Steve Young 847-254-4468

Summary

  • Designsinnovative, yet practical,solutions for real-world business needs and problems
  • Delivers quality through customer collaboration and incremental implementation
  • Buildsmotivated, effective teamsthrough caring leadership andstrong mentoring

Employment History

Independent Agile Transformation Consultant

Agile Coach at Sears Holdings – Hoffman Estates, ILDecember 2011 – November 2012

  • Introduced Scrum to the Mobile Commerce Group as a Trainer and Coach
  • Guided the Agile transformation of the group over several months
  • Introduced Agile Portfolio and Program Management to five programs within the group
  • Trained and facilitated the organizations first Release Planning sessions
  • Served as coach and mentor to the budding Agile program and functional managers

Agile Consultant at Axcess Financial – Cincinnati, OHOctober 2011 – November 2011

  • Helped lay groundwork for the creation of an Agile Program Management Office (PMO)

Nokia Location & Commerce (Formally NAVTEQ)Chicago, Illinois

Agile Release Train Conductor (Facilitator) November 2010 – October 2011

  • Facilitated Release Planning sessions for trains varying in size from 5 to 17 teams which are locatedin the USA, India, and EU
  • Facilitated Portfolio and Program level planning sessions
  • Trained and coachedexecutives, managers, product owners, and other principles in the organization and operation of Release Trains

Agile Trainer & CoachFebruary 2010 – October 2011

  • Designed, implemented, and conducted agile and agile related training for teams and stakeholders
  • Designed Agile training curriculum and am implementing courses
  • Trained over 500 developers, testers, analysts, and other software professionals in the Agile arts
  • Served as the agile coach to multiple project teams
  • Trainedand mentored new coaches and ScrumMasters
  • Provided direction and coordination to cohort of contract agile coaches

Agile Program ManagerDecember 2009 – October 2011

  • Adapted agile techniques for use in a $1B revenue company with600 developers in seven development sites around the world, initially reducing time to market by 25%
  • Blended Scrum and enterprise agile into a scalable framework for moving project teams from a waterfall process to an agile process
  • Implemented Excel tools for managing backlogs, organizing sprints & releases, managing sprints, and generating burn-down charts

Agile Activist July 2009 – October 2011

  • Introduced Agile to NAVTEQ’s software development organization
  • Organized the Agile Collective, a group of over 200 software professionals at NAVTEQ that were interested in initiating a grassroots agile adoption
  • Speaks at local professional groups on Agile

Senior Process Engineer & Trainer March 2003 – July 2009

  • Implemented process definition and improvements for corporate CMM and ISO certificationby blending elements ofRUP, PMBOK, Agile and other software methodologies
  • Created and delivered software development and project management training

Senior Project Manager January 2001 - March 2003

  • Managed the development activities for delivering a web service API for accessing and manipulating digital map data, utilizing routing algorithms, and rendering map images
  • Applied agile techniques to make the development process more responsive and efficient
  • Gathered requirements and designed the architecture

Senior Development Lead August 1999 – January 2001

  • Improved data quality as lead the Map Data Validation team
  • Designed and managed the development of map validation software
  • Introduced artificial intelligence and rule-based processing design concepts
  • Designed algorithms based on nature to improve processing efficiency (ant colony communication) and memory management (forest fire burn patterns)

Zeal Inc.Northbrook, Illinois

Systems Analyst Contractor March 1999 – August 1999

  • Collected requirements and outlined architecture for insurance claims processing system

Advanced Health TechnologiesChicago, Illinois

Director of Project Management March 1998 – March 1999

  • Established project management practices and software development methodologies in a small dynamic company. Planned and implemented project management strategy
  • Managed the implementation & delivery of the flagship product with a schedule variance of 4% and a defect count 47% less than previous releases
  • Introduced RAD methodology with JAD techniques for new projects
  • Assisted in the design of a new architecture for future applications

