Steven Starosto Governance and Transformation Executive

Principle Agilist, AD

Cognizant

Sep 2021 - Jul 2023 (1 year 11 months)

- Working inside Cognizant's Life Sciences business unit, I have helped several Clients leading Agility in their Portfolio Programs and Teams with the focus of transformation to maturity in Agile. - Collaborated with leadership to define and monitor metrics such as ROI, KPIs, and OKRs, implementing proactive controls for change and risk management to ensure alignment. - Translated technical concepts into business language and vice versa, demonstrating cognitive flexibility and leading the development and evaluation of pragmatic and savvy strategies. Cultivated a constructive and harmonious environment by facilitating open pedagogy, fostering autonomy, enablement, sharing, and trust, resulting in consistent improvement. • Provided pragmatic

Enterprise Agile Coach

Comerica Bank

Jan 2021

- Accelerated Agile maturity at a sustainable pace, training and coaching teams and leaders in backlog refinement, planning, measuring, and reporting to help the business drive value and scale Agile delivery roadmaps and transformation. - Transformed Business Analyst positions into Feature Product Owner roles, working in partnership with leaders to scale job descriptions, elevate expectations, broaden responsibilities, and create Chief Product Owners over specific domains. - Provided training to Business Analysts to ensure readiness, facilitated coaching workshops, guided collaborative sessions on Agile Story formats, and fueled unprecedented outputs and a quantitative prioritization mechanism. Charged with turning around a failed Agile sta

Enterprise Agile Coach

The Cincinnati Insurance Companies

Jan 2020 - Jan 2021 (1 year 1 month)

- Promoted increased maturity in Agile ways of working, mentoring team members in continuously evolving and maturing practices, identifying and optimizing value streams, and championing education to drive a growth mindset. - Defined performance metrics and continuous improvement priorities for Scrum Masters, closing knowledge and skill gaps through targeted role-based training, and working with the CoE and VP to optimize Agile values and Scrum principles. - Guided stakeholders in improving their ability to be predictive using best-fit estimation and capacity planning techniques, leading workshops and training sessions focused on integrating workstream developments into the firm’s playbook.

Enterprise Agile Coach

Northwestern Mutual

Jan 2019

- Served as a change agent and servant leader anchoring a Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) for an insurance company navigating misalignment of teams, assessing business and team needs to promote transformative improvements. - Delivered top 10 problem statements and recommendations, leading several coaches in developing a client-side Agile assessment, observing 50+ teams, and performing a SAFe Agile health check to deliver program and team recommendations. - Observed and assessed teams for SAFe Agile in Program Increment (PI), aligning teams on the Agile Release Train (ART) to a shared mission and vision, coaching teams on suggested improvements following a multidimensional phase one assessment.

Enterprise Agile Coach

Texas Department of Transportation

Jan 2018

★ Coached a rapidly growing team in the Agile methodology, designing, developing, and facilitating high-impact training programs, evolving SAFe into a hybrid framework, and preparing leaders to shape high-performance cultures. ★ ➤ Accelerated growth to 175+ team members, earning praise for "doing more in 7 months than two previous and larger vendors had accomplished in 2 years," by working from the top down to change leadership styles and foster communication. ➤ Excelled in building career- and lifelong relationships by showing a genuine interest in meeting stakeholders' needs, engaging across 8 Scrum and 7 Kanban teams within 4 trains to map existing processes and define future state goals. ➤ Embedded within the State of Texas Department o

Enterprise Agile Coach

Kaiser Permanente

Jan 2018 - Jan 2019 (1 year 1 month)

- Stood-up’ teams in cadence with vendors, forming two SAFe ARTs each with PO, VM, and SM with teams; facilitated rapid product development sessions, Scrum training, and identification and development of an internal Agile Coach. - Broke out business and use cases into first-year Epics, creating 3 product backlogs and teams, and equipping resources with the ability to identify feature sets, produce RFPs, and manage the vendor selection process. - Traveled extensively across the country to meet with product teams as they launched Scaled Agile, partnering with key stakeholders to develop roadmaps, lead product and backlog workshops, and optimize the efforts of 100 FTEs across 3 teams.

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Agile Transformation Coach

Wells International Foundation

Jan 2016 - Jan 2018 (2 years 1 month)

★ Offered ideas and creativity to organizations seeking to drive transformative change, consulting with founders, Board members, and executives to devise action plans, incorporate the voice of the customer, and achieve nonprofit missions. ★ ➤ Trained C-suite leaders and Board members in iterative concepts and Agile fundamentals, facilitated workshops to apply approach to development and advancement work, and fueled understanding of current market and business trends. ➤ Contracted with nonprofit organizations to utilize Agile framework to identify opportunities for continuous improvement, iterative learning, and program enhancement. ➤ Built first-time infrastructures centered around portfolio planning, alignment of OKRs with value streams, a

Agile Transformation Coach

US Department of Veterans Affairs

Jan 2015 - Jan 2016 (1 year 1 month)

★ Strengthened collective Agile acumen, closing vendor and contract gaps, eliminating deliverable deficiencies, and providing influential and expert Agile leadership to shape the VA's transformation journey. ★ ➤ Transformed a 2-year Waterfall contract to meet and exceed Agile iterative development and release plans, earning COR approval based on the ability to cultivate strong vendor working relationships to drive the program forward. ➤ Led the creation of a Cloud platform and adjudication engine, leveraging AWS' artificial intelligence to facilitate examination and analysis, streamlining processes, reducing administrative expenses, and improving the customer experience. ➤ Recruited to return to the VA to mitigate risks associated with miss

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Managing Consultant, Professional Services Transformation Leader

Oct 1995 - Sep 2023 (28 years)

• Led Agile transitions and transformations for 15 years, successfully initiating, stabilizing, and optimizing teams, programs, and portfolios. • Collaborated with Leadership to define and monitor ROI, KPIs, and OKRs, implementing initiative-taking controls for change and risk management to ensure alignment. • Translated technical concepts into business language and vice versa, demonstrating cognitive flexibility and leading the development and evaluation of pragmatic and savvy strategies. • Cultivated a constructive and harmonious environment by facilitating open pedagogy, fostering autonomy, enablement, sharing, and trust, resulting in consistent improvement. • Provided pragmatic direction, guidance, principles, and values while coach

Steven Starosto

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Steven Starosto