About

I'm Ahmed Avais, and for more than 25 years I've been learning how systems behave and how to help them change. The systems started out as machines, became teams, and today they're teams working alongside AI.

Machines

I began as an engineer, first running networks and then spending more than a decade on mission-critical infrastructure, where downtime affected thousands of people every day. That's where I learned to look for the constraint in a system and improve the flow around it, a habit I still bring to every problem.

Teams

In 2008 I started Agile 7 to build products with small businesses and startups. Chicago's startup scene was taking off, in the years that produced Groupon, Belly and SpotHero, and I learned a great deal from its Lean Startup and agile meetups. Extreme Programming and test-driven development showed me that code gets better when a team's habits get better, and that idea pulled me into coaching.

For the next decade I coached teams and leaders in finance, healthcare and technology, including Fidelity Investments, UnitedHealth Group and Capital One, sometimes with a single team and sometimes across more than 200. I worked alongside CIOs and their leadership teams, led groups of coaches, and helped managers become coaches themselves. I've led transformations with Scrum and Kanban, my teams work with FaST today, and along the way I've gone deep into Human Systems Dynamics. No single method fits every context, so I pick the one that fits the people and the problem.

Whatever the method, I start with people as they are and help them see their own system, so they can chart their own path.

Teams and AI

More recently I helped a federal agency take a secure LLM solution from concept to production, and today, as a Senior Engineering Manager, I lead teams that build with AI every day. We work with specs, an agent harness and a safety net that catches what generated code gets wrong, and we've watched the constraint move from writing code to reviewing it. The human side of that shift is the hardest part, and it's where my years of coaching matter most.

My teams do the work, and my part is to create the conditions for it: the practices, feedback loops and trust that let them do it well.

Credentials

I'm a Certified Enterprise Coach (CEC) and an ICF Professional Certified Coach (PCC), and I contributed to and edited The Leader's Guide for Social Responsibility.

I live in Apex, North Carolina, with my wife and children. The full timeline is on LinkedIn, and I make small interactive things at ahmedavais.com.