William Brown, Scaled Agile Servant-Leader and Coach

About

Enthusiastic collaborator.

Experience

independent consulting

Oct 2018 – Present

Minnesota

Lean-Agile Leader and Coach

My focus has been on working with the leadership of organizations of multiple business domains, using a Lean-Agile approach to help them achieve business agility. • I led the improvements of mixed Agile variants and traditional PMO processes for an organization and coached business stakeholders, project managers and scrum masters to adopt an Agile-Lean version of Kanban and synchronizing team deliveries to a cadence. • I led the Lean and Continuous Integration improvements for a rapidly growing small company to gain faster turnarounds in delivery with reduced cost. I worked in both Product Owner and Scrum Master roles. • On another engagement I helped an organization develop Business Agility by rapidly prototyping new services using Design Thinking, Kanban and cross-functional Lean-Agile teams. • I also helped an organization improve their stale Agile processes that had become rituals and losing delivered value, by reinforcing a strong lean-agile mindset and cadenced synchronization across the business and enabler Scrum teams. I worked in both Product Owner and Scrum Master roles. • On my current engagement with a large startup, as a member of the PMO – brought in to act as the RTE and coordinate all aspects of PIs - I am also leading the coaching for a mix of business product and technology enablement teams, inc. their product owners. With the goal of becoming more Lean in their Agile adoption, by getting back to the basic principles of Agile, using a strong Lean approach. I am also scrum master for multiple scrum teams.

Questar Assessment

Jun 2017 – Sep 2018

Minnesota

IT Leader

When I started consulting there for the CTO several months before I joined as an employee, I joined an extremely rapidly growing company with significant late delivery to their state customers. My role was to grow the IT maturity from a startup mentality to a more mature, consistent delivery state. • Led the growth in the adoption of an Agile-Lean focus, inc. business Lean-Agile mindset and Agile Product Delivery, coaching Business and IT leaders, Product Managers and Scrum Masters. • Drove automation of testing reducing delivery delays by weeks and made it an integral part of continuous integration and blue/green deployment. • Made Design Thinking (UX) a key part of the architecture. • I reduced spend by $1M per month through the introduction of scalable Lean-Agile processes.

The Nerdery

Oct 2008 – May 2017

Minnesota

Strategy Leader / Senior Project Manager

Strategy Leader (2012 – 2017) I set up and led the consultancy group, during which I: • Led the retail customer implementation of a Lean-Agile approach in revamping the organization. This included, identifying the value stream, the use of Kanban and cross-functional teams to produce a Lean delivery approach, with DevOps and Continuous Integration and Deployment. My roles included RTE, Product Manager and Scrum Master. • Acted as interim CTO for a leading medical supply company, creating a Portfolio Vision and Backlog that was used to drive the warehouse automation delivery. Senior Project Manager (2008 - 2012) Agile was required by some of the customers and I acted as one of the Agile coaches, training traditional project managers to become proficient scrum masters. • Coached Agile scrum managers by example in the Agile processes and principles. • Mentored traditional project managers in improvements of their planning, risk and issue management and communication skills. • Led strategic projects: investments firm, travel integrator, medical systems company, social media/networking services analysis tool to track individual and groups, CAD fault tolerance analysis tool for injection moldings, global marketing collaboration system and the initial public use of beta Azure cloud for Microsoft. • Led the implementation of a Lean-Agile approach for a strategic customer, which included: identifying the value stream, implementing a release train, the use of Kanban and transformation to cross-functional teams to produce a Lean delivery approach, with DevOps and Continuous Integration and Deployment.

Xerox

Jun 2002 – Sep 2008

Minnesota

Scrum Master / Solution Architect

Scrum Master (2005– 2008) I was the lead Agile Scrum Manager for the software delivery, using cross-functional teams and continuous integration for a healthcare insurance system integrated to state and federal government systems. Solution Architect (2003 – 2005) • Moved a power company’s telecom startup from spreadsheets to a full OSS. • Collaborated with a travel company in delivering a front-end framework. • Performed a code and user experience analysis as part of a re-engineering project for state family services. • Led the production of a new health insurance system architecture.

Education

Teesside University

B.Sc., Computer Science

Scaled Agile, Inc.

Certified SAFe® 5 Agilist, Scaled Agile Framework

William Brown

Scaled Agile Servant-Leader and Coach

Skills