Andrew Kazarinoff - Agile Coach and Trainer

Successfully leading Agile transformations -- Scrum and Kanban supported by XP engineering practices and Lean techniques.  Coaching senior management on enterprise Agile adoption.  Coaching and leading teams to high productivity.  Skilled training workshop leader and course developer.  Agile metrics expert.  Agile maturity audit experience.  Financial industry and consulting background and structured methodology experience.  Certified Scrum Professional (CSP/CSM). 

 Scrum Projects since 2008:

 Trillium Solutions Group                                                                                

 For a market-leading communications company developing structured methods of BYOD management, designed an Agile transition model and action plan.  Assisted teams in effective product backlog definition and release planning.  Designed a metrics framework and a capability for progress tracking and reporting.  Defined a Rally structure for transparency of progress on working software. 

Results:   Improved ability to meet product release commitments.

 Express Scripts (Medco)                                                                         

Facilitated enterprise integration of Scrum into a traditional development environment for this giant pharmacy benefit manager.  Coached and trained globally distributed business and technical teams on strong vision definition and product roadmap development, rigorous release and sprint planning, robust testing practices, and mindful retrospectives.  Advanced the organization's competence in use of Rally.  Founding member of an Agile metrics leadership group.  Applied Agile maturity audit methods.  Mentored new scrum masters.  

Results:   Energized offshore and onshore teams through self-organization and a focus on business goals.  Collaboration between business and delivery teams is steadily increasing productivity.

 Blue Cross Blue Shield                                                                   

Led an enterprise Scrum rollout.  Began by defining transformation milestones to engage executive management.  Formed and coached a product coordination team to communicate a product vision and roadmap.  Designed courseware and delivered training to Product Owners and ScrumMasters.  Coached teams to reach high productivity by self-organizing and understanding “ready” and “done.”  Developed Agile maturity audits to address dysfunctions.

 Implemented concurrent testing to minimize technical debt.  Drove adoption of jUnit and nUnit.  Steered installation of continuous-integration tools (Subversion, Maven, Hudson, Nexus) and code analysis tools (Checkstyle, Cobertura, Sonar) .  Set up a metrics framework to support coaching.  Transformed the participation of business system owners in release planning and in sprint reviews and retrospectives. 

Results: Scrum is firmly embedded.  Teams are delivering significant business value.  The culture has embraced collaboration and continuous improvement.

 Bowne & Co., Inc.                                                                              

Improved the effectiveness of Scrum on a project creating a web-based financial content management system.  Led the project as ScrumMaster.  Trained and coached a distributed team of developers and testers to improve productivity.  Coached the Product Owner on product backlog definition and grooming, and on story and acceptance criteria clarity.

 Initiated robust testing disciplines and drove adoption of automated testing.  Aligned sprint planning, retrospectives, and daily scrums with accepted Scrum practices.  Coached the team and Product Owner on collaboration and self-organization.

 Results:  Achieved adoption of Scrum practices for high productivity. The team doubled delivery of useful functionality without adding technical debt.

 Integra Technology Consulting Corp.                                                              

Launched Scrum to accelerate development of a data mining application.  Developed courseware and trained managers and developers in distributed teams.  Coached and mentored a senior executive in the Product Owner role.  Coached and mentored a technical lead and a project manager transitioning into ScrumMaster roles.  Put engineering practices in place:  coding standard, single code base, test-first development, refactoring, code reviews.

 Results: A development organization that delivered more useful functionality in the first month than in six months prior to Scrum, and was able to sustain a high-productive state. 

 Federal Reserve Bank of New York                                                        

As Agile evangelist in an information security group, introduced Scrum practices into mobile-device protection projects.  Facilitated adoption of the Scrum framework and practices through formal orientations and intensive coaching of project teams. Reconciled Scrum practices with enterprise project lifecycle standards.  Coached the group manager on Agile collaboration and self-organization.

 Results: Faster project startups, daily focus on project work, less waste from task switching, and Agile collaboration practices. Conventional projects have also adopted key Agile principles. 

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