About Søren
I Help organizations achieve Better Value, Sooner, Safer & Happier
Agile consultant, Coach, Trainer and working Scrum Master/ Product Owner with a flair for 360° thinking and putting the customer in focus.
My main goal is to deliver value to the customer, and I believe the best way to do this is through an agile way of working. I acknowledge that a team or organization must co-exist with many stakeholders, and it is therefore my responsibility to use the tools I have and tailor the process to best suite the customers needs. My toolbox consists of a mix of expertise in agile frameworks, a mindset coupled with expertise in change management and a pragmatic approach to problem solving.
Professional competences
I first encountered agile about 15 years ago, where scrum was used within a project program, to facilitate ever changing requirements. Since then, I have used agile principles and frameworks to get the most out of the projects he has been involved in, simply because it made more sense. A good example of this is working diligently with MVP and focus on delivering business value as early as possible.
I combine a solid theoretical and practical understanding of Agile, Scrum and KanBan with hands-on experience as scrum master, delivery- and project manager. Furthermore, I have IT management experience from being a part of a department management team as a Project Manager.
I typically works in roles of Agile Team Coach, Organizational coach and Agile Trainer.
| Education MSc In IT and Business Administration Copenhagen Business School (2000 – 2006) Linguistic competences Danish: Native language English: Negotiation/Advanced level Skills * * * * * Agile * * * * * Scrum * * * * * Project Management * * * * * SAFe * * * * Facilitation * * * * KanBan * * * * Org. Change Management * * * * Teaching / instructor * * * * Stakeholder Management * * * * SLDC | Certifications 2020 SAFe Program Consultant (SPC) (Scaledagile.com) 2019 SAFe DevOps practitioner (scaledagile.com) 2017 SAFe Agilist (Scaledagile.com) 2017 Professional Scrum Master I (SCRUM.org) 2015 ITIL Foundation (Vestergaard A/S) 2009 Certified Organization Change Manager (Change Management Institute) 2007 Certified Facilitator (Facilitators) |
Career
2022 – Agile course Instructor at Mannaz
I teach a Scrum Master course introducing new scrum masters to the role and with the aim of completing the Scrum.org PSM certification, as well as several SAFe courses.
2022 – Scrum Master at Vattenfall
The main responsibility is to ensure that the team, who is creating document management solutions based on SharePoint technology, is working efficiently and delivering value to the customers. A big task in this has been to ensure a much closer cooperation between the business areas and the development team. This has now resulted in a very close and beneficial cooperation.
2020 – 2022 Scrum Master and Agile Coach at Novo Nordisk
The main responsibility has been as a Scrum Master for a newly formed team, focusing on start-up of agile ways of working with-in a SAFe project setup. The main objectives has been to guide the team through PI planning and other PI events as well as implement good practices for Iteration Planning, Stand-ups, review, retro and refinement. All of this was complicated by the team working remotely during the corona virus pandemic, where we managed to keep up our productivity and a go live with the solution while working remotely. Other parts of the assignment has been sparring with the RTE and working with how to structure the future DevOps setup.
From 2021 the role was part time as Scrum Master and part time Agile Coach starting up a new agile release train and getting the teams onbarded on to the train.
From autumn 2021 I transitioned into a full time agile coach role, helping Scrum Masters, Product Owners, Teams and management work as efficiently as possible, both within the ART and across ARTs in the organisation.
2019 Agile Consultant at Saxo Bank
The role has been multifaceted, touching on many different types of work. One has been to set up an agile coaching hub, helping to facilitate multiple coaches working with different parts of the organization in a coherent way. Another part has been supporting middle management, Chief Scrum Masters and Product Owners in implementing Lean Portfolio Management and Minimum Viable Bureaucracy. Thirdly it has been supporting teams in best practice of tracking work in order to enable an organization wide data driven improvement effort and thereafter helping the teams to implement agile best practices.
2018/2019 Project Manager & Consultant at Rigsarkivet
The task was in two parts. One was to act as technical project manager for two internal projects. The main work was to assure coordination between the IT department and the business side, including follow-up on plans and progress. The other part was sparring and advisory services to IT management regarding the future development process and project management model. The aim was to enable faster delivery through utilizing agile practices
2018 Agile consultant at TDC Group
The primary task was supporting a part of the organization in their to journey to create an agile delivery organization inspired by the sportify organization model. My task was to support the teams in the start-up phase, helping them improve through both direct feedback and through sparring with the Scrum Master and Product Owners. Later I was involved in helping the chapter leads understand their role and how to work with other roles in the organization. Lastly, I took over a team converting to KanBan and was involved in defining an overall setup for handling cross-squad projects.
2018 Scrum Master at Nordea Liv & Pension
The primary task has been performing the role of Scrum Master for a newly formed team, made up of team members from two previous teams. The focus has been on establishing a common way of working agile, and to have the team members cooperate. I have also helped other teams on occasion, and I participated in the scrum master community at Nordea Liv & Pension. Lastly, I have been involved in defining the scaled agile setup for a large project programme.
2017 Agile Team Coach at ATP
The primary task was start-up of 4 teams with SCRUM or KanBan methodology, where the teams also need to be able to work in a future scaled Agile (SAFe) setup. This included start-up activities to prepare the teams, and then facilitating the scrum events for the first few sprints, and then supporting the scrum Masters and Product Owners in the following sprints. For all three teams there was a great focus on coaching the product owners, in order to ensure well refined backlogs as a prerequisite for good planning sessions.
2017 Agile Consultant at Oticon
Conducted a series of workshops to make sure that all Scrum roles and management was aligned before implementing new SAFe inspired agile setup in an R&D department 120 employees. Coached teams and cross-team initiatives after implementation, including refinement and planning activities and best practice for cross team work.
2016 Agile Trainer at Ugilic and Agile Akademiet
I taught several courses at Agile Akademiet. This included Agile introduction courses, Scrum Master certification courses and Product Owner certification courses. As well as change management and KanBan courses.
I was also responsible for the Webinar part of Agile Akademiet, and regularly ran webinars.
2016-2017 Agile Team Coach at BRF Kredit
Team coach for one team with a new scrum master, which was part of a scaled setup with 3 teams operating under one product owner. The coaching also included coaching of cross-team activities and events, as well as the product owner. The setup drew inspiration from both SAFe and Nexus setups and included over 30 persons. Later in the assignment I coached a mature team, which got a new scrum master. The coaching focused heavily on the scrum master, but also led to improvements for the whole team. The assignment also included helping middle management understand and work in an Agile organization.
2016 Scrum Master / Delivery Manager at GN Audio
I worked as scrum master for several project teams during the period and had the responsibility for the day to day work in the sprints. The teams worked across locations in Denmark and Ukraine. Furthermore, I was delivery manager for the department, were I had the responsibility for aligning deliveries with the rest of the organization, as well as ensure team composition in order to best meet the business needs.
2013-2016 Agile Project Manager at Dansk Bank. (Permanent position)
I had the responsibility for projects within Real Estate Financing. The budgets were up to 40 mill. DKK, and a staffing of 20+ people. Several of these projects included data conversion og data gathering across multiple systems. The projects were inspired by agile methodologies including SCRUM and KanBan, and planning was kept at a high level in order to avoid overhead in re-planning. Furthermore, I was part of the department management, which included roll-out of agile across the department.
2006-2013 Business Analyst at Danske Bank (Permanent position)
I worked as a business analyst on large projects, including electronic signature, online advisory system, new property system and compliance projects. Many of these used agile ways of working.