SUMMARY:

As an Agile and Innovation lead, I work with executives, customers and teams to build innovative new products. This is accomplished through hands on facilitation of proven approaches: Design Thinking, Agile / DevOps delivery techniques, visioning, MVP, Lean Startup, “Jobs to be done” framework for innovation, Innovation Games, feedback loops with weekly demonstrations of progress and more. Once we’ve proven the right product and ROI, I use a custom recruiting and training approach to build the high performing team and use Agile / DevOps methods to iteratively deliver.

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE:

Confidential, Arlington, VA

Chief Innovation Officer / Advisor

Responsibilities:

• Serve as advisor on business accelerator panel and help tech startups focus their offerings
• Set up and facilitate innovation initiatives and lab results using frameworks for innovation
• Build teams ( Interview, hire, train and retain talented employees )
• Design and facilitate custom innovation frameworks for clients with established methods: “jobs to be done” framework, design thinking, business model canvas, innovation games, Vision, MVP, iterative prototyping experiments, demos to share outcomes, agile/lean startup activities and a “non - customer” feedback loop to explore disruptive opportunities
• Provide training on many of the topics above
• Teach conflict resolution approach to address common challenges with innovation
• Coach Agile/DevOps teams and model facilitation of Scrum ceremonies: sprint planning, release planning, demo, sprint review, retrospective and daily stand-ups.
• Remove impediments for team and promote use of DevOps engineering practices such as automated testing, CI/CD and use of Cucumber, Git, Jenkins, Docker, Java, NoSQL.
• Create forecasts and other information radiators
• Foster business innovation and define strategic product direction with client teams through business working sessions with stakeholders, customers and Product Owner

Confidential, Mclean VA

Office of Confidential Coach: Agile / DevOps

Responsibilities:

• Provided methodology design support for innovation lab team
• Coached Agile DevOps pilot for Confidential (Cucumber, Git, Jenkins, Docker, Java, NoSQL)
• Hired and led Team of senior Agile Coaches. Run Scrum Master Peer Forum and COI
• Facilitate identification, prioritization and removal of organizational impediments to agility.
• Established Vision for future of Agile / DevOps delivery with Confidential
• Provided expert coaching to executives, managers and teams to create alignment
• Served as Agile Coach & Scrum Master: Fostered team setup in iteration and masterfully facilitated ceremonies and working sessions: vision, sprint/iteration planning, backlog development/refinement, release planning, demos, iteration review, retrospectives, daily stand ups as well as stakeholder engagement. Coach and train product owners, teams and managers in agile delivery. Facilitate backlog creation, refinement and forecasting
• Designed/taught classes to hundreds of staff: "Introduction to Agile", "Agile Team Foundation Training" and "Product Ownership" with exercises, presentations and videos.

Confidential, Washington, DC

Executive Level Agile Coach

Responsibilities:

• Advised IT executives on scaling of agile
• Implemented business case definition, intake and justification standards for project portfolio to ensure the most valuable work is budgeted
• Led executive stakeholder decisions on strategic project objectives, outputs, vision, business case, what’s in/out of scope, prioritization and success criteria
• Evaluated Rally and VersionOne software to help selected solution (VersionOne)
• Led delivery of client technology upgrades, COTS and new software using Agile practices
• Facilitated and coached Release Planning Games, Sprint Planning, Daily standups, Epic/Story writing, Sprint Reviews, Retrospectives, Velocity Tracking, Point Estimation with Planning Poker, Test Driven Development, Kanban, Retrospectives and Burndown charts.

Confidential, Herndon, VA

Founder / Product Owner / Senior Agile Coach

Responsibilities:

• As owner of web-based property rental company, developed business case, prioritized vision/strategy and product features, managed backlog, marketed and closed sales. Listened to customer feedback to launch new web service that increased revenue over 600% within first 2 years.
• As founding team member of on-line identity theft early detection software company, defined product vision and priorities. Completed industry research, competitor analysis, wrote whitepapers and value proposition and sales deck. Participated in sales activities.
• Helped Confidential design custom Agile portfolio management for >100 projects at software company: established start criteria, objectives, success criteria, cost of failure and ROI.
• Designed and taught Agile Project Management and Scrum practices to IT leadership and teams using bootcamp format in which students delivered a real project
• Led evaluation of Agile tools: Greenhopper, VersionOne, Rally, XPlanner and others.

Confidential, Fairfax, VA

Director of Learning Institute/ Agile Coach

Responsibilities:

• Managed team (trainers, marketing designer, training coordinator, instructional designer and sales) in creation, promotion and continuous delivery of learning programs.
• Led the creation and delivery of courses in agile project management, facilitator excellence, personal presence, RUP, requirements techniques (activity diagrams, use cases, business models and iterative delivery). The classes saved the company over $250k, improved the ability of employees to deliver quality and provided a new source of revenue.
• Developed marketing material, sold classes, lead marketing campaigns and built relationships with other directors in order to achieve strategic goals
• Facilitated C-level decision making sessions to define strategy, corporate vision and values using root cause analysis, program prioritization, visioning exercises and cost analysis XP Coach and Scrum Master to software delivery teams
• Taught teams Agile/XP/Scrum practices: user stories, planning games, daily standups, test driven development, story mapping (affinity grouping), velocity, paired programming, retro
• Shortened release schedule, increased customer engagement and improved code quality

Confidential, Mclean, VA

Sales Engineer

Responsibilities:

• Gave customer demos, provided sales / client support and taught courses (RUP, Object Oriented Design and Development, Rational Rose, Requisite Pro)

Confidential, Palo Alto, CA

Principle

Responsibilities:

• Led startup executive decision making sessions to set business direction and product vision
• Managed delivery of B2B web based software solutions for clients in industries including health care, banking, mortgage, insurance, on-line auctions and import/export logistics
• Designed first web based secondary mortgage market application
• Performed market analysis, stakeholder interviews and presented results to executives

Confidential, Mclean, VA

Software Engineer

Responsibilities:

• Lab: Developed software and prototype systems with Java, Javascript, C/C++, SNAP, X and X-Motif, HTML, Perl. Envisioned and created first web based aircraft situation display to augment legacy systems for the Confidential . Reduced cost by $30k per seat
• Designed, and managed successful corporate mentoring program. Presented findings on “How to Run a Values Based Mentoring Program” at Linkage Inc. Conference.