Mission
Whitewater Projects, Inc. is committed to empowering and equipping people to find hope and joy in their work.
Our key niche is working with mixed agile and waterfall organizations thus the name “Whitewater”; Mixed Waterfall & Agile adoption is like whitewater rafting; it is exciting, a bit dangerous, and best attempted with an experienced guide.

Bio
Joseph Flahiff the President of Whitewater Projects, Inc. and author of the book “Being Agile in a Waterfall World: A guide for complex organizations.” (http://www.amazon.com/Being-Agile-Waterfal...dp/1499772041/) He is focused on bringing hope and joy to people who work in difficult business contexts; making sense of these seemingly conflicting approaches

Connect with me at www.linkedin.com/in/josephflahiff/ and on my blog at www.whitewaterprojects.com

Joseph has more than 20 years of experience in both traditional and agile project delivery in large scale complex enterprise IT organizations. Joseph's provocative, engaging, and energetic agile training courses are in demand in USA and in Europe. Joseph speaks internationally to industry leading organizations about the challenges organizations face in making the transition to agile. Joseph is currently serving on the PMI-ACP Content Support team, developing ACP study materials for PMI.
Author
• Your story cards are limiting your agility – InfoQ.com
• Why agile projects pose challenges for enterprise project managers – SearchCIO.com
• Choosing a management approach that clarifies agile project completion – SearchCIO.com
• Agile project management approaches for on-time and on-budget delivery – SearchCIO.com
• Agile project management, from agile to waterfall – SearchCIO.com
• Agile best practices can combine waterfall and Scrum – SearchCIO.com
• Five points to consider when considering agile best practices – SearchCIO.com
• PMI’s Agile Certified Practitioner, a Cert is born – TechTarget.com
• Agile in a Waterfall World – InfoQ.com

Speaking & Keynotes
Joseph provides keynote presentations worldwide on lean and agile adoption in non-traditional contexts, recent presentations include:
• PMI – Oslo, Norway Chapter
• PMI – Government Community of Practice – Webinar
• PMI – Pharmaceuticals Community of Practice – Webinar
• Search CIO Webinar
• PMI – Poznan, Poland Michal Raczka [email protected]
• PMI San Diego, CA
• PMI Global Congress Europe/Middle East/Africa – Dublin Ireland – Contact – Merete Munch-Lange [email protected]
• Video here: http://whitewaterprojects.com/pmi-global-emea/#
• PMI Global Congress North America – Contact – Michelle Sliger [email protected]
• Scrum Gathering Seattle – Open Session: Becoming Agile in a waterfall World – [email protected]
• Oslo PMI Pub Meeting – Merete Munch-Lange [email protected]
• A Day of Agile Cincinnati – Jonathan Mills [email protected]
• PMI San Diego 2 hour talk – David Mahler [email protected]
• PMI Atlanta – Sameer Bendre [email protected]
• PMI Phoenix – Beth Chappel [email protected]
• Beyond Agile, Seattle, WA – [email protected]
• Monthly Webinar Series for the past 3 years
Industry Involvement
• Board Member PMI Agile Community of Practice (32,000 Members)
• Past Co-Lead for PMI of the PMI-Agile Certified Practitioner Content Support Team
• Asked by PMI to develop content for a new course “Agile in the PMO”
• Aided in development of PM competencies for ICAgile Certification

Experienced
Real Networks – Transformation Coaching Embedded Coaching
Contact: Jeff Chasen VP Product - [email protected]
• Coaching leaders on managing and leading Self Organizing teams
• Coaching development through the process of becoming Scrummasters
• Coaching teams to adopt agile planning, both long and short range
• Developing all levels of people in their agile practice
• Group training and facilitation
Washington State Department Of Licensing
Contact: Melodi Cottongim - [email protected]
• Facilitating the development of the Strategic Plan for IT
• Providing training for 2 agile development teams (20 members), managers, and support teams
• Individualized coaching plans to support the execution of the project delivery
• Coaching 2 pilot project teams on their first agile project
• Coaching Project Managers through the transition to Agile project delivery
• Coaching and facilitating Project Planning sessions
WireStone
Contact: Jon Baker - [email protected]
• Product Owner coaching: providing mentoring, training and in-the-moment coaching to the product owner for a major client project
• Developing a long range transformation plan with executive leadership
• Providing internal training on agile/lean/scrum/kanban for Developers, testers/QA, and creative team members.
• Coaching the Scrum Master for major client projects.
• Leading agile Coach the coach circles to train internal Agile coaches
Regence Blue Cross Blue Shield
Contact: Iain MacMillan – [email protected]
• Coached and lead agile teams
o As project and program lead I coached numerous agile teams. Continually honing the agile processes and growing leaders within the teams.
o Coaching teams to self-organize, Facilitating and leading by example
• Successfully lead high profile agile projects that integrate with a waterfall portfolio.
• HIPAA 5010 Program - Critical, High profile Federally Mandated group of projects
o Total Project budget $18 Million over 3 years
o Lead 130+ people on 5 cross functional, cross divisional, enterprise wide Agile Project teams including 4 Project Managers and 5 scrum masters
o Technical components include: Enterprise Data Warehouse, EDI, X.12, SQL, J2EE, Business Objects (BOE), Legacy Mainframe, BPEL
o BCBSA mandated reporting and updates
• Employer Based Reporting Portal Project
o Lead 39 people on 2 cross functional, multi-division Agile Project Teams.
o Total Project Budget $ 5 Million over 1.5 years
o Technical components in clued: Enterprise Data Warehouse, EDI, ETL, J2EE, Adobe Flex, SQL, Significant Performance testing and tuning
o Assigned to this project when it was critically off-track, unable to hit scope schedule or budget.
o Produced daily status reports to senior executives during the turnaround
• Rescued 2 troubled projects (Employer Reporting and Sellover Product Decommissioning) in danger of failure.
• Gained a reputation for getting things done, when the challenges are high and personalities difficult.
• Transparency Cost & Quality Key Initiative project. (This project won the “Best of Blues” award for a marketing campaign, 2009)
o Managed a combination of 4, multi-year, multi-release, projects with 16 Go-Live dates spanning 2008 and 2009.
o Managed a budget of $8.7 Million and a diverse & distributed team of 70+ members and vendors including: Regence ITS, Website Dev, Ebiz, Infrastructure, Provider Services, and outside contractors.
o Drove execution of the Transparency “Corporate Key Initiative” re-plan/project turn-around, in 2007/2008, from re-visioning the project, Planning through Delivery (release dates ran through 2009)
o Demonstrated strong communication skills at all levels of the organization: Sr. executives, steering committee, business leaders, project teams, and EPMO leadership.
• Able to create value and confidence in stakeholders and teams.
• Active contributor to improving the quality and operations of the EPMO through participation in programs like the QA Pilot, Early adopter of Earned Value, facilitated the PMP study group, and lead Scrum Master training classes.