Charles Kroll

*** ****** *****, *******, ** *****

Phone: 210-***-**** E-Mail: adi9bx@r.postjobfree.com

https://www.linkedin.com/in/chuckkroll/

Senior Agile Transformation Lead / SAFe Program Consultant

A seasoned IT and Operations leader adept at implementing PMI, ITIL, and Agile, across industries. Significant experience in leading full-stack Agile/Scrum/Kanban/SAFe teaching, training, and coaching from the Team-level to the C-Suite to deliver effective results against the most complex business and technology initiatives. I have nearly 20 years of knowledge across Organizational Development, Project Management, Change Management, Process Improvement, Training & Coaching, Resource Management, Cross-Functional Coordination, and Value Stream Mapping. Offered focused enterprise-level training at prestigious organizations such as Lockheed-Martin, Parsons, 7-Eleven, and Fidelity Investments, and provided team-level coaching at the other engagements. An ITIL Foundation v3 certified professional with robust communication skills, proficient at fostering "agile" ways of thinking, transforming mindsets, and organizational culture to promote efficiency.

~ Designed the Fidelity Investments Agile Transformation, provided training and coaching for multiple teams in multiple Business Units ~ Conducted focused Enterprise-level coaching and mentoring at the Ally Auto Finance, Lockheed-Martin, Parsons, 7-Eleven, and Fidelity Investments, and Team-level coaching at the other engagements ~ Taught, trained and coached over 23 Delivery Teams at 7-Eleven to make the disciplined transition from Waterfall to Agile utilizing either Scrum or Kanban in various divisions ~

Skill Areas: Establishing High-Performing Teams w Organizational Development w Project Management w Change Management w Leadership w Process Improvement w Training & Coaching w Resource Management w Cross-Functional Coordination w Value Stream Mapping w Aligning HR to Agile methods w Communication w Strategic Operations & Planning w Analytical Skills w Strong Interpersonal Skills w Establishing OKRs Focused on Meaningful Metrics

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

Cable One – Phoenix, AZ (Oct 2020 to Present)

Senior Agile Transformation Coach

Cable One provides cable and internet service at the consumer and business customer.

I facilitated an Agile Transformation at Cable One Business Intelligence Unit. Following a thorough assessment of Cable One’s current Business Intelligence development documentation and project management approaches, I utilized a context- and progress-based approach to develop customized training materials, including:

Defined the Scope of Services Charter for the Business Intelligence organization

Established Agile best practices Roadmap to drive maturity aligned with future vision

Designed, documented, and implemented a customized Agile Operating Model

Built customized training program to fit the needs of the Business Intelligence organization in support of the new Agile Operating Model and Agile mindset

Created all workshop materials, including a facilitator’s presentation, reference guide, and facilitator’s notes

Delivered 2 training workshops (“Vision and Values” and “User Story Writing”) and 10 coaching sessions

Coached through day-to-day scenarios following trained concepts to include attending team ceremonies/meetings and fine-tuning best practices over time

Developed and delivered the Engagement Communication Plan

Developed and delivered Implementation Roadmap

Developed and delivered the context-driven Agile Playbook

Developed and delivered Business Intelligence Scope of Services Charter

Created and maintained the Risks, Issues, and Decisions Log

Monitored the design and development of customized Agile Level 1 training materials and developed a training schedule for the Cable One BI staff.

Conducted Discovery Interviews and compiled a report on the results.

Compiled a Gap Analysis itemizing the fundamental requirements of Ally’s Agile Transformation.

Designed a roadmap for Agile process alignment and implementation, including Agile Objectives, Guiding Principles, Agile Knowledge Summary, and OKRs.

Consequently, I facilitated numerous practical training sessions of Agile, Scrum, Kanban, Release Planning, and Role-based training, daily team-level coaching, and gathering feedback surveys.

I compared various aspects of the Waterfall mindset during each training session to instill an Agile mindset not only among the Team but also the leadership.

Ally Advantage - Troy, MI (Oct 2019 to April 2020)

Senior Agile Transformation Coach

Ally Advantage provides auto inventory financing for both the dealer inventory and the individual consumer.

I facilitated an Agile Transformation at this company after two failed by other vendors who had used a prescriptive, directive and scripted approach. Following a thorough assessment of Ally’s current systems development documentation and project management approaches, I utilized a context- and progress-based approach to develop customized training materials.

Monitored the design and development of customized Agile Level 1 training materials and developed a training schedule for the entire Ally staff.

I conducted several stakeholder interviews and compiled a report on the results.

