Chris O'Connor

Biography

Chris O'Connor is a passionate SrumMaster and Scrum Coach, having converted from his previous role of Senior Project Manager, managing a team of seven project managers.  Chris started his working career in the Armed Forces and following six years in the Royal Marines he moved on to the Retail Industry in a number of trainee and assistant management positions.  At the end of the 80’s Chris went back to college and studied Accountancy, qualifying as a Chartered Cost & Management Accountant in 1991.  A career in Accountancy followed, heavily biased towards the implementation of accounting systems, during the era of computerisation in the 1990’s.  A stint in consultancy at KPMG in the late 1990’s lead to Chris’s career within the Financial Services industry, initially in the Insurance Sector.  Formally trained in PMBOK and PRINCE2, Chris fulfilled roles as Project Manager, Build Manager and Release Manager, before being exposed to ‘Agile Methods’ in 2009.  His initial Agile training in DSDM in 2009, didn’t set the world on fire, it did however capture his interest for more.  In early 2010 when his first opportunity arose, to lead a project team as ScrumMaster, he seized the moment, armed himself with the excellent book ‘User Stories Applied’, and has never looked back.

Following the successful delivery of a series of Agile projects, Chris now considers Scrum the defacto standard for any IS & Business Change delivery project.  Chris now works with organisations and teams getting to grips with Scrum for the first time, helping, supporting and encouraging them to take the first steps and to notice the opportunities for improvement that the Scrum framework offers.  Within his current organisation, Chris’s role title is Project Manager, but he is happiest working as a ScrumMaster or Scrum Coach, or as he is sometimes referred to, Scrum Jedi!