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Biography

          

My name is S Elizabeth Morris, everyone calls me Lizzy. I am an Agile Coach and Trainer. I believe that being Agile is about a state of heart beyond being about a mere state of mind. It is this heart that makes Transformation happen and evolve until it becomes an organic interwoven part of a companies culture and employee default behavior. 

When I was first exposed to Scrum, I would never have thought I would hold this premise today. I have spent the last 18 years of my life as a Management Consultant, crossing industries such as banking, insurance, entertainment, non-profit, utilities, education, legal, agriculture, pharmaceuticals, and of course IT. 

My sweet spot is Organizational Transformation, not just because of my experience in adapting Agile best practices to an organizations ideal state. Put simply, there is nothing greater than starting to see all the “arhah” moments happening with teams, executives and middle management. It tends to be like a domino effect that had once seemed impossible. When every training class and Agile presentation and side conversation you have had comes to life and makes sense to customer. Nothing like it ..it beats ice-cream!

Today I partner with my best friend and run a company called BeardedEagle, we offer services that are  geared towards individuals, teams, managers, executives and organizations at large who are ready to embark on their Agile journey. We partner with other groups and colleagues to help deliver value whenever we can.

So here I am today with Scrum being a passion. I am blessed to go to work everyday pursuing one of my  passions. I am blessed to be able to be share it with others through training, coaching, writing and mentoring. I love to learn from others and share ideas.   I look forward to the collaboration I will experience here within the alliance and out there with many of you on the field.

Approved Courses

CSM

  • Certified ScrumMaster®

CSPO

  • Certified Scrum Product Owner®

Work experience

Principal Enterprise Transformation Coach
May 2012 - Present, Arlington, Texas, United States

Managing Client Relationships and long-term Agile Accounts

Designing Agile Transformation Strategy Model to include Agile Human Resource Models
Coaching Health Reform Product Teams
Coaching Executives Teams through Agile Transformation paths
Providing Agile Readiness Assessments for organizations 
Designing and Training Public Agile Course Curriculum 
Responsibilities include:
Establishment and management of Agile engagements
Partnering with other Agile Management Practices to delivery Agile services their clients, include transformations services, training and leadership development 
Identification & training of ScrumMasters , junior coaches and team mentors
Identification and implementation of internal Scrum Master development program
Design and delivery of coaching maps
Running Agile project inceptions and facilitating backlog workshops
Coaching XP practices
Training and Coaching the Scrum Framework with KanBan along with other frameworks

Valtech Inc, Snr Agile Coach Consultant
September 2011 - July 2012, Dallas, Texas, United States

Train formal Public Agile Essential classes, design custom agile boot camp training around scrum and agile principles, coach and train client teams on Scrum in real project life. Design Agile Enablement programs

ThoughtWorks, Principal Consultant
September 2010 - September 2011, Chicago, IL, United States
Designed and lead Agile transformation for several client accounts and developed training for executive leadership to teach them scrum fundamentals. Utilized Scrum framework to plan, manage and implement

Rackspace, Scrum Coach
May 2010 - August 2010, San Antonio, texas, United States
Was asked to come and train, lead, coach and mentor development teams to around scrum. Trained and coached product owners, business analysts, and help to set up a Agile Accepting PMO and define metrics and map Scrum vs Waterfall to roadmap adoption

Johnson and Johnson, Global Delivery Manager Medical Devices
July 2008 - January 2009, Raritan, New Jersey, United States
Set up and managed a scrum based portfolio for the global medical devices web division of global service IT. Set up each project backlog with client, trained offshore and onshore resources to do scrum. Wrote scrum training materials online learning and reference guides to starting and managing scrum projects. Travelled across USA to ensure full Scum adoption throughout portfolio. Suppled JITT as needed to support designed classed.

USAA, Agile Consultant
July 2007 - December 2007, San Antonio, Texas, United States
Lead Scrum based web redesign project served as scrum master, and agile lead

Articles I've written

Serve My Agile Like a Fast - Food Burger -- FAST
When I began my transformation reflections, a repetitive theme came up: "Make us Agile fast." Can Agile be done faster, can you make us what it took you years to become -- in a month?

 The Fear Factor
How often to do you forget that you're dealing with fellow humans when a deadline is at the door? Never, Not Often, Sometimes, All the time?

 Agile Boardroom 
Does executive transparency act as a catalyst for Agile transformation? Are executives willing to go through the pain their teams endure during an Agile transformation? Should what goes on in the boardroom stay in the boardroom?

 We Have Socks for Cold Feet 
Many people are aware of the concept of cold feet, but it tends to come up in the context of getting married, which makes you think of a long-term commitment. Still, how many times have you gone into an organization that claimed they were ready to embrace Agile -- but when it came time for them to go for the gold, they got cold feet?

 The Balance Monster
I am convinced of this truth: Continuous improvement isn't a target but a journey.