332 Vincent Place
Elgin, Illinois 60123
Steven Young
(Steve)
847-254-4468 (M)
steve.young@kasanamaso.com
Summary
 Designs innovative, yet practical, solutions for real-world business needs and problems
 Delivers quality through customer collaboration and incremental implementation
 Builds motivated, effective teams through caring leadership and strong mentoring
Employment History
Independent Agile Transformation Consultant
Agile Coach at Sears Holdings – Hoffman Estates, IL
December 2011 – November 2012
 Introduced Scrum to the Mobile Commerce Group as a Trainer and Coach
 Guided the Agile transformation of the group over several months
 Introduced Agile Portfolio and Program Management to five programs within the group
 Trained and facilitated the organizations first Release Planning sessions
 Served as coach and mentor to the budding Agile program and functional managers
Agile Consultant at Axcess Financial – Cincinnati, OH
October 2011 – November 2011
 Helped lay groundwork for the creation of an Agile Program Management Office (PMO)
Nokia Location & Commerce (Formally NAVTEQ)
Chicago, Illinois
Agile Release Train Conductor (Facilitator)
November 2010 – October 2011
 Facilitated Release Planning sessions for trains varying in size from 5 to 17 teams which are located
in the USA, India, and EU
 Facilitated Portfolio and Program level planning sessions
 Trained and coached executives, managers, product owners, and other principles in the organization
and operation of Release Trains
Agile Trainer & Coach
February 2010 – October 2011
 Designed, implemented, and conducted agile and agile related training for teams and stakeholders
 Designed Agile training curriculum and am implementing courses
 Trained over 500 developers, testers, analysts, and other software professionals in the Agile arts
 Served as the agile coach to multiple project teams
 Trained and mentored new coaches and Scrum Masters
 Provided direction and coordination to cohort of contract agile coaches
Agile Program Manager
December 2009 – October 2011
 Adapted agile techniques for use in a $1B revenue company with 600 developers in seven
development sites around the world, initially reducing time to market by 25%
 Blended Scrum and enterprise agile into a scalable framework for moving project teams from a
waterfall process to an agile process
 Implemented Excel tools for managing backlogs, organizing sprints & releases, managing sprints,
and generating burn-down charts
Agile Activist
July 2009 – October 2011
 Introduced Agile to NAVTEQ’s software development organization
 Organized the Agile Collective, a group of over 200 software professionals at NAVTEQ that were
interested in initiating a grassroots agile adoption
 Speaks at local professional groups on Agile
Senior Process Engineer & Trainer
March 2003 – July 2009
 Implemented process definition and improvements for corporate CMM and ISO certification by
blending elements of RUP, PMBOK, Agile and other software methodologies
 Created and delivered software development and project management training
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Steve Young
847-254-4468
Senior Project Manager
January 2001 - March 2003
 Managed the development activities for delivering a web service API for accessing and manipulating
digital map data, utilizing routing algorithms, and rendering map images
 Applied agile techniques to make the development process more responsive and efficient
 Gathered requirements and designed the architecture
Senior Development Lead
August 1999 – January 2001
 Improved data quality as lead the Map Data Validation team
 Designed and managed the development of map validation software
 Introduced artificial intelligence and rule-based processing design concepts
 Designed algorithms based on nature to improve processing efficiency (ant colony communication)
and memory management (forest fire burn patterns)
Zeal Inc.
Northbrook, Illinois
Systems Analyst Contractor
March 1999 – August 1999
 Collected requirements and outlined architecture for insurance claims processing system
Advanced Health Technologies
Chicago, Illinois
Director of Project Management
March 1998 – March 1999
 Established project management practices and software development methodologies in a small
dynamic company. Planned and implemented project management strategy
 Managed the implementation & delivery of the flagship product with a schedule variance of 4% and a
defect count 47% less than previous releases
 Introduced RAD methodology with JAD techniques for new projects
 Assisted in the design of a new architecture for future applications
Motorola, Inc.
Arlington Heights, Illinois
Project Manager
April 1996 – March 1998
 Managed releases of GSM Base Station software and associated hardware development projects.
