Annika Vatsa

Annika Vatsa My interest in technology and a desire for efficiency have been strong drivers throughout my career. After completing a four year degree in business and computer science in Germany, I moved to the US and obtained a M.B.A. with Management Information Systems Specialization. I have always enjoyed working in a team environment as the different perspectives and personalities enable the groups to solve problems more creatively. For much of my career I have worked as a software developer, interacting closely with marketing departments to shape solutions collectively. In 2009 I first had the opportunity to work as developer on a scrum team. Many of the team members enjoyed the collaboration and appreciated the business being more involved. The team continued to hold daily scrum meetings even after the initial 9 months project was completed. Over the years that followed all IT teams transitioned to scrum. The desire to further facilitate the collaboration between the business and IT while fostering an understanding for the different perspectives and priorities was the main reason I pursued the role of scrum master that I had first come to know in 2009. From April 2013 - September 2015 I have worked as a scrum master for teams in data warehousing, reporting, devops, and more traditional software development. Aiming to scale based on the SAFe approach our organization has adopted the practice of holding large, multi-day release planning events to scale our agile approach. I have facilitated story mapping/visual mapping sessions for many teams during these events and organized planning events for individual teams on my own. I have hosted the company’s internal monthly scrum improvement community meetings that focused on maturing our agile practices.

In September 2015 I joined the information security department to build an application security program in an agile world. Over time I got the opportunity to build out the application security team and take on identity and access management.