Compiled a Gap Analysis itemizing the fundamental requirements of Ally’s Agile Transformation.

Designed a roadmap for Agile process alignment and implementation, including Agile Objectives and Guiding Principles, Agile Knowledge Summary.

Collaborated with Senior Executives to define, document, and socialize OKRs at the Enterprise level and worked with lower levels to develop Action Plans to meet those OKRs and identify Meaningful Metrics.

Consequently, I facilitated numerous practical training sessions of Agile, Scrum, Kanban, Release Planning, and Role-based training, daily team-level coaching, and gathering feedback surveys.

I compared various aspects of the Waterfall mindset during each training session to instill an Agile mindset not only amongst the Team but also the leadership.

Lockheed-Martin - Fort Worth, TX (April 2019 to Sept 2019)

Senior Agile Transformation Coach/SAFe Transformation Architect

Lockheed Martin Corporation is an aerospace, defense, arms, security, and advanced technologies company with worldwide interests.

I taught, trained, and coached Teams in SAFe practices, ARTS (Agile Release Trains), certified SAFe Scrum Masters, SAFe Product Owners, and SAFe Release Train Engineers.

I implemented sustainable methods to ensure an improved tracking of the training session to include not just the participants of the same, but also those who had taken and passed the corresponding SAFe certification exams.

Effectively set up, established, and coached four ARTs from PI Planning through completion and delivery of the Release content, including all ART events.

While overcoming the Labor versus Management mindset was as tricky as it was to get control of Training and certification progress, I modified the spreadsheet to account for the multiple certification classes per individual and certification dates.

I also created a metrics focused training associated with each level of reporting to distinguish what the Team and Scrum Master use versus what the Manager needs to ensure the Managers do not abuse the metrics. It effectively helped reduce the Labor versus Management conflict.

7-Eleven Store Support Center - Irving, TX (Feb 2018 to Dec 2018)

Senior Agile Transformation Coach

The 7-Eleven Store Support Center provides IT support for the Corporate and Franchisee-Owned Convenience Stores.

Successfully taught, trained, and coached 25+ Teams to the required level of Agile/Scrum/Kanban.

I created a customized 7-Eleven Scrum Solution Delivery Guide (173 pages). To cover the autonomy of each Team, I mind-mapped the content and outline of the Guide and drafted the full content with several iterations and reviews.

I was invited to be the keynote speaker at the 28th Annual DFW-ASEE Symposium on Software Engineering Process Improvement.

AXA Equitable Insurance - Jersey City, NJ, Syracuse, NY, and Charlotte, NC (Nov 2016 to Feb 2018)

Senior Agile Transformation Coach

AXA Equitable Insurance offers term, universal, and whole life insurance and investment management services.

I administered the streamlined (from 75+ questions to a 12-dimension assessment conducted in less than 1 hour) Agile Maturity Assessments for each Team's baseline and quarterly follow-up AMAs to identify areas for improvement and track progress. It helped reach a clear, concise, and consistent assessment of each Team’s Agile Maturity throughout the Enterprise.

I taught, trained, and Coached SAFe structure, principles, and approaches at the Team, Program, Release, Portfolio, and Enterprise levels. I initiated the discussions with the WIIFM (What’s In It For Me) approach from the receiver’s viewpoint.

Conducted all facets of training and coaching delivery teams to make the rigorous transition from Waterfall to Agile utilizing either Scrum or Kanban in Employee Benefits, Finance Moving Forward (FMF), Application Obsolescence, and EAD divisions. I concentrated on the CTO SCOPE survey results to laser-focus efforts on correcting the behaviors Agile was uncovering at AXA.

I successfully trained the middle managers on Agile, the benefits of Agile, How's and Why's of Agile, and how to get teams hyper-productive without abandoning the SDLC and CMMI investments AXA has made.

I worked with the existing PMO to meld the SDLC Governance Artifacts into the SAFe Scrum framework and establish the Agile Guild within the existing PMO in the highly regulated insurance and investment marketplace.

Managed and maintained two internal blog sites: Agile Tip of the Day and Agile Thought Leadership posts widely read by the AXA Agile User community.

Besides successfully refining the Agile Onboarding Suitability and Readiness Assessment for teams wanting to transition into the Agile space, I served as a User Administrator for TFS then VSTS ALM tool.

Authored and published, “The Agile Evolution, It’s More than a Process” in the April-June 2018 issue of Workforce Solutions Review.

