Who is Winnow Management
Meet the Instructors
Winnow Management was founded by Peter Borsella, an IT professional with over 25 years of experience in application development and leadership. Peter is also a Project Management Professional (certified by the PMI), a Certified Scrum Trainer (certified by the Scrum Alliance), and a Certified Large-Scale Scrum Practitioner (certified by The LeSS Company).
An active and contributing member to both the PMI and the Scrum Alliance, Peter’s speaking engagements focus on bridging the gap between traditional Project Management and Agile Project Management.
His goal is to help others understand how to get the best return from any project by achieving higher levels of software quality, increased customer satisfaction, and cohesive teams that enjoy increased productivity.
Lonnie Weaver-Johnson has been guiding organizations towards agile since 2006. After initially saying “no thanks” to Scrum, she became an early convert to Agile after finding how the principles aligned with what she already believed: put people first.
She is a Certified Scrum Trainer (CST®) through the Scrum Alliance and she’s worked in a number of industries including financial, insurance, gaming, retail, and government.
Since graduating from the University of Minnesota with a BA degree in Communications, she’s worked in a variety of areas that include corporate training, process improvement, and business analysis, and has over 25 years of leadership experience. Lonnie is a dynamic public speaker and natural facilitator and she thrives on developing others.
Outside of work she spends time traveling with her family, gardening, and volunteering in the animal rescue community.
Mike Stuedemann is Founder/Principal Consultant at agilityIRL. In this role, he is responsible for educating his clients in Agile methods and working with all levels of an organization to help them produce products that people want to use.
He has presented on Agile at numerous industry events including PMI-Minnesota’s Professional Development Days, the Minneapolis-St. Paul Chapter of IIBA, and Agile Development West.
Prior to founding AgilityIRL, Mike founded another agile consultancy – 3 Plus 1 Consulting. Mike has also worked for Savigent Software as an Engagement Manager, Medtronic in a number of IT Leadership roles, Data Recognition Corporation as a Business Analyst and for Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC) as a Staff Consultant.
He has undergraduate degrees in International Management and Japanese from Gustavus Adolphus College and an MBA from the University of Minnesota’s Carlson School of Management.
Mike lives in Andover, MN with his wife, Erin, and his sons, Joe, Ray and Will. When not spending time with his family, Mike enjoys watching sports and reading.
James Smith first experienced the power of Scrum during a most dramatic of corporate turnarounds. Holding a very painful client-facing position and tiring of having nothing but bad news to communicate to his clients over and over again, a new job search had begun. Then Scrum took seed. In an incredibly short time, Monday mornings were once again something to look forward to and not to dread. Clients soon began requesting that we slow down our pace; we were overwhelming their IT departments with new features. Life for everyone in the corporation, and for those to whom we come home at night, got much better.
Moving into the ScrumMaster role and being part of the many successful releases delivered to our clients has been an extremely gratifying part of the past years. Scrum when properly implemented makes life better for all involved. And at the end of the day, that is a very good thing of which to be a part. He has been honored with the opportunity to bring the spirit and techniques of Scrum with multiple training engagements for organizations like Sony, Boeing, HP, Illumina and the US Department of Defense. James is a Certified ScrumMaster, Product Owner and Trainer (certified by the Scrum Alliance), a Certified Large-Scale Scrum Practitioner (certified by the LeSS Company), Six Sigma Certified and holds an MBA from Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management.
Scrum4HW or: bringing Scrum principles and practices to industry and manufacturing, that is my passion. I was around when Scrum started to gain popularity in the early 2000s. Meeting with Ken Schwaber in his kitchen, developing materials for trainers at the first Scrum Gathering in 2004, and becoming a Scrum trainer in 2005.
Fast forward to 2017: Industry is in trouble, products are brought to manufacturing at a very slow pace, and 5-10 years is a common duration. Quality lacks. Motivation of involved people is low. All this is how the software world was in 2000 when Agile and Scrum became visible. In 2000 a small group of enthusiastic people worked hard (and with a lot of fun!) to get through the early adopter phase and to “cross the chasm” with the agile principles.
