January 23, 2015

Shaping Our Next Agilists at East Tennessee State University

By Stephanie Davis

Photo Jan 22, 5 03 09 PMLast night, Bob Damato (Valpak’s Software Engineering Director), Terry Winslow (Agile Project Leader), and I had the pleasure of Skype’ing with a graduate class at East Tennessee State University on real-world Agile. Terry also happens to be an East Tennessee State University alum so that made it extra special.

This is a capstone class for graduate students who are completing a project to build a mobile app using Agile. The students provided a list of questions and Bob, Terry, and I divvied them up and answered them one by one.  It was great opportunity for us to shape and influence our next Agilists by sharing our real-world experiences.

The backdrop you see in the picture is our new Agile boards area where we hold stand-ups each morning.  It consists of 360 degrees of magnetic whiteboards we call “The Park”.  The Park is home to up to 8 Scrum or Kanban boards and also has portable TVs for display of digital boards.

About Stephanie Davis

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I’m currently VP of Innovation & Delivery Enablement at NMI, where I get to work at the intersection of strategy, delivery, and transformation. I lead an incredible team responsible for portfolio, program, and project management—and we’re also driving some of the most exciting shifts in how we work through AI, Agile Ops, and automation. At the core, I’m passionate about making things work better—whether that’s helping teams deliver with more clarity and confidence, modernizing how we operate, or scaling new ways of working across the business. I love connecting big-picture vision with practical execution, and I take pride in creating the conditions for people and ideas to thrive. I believe transformation isn’t just about process or tech—it’s about mindset. And the most powerful results come when we combine innovation with intentionality, and execution with joy. View all posts by Stephanie Davis
This entry was posted on Friday, January 23rd, 2015 at 4:07 pm and posted in Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

One response to “Shaping Our Next Agilists at East Tennessee State University”

  • Mark Kilby's avatar Mark Kilby
    January 24th, 2015 at 12:11 pm

    Good to hear how Valpak is reaching out to the education community. I don’t recall you mentioning the Park. May be a future blog post there.

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