Sagely - Coaching DoD Teams and Shaping a Learning Platform

The dual mandate

Sagely was hired to do something most coaching shops never attempt: coach live DoD software teams and productize the coaching itself into a learning platform. I held both sides. I was the Lead Product Coach for the Wavelength software factory - an Air Force unit pairing balanced teams with squadron personnel on multi-month rotations - and I was a contributor to Sagely's own product strategy. The company was founded by Adam Furtado, former CPO at Kessel Run, and ran on an Air Force SBIR Phase II contract.

A coaching plan as the master plan

I authored a 28-slide, 5-phase coaching framework - Intro, Diving In, Crafting a Plan, Build Prep, Dev Begins - each phase with explicit completion criteria so coaches and clients shared one definition of "ready to move on." It became the engagement's master plan rather than a slide deck that sat in a drawer.

Underneath it I built the teaching: a 3-part kickoff series (Sagely Values & Principles, Modern Software 101, Product Teams & Roles), a week-long immersive curriculum with daily lectures, case studies (Toyota/Black Swan, The Phoenix Project), and experiential labs (Kanban building, Service Blueprints), all bookended by pre/post assessments. The curriculum spanned XP, user-centered design, Lean Startup, Theory of Constraints, roadmapping, and pair programming.

Coaching the teams, not just the slides

The real work happened with the teams. I coached engineers, designers, and PMs through Discovery & Framing toward a sustainable delivery cadence. When the team hit technical-readiness questions, I proposed domain-driven architecture exercises (BORIS/Snap-E), solution diagramming, and path-to-production planning, and pushed for a lean MVP approach - including a deliberately lightweight auth strategy - to keep early scope from ballooning. When engineering staffing got blocked, I ran a strategic-options analysis weighing four pivot scenarios so leadership could decide with eyes open. I also flagged adoption risk early, bringing cross-engagement lessons in to set realistic expectations about how slowly real adoption arrives.

Shaping Sagely's own product

On the company side, I authored Sagely's Now vs. Future business plan defining the pivot from consultant-powered to app-powered learning, and designed the learning-path architecture behind it: a matrix mapping five learner personas across an early curriculum with content-readiness tracking. I built the 2023 rolling quarterly roadmap across three strategy pillars (Personalization, Learner Experience, Stickiness) and a strategy-metrics-tactics lockup with measurable outcomes. I designed the candidate-assessment battery Sagely used for product and design hiring, and a 9-section Growth Board review format for ongoing team-health and delivery tracking.

What this built

• A coaching framework that scaled past one coach. The 5-phase plan, kickoff series, and immersive curriculum turned Kate's coaching into something the company could repeat.
• Teams that could actually ship. DoD engineers, designers, and PMs moved through Discovery & Framing into a sustainable cadence, with technical-readiness and MVP-scope guidance grounded in real constraints.
• A product strategy for the platform. Learning-path architecture, roadmap, metrics, and hiring assessments gave Sagely's app a direction beyond consultant hours.