That is what I am doing again, this time in a physical domain. With the slogan “If you can kick it, you can Scrum it!” I’m working with other early adopters to bring Scrum to the world of industry, supply chain, and manufacturing. Peter Borsella and I founded Big Orange Square and rewrote the CSM and CSPO materials to fit in the industrial design & manufacturing space. We’ve run classes and can show that producing Twice the Product in Half the Time isn’t an empty statement. Large customers like CISCO and ARCA are working with us to change the ways they bring products from idea to the manufacturing plants in record time.
Dr. Ernesto Custodio promotes Agile practices to build innovative solutions. He has over 30 years of experience working in the IT field, with business experience covering Product Management, Project Management, Software Development, and Business Development.
His Agile experience as a Coach and Trainer has led him to work across a range of environments, including startups, Fortune 500 companies, large-scale Agile transformations, and geographically dispersed teams.
Dr. Custodio holds many educational, training, and coaching certifications from the Scrum Alliance, Scrum Inc., Scaled Agile, and the PMI.
He is bilingual and holds an MBA and Ph.D. in Information Systems. His Ph.D. research is in Distributed Agile Teams.
The Winnow Management Story
We’re adept in administering all aspects of project management, as well as providing authentic leadership to create effective teams. Our ability to contribute across a wide range of environments has taken us to companies such as Hilton and Cisco, and outside the United States to countries such as India, China, Israel, and Hungary.
“He [Peter] put forth a superior work effort in our European development office. We needed to fully understand our readiness to implement Scrum. His observations and recommendations were accurate and practical, helping us avoid pitfalls associated with moving to a new development methodology.” – Shashi Kapur, CTO, Ygomi, LLC
“We were faced with a large backlog of projects and a development team that was far too small. Peter was able to increase our development staff from 20 to 80 in less than 12 weeks, increasing our productivity dramatically and quickly. He created new hiring procedures, developed an accelerated training program, and implemented a new agile development process (Scrum). As a result, we completed all critical work expectations, created a more positive work environment, and our customers were extremely satisfied.” – Larence Park, co-founder and former CEO of WildCard Systems, Inc. (now FIS)
“What I find particularly beneficial about the work we’ve done with Winnow Management is their ability to bridge the gap between technology and business while taking very practical measures to maximize project ROI. Additionally, we were able to accelerate our response to new business by cutting our project ramp up time by 75%.” – Tim Dorsey, The Dorsey Group, LLC
Download our whitepaper on an accelerated launch of multiple Scrum teams.
From classroom training (ranging from 2-hour overview sessions to 2-day Certification Training) to organizational consulting, we can help with all your IT project needs. If you would like to learn more, call us at 954-784-3674, or email us at info@winnowmanagement.com
…and why Winnow Management?
Our goal is to help your organization extract the good “grain” while discarding the useless “chaff.” There’s usually some amount of waste in any software development process accompanied by some amount of customer dissatisfaction and employee discouragement. We can show you how the agile Scrum framework employs a set of principles with less waste. This framework creates an environment where team members can make the best decisions possible to produce the best results possible.
Certified Scrum Master Classes
This two-day Certification session will provide participants with detailed insight into the workings of Scrum and the expectations of a Scrum Master. Just some of the subjects covered include:
- The Scrum Framework and Fundamentals
- Why Does Scrum Work?
- Scrum Master, Product Owner, and Team Member roles
- Self-Managed and Cross-functional Teams
- Defined vs. Empirical methods
- Agile Planning and Estimating
- Optimizing Value (ROI)
- Additional subjects may be covered based on participant interest and time
A Short Summary of Scrum:
Even projects that have solid, well-defined project plans encounter some degree of change. Shifting market conditions, budget cuts, staff restructuring, or any number of influences will disrupt the best plan. Projects that begin with changing or unclear requirements make it difficult to even establish initial project expectations. Scrum is the agile development process that allows teams to deliver usable product results periodically throughout the life of the project, absorbing change and new requirements as the project proceeds.