Agile software professional with exceptional analytical, communication, and people skills. Dynamic and credible leader adept at balancing customer, business, and technical considerations; forging solid decisions in ambiguous situations; and building relationships that carry influence across organizations. Polished interpersonal and coaching skills with proven ability to work through high-pressure situations in a calm and solution-focused manner.

Coached and trained teams through Agile transformation. Delivered training and workshops for Scrum, Kanban, and DevOps concepts. Coached teams and Scrum Masters through real world startup problems; helped leaders move from command and control towards team empowerment; identified and helped resolve organizational impediments. Created Team Foundation Server (TFS) extensions to collect and display metrics. Results: Improved existing training materials; developed more capable Scrum Masters, leaders and teams; standardized metrics and automated visual dashboards that focused improvement efforts.

Developed training and coached teams through Scrum adoption. Created training plan and deliverables for use of Scrum within the existing project management framework. Introduced concepts of roadmap and product increment for scaled teams on a large program. Evangelized stakeholder engagement, test automation, cross-functional collaboration and continuous integration. Results: Release of game changing mobile app which made near real-time status of field jobs available to management and field customer service representatives.

Performed agile assessments, coaching, training, and Scrum team startup. Interviewed managers, scrum masters, and team members. Observed scrum ceremonies. Facilitated agile adoption retrospectives for teams and leadership. Summarized findings and prioritized recommendations. Delivered training to reset Scrum expectations. Facilitated sprint ceremonies and coached a new Scrum Master and team. Results: Created agile improvement backlogs. Reset existing practices to better align with Scrum. New Scrum team provided a understanding of agile for the organization.

Coached teams through downsizing from ~180 members to 68. Selected to coach team through program changes required by market conditions. Simplified process to define and communicate features and acceptance criteria. Facilitated sprint ceremonies and maintained physical boards for each team. Implemented Kanban board to provide end-to-end transparency of business and technical process for each release. Results: Business and IT management were aligned with the teams. Features were better understood with lighter-weight documentation. Teams adjusted, performance improved and program was on path to a successful release at my departure.

Served as Scrum Master on a scaled agile program with 180 team members. Coached development teams and business to optimize flow of value. Worked with Agile Coach to influence focus of the business and PMO. Created visual web-based reports from TFS Data Warehouse which became the go-to source of information for Architects, Development Leads, Scrum Masters, and Product Owners. Results: Moved the program focus up from sprint status details to completion of high-level features and incremental releases. Teams achieved a high degree of self-organization, cross-functional swarming, and improved collaboration with the business. Selected as the only Scrum Master for the final program transition phase.

Developed agile training and coached teams through transition to Scrum. Trained 12+ teams on Scrum fundamentals and enhanced existing training workshops. Helped ScrumMasters create task boards, burn-down charts, and other radiators. Coached teams through refinement, planning, daily Scrum, demos, and retrospectives. Assisted Product Owners with backlog creation, prioritization, release planning, and splitting user stories. Recommended changes to workspace, release processes, radiators, training, and support services to increase agility. Results: Transitioned 5 teams to Scrum; improved performance and consistency of 3 existing Scrum teams. Improved agile training material.

Spearheaded adoption of Scrum framework. Perceived resistance from some team members. Stepped out of manager/Scrum Product Owner role to coach the team on Scrum/Agile practices; modeled the desired Agile behaviors and created a safe environment for experimentation and learning. Results: Resistance faded as team embraced Scrum, showed signs of self-organization, and saw progress with the product; incremental process and practice improvements increased team productivity and progress on the product.

Sponsored Six Sigma Black Belt certification project to reduce customer support costs. Mined support case database to identify issues and areas of customer confusion. Categorized issues and attacked the most frequent causes. Created recommended actions and implemented product improvements. Results: Reduced product support events by 40% and cost per support event by 53%. Instrumental in program manager achieving Six Sigma Black Belt Certification.

Reorganized quality assurance team to align more closely with development. Co-located the QA and development teams, encouraged a more collaborative QA process by testing preliminary code and reporting issues directly to developers.  Initiated “Test Days” for developers and testers to find and fix as many bugs as possible in a single day. Results: Reduced internal problem reports by 36% with a smaller, happier and more engaged product team.

Streamlined system integration for new product development. Identified process and technical issues with subsystem test, integration, and sharing of test equipment. Created a standardized test environment with easy to use scaffolding and trained engineers. Captured data from working test environments to simplify subsystem integration.  Focused integration team on automating and streamlining the build process and working with engineers to integrate completed subsystems. Results: Reduced subsystem test setup time by 50%; enabled sharing of scarce test hardware; increased rate of subsystem integration; created a working release of the product.

Led Scrum teams building a new drilling surface data acquisition system. Coached teams on backlog refinement, story slicing, swarming, and the virtues of shorter sprints. Collaborated with product marketing, engineering, and operations on release strategy and priorities. Influenced executives to maintain stable teams, fund platforms instead of projects, assign expert field engineers as Product Owners, accept incremental releases, and align across engineering, marketing, and operations. Results: Gained trust and influence with operations and marketing, operations noted a marked increase in delivery of valuable features, and the new platform was ultimately a success.

