Eastern Michigan University

Saint John's, Florida, United States

Virtually planting the seeds of change with leaders, groups, teams... people.

Insight

National Agile Coach

While working for a major theme park resort:● Member of the Transformation Leadership Team charged with supporting the Agile Transformation● Worked closely with Scrum Masters, Product Owners, and Development Teams to ensure they had the support and knowledge to be successful with Agile and Scrum● With humility I worked with people to help them understand how their actions and behaviors increase or decrease our ability to be agile● Ensured that everyone understands that valuable outcomes are greater than any prescriptive process● Helped leadership buy into the actions and behaviors to support a successful transformation and empowered teams● Coached multiple Scrum Teams; training, mentoring and guiding them on their Agile journey● Worked with Product Owners and Development Teams to ensure they understood how to break work into thin vertical slices● Held “Ask Me Anything” alignment session for Product Owners and Scrum Masters● Worked with other Agile Coaches to ensure we had an aligned and consistent message● Regularly receive compliments on how I’m not a “Typical Agile Coach” that beats people of the head with theory and religious practice● Nominated as “Someone Making an Impact” after only 4 weeks in the role of Agile Coach

TalentWave

Agile Coach

- My focus is on people, actions, behaviors, and agility● Worked closely with our clients to ensure we provide a suitable construct to efficiently operate with agility in mind● Worked with developers, product owners, managers, directors, executives, and business stakeholders to ensure an understanding of Scrum and/or Kanban● Discussed with executive team members from the business and IT to discuss how workplace changes can help improve culture and create workplace happiness● Helped companies understand how to focus on delivering incremental value, and to keep metrics that are more consistent with Agile practices● Worked with multiple Scrum teams to scale valuable incremental outcomes● Helped teams find best practices around breaking down work so that they can use agility to their advantage● Facilitate Scrum events and I empower teams to be effective within their framework and methodology● Coached teams to self-organize in such a way so that I do not become the crutch of the team● Mentored other Scrum Masters to ensure consistency within the guidelines and rules of Scrum● Advocated for continuous improvement and process waste reduction● Trained Kanban teams on work flow, and how to use WIP and Kaizen to improve continuously● Helped teams understand their input (form and type of requirements) andoutput (increments) metrics to maximize their potential● Facilitate User Story Workshops to build an initial healthy backlog● Used Management 3.0 practices to help foster a better workingmanager/employee relationship● Facilitate Scrum and Kanban training workshops, including hands on gamesto reinforce learning● Worked with teams on how to iterate and incrementally build products usingMVPs, versions and releases

CCG Analytics Solutions & Services

Agile Coach/Scrum Master

- Hold initial conversations with Project Leaders to determine if Scrum or Kanban is suitable for project▪	Engage in helping the business understand the different between collecting User Stories and typical requirements, and also hold User Story Workshop to build initial backlog for the project▪	Teach the Scrum Team about and facilitate Scrum ceremonies such as Backlog Refinement, Sprint Planning, Daily Scrum, Sprint Review, and Sprint Retrospective▪	Work with business stakeholders and Product Owner to understand Agile work flows as necessary▪	Teach the Development Team to be self-organizing in such a way as to not become the crutch of the team as Scrum Master▪	Help teams map existing work flows to understand where improvements can be made (Lean)▪	Coach teams to reduce wasteful queuing in order to speed up work flow (Lean)▪	Track and display information radiators such as Sprint Burndown and Feature Burn▪	Track metrics such as Team Average Velocity, Cycle Time, and Lead Time▪	Foster a continuous improvement and continuous integration environment▪	Help team work towards automated deployments▪	Built Scrum Alignment sessions to get a common understanding for all levels of the organization including Stakeholders, Managers, Product Owners, and Development Teams

Scrum Master

- As Manager of BI I provide the vision and direction for our enterprise reporting platform. This includes defining the differences between analytics and reporting, vision for consumption of data in the various Cognos tools, and explaining/documenting the vision to stakeholders and IT staff▪	Support Scrum Team with product sprint and release cycles. Provide input on sprint content to help determine if stories will be a candidate for production release which typically happens quarterly▪	Work closely with Scrum teams to ensure they understood the guidelines and gaps of Scrum and how it impacted their sprint forecast ▪	Asked by IBM to present “Transitioning to Self-Service BI with Cognos 10” at first ever Central and North Florida Cognos User group in Tampa▪	Lead a Business Intelligence Scrum Development Team of 6 that creates and maintains content using IBM Cognos 10.2.2 against SQL Server DB that receives over 150 million rows of data per week▪	Played various Scrum roles including Scrum Master and Product Owner for Business Intelligence Development teams as needed while seeding the Scrum process/roles within IT▪	While serving as Scrum Master I facilitated scrum ceremonies such as sprint planning, Daily Scrum, Sprint Review, and Sprint Retrospective ▪	While serving as Product Owner for BI I facilitated backlog refinements, story pointing sessions, prioritize the product backlog, and review user stories▪	Admin of the Atlassian JIRA and Confluence environments we use to track our product backlog, sprint backlog, projects, and documentation – both internal and user facing▪	Implemented data models using isolation modeling along with durable model techniques ▪	Built FM models and Reports including Active Reports for RFPs and POCs▪	Manage and use a versioning and promotion tool called MotioCI to promote content between development, QA, Stage, and Production environments, as well as export and package content for release and create test cases for QA cycle

