University of Plymouth

No-nonsense leader with an unorthodox but successful style. Fights for kindness, support, lightheartedness and honesty

Edinburgh, United Kingdom

Clevermed Ltd

Engineering Manager

Airts

VP of Engineering

Metail

VP of Engineering & Operations

Worldpay

VP Engineering - Ecommerce Payment Gateway

Agile Transformation Manager

Working as part of the Office of the CTO, I was responsible for the key roles that contribute to product design across Redgate; Product Management, User Experience, and Technical Communication. I led the restoration of our competitive differentiator to our product portfolio by rebuilding and championing our user-centric, design-led culture. As part of the CTO team, I also provided expertise and support for product strategy and innovation.

Achievements:
-  Product Management Restructure – As part of a second major company restructure I redefined the roles and structure for product management to focus on greater customer and user engagement and a move from ownership of individual point tools to a broader portfolio and product line approach.
-  Cohesive Design – Using an intensive “design week” kick-off, I led a company-wide introduction of a design system spanning all our products and web properties to deliver a joined-up user experience.
-  Customer & Market Research Coaching – I pair-coached a 2-person time-boxed innovation research team for 6 weeks. Taking them from an initial fear of speaking to customers and partners to being the voice of expertise for the company on our position with regard to Microsoft’s introduction on SQL Server on Linux.

Awards:
-  Dec 2015 CEO's Team of the Year (for Office of the CTO)

Redgate Software

Head of Product Design

Co-founder and co-creator of "Cracking Big Rocks" coaching cards and workshops; a series of over 50 mini-pattern cue-cards for problem solving and coaching.

The cards are based on the combined career and personal experiences of myself and my co-founder. Some are well-known but many are original.

We occasionally run coaching workshops at conferences introducing the card deck and how to use them.

The deck is now into its second edition having sold out the limited first edition sets less than 6 months after their initial low-key launch. See <a href="http://crackingbigrocks.com">http://crackingbigrocks.com</a> for details.

Conference appearances so far...
Agile Coach Camp, Vettre, Norway - Jan 2012, Jan 2013, Jan 2014
Red Gate Software, Cambridge - Jun 2012
Agile 2012, Dallas, Texas - Aug 2012
Retrospective Facilitator Gathering, Outer Banks, North Carolina - Apr 2013
Agile Cambridge, Cambridge - Sept 2012, Sept 2013

Sample conference session from Agile 2012 available at:  <a href="http://agile2012.sched.org/event/af3f9f966695808c5ac76fbf8e7d547e?iframe=no&w=918&sidebar=no&bg=no">http://agile2012.sched.org/event/af3f9f966695808c5ac76fbf8e7d547e?iframe=no&w=918&sidebar=no&bg=no</a>

CrackingBigRocks.com

Co-founder

I joined the division as a Dev Manager and Agile Coach to mentor their Project Manager and support the .NET Development Tools portfolio. When I joined, the team were critically dependent on a single developer and were months into a project that was significantly overrunning. In my year with the division I transformed the group from struggling to work on a single project, having critical staff bottlenecks, infrequent releases, a largely ignored bug backlog and an active dislike of planning and review activities to a successful team shipping multiple high-quality releases of each of their five products, a strong cross-functional team and great working agile processes & practices.

Achievements:
-  Divisional transformation - By leading one project and pairing, coaching and mentoring their PM on subsequent projects I transformed the development team to become one of the most highly respected and disciplined teams in the company. (see <a href="http://theagilepirate.net/archives/1641">http://theagilepirate.net/archives/1641</a> )
-  Process overhaul - Starting with a series of near daily working practice changes for the first 2 months and moving to a more regular inspect and adapt cycle, I led the team from a loose process with no regular planning or delivery cadence to a successful disciplined Scrum/Kanban process.
-  Estimation - Starting with "Estimation training in 30 minutes"; I took the team from performing little or no reliable estimating to successful task estimation, story and feature sizing and scheduling.
-  Team capacity - By carefully planning work sharing and encouraging regular pair programming, I ensured we removed critical single points of failure across the team. All technical staff can now work on all products - reducing organizational risk and improving overall delivery capability. My successor has taken this even further using explicit staff liquidity tracking.
-  Coaching & mentoring - I coached, mentored and paired with one of our least experienced PMs to develop him as a star within the company.

