Necole Ezell

My name is Necole Ezell.  As an experienced Agile Coach, I work with executives and scrum teams leading Agile transformations, and assisting with the implementation of Agile practices.  I am involved in training on Agile principles, the Scrum methodology, and the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe).  My certifications include Certified Scrum Professional (CSP), Certified Scrum Master (CSM), SAFe Product Owner/Product Manager (PM/PO), SAFe Scaled Agilist (SA), and ICAgile Certified Professional - Agile Coach (ICP-ACC). 

Although an IT and Project Management professional with over 20 years of experience, in my current role,  I serve as the Enterprise IT Planning Director and Agile Coach, 2nd Vice President, at Protective Life Insurance Company in (Birmingham, AL).  I helped lead the organization through the enterprise scaled lean agile transformation and adoption process.  I am a strategist and transformation leader with a passion for people, processes, technology and driving a culture of operational excellence.   As noted below, I assist with on-going SAFe transformation activities such as the value stream/portfolio, value stream/program, and team level coaching of multiple Agile Release Trains.  With the goal of continuous improvement, I assist with on-going training to launch additional programs as well as the socialization of the transformation across the organization.

Transformation and Adoption, Coaching and Speaking

Transformation and Adoption

• Instrumental in establishing, organizing and maturing the organizations Program Increment ceremonies and associated processes. 
• Assisted the enterprise with organizational change management activities to foster education and the execution of agile principles throughout the organization.
• Helped establish and leverage Centers of Excellence (CoE) and other collaboration mechanisms to effectively communicate changes throughout the enterprise
• Engaged in the development of ScrumMasters, Product Owners, and Development teams
• Proven track record creating self-organizing teams, resulting in teams empowered to make decisions, leading the project closer toward the goal.
• Operate at all levels of the organization specializing in enterprise level and organizational redesign.

Coaching

• Provides support to other parts of the organization and stakeholders, so that Agile and SAFe principles are adopted consistently.
• Proficient in coaching across the systems development lifecycle from business requirement definition, business process reengineering, systems analysis, data conversion, software implementation, and system testing to training and education, documentation, and end-user support.
• Actively coach and train Scrum Masters, Product Owners and Development Teams on the Scrum framework. 
• In addition to coaching, I also provide training, evangelism and passion around improving the organization through Agile principles.  I provide workshops on topics such as Introduction to Agile, Scrum, DevOps and User Story Development.
• As a coach, I work with Scrum teams, product owners, and epic owners to improve team performance and delivery. I help managers visualize team improvements, and create a safe, learning culture.  The goal is to lead teams to the understanding that Agile is bigger than stand ups and project boards.

 Speaking

• As an Agile Practitioner, I speak regularly at industry conferences about enterprise agile transformations.  Coach-consultant working to help organizations meet the promise of agile by going beyond agile practices to address culture challenges and help teams and leaders reach and maintain high performance.