PRESS RELEASE
Montréal, QC — March 26, 2026
Why Is It Called Agile Lounge?
The Origin Story — From a Friday Standup to a Decade of Business Agility
Celebrating TEN years of excellence and Innovation.
I love everything about the Lounge culture. The music, the space, the fashion, the era of the jazzy lounge café, the retrofuturism, and the chillness it brings to a team.
Being a Scrum Master since 1999, evolving in the art of pleasing teams and customers, I once transformed a Friday Daily Standup into a Daily Lounge gathering of the team. Where I was working during that period, the place had these amazing closed rooms with couches and sofas.
I decided to book one for every Friday Daily “Stand-up” as I surprised my team by telling them: it’s Friday, let’s chill and let’s talk about how we are doing in the sprint, but also your life in general, about the delivery, about anything you learned this week, and if there’s anything that stops you from achieving your goal or the team mission.
Team members started bringing coffee and some snacks to share with others. We ended up doing our regular 8-to-13-minute Daily and prolonged it talking about the business, IT news, who’s the new build master I will have to kick his ass, etc. So up to 45 minutes of Friday Lounge. Sometimes we celebrated a discovery or a new process, sometimes it was a pre-retro or even a pre-planning and capacity. Sometimes just a chill moment of introspection and storytelling of what they wanted to do next.
The team started calling this “Coach AF Scrum Lounge” — thus was born, some 16 years ago, the idea of the Agile Lounge®.
In a coworking space in Punta Nizuc in the spring of 2016, I started a business plan to offer business agility and Scrum workshops, not only to clients with specific mandates, but also to anyone who would like to get to know what is Agile, what is
Lean, and everything about the new world of work that has been emerging since, in my case, 2006.
As I was building the foundation of these new exclusive and innovative workshops with a tangible outcome for the client, a colleague from one of my New York clients showed me a coworking spot in Bryant Park, in the revamped Bryant Park Studios, where we could rent space just for training or to go meet and greet clients on demand. I was amazed by the project. Meanwhile, in Montreal, a barista friend of mine was opening her café and photo studio in Saint-Henri and was looking for a partner to come along on the adventure of a cross-functional café-studio-coworking. I was enthusiastic about having the Agile Lounge in that space, where people could come and have business agility and Scrum advice while having a perfect cup of coffee. The place’s atmosphere was artsy and lounge, much like the coworking space built in the mezzanine of the old Beaux-Arts Building overlooking Bryant Park from 80th Street.
The funding needed to associate myself with the barista and the photographer was way too high at the time, and according to my business advisor and mentor, too risky an adventure if I ended up the only left-right brain with two artsy people (no offense to right-brainers alone) in making it work long-term. Trust me, I had several businesses related to events, entertainment, and dealt with a lot of amazing artists in the past, and despite the care that a guy like me put into making it work, you could burn yourself out when they don’t care. I didn’t want that.
Weeks passed. Fall of 2016, during an Old Montreal walk with a great colleague, she brought me into this new café on Saint-Jacques: The Crew. Hidden secret place in the once main branch of the Royal Bank building. While having a coffee in this astonishing place reminded me of the Tim Burton Gotham City library where the Joker meets Kim Basinger, I said: “That’s it.” That is the Agile Lounge place in Montréal! Talking with Alex at the counter, as he explained to us that the real project was a coworking and entrepreneur hub, I jumped on the opportunity to become a coworking member. Thus, I did my first Scrum Workshop with clients that fall of 2016, also meeting prospects, giving 1:1 coaching and Agile advice, with awesome fresh well-roasted coffee! Exactly as I dreamed it back in Cancún. I was able in 2017 to secure my spot at the Bryant Park Studios and do the same with my NYC clientele. Soon, fall of 2017, I was also doing it at the IQ Space, a coworking spot in Toronto, in an old CIBC bank.
Few remember that Scrum Beer #1 was held at the Crew in November 2017 with 4 Origines showcasing their beers. Networker as I am, Scrum Beer #2 — more official and with a Meetup — was held in January 2018 at the Brewery.
Voilà! I wanted to give you that tale from the Agile Lounge because many of you have been asking me this in emails. So I thought, as I am writing my book — project title Next Level Agility — that I would answer my valuable subscribers of this valued list, including those many asking about the Agile Lounge name origin and the origin of my brand.
I am in my 10th year of Agile Lounge as well as a coworker at Crew. I feel that we are entering a Renaissance, despite all the darkness that the world is showing us. As you can appreciate in this email banner, a picture of me in Tulum, just next to my 4th coworking space called the Digital Jungle — if you follow your heart, if you care enough about what you want to do and whom you want to be, only yourself and your thoughts can be your limits. Don’t blame the system or others too quickly. Everything starts with CARE.
Do you care enough to think of it, and from your ideas and dreams, do you care enough to move them into action? It’s not always easy, but when you know the principles, you can unleash the activation, wiser. This is, in a way, the best real McCoy personal agility that you can have.
Founder CEO, Principal Advisor and Enterprise Scrum Master
Agile Lounge® by AF J Solutions Inc.
CELEBRATE WITH US
DIX — 10th Anniversary of the Agile Lounge
A Decade of Business Agility, Community, and Lounge Culture
DATE Tuesday, April 14, 2026 — Starting at 5:00 PM ET
VENUE Crew Collective, Old Montréal
ADMISSION Free — A $10 gift donation is welcome. All proceeds will be distributed to homeless shelter organizations in Montréal.
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