I started working in Healthcare IT in 2002. For the first couple of years, I spent a TON of time creating various prototypes along with Requirements and Functional documentation. At that time, the way was waterfall. This approach was the norm until sometime in 2005 when Siemens Healthcare started to adopt an Agile approach to software development.
Being in a large corporation had some advantages. One of those advantages was a large budget to hire experts in the Industry. At that time, I was introduced to who I consider Agile development celebrities like J.B. Rainsberger (TDD expert and author of JUnit Recipes), Micah Martin, and Martine Devos.
As I learned more from those experts and experience, I transitioned from a software engineer to a scrum master. I became heavily involved in the world of burndowns, sprint backlogs, and scrum boards and became a certified scrum master. During that time, I was collaborated with my fellow scrum masters and facilitated a virtual scrum master team where we shared successes and challenges.
In 2010, I entered management but continued to be an agile advocate ensuring that my development teams had the support they needed for success. Over the years, I managed several scrum masters coaching as necessary. In 2016, I became the manager of a large User Experience team and had an opportunity to explore how design and agile could work together. During that time, the organization (Cerner - which purchased our Siemens division in 2015) started to realign the software development approach at the company.
The realignment resulted in a strong focus on agile and the product lifecycle. This change opened up new opportunities, and I became part of a change management leadership group representing UX. In September of 2020, I was able to take a scrum product owner course and became a Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO) through Scrum Alliance.
I am available to advise or coach teams entering their agile development journey. Agile at scale isn't easy, but I have been part of those initiatives more than once and would be happy to share my experiences. I am especially familiar with UX/Design and Agile using Scrum and Kanban.
