Conduo

I work with leaders to create environments that support high performing, collaborative Lean/Agile teams. Through coaching, training and workshops, I work with teams at every level of the organization to focus on their most important goals, identify measurable outcomes and then develop the mindset and practices that lead to continuous improvement and lasting change. I have deep experience in the public sector and a wide range of experience in private sector industries, with expertise in Enterprise Business Agility, Lean/Agile leadership, organizational design and strategy, product management and performance management.

Outcome-Driven Planning gets everyone in your organization on the same page, starting with providing clarity on the problem you are trying to solve and a focus on what is most important. Then, you develop a strategy, agree on what to try first, deliver incrementally and validate whether you are on the right track. This approach energizes and motivates your project teams by providing them the clarity, alignment and focus they need to deliver results.

Outcome-Driven Planning:
* Focuses on outcomes over activities
* Applies Agile, Lean and Design-Thinking, using the Mobius Innovation Framework
* Encourages collaboration
* Incorporates short planning and delivery cycles focused on learning

Business Agility Coach

Agile Transformation Inc.

I'm a certified Enterprise Business Agility Strategist and AgilityHealth Coach and Facilitator, specializing in leadership, enterprise strategy and transformations using the Enterprise Business Agility framework. I provide coaching and training in Agile leadership, effective facilitation, product management, planning and continuous improvement and growth for individuals, teams and organizations. 

Training and Coaching for AgilityHealth: 
* AgilityHealth Facilitator Certification Training
* Coaching leaders and coaches on Continuous Improvement Processes, Measurement and Developing Growth Plans 

Training Courses:
* Advanced Scrum Master 
* Advanced Product Owner
* Agile Overview 
* Servant Leadership  
* Effective Facilitation and Collaboration 
* Developing Measurable Business Outcomes
* Writing Effective Outcomes and Features 
* Leading High-Performing Teams 
* Enterprise Business Agility Strategy

For private sector organizations from small start-ups to Fortune 500 Companies across multiple industries, as well as Government Agencies

Enterprise Agile Coach and Trainer

State of Idaho, Department of Health and Welfare

Lead the business side of software development, quality assurance and production support for the Division of Welfare portfolio, providing leadership to Agile teams using the Scaled Agile Framework to predictably deliver value.

Work with the executive business and IT leadership teams to align product management strategies and Agile team design with organizational goals and priorities. Develop the product vision and roadmap. Facilitate portfolio planning activities. Coach, mentor, and lead the product management team, including product managers, product owners, user experience design and business architects, in applying Lean/Agile product management methodology and practices.

Partner with IT managers to develop the architectural roadmap to support long-term business needs, plan for the architectural runway, strategize on technical options, and ensure that development teams have the tools and standards in place to create effective designs and quality products. Support and design plans toward DevOps culture and practices.

Support end users through leading a production support team responsible for monitoring production system performance, triaging and responding to reported issues, and gathering and reporting metrics.

Deliver quality products on schedule that meet user needs, providing vision, leadership and direction for release management and business testing teams.

Bureau Chief, Agile Program Leader

Created the product vision and roadmap for the project to replace the Department’s legacy benefits case management system. Supervised a team of product owners. Partnered with the operational and policy program managers to ensure system design would meet program requirements and support end users. Played a lead role in rolling out the new system and managing subsequent releases. Designed the workflow and reporting tools and processes.

Outcomes
¥	Transferred and customized a large and complex Welfare Eligibility System from another State, significantly reducing development costs and time lines while delivering a robust and effective application.

¥	Converted active programs and clients from the legacy to replacement system, with benefit program payments and health coverage transitioning and continuing without disruption; this required creative strategies, extensive data analysis and coordination and testing with multiple interfaces and partners.

¥	Established a data warehouse for the new eligibility system, supporting federal, management and field operational reporting requirements; designed a reporting strategy to support workload management and performance reporting with the launch of the new system, allowing for a smooth transition for operational managers.

¥	Implemented workflow and workload management tools in alignment with new processes and organizational structures, so that the system effectively supported the business design.