Fidelity Investments - Westlake, TX (Nov 2012 to Aug 2016)

Agile Coach/Trainer-Enterprise Infrastructure Business Unit Transformation

Fidelity Investments Inc. is an American multinational financial services corporation based in Boston, Massachusetts.

Following thorough discovery interviews and maturity assessments, the teams transitioned to Scrum, Kanban, or SAFe.

I designed customized role-based product owner training based on Scrum Alliance CSPO course objectives.

Working with the APMaaS team, we transitioned to the Kanban framework and quickly improved their ticket Throughput from 50 tickets per week to 289 cards per week (6-fold increase) with no increase in hours or headcount. I facilitated it by identifying and eliminating wastes at two bottlenecks.

I trained three RTEs and established three ARTs using SAFe.

Consequently, I was assigned to serve as the JIRA (by Atlassian) User Administrator.

As an Agile coach and mentor, I worked with the Transfer of Assets (TOA) deliveries team to develop and implement new business process software. The focus was to reduce the amount on manual data keying and to switch from Mainframe to Web Services applications and back again to streamline and solidify the TOA Deliveries process.

I harvested various artifacts of Intellectual Property and organized for Fidelity Investment’s Global Delivery Guide. The organization's efforts included standardizing content and format for consistency within Fidelity presentation standards. The artifacts included presentations, documents, articles, book summaries, and development and metrics tools for topics such as Cost of Delay, Weighted Shortest Job First, Kanban simulator, Virtual Kanban card wall, and Hyper-productivity Metrics.

Worked with Planned Sponsor Analytics (PSA) team to develop and implement complex historical and projected values for corporate investment programs.

I applied a multi-track approach based on Dean Leffingwell's Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) to focus on constant backlog refining, another on feature development, and the last track focused on small enhancements.

I coordinated with Fidelity Investments to facilitate the training and transition of the existing IT department from Waterfall to Agile on the Fund Reference application.

Analyzed project team maturity and fit for Agile Coaching requests, then conducted FAM (Fidelity Agile Methodology) training and FUSION workshops (Iteration Zero).

Maximized utilization of automated test and build tools (Jenkins and Subversion) for TDD and Iteration tracking application (Jira with Greenhopper) for the virtual card wall.

PRIOR EMPLOYMENT DETAILS

Rackspace Hosting June 2012 to Sept 2012

Agile Coach/Mentor

General Motors Sept 2011 to May 2012

Agile Coach/Mentor

Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board (THECB) Aug 2011 to Sept 2011

Agile Coach/Mentor

US Department Of Veteran Affairs April 2010 to March 2011

Senior Program Director/Agile Coach/Mentor

Science Applications International Corporation,

Robins Air Force Base, Warner Robins, Ga

Pfizer Pharmaceuticals, Groton, CT

US Air Force Safety Center, Albuquerque, NM Nov 2003 to April 2010

Agile Coach/Mentor

PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT & CREDENTIALS

Masters Certificate in Project Management

The George Washington University 1999

Bachelor of Science in Business; Finance Major

Utah State University

Advanced Certification:

Certified Scrum Master (CSM) Through Scrum Alliance, CSM#000007771

Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO) Through Scrum Alliance, CSPO #000007771

Certified Scrum Professional (CSP) Through Scrum Alliance, CSP #000007771

Certified Scrum Coach (CSC) Through Scrum Alliance, CSC #000007771

Scaled Agile Framework Product Consultant (Safe SPC3, SPC4, And SPC5)

Certification Facilitator For SA, SP, SSM, SASM, POPM, And RTE

ICAgile Certified Professional – Agility In The Enterprise (ICP-ENT)

ICAgile Certified Professional – Coaching Agile Transformations (ICP-CAT)

ICAgile Certified Expert -- Enterprise Agile Coaching (ICE-EAC)

Agility Health Facilitator (AHF) Certification Through Agile Transformations, AFH #00003

Member, Project Management Institute, ID 117607, Since 11AUG1999

Certified Project Management Professional (PMP) Through PMI, PMP# 41595

Agile Certified Professional (PMI-ACP) Through PMI

ITIL V3 Foundation Certification

Technical Skills: COBOL, JCL

Affiliations:

Scaled Agile

Scrum Alliance

Agile Alliance

DFW Agile CoP Meetup

DFW Scrum Meetup

Dallas ALN (Agile Leadership Network)

DFW Agile Coaching Network

Agile-DevOps: DFW Chapter

Northern Texas Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) Meetup

Scaling Agile Dallas, TX Meetup

Patriot Guard Riders of North Texas

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