Agile Transformation Coach

James W Sywilok

**** ***** **** ***** 703-***-**** (Cell)

Springfield, VA 22153 Email: ad832g@r.postjobfree.com

Relocation: NO Travel: Negotiable

PROFESSIONAL SKILLS SUMMARY

A certified Enterprise Agile Coach & Agile Transformation Coach with over twenty-five years of progressive technical, business, and consulting experience in the following areas within the computer industry:

* Agile Transformation & Enterprise Agility * Agile Program/Project Management

* Scaled Agile Framework & Scrum@Scale * Value Stream Mapping

* Scrum, Kanban, Extreme Programing, Agile/DevOps * Agile Planning & Training

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

10/21- 10/23 Cognizant Consulting, Springfield, VA

Serving as a Principal Agilist/Associate Director in Enterprise Digital Engineering working in an advisory capacity on multiple Lean/Agile efforts such as development of Agile and Lean playbooks, slide decks for User Story Workshops, Story Mapping Workshops, Lean Portfolio Management, Value Stream Mapping for developing more efficient and effective internal business processes, and creating Lean/Agile Centers of Excellence to support and sustain the improvements implemented during Lean/Agile Transformation..

06/21 – 09/21 - Enterprise Solution Providers New York City, NY

As a Senior Agile Consultant, I am working with a team on a short-term engagement to setup a pilot using a Spotify design structure for the Bank of Montreal as a proof-of-concept for an Agile Transformation. This effort includes a divisional team and portfolio structure, utilizing hybrid model customized to client needs addressing business goals alignment, dependency management, team training, leadership coaching, development of KPIs to measure attainment of business objectives. The Agile Transformation proof-of-concept was put on hold in mid-September due to an upcoming reorganization.

06/20 – 12/20 - Pyramid Consulting, Clarendon, VA

As a Senior Agile Consultant working at Capital One X-Commerce Division, I functioned as one of the Agile Delivery Leads within the division and provided coaching and mentoring to scrum teams new to Scrum and Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe). I developed ways to effectively deal with remote coaching by focusing on synchronous communications at the Group level and asynchronous communications at the individual level. Since Capital One uses Jira for the Scrum boards, I created Jira quick filters to focus the team on only the needed work items when doing specific group-level activities such as backlog grooming, sprint planning, daily standups via Zoom. At the asynchronous (individual) level, we used the team Slack channel as well individual team member channels for ad hoc questions, answers, updates, reminders, etc. Confluence was used to store and provide access to team documentation. A team calendar was used to maintain up-to-date information on team member availability when planning for Sprint capacity.

02/19 – 08/19 - Genesis Consulting, Reston, VA: Sr Agile Coach

This was a short-term engagement at US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) helping them to resolve anti-agile patterns interfering with their Agile adoption in the e-Processing initiative and the implementation of a modified SAFe environment.

11/16 – 02/19 – Indev, LLC Arlington, VA: Enterprise Agile Coach

As a Senior Agile Consultant at Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE\DHS) Office of the Chief Information Officer (OCIO), I worked as an Enterprise Agile Coach and Strategic Advisor to the CTO on ICE’s transition to an Agile/DevOps environment. I authored the transition strategy based on the organization’s population profile to identify early adopters, the silent majority, and resistance groups as a means developing a transition plan for building an Agile Adoption momentum within ICE. I also authored the ICE/Agile/Develops Playbook that would be utilized (1) by contractors in their adoption of ICE Agile practices in a DevOps environment and (2) by Quality Assurance in evaluating the contactor adherence to ICE Agile/DevOps practices.

06/16 – 11/16 – Agilious LLC, Bethesda MD: Sr Agile Coach

As Senior Agile Consultant at REI Systems, I provided coaching and mentoring to align and standardize the Scrum process and improve performance for up to six scrum teams at various levels of maturity ranging from a brand-new team to teams with over 1 year of experience. As a result of my efforts, the various clients developed a higher level of trust in the teams because the quality of their work and predictability of their continuous delivery at the end of each sprint.

02/16 – 02/16 - Verizon, Silver Spring, MD: Agile Coach/Trainer

As Agile Consultant working a short-term (3 week) engagement at Verizon, I provided training and guidance on Product Owner (1) Scrum processes and responsibilities with additional emphasis on incorporating business analysts and system analysts into the product owner’s team (2) the user story mapping technique in which you take a product idea and successively break it down into features, epics, and eventually user stories with the end result being a structured backlog that identifies the MVPs (minimal viable products).

