Jason Pipkin

Jason Pipkin

Early in my working career I was in the USAF and served as a crew chief with a unit flying the A7 and later the F-16.  I was later activated and served in Desert Storm in an Intelligence role.  Upon leaving the USAF I became a 911 dispatcher for a time. Both left me with a rich set of stories to tell.  After leaving military and public service I pursued my remaining passion for technology and computers. I began this service in A Quality Assurance role and quickly moved to test automation. Like many others at that time frame I was introduced to some version of a waterfall delivery process and learned via immersion.  I progressed through QA Manager, SDET and Developer roles throughout the years.  In 2005 I was fortunate enough to work for a small start-up that was Agile in mindset and practice. Being new to both small startup culture as well as Agile I was not about to admit my lack of understanding.  Over the next few years I learned SCRUM through deep immersion and much practice.  Looking back my immersion in Agile was priceless. With Scrum under my belt I set out to implement Agile at a much larger company.  Quickly I discovered that scaling Agile to an enterprise level was an enormous challenge.  Having great mentors, coaches and co-workers over the last 5 years has given me great experience with the challenges of scaling Agile.  I am now leading an enterprise transition from Waterfall to Agile and while I love the experience it challenges me daily.  I currently coach and mentor several Agile teams and have begun a very gradual transition to some scaled agile concepts.

As a Colorado native I spent my younger years kayaking, skiing, rock climbing and even paragliding.  As many have done I relented on my thrill seeking adventures upon the birth of my daughter.  My wife is a recovering Help Desk Manager and now has a private mortgage lender practice.  My daughter is now 10 and struggles to understand her 5 year old brother.  I now enjoy sports with my two children and am in my second season learning to play Golf.

Recently I have become fascinated with the dynamics that make a company successful and those companies who are not.  I would imagine others know what I mean.  You can walk into an organization and in a month pretty much sense what the culture is and how a transition to Agile will look.  Culture and the culture created by leaders at the top is in my opinion the largest contributing factor for long term success.  Anyone reading this might have guessed that I am a complete ENTJ but on the margin of an INTJ.  I will be pursuing skill builder assessments for myself and team in the near future.