Development Manager / Agile Coach (.NET Division)

I led the PM community of practice, delivering continuous process improvement, cross-organisation collaboration, facilitation, coaching, mentoring, training, and project reporting across the company.
I acted as Scrum Master for the development function heads team (PM, UX, Test, Tech Comms, Software Engineering) and was the "go-to" person for expertise and facilitation to the CEO, company leadership team, division heads and their first-line management teams in team-building, leadership, vision, strategy, planning and portfolio reviews.

This was a part-time (20%) role until Jul-Nov 2013 when I transitioned leadership of the .NET tools area to my successor in order to focus full-time on company-wide activities.

Achievements
-  Agile Project Management program
-  PM recruitment, coaching and mentoring
-  Executive agile coaching - see <a href="http://simongalbraith.com/im-speaking-at-agile-2013/">http://simongalbraith.com/im-speaking-at-agile-2013/</a>
-  Multiple portfolio review cycles
-  Sales and divisional strategy workshops
-  Company restructuring support - see <a href="http://dev.red-gate.com/restructuring/">http://dev.red-gate.com/restructuring/</a>
-  Vision & strategy review
-  Retrospective facilitation - specializing in difficult projects and sensitive problems
-  A3 reporting - development-wide project reviews
-  Personal development & planning - see <a href="http://dev.red-gate.com/skills">http://dev.red-gate.com/skills</a>
-  Deliberate Practice for Soft Skills

Public Activities:
-  Program Reviewer: Agile Cambridge 2011, 2012, 2013; Agile India 2012
-  Program Committee & Academic Researcher Support: XP 2013, XP2014

-  Speaker:
Agile Coaches Gathering UK 2011 - "Improving Your Retrospectives"
Agile on the Beach 2012 - "Being Agile at Every Scale" co-presenting w/ Johanna Hunt
SyncNorwich October 2012 - "Iteration Planning with the Captain"
Retrospective Facilitators Gathering 2013 - "Convergence & Divergence" (see <a href="http://theagilepirate.net/archives/1392">http://theagilepirate.net/archives/1392</a> )
Agile Cambridge 2013 - "DevOps & Org Structure" ad-hoc session
XPDays 2013 - "Agile Career Development in Flatland" co-presenting w/ Mark Wightman & Brian Harris

Head of Project Management / Agile Coach

I acted as combined Scrum Master, Project and Development Manager for the Red Gate DevOps team with responsibility for development, maintenance and support of our worldwide sales, CRM, web and other commercial systems. 3 Months into the position, I took on a parallel role as Head of Project Management.

Achievements:
-  Team-building - I led the team from being a newly formed working group to a successful agile team with their own strong sense of identity.
-  "Sushi Bar" - I introduced a simple "sushi bar" portfolio board to provide visibility into current and upcoming projects.
-  Neolane (email marketing) - I led our largest ever third-party software project from inception to active use. The project required an overhaul of business practices to ensure can-spam compliance whilst retaining Red Gate’s high trust, customer-centric, great user experience culture. The project involved significant customization and integration to web, ecommerce and CRM systems. Lessons learned through using agile techniques with third party suppliers and on cross-divisional projects have been used to improve subsequent projects.
-  Business analysis - I introduced Red Gate's first Business Analyst role by mentoring one of our sales team through their first IT project and subsequently bringing her permanently onto the DevOps team. I continued the mentoring relationship after leaving the team until her functional mentoring needs significantly outgrew what I could offer.
-  Strategy, planning and reporting - I paired with our Head of DevOps in developing a long term strategy for the group including project planning, team structure and regular portfolio reporting.
-  "Stop The Line" - after a series of outages in Summer 2012 I led a "Stop the Line" initiative to build in mistake-proofing and process improvements into the teams working practices.
-  Expanded team capability - I trained 2 of the team to take on Project Management roles to enable us to successfully run more projects in parallel.

Agile Project Manager / Scrum Master (DevOps)

Blogger and public speaker on agile, lean, management, organisational design, strategy, and software development,
-  Over 100 high quality articles on software teams and management written since early 2011
-  Presenting publicly at conferences, events and internally at companies since ~2009

See more at <a href="http://theagilepirate.net">http://theagilepirate.net</a>

TheAgilePirate.net

Founder / Author

I and my team were responsible for leading a worldwide  agile transformation including strategy, training, practices,  coaching & measurement for all teams across the Software Solutions Group with a goal to drive improved predictability, quality and accountability through agile (including XP, FDD, Scrum, Kanban) and lean practices & culture.