Acosta Sales & Marketing

Business Intelligence Manager

Cognos Architect

- Lead a global Business Intelligence Development Team of 10 that uses Scrum development methodologies to create and maintain content using IBM Cognos 10.1▪	Manage 3 Scrum teams consisting of Developers, QA, and Documentation personnel and coordinate and plan sprints with Product Managers and Scrum Masters▪	Personally created Metrics, Reports and Dashboards to keep track of scrum development process within development using Cognos 10 and Microsoft TFS 2010▪	Successfully implemented new modeling approach (Isolation modeling) and incorporated durable modeling in Framework Manager to help reduce impact on customers when development model changes are made▪	Simultaneously develop models, reports and dashboards on 14 applications across 3 software product lines  ▪	Worked on fringe development including POC for reporting data structures (ODS/EDW) using  Cognos Mobile and .NET web services as data source and complex security implementations▪	Implemented report and portal branding to improve overall look of delivered content▪	Coordinate with other development teams  to integrate Cognos content into the ERP applications▪	Modeled data, created cubes, and dashboards for Local Government data including Finance (GL/HR/PY), Community Works, and Public Safety and Justice▪	Work with QA team to regress and fix bugs in Cognos content and interfaces between applications including launching of reports from within other applications and authentication using Motio Custom Authentication Provider (CAP)▪	Use MotioCI to promote content between development, QA and Production environments, as well as export and package content for release and create test cases for QA cycle▪	Responsible for creating development documentation for installation procedures, security, and development (modeling, reporting and dashboards) standards

SunGard Public Sector

Team Lead of Business Intelligence Development

- Member of the SunGard Higher Education Business Intelligence Services Team that is responsible for installing, configuring, and deploying Cognos Business Intelligence 8.3 and 8.4 to work with relational and multi-dimensional reporting products such as Operational Data Store and Enterprise Data Warehouse for Higher Education clients▪	Installed, configured, and deployed Business Intelligence environments for over 20 clients of various sizes ranging from single server to 4 server clustered environments on Linux, Solaris, HP-UX, AIX, and Windows Servers▪	Help clients troubleshoot Cognos 8 system performance issues such as slow report run time and provide strategic assessment to provide better overall system performance ▪	Conduct on-site and remote client training classes for Cognos Administration and Cognos Connection, Security, Framework Manager, Metric Studio and Metric Designer, Transformer, Query Studio, Report Studio, and Analysis Studio using Cognos 8.3 and Cognos 8.4▪	Work with clients to create and customize Framework Manager models and packages, metrics and scorecards, and cubes to suit customer needs. Also continue to support clients in troubleshooting and additional support for the life cycle of the product▪	Write reports using Query Studio, Report Studio, and Analysis Studio and assist clients with overall guidance for future report writing ▪	Consult with clients in the initial planning phase as they pick hardware and OS software for their Cognos and Business Objects environments. As well help them establish best practices for creating the Databases and Authentication source (LDAP and AD) and Web Server (Apache, IIS, etc)▪	Installed database and create schemas and tablespace as needed for Cognos Content Store

SunGard Higher Education

Senior Technical Consultant

- Member of AB Business Objects Support Team that supported an 8 Server Production Environment, 2 Server Test and 2 Server Dev BO XI R2 Environments▪	Migrated 3000 users from Business Objects 6.5, Crystal Reports 10, and Business Objects XIR1 to Business Objects XIR2 environment▪	Created custom audit and statistical reports based on Universe and Business Views semantic layers using Crystal, Web Intelligence, and Desktop Intelligence that are used to track user actions and provide crucial system metrics▪	Setup Web Services SDK on .NET and Java as well as helped developers with creating Proof of Concept for future projects that needed customized web interface for administration and report consumption▪	Worked with other BI tool administrators to create metadata DB that tracks BI tool usage for the whole company▪	Created, tested, and documented Disaster Recovery restore procedure for XIR2 8 server environment▪	Worked closely with Business Objects Support Engineers on bugs and patch upgrade testing for migrating from CHF17 to SP2 FP 2.3 environment

Anheuser-Busch

Business Intelligence Admin

- Project lead on Business Objects Enterprise XI R2 system Implementation ▪	System Administrator for BOE XI R2 system on Windows 2003 OS with distributed cluster. Two Application servers and one CMS server. Also System Admin for legacy system Crystal Enterprise 10▪	Created process flow for entire BOE system. This includes test environment packets and details for using the test system, as well as the migration process. Also trained development staff and Change Control staff on these processes▪	Full understanding of XI environment including semantic Universe and Business Views, Crystal Reports, Deski and Webi. Wrote Crystal Reports based on Business Views with Dynamic Connections, LOVs, and Dynamic cascading prompts▪	Migrated reports from CE 10 named license environment to BOE XI R2 proc license environment▪	Technical lead on IT Report Review Committee▪	Wrote Crystal Reports against SQL DB, Oracle DB, and Data Warehouses▪	Admin for additional applications such as Appworx, Evisions Form Fusion, and Evisions Intellecheck▪	Designed internal web sites for IT Operation▪	Served on Disaster Recovery Departmental Interface Team which is a central point of contact and liaison for our IT department in the event of a disaster▪	Served on Incident Response Team which creates policies and procedures for the security of EMU’s critical data infrastructure

Ken Rickard

Ken Rickard