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Profileimage by Thomas Kastell Agile Coach, Scrum Master, Digital Transformation Consultant from Frankfurt

Thomas Kastell

Frankfurt
available

Last update: 11.01.2024

Agile Coach, Scrum Master, Digital Transformation Consultant

Company: Agility Transformation OÜ
Graduation: Political Science and Organisations Development
Hourly-/Daily rates: show
Languages: German (Native or Bilingual) | English (Full Professional)

Keywords

Attachments

CV-Thomas-Kastell_110124.pdf

Skills

  • 13 years of agile team and management coaching (e.g., Scrum, Kanban, Lean Start-up)
  • 12 years of agile and hybrid project management (Sprint, Stage gate, Waterfall etc.)
  • 8 years of (agile) organisational transformation and change (Holoc., Smart Contracts, LeSS, SAFE, Hybrid)
  • 6 years of innovation & business modelling (e.g., ideation, MVP, market approach, pivoting, scaling)
  • 6 years of team leadership and management (horizontal leadership, integrative decision making)
  • Industry expertise: Digital and software consulting, aviation and mobility, energy, e-education, e-commerce, real estate, wholesale electrical supply industry

Project history

10/2023 - Present
Scrum Master and Project Manager on cloud migration of a patient management platform for dialysis treatment
Fresenius Medical Care (Pharmaceuticals and medical technology, >10.000 employees)

Part of a company-wide cloud migration program including 6 development teams developing a cloud-based patient and clinic management platform for dialysis treatment. Managing of one project team to implement cloud-based patient dialysis management. Conducting scoping workshops with business owner, POs, requirements engineers and business analysts. Setting up release and deployment plans. Conducting stakeholder management and  management reporting. Setting up the full project structure in Azure DevOps.
Key Contributions:
  • Conducting two scoping workshops for one business and development team each to define business, vision, deliverables and features, backlog, architecture, deployment plan, dependencies and risks
  • Coaching of one development team consisting of 10 developers, QA, BA, PO by adapting Scrum framework and providing team building workshops
  • Setting up the overall project framework for the whole platform in Azure DevOps including a general feature deployment plan, 6 team paths and iterations, risk register and resource planning
07/2022 - 09/2023
Agile coach and Scrum Master for software development towards level-4 autonomous driving
Cariad (Automotive and vehicle construction, >10.000 employees)
Part of a company-wide software-development program including more than 3000 developers developing and providing the software components for level-4 autonomous driving. Conducting team workshops on agile values, frameworks, and serious playing. Connecting iterative software development cycles with long term product increment cycles working in SAFE.

Key Contributions:
• Coaching of two teams consisting of one data science and one development team by individualising frameworks like Scrum and Kanban, and providing team building workshops
• Partaking in practitioner meet ups to exchange on best practices between agile coaches, scrum master and facilitators
• Conducting company wide 2.5 day long workshops for software and product teams on organisational design, agility, values, feedback culture, and serious playing
01/2022 - 06/2022
Agile coach, Scrum Master, Project Lead on the digitisation of assets and power plant management
Uniper (Energy, water and environment, 1000-5000 employees)

Part of a company-wide software-development program including 18 development teams to digitise asset management and facility handling of power plants. Conducting workshops on backlog creation, and user stories. Connecting iterative software development cycles with waterfall planned facility cycles.

Key Contributions:

  • Coaching of two teams consisting of software engineers, business stakeholders, and QAs in adapting and individualising frameworks like Scrum and Kanban
  • Designing a deployment framework together with management to coordinate deployments and dependencies between the development and business teams with SAFE and LeSS approaches
  • Initiating practitioner meet ups to exchange on best practices between agile coaches, software engineers, QAs and POs
09/2021 - 02/2022
Agile Coach and Scrum Master on the organisational setup of the whole development framework
Gamdom (Other, 10-50 employees)

Setting up the software development organisation, coaching and forming of a development team consisting of 9 junior and senior developers, QA, PO. Designing the product vision together with the PO in building MVPs and establishing a structured and prioritised backlog. Conducting workshops to define the team approach as a mix of Scrum and Kanban elements.

