Petula Guimaraes
Lean-Agile Coach | Trainer | Facilitator
With over 2 decades of experience in IT, I have formal training and certification in several Agile practices, such as CSM, CSPO, SAFe Agilist, SPS – Nexus, Lean Kanban/STATIK, Management 3.0, Systems Thinking and Professional Coaching all put into practice in a variety of environments. When designing and running Learning experiences and Facilitation I employ techniques such as Liberating Structures and Training from the Back of the Room.
I also have a lengthy technical background as a full-stack Java developer since the early days of Mobile and the Internet. Technologies always change. But most importantly cultures change. Ways of doing business change. And accepting change deeply in our ways of working is still a challenge. A challenge I love and am prepared to tackle!
Certifications and affiliations
SAFe
– Certified SAFe Agilist 4.6 & 5
Scrum.org
– Nexus SPS
– PSM I
Agile Alliance
– CSM
– CSPO
–
ICF
– ACC Systemic and Solution Focus Coach
ICAgile
– Certified Agile Coach ICP-ACC
Kanban University
– KMP I – Kanban Systems Design
Work History
TD Bank
May 2021 - Sep 2022
This mandate at TD is all about upskilling and coaching individuals and teams in the agile adoption. It’s also about designing and delivering Learning Experiences for their Agile at Scale transformation.
In the learning part, as a facilitator I not only deliver content but invite the learners to discuss and apply their learning, to build on each other’s knowledge, in a coach-like approach.
The other part of the mandate happens post training with coaching teams and individuals to help the colleagues integrate the experience of Agile at scale into their less-than-by-the-book approaches, focusing more on the mindset shifts required than on how to do write user stories.
All groups are remote, geographically distributed and quorum ranges from 20 to 50 people at once.
The learning and coaching I have delivered touch several levels within the Organization and the contents are specific for each group, ranging from the development teams to the senior leadership: Directors ad VPs, Agile Teams, Practice Leads, Executive Product and Platform Leads, Product Owners and Team Coaches (Agile Coaches and Scrum Masters).
More than 3000 individuals have been taught and coached by me so far in this initiative.
Manulife
December 2018 - May 2021
A company in full swing of Lean-Agile transformation. Innovation as the main course. Teams to help grow, from technology to business. The challenges were many and I was able to contribute by individually leading initiatives and in collaboration with other coaches to get outreach. They were in no particular order:
Lifting off Agile teams, aka, teaching and coaching new and existing teams to start working in the Agile mindset via specific systems and frameworks such as Kanban and Scrum.
Leading company-wide training on Agile techniques, such as estimation, User Story writing and mapping, flow efficiency, Agile 101 for “non-Agile” teams, Scrum, Kanban.
Helping the business units to design their Agile practices, such as Agile at scale events, Continuous Improvement management, Portfolio and Intake management, definition and tune-up of Value Streams, Scrum for hybrid teams (vendor, remote and Manulife peers).
Establishing forums for transparency and exchange on Agility, so that everybody could learn and get involved in the changes: Lean-cafes, coaching circles and the likes.
Establishing practice forums and mentoring programs for creating the future Agility Enablers within the company, such as Scrum Masters and Agile managers led by me and transitioned to self-managed practices.
Designing competency models and supporting courses and curriculum for Agile Leadership.
Helping teams and leaders to work on remote-first environment, understanding what is effective, how to achieve trust and delegation, how to enable asynchronous work and how to avoid information inequality. The teams were able to perform higher on COVID times than prior to it.
The main focus is people _individuals and teams_ and to help them grow to generate the best version of Agility Manulife can have.
Triton Digital
October 2017 - December 2018
At Triton one of my main challenges was to bring up the existing Agile culture beyond the company’s Development teams. That involved understanding and influencing teams to think outside of the usual practices, to explore simplified approaches to collaborate with different teams and to focus on result instead of on process.
The changes I proposed reclaimed the spotlight for people and possibilities, so problems are addressed from the perspective of the solutions, key tenets of Agile. They ranged from revisiting current roles and responsibilities, reassessing Scrum and Kanban teams and establishing new teams, mentoring Product Owners and developers, as well as scrutinizing transparency and portfolio management.
Touchtunes Interactive Networks
May 2016 - October 2017
At TouchTunes I acted as a change agent in all levels of the company. With the development teams I helped them to self-organize to decrease complexity and achieve productivity. With peers I coached them on Agile techniques and on Management 3.0 initiatives. I was responsible for the proposals on how to simplify processes, including unifying and streamlining Portfolio management to reduce dependencies, how to use actionable metrics and how to avoid resource allocation approaches. With the leadership I worked bringing to life the perspective of the need for culture change, hiring for organizational fit, among other Agile practices.
Morgan Stanley
April 2014 - May 2016
At Morgan Stanley I leveraged on my position as a team lead to bring my team into using Agile mindset and good Agile engineering practices: how to self organize, how to commit to smaller and constant deliverables, how to work on train delivery, how to use state of the art CI. I helped them to navigate Agile production in the very structured industry of banking.
In the last 6 months I acted as Product Owner for a set of features that needed to make the deadline for the main product I worked on, leading Agile by example.
Hybris SAP
August 2013 - April 2014
January 2012 - December 2012
While still helping on the technical front, my mission was to bring the team together towards efficiency. I evangelized 3 teams on Scrum, the first of them setting the model of what was adopted as a Scrum team for the new Hybris Montreal R&D. I worked on teams invested in the Hybris 5 e-commerce platform and all the teams focused on continuous improvement, iterative delivery and quality as non-negotiable production criterion.
Caesars Interactive Entertainment
December 2012 - August 2013
During my time with Caesars I worked with a small team of talented Java and web developers. I used my Scrum knowledge as a mentor in the launching of the team, shaping the engineering and behavioral practices of our software development.
More About Me
I am a professional in constant metamorphosis
In previous positions I dealt with structured software quality models such as CMM/CMMI and ISO, as process implementer and even more so as a Software developer / analyst. I always naturally stepped on to occupy servant leadership positions within my teams and even as a developer I started up as a great enthusiast and evangelist of XP, moving along to Scrum and Lean SW Development.
I never let job titles define my career. I have always worked at full capacity bringing in my technical skills to develop features, my enthusiastic mindset to help shape great solutions to clients, my self-organization to plan and structure team work, my open mind to bring teams together, my outgoing personality to front-face my teams. In that level I have been, sometimes all at once, Business Analyst, Software Developer, Support Analyst, Project Manager, Agile Coach and whatever name you can think for a role.
My career moto is to solve problems collectively. I understand I do not hold the truth of Agile and I approach problems pragmatically. My ultimate goal is to work hard to share my knowledge and make myself as a team enabler, not a team dependency. I believe knowledgeable teams are happier teams. That is why I do act on their behalf, while also mentor them and give them training and workshops tailored to their specific needs.