Workflow, Value Delivery, and Agility Professional | Accredited Kanban Trainer
Agility Professional and Accredited Kanban Trainer with expertise in workflow design, process improvement, and system optimization. He helps leaders and teams shift from project to product delivery, improve predictability, and deliver customer value. Known for making complex ideas practical, Mark optimizes workflows to improve visibility, throughput, and continuous improvement. He facilitates workshops ranging from product definition and visioning to roadmapping, prioritization, flow metrics, and system design. Mark has delivered accredited Kanban training to hundreds of professionals, spoken at 35+ conferences, and brings experience across federal, financial, and commercial sectors.
PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE
Accredited Kanban Trainer/Coach | Kanban University | 2018 –
Delivered more than 30 courses, successfully training and certifying over 400 professionals as an Accredited Kanban Trainer and Coach, providing instruction for the Kanban Management Professional (KMP), Scrum Better with Kanban (SBK), and Team Kanban Practitioner (TKP) credentials.
Managing Consultant, Agile Coach | Excella | 2016 - 2025
IRS (2023 – 2025) Guided enterprise-wide Agile adoption, helping teams shift from project-based delivery to a product mindset while improving workflow and delivery.
Contributed to the development of policy and guidance for an enterprise-wide Agile transformation with a focus on establishing a product mindset.
Led value stream mapping sessions to identify and reduce waste. Developed and delivered comprehensive agile trainings, including Kanban and Product Owner courses.
Created detailed facilitation guides for journey mapping, story mapping, and impact mapping workshops.
Freddie Mac (2018-2023) Supported a seven-team scaled Agile program, leading organizational transition efforts using Scrum and Kanban to reinforce a product-based mindset.
Designed and delivered Agile workshops and trainings focused on product visioning, Scrum fundamentals, flow optimization, and continuous improvement.
Promoted continuous improvement through coaching plans, regular team observation, and facilitation of program-level improvement and Agile maturity reviews.
Facilitated product visioning, road mapping, feature defining, and value stream sessions allowing product managers to define product strategy and direction. Helped teams map upstream and downstream flows to give a holistic view of value-based product delivery.
Introduced flow-based metrics to improve predictability, expose delivery risks, and support data-driven workflow improvements.
myUSCIS (2016-2018) Supported a 60-person, four-team initiative delivering a personalized myUSCIS digital platform that replaced paper-based immigration processing.
Mentored, trained, and held Scrum Masters accountable to serving as scrum team leaders.
Partnered with leadership and Product Owners to shift toward feature teams, improving backlog flow and transparency across Scrum teams.
Introduced a release planning process allowing teams to plan each release by employing concepts such as affinity sizing and prioritization sequencing.
Agile Coach | Santeon | 2013 – 2016
Mentored project managers transitioning into Agile team leads and Scrum Masters, emphasizing servant leadership, Agile principles, and self-organization.
Coached teams on Scrum events, emphasizing transparency, inspection, and adaptation. Facilitated working sessions to create tools such as team charters, team agreements, Definition of Ready and Definition of Done.
Worked one-on-one with Product Owners tasked with creating backlog items and user stories. Focused on the benefits of value-driven prioritization, well-articulated acceptance criteria, and the importance of INVEST criteria in stories. Introduced various techniques to split stories while ensuring they retain demonstrable business value.
Designed and delivered interactive Agile training covering mindset, facilitation, planning, estimation, and user story creation.
Principal, Scrum Master, and IT Project Manager | SRA International | 2001 - 2013
Scrum Master responsible for the facilitation of Scrum events. Used Atlassian Jira to facilitate the collaboration with a distributed team for refining the backlog, planning sprints, and creating and tracking user stories through the entire release process.
Successfully led numerous software and web development projects comprising multidisciplinary teams of requirements analysts, program developers, database developers, information architects, and software testers through all phases of the software development life cycle.
Senior Requirements and Business Process Analyst. Facilitated requirements meetings with the client. Helped stakeholders define business needs and assumptions, performance goals, quality attributes, and system design and development considerations.
Analytical and Research Roles in Government, Consulting, and Media | Bureau of Labor Statistics, PBS, Doceus, Freddie Mac | 1992 – 2001
Contributed to projects involving economic analysis, audience data management, and software requirements across federal and media organizations. Roles included analyzing the Producer Price Index (BLS), managing Nielsen ratings data (PBS), and assessing client needs, gathering requirements, and researching web industry trends (Doceus, Freddie Mac).
EDUCATION
M.S. Information Systems
George Mason University
B.S. Economics
Penn State University
SKILLS
Workflow Visualization and Management, Customized Training, Servant Leadership, System Optimization, Flow Metric Analysis, Agile Maturity Assessment, Scaling Teams, Facilitation, Mentoring, Leadership, Team Building, Jira, Confluence
CERTIFICATIONS
Accredited Kanban Trainer (AKT)
Kanban Coaching Professional (KCP)
Certified Scrum Professional Scrum Master (CSP-SM) and Product Owner (CSP-PO)
Agile Team Facilitation (ICP-ATF)
Certified Professional in Agile Coaching (ICP-ACC)
SAFe Agilist
Agile Project Management (ICP-APM)
PMP (2009-2013)
SPEAKING ENGAGEMENTS
Experienced public speaker and thought leader who authored and conducted numerous workshops and presentations at conferences and community meetups. Created sessions focused on knowledge work management, flow optimization, work visualization, and enhanced team communication techniques. Review my LinkedIn profile for a complete list of speaking engagements.