Motorola, Inc.Arlington Heights, Illinois

Project ManagerApril 1996 – March 1998

  • Managed releases of GSM Base Station software and associated hardware development projects. Coordinated activities of several functional areas in various international locations
  • Designed, implemented, and managed the Project Management Intranet Web site using HTML and Perl scripts. Created fault detection projection metrics accurate to within 3%
  • Improved Project Management practices and trained Project Managers in the use of improved procedures, metrics, and tools
  • Developed and institutionalized Project Management practices and metrics for Total Quality Management (TQM), Quantitative Process Management (QPM), and the Software Engineering Institute (SEI) Capability Maturity Model (CMM) Level 5

coris, A division of R.R. DonnelleyWillowbrook, Illinois

Project ManagerOctober 1993 - April 1996

  • Managed teams of 8 to 15 programmers and multimedia developers on various CD-ROM based development projects
  • Supported the sales staff, prepared and presented technical sales presentations, provided project cost estimates, and functioned as technical customer interface
  • Designed CD-ROM based catalogs, reference materials, educational programs, electronic parts catalog systems, electronic publishing production systems that generated 70% profit. Designed SGML DTDs for electronic books and magazines

Intelligent Resources Integrated Systems, Inc.Arlington Heights, Illinois

Software Development ManagerFebruary 1991 - September 1993

  • Managed Software Department and trained staff in Object Oriented Analysis, Design, and Programming techniques
  • Designed Object Architecture for video system software. Designed and implemented Macintosh based still-store application. Designed and helped implement C++ Object architecture for video graphics applications

Andersen ConsultingChicago, Illinois

Senior Software EngineerJune 1988 - February 1991

  • Designed and coded the Structure Chart Editor of the Design/1 case tool in Smalltalk
  • Reduced size of code by 45% via refactoring and object reuse

The Alcar Group, Inc.Skokie, Illinois

Software EngineerFebruary 1987 - June 1988

  • Designed and programmed file I/O, memory management, and computation modules of financial valuation application in C on DOS
  • Designed and implemented code based network site license enforcement
  • Developed memory management algorithms to maximize resource utilization and search and program speed

Lockheed Engineering and Management Services Co.Houston, Texas

Software EngineerAugust 1982 - February 1987

  • Developed Engineering Workstation that allowed NASA engineers to access Space Shuttle flight data directly in C on Unix workstations. Programs reduced data turnaround time from 2 days to 15 minutes. Software helped document SRB problems on Challenger explosion
  • Created FORTRAN programs that compared Space Shuttle actual performance against predicted performance and generated exception reports

Experience Summary

  • Agile Development: Certified Scrum Master, Certified Product Owner, Agile coach & trainer, agile adoption & adaptation, enterprise agile, Agile Release Trains, training development, Scrum Master mentoring; Mingle, JIRA/Greenhopper
  • Project Management: Large, medium, and small projects; planning, change management, risk analysis, issue management, resource management, administration, communication
  • Department Management: Assembling and growing software development departments; developing staff competencies; administration & reporting
  • Process Management: Defining, implementing, and institutionalizing software development and project management methodologies, CMM, PMBOK, RUP, Lean, Agile, SPICE, SCRUM, ISO
  • Object Oriented Development: Theory, training, planning, analysis, design, programming, Java, C++, Smalltalk, MVC, patterns, UML, Use cases
  • Structured Development: Theory, training, planning, analysis, design, programming, C, FORTRAN
  • Application Development: Map distribution, SGML production systems, CD-ROM applications, video processing, financial analysis, rocket science
  • Operating systems: Windows, Macintosh, UNIX
  • Desktop: Word, Excel, Visio, PowerPoint, Publisher, Outlook, Mind-maps, Image processing
  • Project Management: MS Project, Clarity, Open Workbench
  • Web: Wiki, FrontPage

Education

Certified Scaled Agile Framework Program Consultant, 2012

Certified Product Owner, 2010

Certified ScrumMaster, 2009

Project Management Professional (PMP) Training, 2007 (not certified)

University of Houston, Clear Lake, Texas, Graduate work on Relational Databases, 1984 - 1985

University of Illinois, Urbana, Illinois, B.S. Computer Science/Mathematics, 1976 – 1982

Affiliations

Agile Alliance; Scrum Alliance; Agile Methodology Meet-up Group, Agile Project Leaders Meet-up Group; Chicago-Software Process Improvement Network (C-SPIN)

1