Emily Harshman
CEO at Agility Consulting International
Emily Harshman grew up in Houston, TX and studied at Indiana University in Bloomington, IN as well as Keller Graduate School in Indianapolis. Initially trained as a financial advisor, Emily soon pivoted towards the constantly changing, always innovating world of information technology and Agile. Emily quickly learned the frustration and confusion that can occur with being new to Agile software development and team foundations.
It is because of these experiences learning a brand new mindset that drove her to become a holistic Agile and Lean coach and trainer. Helping people talk through and avoid the experiences she encountered, teams and organizations everywhere have been in a better and more efficient place with regards to their goals. Many issues in organizations are people and organizational change issues. Addressing these two sides together can be a dynamic combination to bolster success. By applying a holistic approach, including psychological and adaptive techniques, she has coached organizations to reach heights they never thought they could dream of achieving.
Emily has worked with many organizations across six diverse industries, most of which faced challenges involving a mixture of practices and organizational implementation patterns, including teams with a heavily influential individual, teams that aren’t empowered, and upper management facing implementation challenges.
Through her work with Agility Consulting International, Emily has helped organizations leverage Agile to increase organizational agility by 100%, reduce quality analysis bottlenecks by 75%, increase current release rate by 100%, and improve business value delivery by 80%.
Learn how ACI can help you achieve your organizational goals.
Senior Consultants
Sarah Friedman-Cintron
Sarah coaches individuals, teams, and leadership towards greater business agility through team-based decision-making, a focus on customer value, and increased collaboration between technology and business. She has partnered with teams and enterprises through Agile transformations, and has a passion for making training engaging and lively with meaningful discussions and participation-focused learning activities.
Expertise
Enterprise and Team Transformations, Professional Coaching, Organizational Change Management
What I Love about Teaching
The opportunity to connect with learning professionals with different experiences, questions, and unique challenges, and to shape the material to be useful.
Years of Experience
10
Industry Experience
Government, Big Data, Mortgage Markets, Military, HRM System Implementations
Average Course Feedback Score
Excellent
Michael Johnson
Michael is a positive influencer and thought leader, this is reflected in his approach on coaching and training. He listens as much as he shares to ensure that the course material delivers relative and positive results. Michael has over 25 years of Information Technology and Telecommunications experience and that experience and training has enabled him to become an expert in the areas of IT Service Management Best Practice Frameworks, Process Engineering, Digital Transformation Frameworks and IT Business Management.
Expertise
Leadership coaching, Agile Concepts, DevSecOps Practices and Principles, Digital Transformation Frameworks, IT Service Management Frameworks, Project-to-Product transformation, IT Business Management, Toolchain Integration and Orchestration, Value Stream Mapping
What I Love about Teaching
The fulfillment of co-creating knowledge and value through Instructor and Student engagement! Helping others grasp new concepts while obtaining new insights myself is very rewarding.
Years of Experience
Over 25
Industry Experience
Non-Profit, Banking, Telecom, Real Estate, Education, Federal, State, Local
Ram Krishnan
Ram is a pragmatic coach and trainer with more than 30 years in the project and process management area with consulting experience. He focuses on application of the teachings to real-life work challenges and shares tips and insights to help apply theory to practice. Ram has extensive experience across multiple frameworks including Scrum, SAFe, Nexus, LeSS, and others and incorporates best principles from multiple frameworks into each training.
Expertise
Agile, Digital transformation, Organization Change Management, Leadership Coaching, Agile Transformations
What I Love about Teaching
I enjoy the learning opportunity that is reciprocal in nature between the students and the teacher, enriching the overall experience.
Years of Experience
25
Industry Experience
Banking, Insurance, Media, Telecom, Energy
Average Course Feedback Score
Excellent
Rahul Mukherjee
Rahul is a senior agile practitioner executing enterprise agile for clients in banking, digital marketing, retail, healthcare, Life Science, Medical Device, Government, Utility, Telecom, and insurance sectors. He has coached multiple teams using multiple frameworks such as SAFe, Scrum at Scale, Scrum and Kanban. He stresses pragmatic and context-appropriate approaches over rigid out-of-the-box solutions.
Expertise
Lean-Agile Coaching, SAFe 5.0 Trainings, ICAgile Trainings, Release Train Engineer, Professional Coaching, Executive and Leadership Coaching, Team-level coaching, Agile maturity assessment, Setting up an Agile CoE
What I Love about Teaching
He is passionate about learning and making the world of work a better place!