Key Contributions:

  • Enhancing market understanding by introducing A/B test, persona creation, and relative goals leading to a customer retention increase of 27%
  • Establishing a company-wide business priority among support, customer care and
    marketing departments
  • Opening up communications channels between business and development team to provide mutual market feedback and with that enhancing the value creation for customers
  • Growing the team from 3 to 9 full-stack developers, 2 QAs, 1 PO and setting up of the development framework using Scrum leading to a reduction of bug and production incidents by 33% by setting quality standards (DoDs) and introducing peer-reviews, and automated testing
03/2021 - 08/2021
Market launch of a new shopping platform for a British e-commerce tech company as an agile coach and scrum master
British e-commerce tech company (Internet and Information Technology, 500-1000 employees)
Facilitating of client workshops on the definition of the product vision, business targets, and product features, facilitating of backlog workshops (customer and user story mapping), Scrum Master role and coaching of one development team and the client’s management team

Key Contributions:

Taking over Scrum Master role for one development team of 8 developers and 1 PO on MVP building, incremental development approach, roles within the Scrum framework

Client executive coaching for CEO and head of product on iterative product development, A/B testing, leadership roles, and scaling agile frameworks
10/2020 - 03/2021
Agile transformation project on refactoring two products for a British education provider as an agile transformation coach and scrum master
British education provider (Internet and Information Technology, 500-1000 employees)
Defining and scoping the relevant targets and deliverables of the project and supporting POs in breaking them down into epics and user stories. Staffing of all five scrum teams. Serving the role of a Scrum Master for two teams and the agile coach for the overall project.

Key Contributions:

Coaching of two development teams including 10 developers and a PO in adapting to MVP building, small increment deployments, implementing Scrum framework and its role modelling for refactoring of two of their core revenue products and

Adapting a Scrum of Scrum approach and introducing PO and Proxy POs for the whole product suite of 4 different products

Management coaching of 1 CTO and 3 dev managers on roadmap planning, feature prioritization and servant leadership to developers
04/2019 - 02/2020
Data science project on algorithm-driven revenue management as project lead and chief scrum master
Lufthansa on behalf of ZeroG (Transport and Logistics, >10.000 employees)
Defining and scoping the relevant targets and deliverables of the project and supporting POs in breaking them down into epics and user stories. Staffing of all five scrum teams. Serving the role of a Scrum Master for two teams and the agile coach for the overall project.

Key Contributions:

Managing a budget of €9.6M and an international on- and off-shore project team of 35 people Designed the overall Scrum project setup including staffing of POs, Scrum Master and data scientists

Managed three international service providers from India, Germany, and Switzerland located in five different locations

Stakeholder management toward level-one management together with the IT project manager
05/2018 - 12/2019
Introduction of Teal as the new organisational model and paradigm lead agile coach
ZeroG (Internet and Information Technology, 10-50 employees)
Introduced Holocracy as a self-management practice for the whole internal organization of ZeroG including the creation of roles, circles, and practices like integrative-decision making Key Contributions:

Full organizational transformation of a hierarchy-driven organization into a selfmanaged one consisting of more than 50 employees Coaching of the CEO to seize power into the organization and defining his new role Coaching of all employees on self-management (including the new role and circle model)
05/2018 - 03/2019
Introduction of a company wide agile PMO as the project lead and agile coach
Eurowings on behalf of ZeroG (Transport and Logistics, 5000-10.000 employees)
Introduced a project management office to allow a company-wide portfolio management of all projects for the executive board on the one hand and agile project enablement of the project managers on the other. Led a project team of 8 people.

Key Contributions:

Managing a budget of €0.9M and a project team of 8 people Designed the PMO structure including a reporting structure for the executive board and a setup of a prioritization matrix for the staffing of project resources Designed and held more than 15 agile Scrum and Kanban trainings for project managers
09/2017 - 04/2018
World-wide rollout of an IT-tracking software for airport lounges as the project lead
Lufthansa on behalf of ZeroG (Transport and Logistics, >10.000 employees)
Deployed an external lounge-tracking software solution for more than 60 airport lounges world-wide. Scoped the project including the setting of targets, KPIs, milestones and a project plan.