Achievements
-  Founded Agile@GE community, led organic growth to over a thousand active subscribers worldwide across all businesses to become a recognised global thought-leader within GE for agile practices, culture & management.
-  Led direction, vision & acted as scrum master for a global team of agile coaches driving rollout & consultancy for teams.
-  Led alignment of agile (Scrum) process to GE stage gate (tollgate) cycle for Software Solutions Group.
-  Co-developed & delivered agile training & coaching for over 500 staff worldwide.
-  Developed & delivered estimation webinar to over 200 staff simultaneously worldwide.
-  Delivered product owner/manager workshops.
-  Developed & rolled out a unique and detailed team-friendly "agility assessment".
-  Co-led introductory TDD & coding dojos.
-  Supplied technical expertise for Rally customisations including enhancement & rollout of virtual card walls.
-  Led envisioning & scoping workshops for new product releases.
-  Provided regular guidance & expertise to leadership on staffing, change & portfolio management.
-  Provided ongoing line management cover during review & appraisal cycles in 2010 and 2011
-  Fulfilled interim program management role for core product, responsible for $4.2M annual budget

Certifications, Awards & Conferences
Nov. 2010 – Received award for "boundaryless behaviour" for reaching out across GE to support global agile rollout
Oct. 2010 – Presented "The Challenges of Measuring Agility" at Agile Cambridge 2010
Aug. 2010 – Attended Agile 2010 (Orlando)
Dec. 2009 – Certified Lean Six Sigma Green Belt
Aug. 2009 – Attended Agile 2009 (Chicago)

GE Energy

Lean & Agile Expert (Agile Coach)

I managed 50% of the European development team for GE Smallworld in a matrix role. Beyond line management, the other major aspect of my position was in leading and coordinating large corporate change programmes including cost savings, introduction of agile development, defining technical career paths, recruitment and revised operations & reporting practices.

Achievements
-  Provided line management for a group of 20 highly experienced and diverse staff including performance, training, compensation, succession and capacity planning, recruitment, coaching and mentoring.
-  Introduced improved software estimation techniques including workshops, PERT (3-point), SWAGs, wideband-delphi.
-  Delivered multiple financially measurable productivity improvements (saving over $1.3M),
-  Acted as key interviewer/decision-maker for first major new intake of technical staff in 10 years.
-  As ISO process owner for development, led a partial overhaul of the development QMS and procedures.
-  Led cultural transition from “off-shoring” to “global development team” at individual, team and leadership levels.
-  Led the Cambridge site's second attempt at a full lifecycle implementation of agile/incremental development.
-  Successfully introduced streamlined design through use of design decisions and "why vs. what" approach.
-  Drove the concepts of "technical debt" into the culture of both engineering staff and leadership worldwide.

Training & Awards
May. 2009 – CAP Coaches Workshop
Mar. 2009 – Agile Scrum Master and Product Owner Training
Dec. 2008 – Received GE management award for beating first-year productivity improvement target of $1.2M resulting in over 7% productivity increase for development organisation.

Senior Software Engineering Manager

I provided technical management and leadership for a team of 7-10 developers enhancing the Geneva API toolkit delivering on multi-million dollar multi-team projects across distributed office locations (UK, India & USA) using a blend of XP, Feature-Driven Development & traditional stage-gates in an  ISO/TickIT certified, CMMI level 2-3 environment.

Achievements
-  Delivered major new software releases, features, customer-driven enhancements and defect fixes for CRM APIs on multiple parallel projects, on-time and within scope and budget using Java, XML, JDBC, SQL and PL/SQL.
-  Performed full lifecycle analysis, design, prototyping, test, code, review and support for product changes.
-  Acted as feature lead and subsystem owner on multiple product and feature deliveries.
-  Grew a global team into a successful, self-disciplined, cohesive group committed to high-quality solutions using test and review driven development. (no code without good tests, adherence to coding standards, no excuses)
-  Ensured performance, scalability, integration & backwards compatibility were the cultural DNA of every team member.
-  Fulfilled strategic and technical management goals including process improvement, maintenance trend analysis, pre-emptive fault targeting & resolution, architectural enhancements, refactoring, backlog reduction, quality targets, SLA tracking and implementation decision making for functional changes.
-  Provided project management activities including estimation, capacity planning, task allocation, prioritisation, change control, issue negotiation, status tracking & reporting.

