Michael Hager

Michael Hager - Born overseas, traveled the world throughout my childhood. Joined the Marines and was a Scout Sniper for four years. Honorably discharged. Started my career as a System/Server Administrator then moved to Software Testing. Eventually landed in leadership roles and began my career as a Project Manager. Now, I most closely fill the role as an Agile Coach. My first role was Scrum Master, though I was also the Quality Assurance lead on the team. It was a rough transition that never truly took place completely. I learned a lot about what Scrum should never be and most importantly, the "why" behind the specifics in the scrum methodology. The next project I fulfilled the same role, as Scrum Master and Quality Assurance Lead, but had to lead a Scrum of Scrums because we had three teams working on the same product. I learned that scaling scrum is not just adding more teams. There needed to be a layer of communication... and technical excellence is a must as the teams integrate work. A standard set of practices eases the pain of integrating across teams. Quality unit test libraries and a process for sharing them is an absolute must. Which led me to learning about software engineering skills and practices that support agile development. My current project is two-fold. I am at a new site and I am the only Agile drum-beater around. I am charged with organizational transformation AND the adoption of Scrum for a specific project. The role I fill here most closely resembles an Agile Coach... I have learned that an agile transformation MUST include the human element and not just changing the way we do things... but changing the way we think. To quote someone else, I have learned "there are none so blind as those who WILL not see."