Joseph Collins

Serving in the United States Marine Corps for 20 years was the perfect prequel to my new adventures in Scrum.  I began my career as an intelligence analyst in the mid 1990's when technology was becoming the main focus for my area of work.  The Gulf War had exposed gaps in the Marine Corps ability to share actionable intelligence with the warfighter who needed it in a timely manner.  The intelligence community began developing intelligence systems and those systems required Marines with high level security clearances to employ, train and maintain them on a daily basis.  I was one of the first intelligence Marines trained to do this work.  From that point on, I was in a love affair with technology.  After eight years in the Corps, I received my BS, Information Systems Technology from Old Dominion University and was commissioned a 2nd Lieutenant.  Five years later, I received my MS, Management Information Systems from the Naval Postgraduate School (NPS).  From NPS, I was stationed in Indianapolis to serve as the Deputy Director, Integrated Applications Division for the Technology Services Organization. The TSO develops and maintains all of the Marine Corps Pay and Personnel Systems.  My first year at the TSO involved heavy preparation for a CMMI Level 3 evaluation where I found myself coordinating the creation and maintenance of hundreds of pages of documents that enumerated plans, policies and procedures that were rarely referenced.  I was inundated with reoccurring meetings to discuss the waterfall milestones, metrics gathering and reporting that produced artifacts that were not actionable, not timely and not accurate.  It seemed as if the governments main focus and most valued products were the artifacts that would prove they were developing software rather the software itself.  At about the 18th month, I discovered that one of my Branch Heads was experimenting with Agile methods.  Although we had to keep it quiet, I did my best to protect this initiative to allow it to grow without being stamped out by the traditionalists within the organization.  Today, the TSO has over a dozen Scrum Teams.  Upon retirement, I proudly accepted a Scrum Master role at NextGear Capital in Carmel, IN where I currently coach and develop 2-3 teams at a time. I have 50+ sprints under my belt as a Scrum Master. I have become a Certified Scrum Product Owner along with my customers to ensure our goals and priorities are aligned. While I am not currently in a PO role, one of my duties as an Agile Lead is to coach and mentor our active PO's in their efforts.