Jody Tester

Jody Tester

Agile Bio

After 16 years of Agile delivery, coaching and consulting experience, I remain a passionate and dedicated Agile practitioner with a heavy emphasis on Scrum and SAFe. I retired in June of 2021 as the Agile Practice for NTT DATA's Services organization, and now work as an independent Agile Coach, Trainer and Consultant. Most of my current work is in business transformation, tailoringand integrating Agile development, devops and ocm to help clients make the transition from old ways to Lean-Agile ways. 

My educational background is business and information technology, with undergraduate and graduate degrees in business. I began my career as a business systems analyst, and moved into functional management over software teams. After several years of functional IT managment, I moved into a technical marketing management role in a major telecom company. A few years later, I joined an early stage technology company on the leading edge of digital publishing technology, and after a subsequent sale to a national telecommunications carrier, I left to form an internet/digital media company with several others. My role was leading product development, and managing day-to-day operations. These were early days in social media development. It was at that point in my career that I assumed responsibility for the software business unit of a large, national media research company. Which led to my first forays into Agile development - specifically Scrum, followed by an indepth move into SAFe and Kanban. 

I love helping organizations with their transformation to 'agility'. I'm an evangelist for Agile, working across a variety of frameworks (e.g. Scrum, SAFe, Kanban, etc.)