Work experience
UpToDate, Inc., Senior Manager, Agile Practice
November 2015 - Present, Waltham, MA, United States
Responsible for overall health of the agile teams and practices at UpToDate. Coach and lead PMO ScrumMasters and Project Managers in support of sound agile practices across all product development teams.
UpToDate, Inc., ScrumMaster
May 2012 - November 2015, Waltham, MA
Helped UTD transition from traditional project management approaches to Agile (Scrum). ScrumMaster for three scrum teams – two engineering teams and one marketing (web) team. Champion the teams’ Agile processes and activities and coach them in best practices. Shield the team from unnecessary distractions that compromise their sprint/release commitments. Facilitate multiple-team sprint planning, reviews and retrospectives. Collect and display data daily to help the team monitor its progress and adjust course as needed. Work with Product Owners to build out a prioritized backlog, writing stories as needed. Ensure backlog is sized by the team and prioritized by the Product Owners. Provide agile-based project forecasting to product owners and the business. Mentor other ScrumMasters and provide Agile coaching to other UTD teams. Participate in cross-company Agile leadership group within Clinical Solutions business unit.
Perceptive Informatics, ScrumMaster
January 2010 - May 2012, Billerica, MA, US
Championed the team's Agile process and activities. Tracked and resolved impediments to the team’s progress. Shielded the team from unnecessary distractions that compromise their sprint/release commitments. Facilitated multi-team engineering release planning. Facilitate sprint planning and sprint reviews. Collected and displayed data daily to help the team monitor its progress. Helped the team retrospect its process, with an eye toward constant improvement. Tracked and controlled financial reporting for the business. Collected metrics on multiple engineering teams for review by management and, ultimately, the teams. Supported and motivated the team. Managed/mentored other ScrumMasters in the department.
Cengage Learning, ScrumMaster, then Product Owner
June 2001 - December 2010, Boston, MA, US
Collaborated with internal business partners to ensure a cohesive product strategy. Reviewed business and marketing requirements documentation and translate business needs into implementable feature sets. Managed constant inputs from customers, sales, marketing, tech support and the marketplace to identify product direction and synthesize action items. Met with customers to gather direct feedback on the product and identify new opportunities.
Produced clear product plans and user stories in a prioritized backlog. Re-prioritized often based on customer needs. Lead business analyst team in user story creation. Wrote and reviewed stories to ensure they accurately reflected customer needs. Integrated stories into prioritized backlog. Partnered with ScrumMaster and other project managers to ensure features were properly prioritized, that user stories were understood, testable, and appropriately sized. Represented the customer and the business in sprint planning meetings and daily scrums. Removed impediments around product definition on the development team. Integrated customers and internal stakeholders into sprint retrospective demo. Reprioritized user stories as needed to maximize impact of next sprint’s activities. Attended daily defect triage and prioritized work for development team based on customer needs.
Created customer-facing release notes.