Scrum Alliance's Howard Sublett and Melissa Boggs found themselves at their own crossroads last year. Customers were losing confidence in the organization, great ideas were lost in a maze of hierarchy, and some team members felt unable to creatively problem solve. They were faced with a choice: to continue down the same road, or re-think the organization's way of working.

Throughout 2019, Howard and Melissa led Scrum Alliance through a complete restructure into cross-functional and community-centric teams. The organization was flattened to eliminate red tape and place decision making with those closest to the customer. They also completely re-envisioned the hiring process.

At Business Agility 2020, they shared their story candidly, including their transition to a paired leadership style, the move to shared responsibility, and how to view opportunities through different lenses to spark creativity.

About Melissa Boggs:

Melissa Boggs is the Chief ScrumMaster for the Scrum Alliance. Together with the Chief Product Owner and the exceptional staff, Melissa seeks to fulfill the Scrum Alliance's vision of transforming the world of work.

Since 2001, Melissa has embraced experiences in leadership, business, and product development. Her experience with applying, consulting, coaching, and training agile values and principles spans executive teams, software teams, marketers, and educators in domains such as healthcare, public education, e-learning, security software, government agencies, and communication technology. As a consultant and as an executive, she has consistently embodied the Scrum values, and additionally holds dear her personal values of Courage, Empathy, and Creativity.

About Howard Sublett:

Howard Sublett is the chief product owner at Scrum Alliance, a new position for him and for the organization as they continue to evolve toward sustainable agility. Howard brings a wealth of experience in a variety of agile practices to this role, including serving as an agile coach and leader at several agile consultancies. As chief product owner, his primary responsibilities are to forge coalitions, to decide which products and services best deliver value to and serve customers, and to promote agile and Scrum principles and values in the greater community. He shares the C-suite with Chief ScrumMaster Melissa Boggs.

Before joining Scrum Alliance in 2018, Howard championed the SolutionsIQ culture as director of community development. As the face of SolutionsIQ, Howard could regularly be found building relationships at industry events and hosting the popular Agile Amped podcast series. Internally, Howard advocated for the individual and nurtured the company’s teams.

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