Agile at OPM: The USAJOBS Product Owner's Perspective

Description:

The USAJOBS program was a highly visible, time sensitive program, with potentially high government dollar value. To effectively execute the project, the USAJOBS program decided on an Agile approach and in this approach, government program managers were identified to be Agile Product Owners. This session features the experiences, thoughts, and challenges faced by the Agile Product Owners on USAJOBS. Key thoughts from this session include:

• The differences between Project Management and Product Management.

• Shifting from big up front planning to responsible up front planning combined with just in time planning.

• Managing Product Owner bandwidth expectations.

• The impact of Agile from a Product Owners view.

The session is presented by the former USAJOBS Product Owner along with an Agile Coach. The session will explore Product Ownership and Agility on Federal Programs.

Speakers:

Alesia Booth, Program Manager, USA Staffing®

Alesia Booth grew up in Federal human resources - her first job was with the National Institutes of Health payroll office at 16 years old. Since then, she's managed websites, document libraries, corporate recruitment programs, staffing systems and hiring reform process change management activities. Which is how she ended up at USAJOBS. Since then, Alesia moved to Department of the Treasury to be the program manager of the HR Line of Business CareerConnector product for classification and staffing. At Treasury, she concentrated on solving multiple agency recruitment challenges to bring the best and brightest talent into the Federal workforce. Now Alesia is the Program Manager for USA Staffing® at OPM.

Richard Cheng, Principal Consultant, Excella Consulting

Richard Cheng, Principal Consultant at Excella Consulting, provides consulting services to commercial and federal clients in the Washington, DC area. Richard coaches, mentors, and trains clients on understanding and implementing Agile and Scrum. He also leads Excella’s Training Business Unit. A graduate of Virginia Tech, Richard has authored several publications on project management, presented at Agile and PMI sponsored industry events, is a member of Mensa, and holds certifications including Certified Scrum Training (CST), Certified Scrum Master (CSM), Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO), Certified Scrum Professional (CSP), PMI Agile Certified Practitioner (PMI-ACP) and Project Management Professional (PMP). Richard is a founder and on the executive committee of the Agile Defense Adoption Proponents Team (ADAPT).

When: Wednesday, May 14, 2014 at 6:30 p.m. (see agenda below)

Cost: Free for IIBA DC members, $5.00 for non-members.

Sponsor: Thanks to Excella Consulting for providing the meeting space and dinner.

Agenda:

6:30 - 7:00 Registration, light meal and networking

7:00 - 8:00 Guest speaker

8:00 - 8:30 Q&A and wrap-up

Can't make it this month?

We meet approximately every month, either the second or third Wednesday of the month. So if you can't make it this month, hopefully we'll see you at the next meetup. Also, if you have an idea, game, workshop, or story to share with the group, then please contact the organizer to setup a presentation for a future meeting.