WORK HISTORY
2018
Enterprise Lean/Agile Coach and Consultant, and Founder of BluHound Solutions
BluHound Solutions, LLC.
With the aim to help organizations, teams, and leaders deliver solutions that delight their users, I provide coaching, consulting, and training services on Lean, Agile, and DevOps.
Areas of Engagement and Expertise:
- Strategic and Business Planning
- Budget Development & Management
- People Management & Establishing Environments of Continuous Learning
- Continuous Improvement Practices
- Software Development Technologies and Engineering Practices
- Lean/Agile/DevOps Methodologies
- Pragmatic Application of Lean-Agile-DevOps, and extending through Human-Centered Design and Customer Success Operations
- Product Management Practices from Discovery to Delivery
- Large Scale Deployments
- Project Management
- Change and Communication Management
ENGAGEMENTS
Aflac
Enterprise Lean/Agile/DevOps Coach and Trainer.
Centene Corporation
Enterprise Lean/Agile Coach and Trainer. Provide agile, lean, and DevOps coaching, leadership, and guidance to multiple lines-of-businesses (approximately 70 teams), the Enterprise Portfolio and Program Management team, and support the efforts of the Centene Agile Community of Practice or ACE (Agile Center For Excellence. Conduct training and provide coaching and mentoring around the adoption of Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe). Help to train, coach, and mentor leaders to establish an environment where teams can operate at a sustainable pace while increasing innovation.
Helped to facilitate and coach leaders of a next generation, cloud-native utilization and care management solution. Activities include conducting product discovery workshops, coaching and mentoring of teams and leaders as the initiative scales, and help brainstorm new ideas and problems to solve.
Aflac
via partnership with VersionOne
Enterprise Agile Coach. Provide support and coaching alongside internal coaches at Aflac. Help in team level adoption of agile principles and practices, specifically support team performance improvements, backlog management, and introductions of agile technologies (TDD/ATDD).
2011
Professional Services Director, Agile and Technical Product Coach
VersionOne, LLC.
As a director at a leading Agile+DevOps platform provider, my core responsibilities are to lead an autonomous, talented group of passionate consultants and coaches. My goal is to help bring them together as a team that focuses on ensuring our customers attain the goals of their Agile transformation goals and makes the best use of the VersionOne platform. I work closely with our go-to-market teams throughout the product development and sales cycle. Activities include helping organizations articulate and substantiate transformation goals, the creation of implementation roadmaps, define and negotiate statements of work, and, ultimately, drive a healthy pipeline of opportunities for the coaches to make our customers wildly successful.
As a consultant and coach, my responsibilities include mentoring and training customer executives, leadership, and team members on agile and lean principles and the related practices. In addition to process and transformation coaching, I conduct training and workshops on agile, engineering practices, and VersionOne platform usage.
My other duties at VersionOne include working with product management, marketing, customer success, development, and hands-on technical activities when the need calls for it.
NOTABLE ACHIEVEMENTS
- Lead team through a period where we increased professional services EBITA by 1,450% (turned around a negative margin in 2015 to $710k positive margin in 2016, forecast for $800k+ margin with the same team size in 2017). The keys to the increase have been increasing initial deal services attach rate from ~21% to 37% (license dollars/services dollars), and establishing an outcomes and people focused approach to leading professional services.
- Consult on the adoption of Scaled Agile approaches. Included leading multiple SAFe train launches and facilitated PI Planning activities for clients ranging from small/midsize software shops to very large financial institutions.
- Received four quarterly peer/management awards.
2010
Director of Product Development
Brightree, LLC.
Brightree is a provider of SaaS back office solutions aimed at multiple medical equipment markets. Primary responsibilities included leading the development and quality teams charged with maintaining, enhancing, and supporting the core Brightree web application. Led the Lean/Agile adoption across all product development areas including product management, engineering, and leadership.
2006
Director of Product Development, Sr. Technical Program Manager
nuBridges, Inc.