02/15 –12/15 - Capital One McLean, VA: Agile Coach/Scrum Master

As Agile Coach\Scrum Master at Capital One, I successfully guided and supported two newly formed scrum teams involved in software development. At the time, I was unaware that this was in part an experiment being conducted by the Release Train Program Team to find out if a homogeneous team of software engineers could effectively work in multiple disciplines within an Agile framework and utilize test driven development (TDD) to successfully deliver product value as part of the company’s initial move to a DevOps environment. These two new agile teams were the first of their kind in that they are homogeneous teams of software engineers that would do both frontend and backend development.

10/11 – 07/14 Accenture Federal (formerly Agilex Technologies) Chantilly, VA: Agile Coach/Scrum Master

Supporting US Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) on their CBP Cloud Computing Environment (C3E) Project, I served on the Agile/Scrum Master Team as an Agile Coach, Scrum Master, and SAFe Release Train Engineer (RTE) and have substantial experience to using the VersionOne Agile tool. Over the November 2013 – January 2014 timeframe I provided the thought leadership and coaching for the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) and worked with my fellow Scrum Masters to coach and transition the Product Owners (PO) of nine scrums into a Program-level Release Train (based on a value stream map) where they could plan out their individual efforts in a coordinated manner for sequence, dependencies, and risks.

01/06 – 05/11 Northrop Grumman IT, McLean, VA: Project Manager

I was also assigned as project manager for the Customer Partner Access (CPA) software development project ($1.45 mil). 06/09 – 05/11 I introduced the Extreme Programming Agile practice. Despite resource contention, the project completed development of the CPA application on schedule and within budget on December 17th, 2010 and went live May 2011.

As part of contract bailout team (09/07- 12/08), I took over as the Interim Infrastructure Manager on Next Generation Automated Biometric Identification System (NGA) contract to get the schedule back on track. I managed a team of a dozen engineers involved with building the infrastructure for the NGA.

Using the Kanban agile methodology, I re-focused the team efforts by eliminating drive-by tasking through implementation of work-item queues and swim lanes, re-prioritization of work items to eliminate multiple #1 priorities, and use of the Kanban boards as information radiators.

CITIZENSHIP: U.S. SERVICE: Navy 1980 -1987 Lieutenant, & Army 1971-1974 Rank: E-5

FORMAL EDUCATION

MS, Management Information Systems, George Washington University, 1993

BS, Business Administration, Ramapo College of New Jersey, 1978

PROFESSIONAL CERTIFICATIONS

Certified Professional in Enterprise Agile Coaching– ICAgile

Certified Professional in Coaching Agile Transformations – ICAgile

SAFe 6.0 Practice Consultant (SPC6), Scaled Agile, Inc

Certified Professional in Lean Portfolio Management - ICAgile

Certified Professional in Business Agility Foundations

Certified Professional in Agile Coaching – ICAgile

Certified Professional in Agile Team Facilitation ICAgile

Certified Professional - Foundations of DevOps – ICAgile

Certified Kanban Management Professional -Lean Kanban University

Certified Agile Leadership I - Scrum Alliance

Certified Scrum Professional CSP/Certified Scrum Master CSM - Scrum Alliance

Certified Less Practitioner & Certified Scrum@Scale Practitioner – Scrum, Inc.

PMP & PMI-ACP – Project Management Institute (PMI)

Certified Technical Trainer – CompTIA & SAFe Enabled Trainer – SA, SP, SSM, SASM, SDP, LPM, POPM

AGILE/LEAN PUBLICATIONS

Sywilok, James, “The Scrum Task Board and the Self-Managing Team”, Contributing Author - Front Row Agile Blog, April 20, 2017 and was selected for inclusion in the compendium of BEST AGILE ARTICLES OF 2017 in November 201.

Sywilok, James, “Agile Transition Strategy”, Contributing Author - Front Row Agile Blog, February 17, 2017

Sywilok, Jim, “Kanban - an Agile Methodology for the Operational Side of Business”, LinkedIn, August 18, 2015

Addition Lean/Agile articles can be found on my Linked-In-Profile.

PRESENTATIONS/SPEAKING ENGAGEMENTS:

Key Facets of the Lean/Agile Organizational Transformation

Expert Agile Club Virtual Meetup, February 16, 2022

Agile Transition Strategy

Agile Leadership Network- DC Chapter, Vienna, VA April 6, 2017

Kanban - An Agile Methodology for the Operational Side of Business

Agile Leadership Network- DC Chapter, Vienna, VA September 1, 2016

PMI-DC Chapter-Loudoun Community, Sterling, VA October 10, 2016

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