Coordinated activities of several functional areas in various international locations
 Designed, implemented, and managed the Project Management Intranet Web site using HTML and
Perl scripts. Created fault detection projection metrics accurate to within 3%
 Improved Project Management practices and trained Project Managers in the use of improved
procedures, metrics, and tools
 Developed and institutionalized Project Management practices and metrics for Total Quality
Management (TQM), Quantitative Process Management (QPM), and the Software Engineering
Institute (SEI) Capability Maturity Model (CMM) Level 5
coris, A division of R.R. Donnelley
Willowbrook, Illinois
Project Manager
October 1993 - April 1996
 Managed teams of 8 to 15 programmers and multimedia developers on various CD-ROM based
development projects
 Supported the sales staff, prepared and presented technical sales presentations, provided project
cost estimates, and functioned as technical customer interface
 Designed CD-ROM based catalogs, reference materials, educational programs, electronic parts
catalog systems, electronic publishing production systems that generated 70% profit. Designed
SGML DTDs for electronic books and magazines
Intelligent Resources Integrated Systems, Inc.
Arlington Heights, Illinois
Software Development Manager
February 1991 - September 1993
 Managed Software Department and trained staff in Object Oriented Analysis, Design, and
Programming techniques
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Steve Young
847-254-4468
 Designed Object Architecture for video system software. Designed and implemented Macintosh
based still-store application. Designed and helped implement C++ Object architecture for video
graphics applications
Andersen Consulting
Chicago, Illinois
Senior Software Engineer
June 1988 - February 1991
 Designed and coded the Structure Chart Editor of the Design/1 case tool in Smalltalk
 Reduced size of code by 45% via refactoring and object reuse
The Alcar Group, Inc.
Skokie, Illinois
Software Engineer
February 1987 - June 1988
 Designed and programmed file I/O, memory management, and computation modules of financial
valuation application in C on DOS
 Designed and implemented code based network site license enforcement
 Developed memory management algorithms to maximize resource utilization and search and
program speed
Lockheed Engineering and Management Services Co.
Houston, Texas
Software Engineer
August 1982 - February 1987
 Developed Engineering Workstation that allowed NASA engineers to access Space Shuttle flight data
directly in C on Unix workstations. Programs reduced data turnaround time from 2 days to 15
minutes. Software helped document SRB problems on Challenger explosion
 Created FORTRAN programs that compared Space Shuttle actual performance against predicted
performance and generated exception reports
Experience Summary
 Agile Development: Certified Scrum Master, Certified Product Owner, Agile coach & trainer, agile
adoption & adaptation, enterprise agile, Agile Release Trains, training development, Scrum Master
mentoring; Mingle, JIRA/Greenhopper
 Project Management: Large, medium, and small projects; planning, change management, risk
analysis, issue management, resource management, administration, communication
 Department Management: Assembling and growing software development departments; developing
staff competencies; administration & reporting
 Process Management: Defining, implementing, and institutionalizing software development and
project management methodologies, CMM, PMBOK, RUP, Lean, Agile, SPICE, SCRUM, ISO
 Object Oriented Development: Theory, training, planning, analysis, design, programming, Java,
C++, Smalltalk, MVC, patterns, UML, Use cases
 Structured Development: Theory, training, planning, analysis, design, programming, C, FORTRAN
 Application Development: Map distribution, SGML production systems, CD-ROM applications,
video processing, financial analysis, rocket science
 Operating systems: Windows, Macintosh, UNIX
 Desktop: Word, Excel, Visio, PowerPoint, Publisher, Outlook, Mind-maps, Image processing
 Project Management: MS Project, Clarity, Open Workbench
 Web: Wiki, FrontPage
Education
Certified Scaled Agile Framework Program Consultant, 2012
Certified Product Owner, 2010
Certified Scrum Master, 2009
Project Management Professional (PMP) Training, 2007 (not certified)
University of Houston, Clear Lake, Texas, Graduate work on Relational Databases, 1984 - 1985
University of Illinois, Urbana, Illinois, B.S. Computer Science/Mathematics, 1976 – 1982
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Steve Young
847-254-4468
Affiliations
Agile Alliance; Scrum Alliance; Agile Methodology Meet-up Group, Agile Project Leaders Meet-up Group;
Chicago-Software Process Improvement Network (C-SPIN)
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