Introducing Practiqual
Designed for professionals who want to lead with clarity, confidence, and a community-built approach to delivering real outcomes.
Vision
Our vision is a professional marketplace where members lead with integrity, continually elevate the craft of delivering complex product in complex organisations, and set a new standard that empowers people, strengthens careers, and builds lasting trust with the organisations we serve.
Mission
Our mission is to replace the broken agile marketplace with a principled, professional ecosystem that values integrity over branding, competence over certification mills, and collaboration over tribalism.
We are not rejecting agility. We are rejecting the marketplace built around it, a marketplace that has become fragmented, commercialised, and unaccountable.
Goals
Create career opportunities across consulting, delivery, leadership, and training
Rebuild trust with consumers and employers
Develop reputable certifications and assessments that protect members and give confidence to the market
Raise the bar of professionalism
Establish a marketplace for consultants and trainers
Ensure shared and aligned understanding of key concepts and practices
The Practiqual Approach™
The Practiqual Approach™ is a structured, leadership-first system for navigating complexity in modern organisations. It replaces the dysfunction of the agile marketplace with a clear, principled alternative. It is designed to help leaders, teams, and businesses solve complex problems in the real world.
This isn’t a framework to follow. It’s an approach you build, grounded in leadership, evidence, and professional standards. And it’s developed and owned by the community, and not a single vendor.
The Practiqual Approach is made up of four integrated layers, each with a distinct function:
Core
Framework
Pattern Library
Customisation
1. The Core (Mindset and Leadership)
The Core defines the thinking behind the approach. It sets out the leadership behaviours, principles, and mental models needed to succeed in complex environments.
Rather than enforcing a fixed set of values, the Core encourages each organisation to define its own principles and behavioural expectations, aligned to its purpose. This creates a strong ethical and strategic foundation for decision-making, governance, and change.
At its heart, this layer is about Lead with clarity. Deliver with intent. Adapt with integrity.
Practiqual addresses many levels of leadership and there are areas of business acumen, risk management, change management, business strategy, product strategy and more.
2. The Framework (Structured, Customisable)
The Framework layer offers a base blueprint which a practical, structured starting point for how build and deliver your products, how decisions are made, and how teams coordinate. It draws heavily from frameworks and methods like Scrum, Kanban, LeSS, Nexus, Systems Thinking and Evidence-Based Management, but is not bound by any one of them.
This is a Build-Your-Own (BYO) framework. The blueprint must be customised by each organisation to suit its structure, culture, and strategic goals. Some may tailor it to become more flow-based and adaptive, while others may lean towards more defined or formal delivery controls.
What matters is that the framework is fit for purpose and is clear, coherent, and evolving as the organisation itself evolves. The only non-negotiable? You must regularly assess the effectiveness of both the products/services being delivered as well as the approach used to deliver them.
3. The Pattern Library
This layer is where theory meets real-world action. The Practiqual Pattern Library will be continually growing, maturing and a peer-reviewed collection of techniques, delivery patterns, and methods. Many of these already exist and we will not be reinventing them, instead enhancing clarity around them.
Each pattern is clearly defined, contextualised, and critiqued. They don’t come with vague descriptions or universal claims. They come with detailed how to steps, case studies, variations, trade-offs, and guidance for when to use them and when not to. Patterns will have short cases studies from other members who have used it, sharing their context and outcome of using that pattern.
This allows practitioners and leaders to explore patterns they may wish to use in their own framework and thus customise their framework accordingly. This mean they are not left alone to filter out noise, contradictions on their own. The can see success and failure that others have had.
The community curates, maintains and evolves this library. Practitioners can share their experiences, refine the methods, and contribute new ideas. It making this a living resource that gets more valuable over time.
4. Customisation
Customisation is essential. This layer gives organisations a structured way to customise their own framework responsibly, without compromising their framework and/or introducing unnecessary risk.
Rather than just encouraging customisation, this layer aims to guides it by howing where flexibility is healthy, where it carries risk, and how decisions ripple across the system. It helps organisations evolve with confidence, balancing innovation with operational safety.
