Scrum Alliance® Adds Chief ScrumMaster Melissa Boggs Alongside Chief Product Owner Howard Sublett

Experienced agile coach joins leadership team continuing internal agile transformation

By Eric Engelmann

Reinvention and change lie at the heart of agile. Where we have the opportunity to improve, we can never allow ourselves to instead burrow into the safety of the status quo.

This is something our board has been wrestling with for more than two years. Scrum Alliance is a great organization, with a long list of successful efforts to grow the community of agile practitioners both in number and in skill, but we have been pushed by the idea that we could do better.

As we went through the process of hiring a new CEO, we had a big What If Moment. What If there was another way to think about this position? What If the job actually required more than one person? And What If that structure could look more like the Scrum teams we’re helping so many other companies and organizations build?

A few months ago, we announced that Howard Sublett would join Scrum Alliance as our Chief Product Owner. His role focuses externally on co-creating the strategic vision for our organization with our community of agile leaders and other stakeholders. He’s worked very closely with the board on these goals.

But the Chief Product Owner role was always intended to be paired with a Chief ScrumMaster; together they’d fulfill the primary executive role in the organization. This approach was intended to help Scrum Alliance live the Scrum values deeply, even through our organizational design.

We have now made the second hire that rounds out the leadership team: Melissa Boggs — an agile coach well-known in our community — joined Scrum Alliance in January as our Chief ScrumMaster. She is focusing internally on organizational growth and culture, continuing our own agile transformation.

Melissa has lots of experience in this space. Previously, she worked as an Enterprise Agile Coach at agile42, and is a Certified Enterprise Coach (CEC), Certified Agile Leader 1 (CAL1), Certified LeSS Practitioner (CLP), and Project Management Professional (PMP).

This is an exciting time for Scrum Alliance as we try out this new model. With Howard and Melissa at the helm backed by a strong leadership team, a diverse and hard-working staff, an energized global community and a committed board of directors, the future is bright as we strive to transform the world of work, together.

Eric Engelmann is the Chair of the Scrum Alliance Board of Directors