Key Contributions:

Successful software rollout within seven months Managing a budget of €1.1M and a project team of 6 people Managed two international service providers located in Canada and India
04/2016 - 12/2016
Creation of a new digital business model, including a go-to-market approach and up-scaling as the project lead and agile coach
German wholesale electrical supply company on behalf of 2b AHEAD (Consumer goods and retail, 500-1000 employees)
Held innovation and business model workshops to design a new digital business model for a wholesale electrical supply company including a go-to-market approach, channel selection, initial organizational setup with Scrum and the scaled-up agile approach with LeSS and SAFE

Key Contributions:

Managed an initial budget of €0.5M and 10 team members

Managed a budget of €6M after proving the business model

Set up the initial Scrum team and coached the team member on the job

Scaled up the initial agile setup with to LeSS and SAFE for up to 450 employees
06/2015 - 04/2016
Introduction of Kanban and set up of an internal service factory as the Head of Agile Project Management
2b AHEAD ThinkTank (Other)
Introduced Kanban as a self-management practice for the internal services team of CRM, Sales, Back Office of 2b AHEAD to build up an internal service factory based on customer centricity, usage of digital office technologies and pro-active problem-solving

Key Contributions:

Led a team of 12 mostly young people

Increased incoming sales leads by 30% and customer-satisfaction

Introduction of a KPI-driven cockpit to enable people to measure customer and client satisfaction and test efficiency of new methods, channels and ideas
07/2013 - 05/2015
Go-to-market and business setup for the founded start up RS-Schlossresidenz as a co-founder
RS Schlossresidenz (Architecture and civil engineering, 10-50 employees)


Initiated the real estate company and performed various real estate projects (including the delivery of several projects and the internal company build-up with Kanban). Developed and sustained strategic partnerships with vendors for business expansion.

Key Contributions:

Captured new business opportunities and attained real estate project worth of 3M€.

Scaling the business up to yearly revenues of 5 million € and 12 employees

Agile setup of the business organization with Kanban frameworks
09/2013 - 06/2014
Management of a real estate project on the market placement of 17th century chateau as the project lead
RS Schlossresidenz (Architecture and civil engineering, < 10 employees)
Acquisition of the 17th century chateau including the preparation of a business model canvas, negotiations with venture partners and market placement Key Contributions:

Project management of the chateau restauration with a budget volume of 1.5 million€

Market placement within the event and hotel industry generating revenuers of 500k € during the first year

Horizontal agile project management together with 3 employees
01/2013 - 07/2013
Go-to-market for a new business model of training courses in Saudi Arabia as the project manager
GIZ International Services Saudia Arabia (Public service, >10.000 employees)
Developed a new business model to offer management and language training course for Saudi managers for an institution of the German development aid

Key Contributions:

Managed the comprehensive business planning, roll out, and business development including leadership for an international team of 4 people

Streamlined complete business operations, while remaining within 500k budget.

Secured business deals with the Saudi government worth €1.5M and directed a team of four international and Saudi employees.
01/2009 - 11/2011
Founding the digital platform and e-commerce start up Eventmarkt.de as one of the co-founders
Eventmarkt.de (Internet and Information Technology, 10-50 employees)
Founded a start-up bringing together event organizer and private customers on a platform. Designed the business plan together with the founder. Built up of sales and marketing funnel. Set up of operations and the internal organization with Kanban.

Key Contributions:

Scaling the business by creating yearly revenue streams of €3.5M Created user traffic of more than 10k visits per month

Design of the business organization with Kanban frameworks leading a team of 12 employees.

Local Availability

Open to travel worldwide
Profileimage by Thomas Kastell Agile Coach, Scrum Master, Digital Transformation Consultant from Frankfurt Agile Coach, Scrum Master, Digital Transformation Consultant
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