At nuBridges, a leading provider of secure e-business software solutions, I provided hands-on leadership of the development, maintenance, and support activities surrounding five software products using agile processes. I managed and led teams across multiple geographical locations including Atlanta, Dallas, and Gurgaon, India. Assisted sales, professional services, and customer support with numerous customer-facing activities to increase product revenue and maintain a high-customer satisfaction rating.
NOTABLE ACHIEVEMENTS
- Led the implementation of Agile approaches and the Scrum framework to provide consistent, predictable delivery of new product features. Trained all levels of employees across multiple locations, and coached organization through process changes. Results of implementation were improved team morale, trust amongst departments, and continuous improvements surrounding team velocity and product quality.
- Led all aspects surrounding the development of next-generation secure managed file transfer application that received the 2010 Network Products Innovation award. The application was able to handle very large enterprise data transfer loads, deployable across multiple platforms, and was architected to have native fault-tolerant support.
- Established continuous improvement processes that focused on implementing and enforcing engineering best practices (paired programming, TDD, continuous integration), establishing robust build and test automation, and establishing a people-first team environment. Resulted in a 68% reduction of escaped defects.
- Spearheaded and managed efforts to redesign a C++ and .Net based health care, secure order management application that resulted in reduced maintenance and support load while providing a much-improved user experience.
- 2007 Presidents Club winner, received four quarterly management recognition awards.
2005
Sr. Technical Program Manager, PMO/Development Lead
Turner Broadcasting (CNN)
Worked within the PMO group on broadcast production system initiatives leveraging Scrum framework for new development activities and traditional project management techniques for enterprise deployments. Led internal resources and external vendor teams to form cohesive, goal driven teams. Performed enterprise architect and business analyst activities as needed. Regularly worked with senior IT and on-air production personnel.
2001
Application Project Lead (Director), Product Manager, Web Technologies Manager (Nov. 1999 – Aug. 2000)
UPS Supply Chain Solutions
Managed team responsible for developing and maintaining UPS SCS’ Transportation application platforms. The applications supported both North America (NA) and Europe/Middle East/Africa (EMEA) regions. Gross annual revenue enabled by these platforms exceeded $550MM. Consulted with customers and business units, owned cross-team capacity planning, and led IT efforts for business planning/budgeting. Regularly interfaced with customers’ C-suite and senior management.
2001
Program Manager, Development Director
MaxCommerce, A BTI Company
Managed and led all project related resources (23 associates) and activities, including strategy, creative, development, and quality assurance. Engaged in program reviews, customer assessments and business model reviews, creation of statements of work, and working with the teams to make great online experiences.
2000
Application Project Lead (Director), Product Manager, Web Technologies Manager (Nov. 1999 – Aug. 2000)
PMG.net, Inc.
Managed web and online application projects with budgets between $30 and $300K. Hands-on leadership and development of multiple web enabled commerce applications.
1993
Manager of Software Development, IS Manager, Sr. System Analyst, Programmer Analyst
Trus Joist MacMillan
Trus Joist MacMillan, the leader and top innovator of engineered building products. I joined as a programmer and worked my way up to the corporate office managing a ten-member application development team supporting all development aspects of the organization including SAP R/3, intranet, and in-house developed back-office and manufacturing applications. Established development methodology practices and disciplines to predictively deliver user-centric, valuable and high-quality solutions. Reported directly to CIO.
EDUCATION & CERTIFICATIONS
2019
Training from the Back of the Room (TBR)
Scaled Agile, Inc.
2013
Scaled Agile Program Consultant (SPC5)
Scaled Agile, Inc.
2012
Innovations Games Facilitator
Innovation Games/Conteneo
2011
Certified Scrum Product Owner
Scrum Alliance
2006
Certified Scrum Master
Scrum Alliance
1993
Bachelor of Business Administration, Management Information Systems
Georgia Southern University