Keith Tasker

Keith Tasker My name is Keith Tasker and I live and work in the great State of Maine, currently at IDEXX Laboratories (Westbrook, Maine). My professional life began in Customer Service in the early 90s. In the years since then, I’ve progressed through a variety of roles involving customer operations, product management, product development, operations management, project management, and most recently the role of Scrum Master and Principal Technical Project Manager at IDEXX Laboratories. As a “home grown” project manager, I’ve always worked with, for, and around software engineering teams doing new product development. While not a technologist by any stretch of the imagination, over the years I’ve come to understand the language, behaviors, and patterns of software engineering teams, both in waterfall environments and Agile environments. When asked if my lack of background in technology constrains my ability to be an effective project manager or Scrum Master, my answer is that I believe it actually is a benefit. I’ve found that I can rely on my technology leads to handle technology matters, which allows me to be a true and objective steward of the Agile methodology and the Scrum framework, without getting bogged down in the details of technical solutions. Until 2011, my exposure to Agile and Scrum were only cursory. At that time, I was given the opportunity to join IDEXX Laboratories with the specific intent of evolving into a Scrum Master role, working with a brand new software engineering team, building an exciting new product. I embraced this enthusiastically and am I ever glad that I did. Becoming proficient in Agile methodologies and the Scrum framework has totally opened up my career path. In December of 2011, I obtained my Scrum Master certification after completing the training and exam. As I joined my new IDEXX team, I had the good fortune of having lots of really talented people around me, many of whom had varying levels of Agile and Scrum experience and who helped launch me from waterfall project manager to Scrum Master. It goes without saying that having great people around you is hugely important to one’s success, especially when working through a significant role change. I find the Agile methodology and the Scrum framework extremely refreshing as compared to the “conventional” waterfall methods of my past…and I feel just as strongly about that now as I did in 2011 when I started this new journey. If I had to pick a single significant value point of Scrum and Agile, I would pick Transparency. I tell all my new teammates and co-workers who have had limited exposure to the process that the level of transparency achieved takes such a huge amount of stress out of the product development process. That said, I find that many people who have lived in the waterfall world for many years are actually afraid of the idea of such wide open transparency…this was me in the beginning as well. So many waterfall organizations have created an environment that is more punitive than constructive when it comes to promoting and maintaining transparency. Therefore, people work on their long drawn out projects, without raising risks, and then paying the consequence of “surprise” problems too late in the waterfall cycle. I find that it takes some people who are new to Scrum and Agile a bit of time to embrace and leverage the environment of transparency and constant communication. My one word…Transparency. As can be seen in my profile, I’ve worked with several great companies in Maine, including WEX, Clareon, Bank of America, Bottomline Technologies, and IDEXX Laboratories. All great companies that have treated me well and taught me a lot. Outside of work, I love spending time with my family and making music. I’ve been a semi-professional musician off and on since the early 80s.