The base blueprint is an optimal model with very clear intentions, risk controls and optomisations. Changing it is encouraged, but the customisation layer helps with “if you change x, realise the impact to y and the risk associated with it”
Every adaptation is intentional. Every trade-off is made visible. Every risk raised.
Customisation reflect the organisations reality, not someone else’s idea of best practice or someone else's principles. The consumer needs to own their own operation model.
The Practiqual Community
The Practiqual Community is a professional consortium made up of leaders in complex product and service delivery. Members come from diverse industries and roles. Some lead teams within organisations, others run their own businesses, and many influence strategy at various levels. What unites them is a shared mission.
To elevate the profession by building a credible approach and defining the standards that guide how we lead, work, and deliver.
This is not just a network of peers. It is a governed, structured community with real responsibilities.
The Practiqual Community is accountable for both:
Shaping and evolving the Practiqual Approach, the shared method, principles, and mindset used to navigate complex work
Defining and protecting the standards that support it, such as professional conduct, certification expectations, assessments, and quality benchmarks
The community is the strategic owner and critical stakeholder. Elected stewards represent the membership, guide decisions, and ensure the Practiqual Approach remains relevant, consistent, and high quality.
This structure matters.
It ensures that those who use the approach, and whose reputations and careers depend on its credibility, are the ones shaping and upholding it. That creates a shared incentive to keep the bar high.
To support this, the Practiqual Approach’s body of knowledge is protected by legal structures that guarantee it remains community-governed and not privately owned. No individual or company can claim it. All members commit to a shared Code of Ethics that enables trust, respectful collaboration, and open knowledge sharing, even among competitors. The community also respects copyrights and trademarks of existing patterns in the agile market.
In short, the Practiqual Community exists to build and evolve the Practiqual Approach. It defines, upholds, and protects the standards that give the approach its strength. Members apply the Practiqual Approach in their organisations, customers and end consumers.
It is a principle-led, profession-first consortium built to move the industry forward together.
Career Pathways
Practiqual supports diverse career roles aligned with the Practiqual Approach. These roles are:
Practiqual Practitioner – Individuals applying Practiqual concepts in team-based work. No certification is required, just a commitment to a few core concepts. They need to understand and apply their framework.
Practiqual Leader – For team leads and line managers who guide delivery and develop team capability.
Practiqual Capability Leader – Senior leaders managing multiple teams or portfolios, focusing on strategic alignment and organisational capability.
Practiqual Product Manager – Product professionals using Practiqual to shape, validate, and evolve valuable products.
Practiqual Strategic Advisor – Experienced leaders helping organisations redesign operating models, governance, and leadership systems using the Practiqual approach.
Practiqual Licensed Trainer – Independent professionals licensed to deliver official Practiqual courses. Trainers are assessed for facilitation skill and real-world experience.
Practiqual Licensed Assessor – Professionals qualified to assess and certify members or organisations. Assessors must be independent from trainers and adhere to rigorous evaluation standards.
Note: Practiqual is still in its early stages. These roles and pathways represent our current direction, not the final design. As a community-driven initiative in startup mode, we expect things to evolve
Safeguarding the Integrity of Practiqual
Practiqual is not just another framework, it is a professional ecosystem built to restore trust, protect members, and raise the bar in complex product delivery. We’ve seen what happens when communities are left unguarded: brand erosion, fly-by-night operators, and certification mills that devalue the profession. Practiqual is structured differently by design. Each of the following safeguards is deliberate, essential, and non-negotiable. Together, they protect the community, the approach, the certification, and the broader public from the very behaviours that corrupted the agile marketplace.
Community Safeguards
As Practiqual is a professional community governed by ethical and legal protections. Membership is not a free-for-all, it is earned and maintained through conduct, contribution, and alignment with our standards. Opportunistic trainers, consultants, and fly-by-night actors are kept out through binding commitments, including a formal Code of Ethics and legal recourse.
The community defines the expectations. The IPAAA ensures those expectations are upheld. Membership can be revoked when standards are breached—this isn’t just policy, it’s enforceable. This structure protects the brand, the profession, and the careers of those who genuinely uphold it.
