Alan James Sebring

Seattle, WA, United States

Member since May 11, 2018

Alan is a business-driven director, consultant, coach, and technical project manager. He has worked with organizations of all sizes to clarify how they define business value and then helped them unlock more by leveraging Lean-Agile and traditional project management methods.

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Project Highlights

Product Management Coach for eCommerce organization (Premera)
Through custom workshops and individual coaching, increased the effectiveness of eCommerce product management organization.
Technical PM/Coach for 15+ Scrum Teams on Large Initiative (Alaska Airlines)
- Bridged traditional PMO program oversight with eCommerce Scrum teams, led special technical projects
Technical PM/Agile Coach for New Portal (UW Office of Research)
Led team through multiple releases of new, high-profile Web portal to support researchers' grant management.

Expertise

Agile Product Management
Agile Project Management
Agile Software Development
Agile Transformation
DevOps
Healthcare
Kanban
Scrum

Education

Bachelor's degree
University of Washington

Select Certifications

Certified Scrum Master
Scrum Alliance

Employment

Principal Consultant/Owner
2012 - PRESENT
Lean Effect, LLC
- Served as a consultant for senior leaders to plan and execute Lean/Agile/Scrum transitions.
- Provided Agile coaching for program/product managers, team product owners/analysts, functional leaders, delivery teams, and individual contributors.
- Managed technical projects for Agile, traditional, and hybrid project/product teams for large and small companies co-located and distributed.
- Advised on establishing portfolio management and product roadmaps aligned with Agile release plans.
- Collaborated with clients including Starbucks, TransAct, Univ of WA, Microsoft, Alaska Airlines, Premera Blue Cross, and Kaiser Permanente of WA.
Senior Consultant
2011 - 2012
Net Objectives, Inc.
- Trained and coached small to Fortune 500 clients to begin or scale Scrum/Kanban/hybrid development.
- Developed Scrum/Kanban transition roadmaps aligned with business strategies in partnership with senior leaders.
- Collaborated internally with Net Objectives CEO and other consultants to improve sales and marketing.
- Worked with a variety of clients including ADP Dealer Services, CarMax, University of Iowa Foundation, and Microsoft.
Director of Software Development (reported to CEO)
2008 - 2011
Tecplot, Inc.
- Introduced Agile practices resulting in more frequent releases, higher quality, reduced technical debt and improved employee morale.
- Shipped high-performance, cross-platform C++ and Java desktop, web and SDK visual analysis products to thousands of demanding scientific and engineering users around the world.
- Challenged executives and developers to focus product and technology strategies to address sagging revenue, resulting in the release of a bold new product and architecture.
- Organized and coached team members resulting in the emergence of new leaders, more productive local teams and a successful new offshore team.
- Introduced UX designer into the organization, establishing accountabilities and collaborations among roles.
- Collaborated with peer executives and their teams to establish product development process resulting in alignment from business plan to code.
Independent Contractor/Owner
2002 - 2008
Sebring Software, Inc.
- Served as technical project manager/Scrum Master for a data warehouse replacement project.
- Led a mission-critical gas pipeline scheduling system upgrade as a Scrum Master/Agile Coach.
- Oversaw engineering team as Acting Engineering Manager for the lead team on complex (six global engineering teams, four business units) replacement of Microsoft's license management system.
- Headed the performance improvement effort to scale Expedia's back-end hotel payment processing as the technical program manager.
Director of Software Engineering
2000 - 2002
Solucient, LLC
- Transformed disheartened legacy desktop coders into disciplined web software engineers.
- Led architecture and process improvements to rapidly develop new n-tier Web reporting and data warehouse applications for multiple business units.
- Collaborated with peer departments to advance corporate initiatives including mergers and acquisitions which grew revenue from $30M to $130M in a single year.
- Launched post-merger team to develop portal-based platform resulting in streamlined user experience and reduced development costs for multiple products.
- Led cross-functional team and architecture design resulting in lower operational costs and on-time delivery for multiple internal customers.
Engineering Manager
1998 - 2000
Sierra On-Line
- Launched new team and processes to automate builds for dozens of software titles.
- Coached small team of entry-level developers to increase engineering discipline and meet demanding schedules of multiple internal customers.
- Led successful C++ rewrite of $20M consumer application (Print Artist) after two earlier teams’ failures.
- Architected automated build, code quality, and install systems.
- Improved development processes, coached developers, and coordinated with other teams.

