Charlie Pfeiffer

Biography

Since becoming a member of the Scrum Alliance in 2011, I have been a huge advocate of Agile. I have found that my passions lie in helping organizations implement Agile (primarily Scrum and Kanban). I truly enjoy the challenge of engineering new processes to improve efficiencies, training organizations on Agile, and coaching teams to help them evolve into high-performing teams. My background, like so many others in Scrum, was in traditional project management. I was a huge believer of PMO and the PMBOK guide. Around 2010 I began hearing more and more about Agile, so I started researching. My expectation was I would find a bunch of flaws with Agile, and walk away. Instead, I found that many of the advantages written about Agile were aligned with areas so many of my projects struggled with using traditional methodologies. At the time I was a PMO Director in South Florida, and I decided to get my CSM. This turned out to be quite the paradigm shift for me. I immediately wanted to implement Scrum, and being the PMO Director, I had the authority to do so. However, I quickly found out that as simple as Scum concepts are, implementing them is much more challenging. I wanted to experience Scrum working, so I decided to make a change. I accepted a Scrum Master position with another organization. The timing could not have been better. They were in the early stages of Scrum adoption, which allowed me to be a part of maturing the processes. As the Scrum processes matured I was able to experience how powerful Scrum could be when fully adopted. Never before had I seen software development teams produce so efficiently. Since then I have had the privilege of implementing Agile/Scrum/Kanban at several organizations. I have been able to implement Agile at private companies, government organizations, and universities. Every organization poses new challenges that continue to help with future implementations. I have also found that having the traditional project management background is invaluable, especially when working with governments and universities. My goals are to continue down the path of implementing Agile, training organizations, and coaching teams. Over the next couple years, I will be pursuing the CST, CEC, and CTC certifications.