Product Manager

Legislative Services Office, Idaho

Advised legislators in setting the annual state budget and creating related legislation, providing expertise on the organizational structure, functions, performance, policies, budgets and statutory requirements of assigned state agencies.    
 
Completed analysis of agency expenditure data to determine compliance with legislative intent, use of efficient management practices, and trends across state government. Reviewed agency budget requests, gathered supporting information, and created content for annual legislative budget publications. Presented agency budget requests to the Joint Finance Appropriations Committee.

Budget and Policy Analyst

I'm a Business Agility Coach and co-founder of Conduo. I work with Agile leaders in regulated industries and the public sector who want to be more strategic and outcome-driven. Your teams are busy, but are they working on the right things? Are you making progress toward your most important goals?     

There's nothing I love more than to bring a group together and facilitate a collaborative and visual process, to sort through complexity and find a clear path forward. It comes down to people having good conversations to develop common understanding and trust. Once that is in place, we can develop an effective and repeatable process for Outcome-Driven Planning.  

Here's a little about my background, and what led me to what I do today: 

I got started as a Product Owner in 2007, and I fell in love with the Agile way of working. It just made sense to identify the most important things to work on, get them done quickly and make changes to stay on track with delivering value. It was rewarding to work as a team and see things go from idea to reality. 

I took on increasing levels of responsibility, eventually leading a team of product owners and managing the portfolio. 

Working with Agile coaches (including my current business partner) inspired me to further my knowledge and skills, and in 2016 I started to work as an Agile coach and trainer. This was an exciting leap and sparked a lot of personal and professional growth. 

For several years, I worked with leaders at large organizations to develop a continuous improvement strategy using the AgilityHealth platform. This deepened my understanding of the common patterns and challenges of leading Agile across multiple teams. 

During this time, I also developed and delivered Agile leadership training on Adaptive Leadership, Enterprise Business Agility, Defining Measurable Outcomes, and Effective Facilitation and Collaboration. 

The past several years have been focused on working with my business partner Ryan Fullmer to  take our experiences and focus on where we think we can make the greatest impact. Outcome-Driven Planning is our answer to this. 

We developed Outcome-Driven Planning as a series of workshops that you can learn to run with your teams to get better results from the way you plan and deliver. 

Outcome-Driven Planning incorporates the Mobius Innovative Framework developed by Gabrielle Benefield and includes five steps:

1 - Discover Why
2 - Identify Options 
3 - Decide What to Do
4 - Deliver Incrementally
5 - Continuously Improve

Julie Springer

Kronos

As ScrumMaster for 3 teams I facilitate at all Scrum ceremonies and guide them to the completion of their stories.  Two teams are remote and one team is local.  This is the most rewarding work that I have ever done and Kronos is the best company that I've ever worked at.

ScrumMaster

INSYS Group, Inc.

Scrum Master for Insys Group Inc. working at United Health Group on a project ingesting data from the data lake, enhancing the data then moving it into a consumable format for customers.

As QE Manager led team of 7 engineers in the testing of multiple products over multiple releases while ensuring that the final product was released on-time with 0 severity one defects.

•	Managed QE staff including hiring, performance management and career development to ensure alignment with defined goals
•	Collaborate with product development, Bangalore QA Managers and release manager in release planning/scoping and in analysis of customer issues
•	Release management activities including load work balance, monitoring and necessary adjustments to quality of test case development and sprint deliverables; regression cycle planning
•	Managed engineers at all levels and in different geographic locations while they participated on multiple scrum teams
•	Participated in weekly release meetings to provide test metrics and status to management for both manual and automated testing
•	Provided test strategy document which stated types of test platforms, applications/storage type under test and overall test coverage

QE Manager

As Automation Product Owner led engineers in the architecture definition, implementation and delivery of a new automation framework based on Java using TestNG/Groovy.  Also led 21 engineers in the deployment and maintenance of hardware setups running automated Perl scripts while providing metrics used to gauge quality of two products throughout the SDLC