Industry Experience
Banking, Digital marketing, Retail, Healthcare, Life Sciences, Medical Devices, Government, Utility, Telecom, Insurance Sectors
Brad Sherman
Brad Sherman is a lean-agile leader with many years of technology experience as a software engineer, project manager, software director, scrum master and agile coach. Brad has led multiple scrum teams in many different industries including telecommunications, medical devices, commercial aviation and electric utilities. His coaching experience includes team- and program-level coaching for IT products in the areas of eCommerce, financial services and insurance. He has led workshops in areas including user story mapping, value stream mapping, process mapping and problem-solving. He has taught internally-targeted special classes on agile, scrum and tooling, as well as certification classes for ICAgile and Scaled Agile.
Expertise
Lean-Agile practices and mindset, Scrum, Scaled Agile, Software engineering, Project management, Software management, IT-Business-Ops inter-operation, Medical device development
What I Love about Teaching
I enjoy being there with people when they discover something that will help them in their career or with current work challenges.
Years of Experience
35
Industry Experience
Medical devices, Computer design and manufacturing, Telecommunications, Systems and storage management, Commercial aviation, Electric utilities, Banking and financial systems, Insurance, eCommerce, Payment processing
Average Course Feedback Score
4.35
Todd Swift
Todd is a value-driven, customer-centric Lean Agile Transformation Coach and Technical Professional with 17 years of experience in software development and systems engineering. As a lifelong learner, he continues to demonstrate mastery of Agile frameworks and software methodologies and has served numerous Agile teams as a Scrum Master, Release Train Engineer, and Coach. He has partnered with energy, transportation, insurance, pharmaceutical, healthcare, government, manufacturing, and technology organizations, which has led to a variety of real-world experiences that customers can relate to. Todd became an SPC in 2018 and enjoys teaching and coaching individuals throughout the Lean Enterprise and the public. His lifelong dream is to teach SAFe courses in Latin America and Spain and increase awareness in Lean Agile frameworks to native Spanish speakers. In his spare time, Todd and his wife represent Subaru as Brand Ambassadors, educating the public on improving environmental practices and the benefits of Subaru ownership.
Expertise
Agile, DevOps, Kanban, Lean, Scrum, XP, BDD/ATDD, Transformations, Servant Leadership, Team and Technical Agility, Program Coaching, Remote Facilitation and Training, Agile Tooling (Jira, Jira Align/AgileCraft, Azure DevOps, Mural, SAFe Collaborate, Miro, Stormboard)
What I Love about Teaching
I love helping students discover their ‘Eureka! Moment’ and gain understanding and not just knowledge by introducing a fun learning environment and sparking conversations around our classroom that they can relate to at work and at home.
Years of Experience
17
Industry Experience
Energy, Healthcare, Insurance, Government, Pharmaceutical, Transportation, Manufacturing, Retail, and Technology.
Average Course Feedback Score
8.95 / 10
Net Promoter Score: 65
Victor Penman
Victor draws on significant practical experience and broad Lean/Agile knowledge to marry underlying principles with the practical needs of students and organizations.
Experience
His practical experience includes Agile Transformations at Merck, AmerisourceBergen, QVC, USGS1 (not-for-profit), US Postal Service (organized labor), Cargill (largest privately-held company in the US), Optum Data Management (UHG), Consensus Corp. (Target), Comcast, GE Healthcare, State of Idaho Medicaid, Garage Games, Forterra Systems, and Opex Corporation. He has worked as a newspaper Managing Editor, Game Designer and Producer, IT Manager, Quality Assurance Manager for FDA-regulated Medical Devices, Project and Program Manager, Creative Director, Agile Coach, Product Owner, and Scrum Master.
Certifications
He holds 15 Agile Certifications from seven different certification groups including: SPC5, ARCH5, RTE5, APM5, LPM5, Certified Scrum Professional®– ScrumMaster, Certified Scrum Professional®–Product Owner, Certified Large Scale Scrum (LeSS) Practitioner, Certified Scrum@Scale Practitioner, PMI-ACP®, Team Kanban Professional, and Professional Scrum Master I.
Teaching
Victor has taught numerous SAFe certification and other Lean/Agile classes as well as leading workshops and creating training material for Value Stream Mapping, Story and Feature Writing, Test First Development (TDD, ATDD, BDD), and Kanban.
What I Love about Teaching
Seeing the light come on when students understand how to apply what we cover in class to their real-life siturations
Years of Experience
45
Average Course Feedback Score
Excellent