Recognition
Dec. 2006 – Selected to join 2007 “Future Leaders” program. Selection is based on proven leadership competencies and a demonstrated commitment to learning and self improvement.
Mar. 2006 – Received “key contributor” rating (top 10%) in annual performance appraisal for “role model” leadership, dedication and commitment over the previous year.

Convergys

Senior Analyst / Dev Team Lead

I provided customer-facing & internal technical leadership supporting customer & partner learning management system implementations worldwide. As a start-up in Europe I expanded my role to include internal systems development & IT infrastructure.

Achievements
-  Defined EMEA support strategy & goals, led senior management in understanding & monitoring customer needs and issues, support procedures & gaps.
-  Introduced & implemented technical account management & customer ownership programmes.
-  Led regular customer site visits & support representation at corporate conferences.
-  Developed management alerts, reporting & presentations for clients with simple statistical analysis of team & customer metrics.
-  Led technical recruitment, mentoring, issue negotiation, prioritisation & action planning.
-  Provided account management for 40% of EMEA/APAC customers & partners across multiple vertical markets.
-  Delivered full lifecycle development of web-based install base, patch tracking & notification system.
-  Performed code tracing, tuning & debugging of Java (JSPs, servlets & applets) & database code (PL/SQL, T-SQL and dynamic SQL); troubleshooting n-tier environments (connectivity, architecture, application server configuration & tuning, server administration, database performance); creation & import/export of Oracle/MSSQL databases; functional analysis & solution definition for customer implementations; fault replication & root cause analysis of defects & limitations.
-  Adopted IT management role covering desktop, server & network systems specification, purchasing, configuration, rollout and support.

Awards  (for “Outstanding Contribution”)
Mar. 2003 – Voluntary expansion of role to cover EMEA IT management to save over $80,000 per year.
Dec. 2002 – (Nomination) Development & release of install-base tracking system.
Sep. 2001 – Global support leadership on US product implementation for Dell Computers Inc.

Saba

EMEA Support & IT Technical Lead

As global technical lead for Oracle's pricing systems, using Oracle's own tools & applications I designed, coded, implemented and supported multiple solutions to enhance and support Oracle’s international order to cash business processes.  These were successfully achieved by performing business analysis, functional and technical consultancy, end-user training, team leadership and hands-on development with colleagues throughout Europe, Asia Pacific & America as a virtual team with semi-regular international travel to Europe and the US.
Having been recruited through Oracle’s graduate intake program, career development included regular management, soft skills & technical training.

Achievements
-  Customer Install-Base - Refactored and enhanced a major bespoke web-based BI application used by all order fulfilment staff and managers to publish live data directly from production ERP and Financials systems.

-  Global Pricing Engine - Delivered at least 3 full development lifecycles including one complete re-architecture of a performance-critical pricing engine to support rapid changes in Oracle's global pricing business practices whilst retaining backwards compatibility for all customer pricing. Multiple calls to the engine were made for every order placed at Oracle world-wide.

-  Pricing Download - Wrote and delivered a highly tuned PL/SQL batch process to replicate Oracle's price lists, complete discount structures and historical pricing models in over 20 currencies. The system processed between 3 and 5 million records per cycle across multiple databases.

-  Euro Implementation - Lead analyst/developer on Oracle's international pricing upgrade to enable Oracle to service Euro orders by New Year 1999. Working to a fixed deadline, the project required analysis & implementation of EU currency triangulation & rounding rulings for Oracle's order fulfilment systems.

Other
Mar. 2001 – Co-author for White Paper,  "Extending 11i Advanced Pricing for Your Business"

Oracle

Applications Technical Consultant

Provided company-wide NT domain administration, UNIX user administration, hardware, software, network and systems support as the company grew from a single site management buyout start-up to 150+ staff in 3 offices across the UK.

Achievements
-  Delivered pre-sales system setup, network & hardware support for multiple trade shows and site demos.
-  Designed and deployed a multi-site corporate backup & anti-virus strategy
-  Developed a web-based directory services application for staff telephone and mailing list administration.
-  Provided additional trade show and development support during final year of degree from Sep. 1997 to Jun. 1998

Simon Cromarty