“If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” ~ Isaac Newton
Oct 2024 Project to Product Summit- Executive Experience NYC – Exec Panel w/ Q&A: Dr. Mik Kersten (Moderator), Keith Buehlman (Launch NTT Data), Sejal Amin (CTO Shutterstock), Laura Barnard (PMO and Author), Mike Carr (CTO Vangaurd), Phil Clark (VP Technology)2022: Dominica DeGrandis, Dr. Ron Westrum, Jonathan Smart, Simon Rohrer, and Gene Kim
2024 Nathan Harvey (DORA), Laura Tacho (CTO DX)
March 2025 Flow Engineering Retreat, Steve Pereira, Mark Hornbeek, Miguel Dias, Cesar Arce, Robb Keayes
“There are books that change your life in a sentence and people that change your life in an instant. Both books and people have the power to transform you. That’s why it’s important to know what to read and who to surround yourself with.” ~ Alberto Garcia
Like many, my career has been both challenging and incredibly fulfilling. I have been fortunate enough to work during two major technical industrial revolutions. I enjoy pulling from my 25 years of experience in software engineering, leadership, and digital transformation and sharing experiences and learning. Therefore, I am devoted to spreading this message through Rethinking Your Understanding.
As I enter the final phase of my professional journey, I am passionate about today’s challenges and the technical community. I am eager to give back to the community by volunteering my time and expertise, making a positive impact, and continuously learning and growing my skills.
Here are a few examples of the ways that I enjoy engaging with you, your organization, or team.
Speaking engagements and corporate presentations:
see below (Industry leadership conversations)
Technology and Leadership panels
Senior Leadership round table discussions
Digital transformation consulting and conversations
connecting software engineering to business outcomes
change, culture, and mindset
architecture and team design
optimizing efficiencies
team design
delivery practices
leveraging value stream management, flow and realization
metrics and team performance
technology leadership and management
Coffee calls
bounce ideas off of each other
trends in the industry
experiences
Mentoring: I have promoted, developed, and mentored many first-time engineering managers. I enjoy mentoring and sharing my experiences and learning.
new managers must understand that this is a career shift more than a progression.
being a great engineer and leading an engineering team are two different competencies; each requires very different skills and strengths. Knowing this is important, the transition may only work for some technology team members.
going into management requires a shift in mindset. You should be passionate about investing in and putting your team members first. You see reward through their growth and successes.
if you go to management, please remember you are still a great engineer. You do not give up on your intuition and ability to contribute advice as an engineer.
“Leadership behaviour will make it or break it.” ~ Jonathan Smart
Industry Conversations
Since 2021, I have appreciated the opportunity to discuss my and other organizations’ leaders’ digital experiences, transformations, contexts, challenges, and practices. Some of these talks, presentations, and discussions include:
2025
Flow Engineering Retreat hosted by Steve Pereira and Visible.is (Telchac, Yucatán, Mexico). This exclusive three-day event is designed for leaders looking to master Flow Engineering. Participants will engage in open sessions, case studies, and hands-on workshops focused on improving performance, unlocking potential, and building sustainable, high-performing systems. It’s a rare opportunity to collaborate with Value Stream Management experts from around the globe and share practical insights to drive innovation and operational success.
Partnering with a Leading Value Stream Management Platform to Improve Value Stream Management and Flow Metrics through AI:
As part of an AI copilot early adoption program, I’m collaborating with a leading Value Stream Management Product Team and other enterprise industry experts to explore Generative AI use cases within their platform and other products. In 2024 and 2025, we’ll hold biweekly discussions focused on how AI, Generative AI, automation, and decision-support tools can enhance efficiency, improve value stream visibility, and deliver data-driven insights for technology and business leaders.
Our collaboration aims to shape the future of AI-powered Value Stream Management by improving operational visibility, deep data analysis, reporting, and strategic execution. We’re enhancing AI automation, predictive insights, and intelligent recommendations within the VSM platform ecosystem.
2024
Industry Speaker: Flowtopia 2024 conference, virtual event, Lessons Learned Adopting Value Stream Management.
Panel Discussion – 2024 Project To Product Summit: Executive Experience NYC, Mik Kersten, Keith Buehlman, Sejal Amin, Laura Barnard, Mike Carr, and Phil Clark, moving to a Product Operational Model experiences and Q&A session.