Executed 25+ on-time software releases for a time-to-market driven hardware business. Created an agile development and release process, influenced server test organizations to adopt automated deployment to complement the team’s testing. Drove creation of an automated build and release process. Results: Increased quality, improved ability to adapt to changing priorities, released frequently in support of pilot hardware testing, provided timely releases supporting ProLiant server announcements, and achieved time to market release with Intel and operating system partners.

Conceptualized and directed development of software product as Scrum Product Owner. Created and prioritized product backlog; refined backlog with the team; updated backlog to incorporate feedback from customers and stakeholders; review and approve user interface design. Results: Generated enthusiastic responses from customer demonstrations; achieved business objectives of compatibility with HP Server Automation and easy adoption in the volume server market.

Coordinated outsourcing of maintenance and ongoing development of legacy server deployment product. Created a transition plan with HP’s outsource partner, trained receiving team, coached lead program manager and lead engineer, and reviewed release metrics during the transition. Results: Made experienced in-house team available for next generation product development; maintained quality, on-time release record and customer satisfaction with existing product.

Built and mentored a highly motivated and cohesive team. Started with a team of 5, hired 10 additional engineers. Trained and coached team on development practices and real-time system design.  Improved team’s focus on peer code reviews and negative testing. Results: Completed initial release of system services and initialization, reduced internal problem reports by 63%, and cut internal support costs in half.

Designed and developed real-time software for energy management systems. Designed initialization subsystem for a distributed architecture SCADA system, convinced Director to enhance control language and implemented a compiler, pioneered use of new Intel development tools and embedded OS, trained other engineers, and assisted with debug. Results: Noted for “outstanding design” skills, exceeding customer expectations; earned a leadership role, increased freedom and responsibility.

Developed and evangelized the first “for sale” software product in Compaq’s Industry Standard Server Division. Adapted and packaged a partner software product for sale with HP’s ProLiant servers. Enhanced product to meet emerging customer needs and technology changes in the server market. Results: Product became a successful differentiator for HP’s server business, created customer “stickiness” to ProLiant servers; provided customers with a clear ROI and consistent server deployments; ultimately grew into a $500M software business for HP.

Demystified automated server deployment for customers, field sales, and support. Delivered demonstrations and presentations on server deployment to field sales, trainers, and customers. Assisted with setup and delivery of early training classes. Identified the key selling points that resonated with customers. Coached and assisted field sales during evaluations and installations. Results: Conpaq’s major customers moved from manual deployments following a playbook to automated deployments provided by a Compaq software product. This software product created “stickiness” for Compaq servers in corporate accounts due to data center efficiencies.

Spearheaded formation and training of dedicated technical support team. Persuaded technical support leaders to form a dedicated team to handle the unique needs of our “for sale” software product. Trained new support team, provided early access to software releases, and held Q&A sessions for each release. Results: Quick reaction time improved the customer support experience eased the customer adoption process. Improved support reduced load on pre-sales engineers, clearing pre-sales pipeline for new customer engagements.

Created a community of practice for pre-sales engineers selling software products. Created and promoted an email list to give field engineers direct access to the development team. Provided pre-release notifications, access to beta software, answered questions, published road-map, surveyed list to clarify priorities, and enabled knowledge sharing among list members. Results: Generated numerous product enhancement ideas; built trust with pre-sales engineers, created a forum for pre-sales engineers to document and share knowledge. Model was copied and ultimately sanctioned as the Management Ambassadors program.

Pioneered automated deployment of servers in boot from SAN configuration. Recruited a cross-functional team including storage, driver, operating system, and firmware engineers. Brainstormed issues with the team, assigning actions to investigate potential solutions. Engaged SAN partners and internal teams to create tools needed for automated configuration. Results: Automated the deployment process, provided a unique differentiator for ProLiant blade servers and supported disk-free blades well in advance of converged network/storage infrastructure; inception of blade server “rip and replace” with SAN boot which led to US Patent 7,856,489 - Simplified Server Replacement which enhanced HP’s strategic Virtual Connect product.

Improved customer experience at intersection of Microsoft and Compaq. Integrated with the Windows development team and built a Compaq team on-site. Provided ProLiant servers to performance and storage teams. Instrumental in site selection, design and build of Compaq’s Redmond office. Results: Improved out of box experience, performance, and scalability on ProLiant servers running Windows. Expanded scope of partnership with Microsoft. Recognized by Director for “one of a kind” work with Microsoft that was “critical to our success.”

Enhanced server setup during formative years of Compaq’s Industry Standard Server business. Envisioned and prototyped a server Maintenance CD, demonstrated and persuaded management to ship it.  Invented and implemented a method to run server configuration tools from hard disk. Results: Streamlined server setup and maintenance for customers.

B. S., Computing and Information Sciences, Trinity University, San Antonio, Texas, 1983.

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