Approach Protection
The Practiqual Approach is not open-source and cannot be freely co-opted or misrepresented. It is protected through a suite of legal instruments such as copyright, trade secrets, IP trademarks, and certification marks. These protections are stronger than basic trademarks and give the community the power to challenge misuse in job ads, sales pitches, and training offerings.
Importantly, the intellectual property is not owned by any individual or business. It is held in a separate legal entity, which ensures that no single person or commercial actor can hijack or dilute the approach. That entity engages the IPAAA to uphold these protections on behalf of the community.
Certification Integrity
Practiqual certification is intentionally difficult and that’s a good thing. There are no 2-day course quizes sold as certificates as those are scams. These are based on knowledge, demonstratable skill and experience.
It follows ISO-aligned principles where trainers cannot assess their own students, and certification is based on demonstrated real-world competence, not rote memorisation. We are taking it a bit further though, examination and certification are separated too.
Every certified member is bound by the Code of Ethics and remains accountable. This is not a rubber-stamp. It’s a signal to clients and employers that a certified member is a true professional who has earned their standing through integrity, skill, experience and contribution.
This is not the weak, unregulated certification culture you may be used to. It is designed to protect both consumers and certified professionals from the damage caused by low-quality credentials.
The Role of the IPAAA
The International Practiqual Administration and Accreditation Authority (IPAAA) exists to protect the community and not to control it. It holds the legal framework, enforces the certification marks, and ensures compliance with the standards and ethics set by the members themselves.
The IPAAA does not provide training or consulting. Nor does it define the Practiqual Approach. Its independence is intentional, it serves the community’s interests, not commercial ones. We have invested in making sure the community’s standards and intellectual property is protected. This means breaches are defensible and action can be taken by the IPAAA on behalf of the community.
The IPAAA also provides critical infrastructure: such as websites, hosting the knowledge exams, offering tooling and support. It ensuring that certification assessments are performed independently by approved Practiqual Licensed Assessors and are fair.
Each of these mechanisms is an intentional safeguard. Not to make things harder, but to make them credible. To protect those who do the right thing and stop those who do the wrong thing. As for right and wrong, the community decides. It is there to give our community a future built on trust.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q. Is Practiqual agile?
No. Practiqual does not adopt the principles or values outlined in the Manifesto for Agile Software Development. Instead, we support organisations in defining their own principles instead fit for their context. That said, many of the MFASD principles are valuable and worth considering. We simply don’t treat them as sacred or universal.
Q. What happens to all the agile skills I already have?
The Practiqual Approach builds on many strong ideas introduced through agile. Your existing knowledge still matters and will often be useful when applying Practiqual in real work.
Q. What if my understanding of agile concepts differs from the Practiqual Approach?
Due to widespread confusion and misinterpretation in the agile space, Practiqual provides a single, community-aligned view on key concepts. If your interpretation differs, you’ll need to adapt and reframe so we’re aligned and speaking the same language. This alignment is deliberate to reduce conflict between members and provide clarity to those we serve.
Q. You keep using the word governance. That’s not agile.
That’s correct. Practiqual isn’t agile. We use language and terms that resonate with business leaders, because our goal is to support them and the organisations they serve. The discomfort with governance usually stems from outdated command-and-control models. Practiqual embraces modern, flexible, and pragmatic governance approaches. Ironically they are fully compatible with agility when done right.
Q. I’m a Scrum Master or Agile Coach. What’s my career path?
The role of Practiqual Leader is the most natural entry point. You’ll already have relevant skills and experience that align well. And there’s a clear path to grow beyond that. Practiqual opens up new leadership and strategic opportunities for those ready to step forward.
Q. How will you stop lazy tailoring from masquerading as innovation?
Customisation is structured and accountable. Changes must align with core principles, and risks are made explicit. We do not encourage companies to customise without help from a Practiqual Strategic Advisor or Practiqual Certified Consultant. Practiqual ensures tailoring is intentional—not just personal preference disguised as progress.
What happens when someone tries to monetise or subvert Practiqual?
They can’t. Practiqual is protected by legal safeguards and independent governance. Only licensed professionals can teach or certify, and misuse is enforced to protect the community and its standards. If you see this, let the IPAAA know and we will get the lawyers on it.