Kasie Kremenak

Kasie Kremenak

I began my professional journey as a customer relationship manager with Transamerica and later moved to be operations support. While working as operations support I found the waterfall methodology to be very difficult to work in. There were constantly changes in scope and the customer rarely got what they needed when they needed it. Testing was also challenging because the window would become so small due to development efforts consuming the majority of the project timeline. We would find ourselves working nights and weekends to get through all the test cases and correct all defects. Quality would suffer because there was such a disconnect between the customer, developers and testers. I thought there must be a better way. That is when I was introduced to the Agile principles and Scrum framework. Learning this new methodology invigorated me so I pursued the path of a Scrum Master. I have been working as a Scrum Master for 4 years with Transamerica. I started as a Scrum Master, obtaining my PSM, and working with 2 teams located in Texas. I was firmly located in Iowa so I would visit often and look for inventive ways of communicating with the team. Being a remote scrum master was difficult but we came up with creative ways to ensure everyone was involved and the communication lines were open. During my time as a Scrum Master with those teams we were able to flourish as Agile teams, implementing automated testing and creating a new mobile platform for our site. We released 3 new products into production successfully. My next position was with Aegon Global technologies as an Agile business analyst and Scrum Master. In this position I worked with a team that had faced challenges for years delivering product to the business. Upon implementing Scrum as the execution framework, we were able to deliver product within 3 months. The project became very successful as we worked through forming the team and organizing the work. I also worked to evaluate projects early on to determine if they were good candidates for an Agile execution methodology. Identifying potential projects early on allowed us to resource better and deliver value much more quickly. Currently I am an Agile coach on the PMO for Aegon Global Technologies. I am working to transform the PMO to become more agile so we can work better with our business partners. I facilitate Agile and Scrum training to educate the enterprise as well as work directly with PM's and senior leadership on transforming teams and projects to become more Agile. I have worked with traditional PM's to create a reporting template that can be used universally for Agile, waterfall and iterative projects. I have introduced Kanban as the execution methodology for our roadmap which is keeping us focused and accountable. I am passionate about being an Agile coach. It is very rewarding to be able to see the benefits. I get the opportunity to see individuals grow and become excited about what they do. Value is our number one focus and being an Agile coach allows me to be on the front edge of this.