Kara Watson

Agile Coach & Release Train Engineer @Booz Allen Hamilton

US

Improving agility among software development teams. Giving good people the right tools in a complex ever changing environment. Serving as an evangelist and accelerator for adoption of agile ways of working within their organization. Providing training and coaching to build teams’ maturity in agile approaches, measure progress to overcome obstacles and drive continuous improvement, and champion agile to stakeholders. Responsibilities:• Develop, deliver, and/or coordinate with external providers to provision training and workshops on agile frameworks (e.g, Scrum, Kanban, Scaled Agile Framework) and practices (e.g, conducting daily stand-ups, retrospectives, backlog management).• Assess and enhance team agility and maturity by developing coaching plans and conducting maturity assessments.• Coach individuals and teams (including scrum masters and product owners) to facilitate adoption and improvement in agile methodologies and principles.• Establish and ensure adoption of standards, ceremonies, and best practices for agile ways of working.• Provide guidance and facilitate sprint and release planning sessions, and other agile ceremonies as needed.• Challenge existing workflows and processes and remove impediments to agile teams’ success.• Facilitate the organization’s transition to a continuous delivery model and adoption of an agile mindset across stakeholders.• Monitor and communicate progress of agile teams’ key metrics• Keep up to date with corporate policies, practices, and industry trends concerning agile.• Participate in the identification, collection, and reporting of agile practice metrics and measurements to track progress.• Assist with establishing communities of practice and developing a culture of continuous improvement across teams.• Establish best practice and scrum framework using agile planning tools: Jira, Confluence

University of South Florida

Bachelor of Science (B.S.), Marketing