Project History

Scrum Master for Marketing Analytics Data Science team (Starbucks)
Adapted Scrum for a team of data scientists in Marketing Analytics organization
- Established daily standups, sprint planning, review, planning and retrospective meetings.
- Connected product roadmap to epic/features to stories.
- Collaborated with peers in PMO to apply Scrum to our process improvements and improve meeting efficiency.
Agile Coach for eCommerce Rewrite (Kaiser Permanente of WA)
Agile Coach to maximize effectiveness for five delivery teams, mostly new to Agile under pressure to deliver a $20M project.
- Coached Scrum Masters, Product Owners, and teams.
- Established standard sprint review for each team to showcase progress consistently for business stakeholders.
- Established common usage of Rally for all teams.
- Integrated critical path DevOps with multiple delivery teams.
Product Management Coach for eCommerce organization (Premera)
Through custom workshops and individual coaching, increased the effectiveness of eCommerce product management organization.
- Created and delivered workshops on excellent product management.
- Assessed and coached leaders, product managers, and product owner/analysts to support new director.
- Topics ranged from business cases and relationship management to agile delivery.
Technical PM/Coach for 15+ Scrum Teams on Large Initiative (Alaska Airlines)
- Bridged traditional PMO program oversight with eCommerce Scrum teams, led special technical projects
- Defined a "Chief Scrum Master" role and Scrum of scrum framework to tie together 15+ Scrum delivery teams, all eCommerce value streams/products.
- Led security assessment and recommendations project the board demanded after a critical incident.
- Supported teams' migration from Jira to VersionOne as the new organization and SDLC was introduced.
Technical PM/Agile Coach for New Portal (UW Office of Research)
Led team through multiple releases of new, high-profile Web portal to support researchers' grant management.
- As Technical PM/Scrum Master, reintroduced Agile for all Scrum ceremonies adapted to unique requirements within the department.
- Introduced Agile release planning to align product roadmaps with quarterly releases and biweekly sprints.
- Coached additional teams and Scrum Masters to spread success across the department.
- Facilitated project chartering meetings to get a cloud-based rewrite of the legacy system on track.
Lean Audit and Recommendations for Global Security Operations Center (Microsoft)
Assessed procedures and execution for world-class security operations center and delivered improvement recommendations.
- Interviewed operators and leaders, conducted time and motion studies, and reviewed operational procedures.
- Recommended new approaches to procedures, opportunistic technology, and human investments to lower costs and improve the safety of Microsoft's worldwide staff and lower asset risks.
- Presented findings and recommendations to leaders, supported strategy on how they would proceed.
Teaching Assistant for Undergraduate PM Course (University of WA)
Co-developed and delivered undergraduate introduction to project management for design students.
- Collaborated with lead instructor to design course blending text-based material and real-world experience to prepare students for industry work.
- Led Agile parts of the curriculum during lectures and in-class exercises.
- Coached students through homework feedback and in-person.
Technical PM/Scrum Master for Offshore Team's Product Rewrite (TransAct)
Organized and led project leveraging offshore team to rewrite company's flagship product on an updated technology platform.
- Gathered requirements from company's leadership and staff to drive Agile project for technology refactor.
- Facilitated offshore team communication for Scrum and other meetings with client stakeholders.
- Worked with CEO on the roadmap for other product upgrades.
Scrum Master for Supply Chain Management Application Rewrite (Starbucks)
Established effective Scrum standups, release planning and other team-level execution practices within enterprise initiative.
- Led establishment of hybrid Scrum / Kanban "flow" board to dramatically improve daily visibility on progress.
- Coached by example how to effectively participate in Scrum ceremonies.
- Introduced Agile release planning to overcome past, unrealistic schedules that had dogged project execution.

Education

Bachelor's degree in Business Administration
1984 - 1987
University of Washington - Seattle, WA