Value Stream Management Consortium Office Hours – Reference Panelist; We’re excited to kick off our monthly office hours sessions, where you can connect with a panel of industry experts ready to share their insights and experiences!
Panel Discussion – Connecting Product Management and Software Engineering Episode 51 of Day-to-Day DevOps, Helen Beal and guest experts Umar Farooq Kadri, Jeff Keyes, Phil Clark, and Cristin Hernandez look at how connecting product management and software engineering can lead to better business outcomes and happier teams.
Case Study – Published May 2024: Evolving Measurement from Individual Metrics to Team-Level Metrics at Parchment, Flow Engineering: From Value Stream Mapping to Effective Action, Chapter 13. Pereira, Steve; Davis, Andrew. (p. 220). IT Revolution Press. Kindle Edition.
Industry Speaker: Flowtopia Conference, live in-person event, Las Vegas Aria Resort and Casino (Value Stream Management).
INSPECT: Phil Clark, Parchment/Workshop with Broadcom: Lance Knight
Industry Speaker: Planview – 2023 Accelerate Global Customer Conference, virtual conference event.
Parchment – Rethinking Metrics: A Journey from Legacy Measures to Team Success.
Leadership Round-table:
Replacing Agile Leadership with technical members, combining agile leadership responsibilities into fewer roles.
Using AI to replace to agile leadership.
Thank you to Apurva Xxxx and Phil Clark for the suggestion.
Round-table: Project to product.
Leadership Round-table: M&A strategies and SOPs
How and when to integrate systems to achieve 1+1=3.
How do you manage data when you haven’t yet integrated acquisitions?
Is Global Business Operations a centralized function or in silos?
Standardizing process first. Heavy customization in a SaaS product is indicative of a problem.
Profitability expectations from your PE firms, has your investment thesis changed due to market conditions? Rule of 40 – Swing between growth & margins Growth at all costs is now health at all costs
How are you using AI, internally, externally, etc.
2022
Leadership Round-table: competition for talent; skill set mismatch; burnout; driving and managing change.
Round-table: Key themes from Team Topologies. For those organizations on a transformation journey – Value Streams, Team structures, Team cognitive load, Metrics for team structures, and Platform teams.
Private by invitation round-table – Cynefin framework with Dave Snowden.
Round-table: Metrics that matter:
What metrics are key to your organization? Examples: ROI, cost of delivering IT services, cost of resources, business value related to digital transformation, online apps availability, production incidents, utilization rates, user experience ratings, social media activity, downloads
Do your metrics communicate how IT is enabling critical business/mission outcome success?
Discuss challenges, hurdles and barriers to creating IT metrics which matter to executive leadership.
Share lessons learned which others will benefit from and identify best practices which you can readily apply in your organization.
Round-table with Gene Kim. Gene Kim’s top takeaways from the 2022 DevOps EU Summit and open discussion forum.
2021
CEO conference, panel member: “How Leadership Impacts Transformation Success.”
Local Transformation Leader of the Year: Listen in quarterly as nominees and other Arizona business leaders collaborate and share transformation best practices and experiences.
Digital Transformation: continued discussion about your organization’s specific objectives, measurable benefits, timelines, and communication.
Hiring in a tight labor market; we are experiencing a war for talent again. How do we compete for the best and brightest?
Focus on the growing prevalence of “change fatigue“, measuring value, and Scaled Agile (SAFe) with Dean Leffingwell.
Round-table with Gene Kim.
Focus on OKRs and accelerating the flow of business value.
Peer exchange around technical debt and its severe impact on the health of the business. With technical debt estimated to cost companies up to $85 billion annually, the time has come to make it a priority agenda point in the boardroom.
Driving 496% ROI with Tasktop Viz (Value Stream Management and Flow Metrics).
Effective OKRs: Focusing on Outcomes and Finding Flow.
Round-table with Gene Kim. A confidential, invitation only, and interactive session includes an open discussion and peer exchange around some of the key themes and learning from DevOps Enterprise Summit US 2021.
How Value Stream Management complements your Product development.
Lightning talk on the topic of how measuring the performance of people impacts your outcomes, after which we’ll continue the theme with a Lean Coffee session.
We all come from different experiences, let’s talk.