•	Organized automation team into developing a new framework based on Java which provided QA engineers with the ability to create automated scripts and compile code in a widely accepted OO language (old tooling did not have a compiler and very few resources to consult for support)
•	Formed automation team into a very effective scrum team with a steady and predictable velocity.
•	Worked with lead engineer to effectively define and size stories.  Met with team for each sprint planning session where stories were prioritized and tasked out by team
•	Team regularly completed all tasks at end of each sprint due to effective planning and efficient execution
•	Architecting of framework completed in Q4 and delivery of first phase was completed in next quarter
•	Regularly sought feedback from the end-users of the framework (customers) to gain insight into how they used it, what was good or what wasn’t working for them and modified functionality based on this information
•	First scripts implemented achieved 80% automated coverage of two large features thus significantly reducing manual regression test effort
•	Coordinated effort of ~25 automated setups over multiple releases, qualifications and hotfixes for product
•	Brought new automated setups using a new framework into production for product. Drove effort to create and distribute a best practice guide for department to follow when developing, implementing and maintaining automation for the product
•	Removed script redundancy and consolidated functionality that resulted in a reduction in the number of autoservers from 21 to 8 over two years

Product Owner - Automation

As Scrum Master guided 2 to 4 teams through 10 day iterations.  In a servant leader capacity organized and focused each scrum team in achieving operational excellence through such activities as backlog grooming, sprint planning, retrospectives, daily scrum meetings and sprint reviews.

•	Organized and facilitated scrum meetings such as sprint planning, daily stand-ups, sprint reviews, demos retrospectives and assisted in resolving impediments when necessary
•	Expert at driving the adoption of Scrum guidelines, removing impediments, and fostering self-management while keeping teams focused on successfully delivering their product
•	Tracked team progress and velocity using Version One
•	Reported status and progress to Product Owners and management
•	Facilitated discussions with Product Owner and team for different issues such as reassignment of team members, velocity affected by non-scrum activities or change of functionality
•	Ensured that team followed agile principles and facilitated discussions of done/done between team and Product Owner
•	Supported team in story pointing and making commitments based on appropriate estimations
•	Worked with teams implementing different functionality such as UI, application support, storage and core functionality
•	Planned and coordinated final weeks of testing before release by working directly with all Scrum Masters, Product Owners and QA Managers, both locally and in Bangalore.  All information became prioritized stories which went onto each team’s backlog and were broken down into tasks by the teams

Scrum Master

Oversaw QA team in the completion of software testing for release to market of high-end data management products generating $MM revenues. Developed detailed project plans and schedules; assessed and mitigated project risks. Coordinated testing activities with multidisciplinary, cross-functional and international groups to ensure on-schedule completion of project tasks. Developed performance metrics and reports to convey project progress to upper management.

Group Leader/Supervisor Engineering (2007 to 2010)

EMC Corporation

Coordinated planning among release, test and development departmental managers in MA and 6 in Bangalore, India. Trained and directed teams of 5 to 8 QA engineers to achieve project goals, provided support and worked to quickly resolve hardware/resource issues. Analyzed, procured and allocated resources to secure anticipated software release dates. Participated in new employee hiring; evaluated resumes, conducted preliminary phone screenings, interviewed select candidates and gave input on final hiring decisions.

Senior Software QA Engineer

Participated on multiple projects within the System Test Group, writing test cases and configuring both Windows and Unix software and hardware. Feature lead for testing EDM product support on a Solaris box that supported Oracle, Novell Netware, SAP and Lotus Notes.

Software Engineer

As a Certified ScrumMaster since 2010, I can leverage my past experience QA Manager and Product Owner to usher software development and testing projects through the SDLC on-time, on budget and with minimal defects. Excels at guiding and participating in teams using Agile methodologies to drive continuous improvement and value driven product development.

Exceptionally motivated and leads well by example; offers exceptional time management skills to facilitate team planning and prioritization. Strong skills in servant leadership, facilitation, situational awareness, conflict resolution, continual improvement, empowerment, and transparency. Well-developed interpersonal skills; works effectively with cross-functional stakeholders outside of scrum teams.  Comfortable as a remote or independent contributor.

taplio

The Battle

Julie Springer

Rhonda Gary

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