Michelle Michael

Michelle Michael 

Seven years ago I was introduced to Agile Scrum framework.  I had been working at HSBC Bank as a Sr Business Analyst supporting mortgage loans and credit cards operations for about 10 years, before their credit card operations was acquired by Capital One in 2012.   As part of that transition, I worked on an Scrum team as a developer and served as backup Scrum Master.  In 2014, I obtained my CSM cert from Agile Alliance.  I Capital One I was in a scaled environment and traveled quarterly for release planning. After being asked to relocate to the Chicago area, I decided to take a full time Scrum Master role.

I started contracting with TEKSystems and my first assignment was with Catalina Marketing. At Catalina I worked with a couple teams that supported internal UIs for generating incentives and campaign promotions.  I helped the teams get set up and worked alongside coaches to help the teams mature in the scrum process.  I coached the team in the development of team Norms, DoD, DoR ,set up the scheduling and facilitated all of the scrum ceremonies.   I also supported a small Kanban team that did production support on a legacy system.  While there at Catalina, changes in management brought change to the application of Agile. At the end of my 1 year contract I was supporting a small Kanban team that did production support on legacy systems and acting more as an agile project manager.  

Early in 2016, I took a full time Scrum master position at Healthesystems. Healthesystems is a Pharmaceutical Benefits Management provider with a focus on worker’s comp.  The team I served supported the Clinical Operations systems to monitor drug utilization.   Initially, the company supported pure scrum.  However, after management changes and external coaching contracts were completed, some teams started doing Kanban and Scrumban – a mix of Scrum and Kanban.   While there I gained more experience with scaled agile, story mapping and release planning.  I also obtained my PMP-ACP, which gave me a better understanding of Agile, outside of Scrum, including Kanban, Lean, XP, and Hybrids frameworks.  In fall of 2017, there was reteaming done and that impacted the SM and PO roles.

In the fall I of 2017, I started contracting again and have completed 2 additional assignments with Strategic Staffing Solutions.  A one year contract with MyMatrixx, also a PBM.  Where I worked closely with Agile coaches to promote the agile transformation, after the company, MyMatrixx was acquired by Express Scripts.   There I helped set up 4 teams, and coached 3 teams simultaneously. 

The last assignment with Strategic Staffing Solutions, was 100% remote at Trinity Health.  That was the first time and only time I coached team members outside of IT.  It worked well.  Unfortunately, another company Leidos acquired Trinity’s revenue application systems in May this year and they decided to discontinue agile. 

I continue to grow in my professional by attending local meetups, conferences, and reading books and articles.  My most recent certification is the CSP, that I acquired in 2017.   .