Hernán Benedetti

Conducted and participated in different activities such as interviews, focus groups, and surveys to understand strengths, weaknesses, and actions regarding Agile ways of working in the client's South America region (Brazil and Colombia). Also participated in defining status and action plan in coordination with the other regions of the transformation, US and UK.

The diversity of cultures (more than three continents), methodologies, and the company's size (17,000 employees) were a challenge, given the environment's complexity under these circumstances. Different teams were established by region to overcome this, but at the same time, decisions were made by a global committee to make sure both regional and global points of view were considered. Furthermore, the information gathering process involved different methods such as surveys, to gather as much quantitative information as possible and easy to summarize; interviews, to keep the human interaction and qualitative and non-verbal information as high as possible; focus groups, to get different roles involved and let the teams assess themselves while being guided and coached.

Acted as scrum master for three teams, trained employees on Agile methodologies, coached leadership on Agile, Kanban, and Scrum, and provided recommendations to the company's partners on how to structure the company as they grew.

There was zero to basic knowledge of Agile in the company, so I started the implementation from scratch. Initially, a Kanban model was applied due to the characteristics of the context, changing priorities, and lack of visibility. As the company started to grow, a more organized approach (Scrum) was implemented, with different independent teams.

Managed the daily communication and relations with the client and acted as scrum master for the team, helping on the product definition, Scrum practices such as sprint reviews, daily meetings, and user story tracking.

Successfully delivered and released the product using an incremental approach and creating new versions frequently and continuously.

Took the role of a scrum master for around one year in a cross-functional team consisted of managers, developers, and other roles, that had the goal of taking the development teams to the next level of Agile. As we detected that teams were implementing Agile successfully, but there was no breathing agility atmosphere, this initiative intended to overcome that and develop new spaces or initiatives to become more agile.

Received coaching by an Agile evangelist, that is also a recognized author and leader in the industry.