Head of EPAM’s global Agile Competency Center 

EPAM Systems 

Head of EPAM’s global Agile Competency Center 

September 2015 - March 2019 (4 years 4 months) 

Summary 

In this role I coached and guided EPAM's clients and development teams on agile mindset and practice. I led EPAM's Global Agile Competency Center (ACC) and set the vision and standards for agile coaching within EPAM. I managed a staff of 5 – 8 people directly and mentored agile coaches across EPAM. 

In collaboration with my team, and other teams within EPAM, I scaled the ACC's operation to match EPAM's increase in staff from 16,000 to 30,000. Because EPAM's business was growing I shifted our focus from a centrally organised unit to a distributed model. 

  • Proposals and Engagements defined in terms of qualitative and quantitative business outcomes

  • Standardized and globalized agile coach hiring 

  • Grew interviewer pool to 50 people while maintaining interview quality 

  • Formalized the Scrum Master role within EPAM 

  • Answered agile-related questions from EPAM’s 30,000 staff  

  • 4.8/5 Customer satisfaction for supporting the Agile Center's customers

  • Grew EPAM's internal & external agile communities 

  • Anticipated demand for agile@scale and trained staff in the following models:

  • LeSS
  • Scrum@Scale
  • Spotify
  • SAFe
  • Enterprise Business Agility
  • Managed agile coaches from China, Ukraine, Russia, Hungary, Switzerland, USA, Canada and Mexico 

Machine learning/Opensource 

I led a team of three staff to analyze project backlogs using IBM Watson. 

I defined goals for an open-source research effort (EPAM Contribute project) applying machine learning to agile practices; specifically selecting backlog items, planning, generating tests from acceptance criteria and creating code. 

Mergers and acquisitions 

I identified a potential company acquisition for EPAM based on my roadmap for growth of EPAM's agile consulting business. 

Staff development 

As Agile Discipline Head I refined and defined the competencies for Agile Coaches and Scrum Masters within EPAM. For the Agile Competency I led assessments for Agile Coaches and Scrum Masters. 

Industry Analysts 

I represented EPAM’s agile activity to industry analysts at Forrester and Gartner; explaining EPAM’s agile strategy, project execution and interactions with clients. 

Answering difficult questions

As the ultimate authority for agile practice within EPAM I answered traditionally difficult questions, such as: 

  • What role do managers have during and after an agile transformation? 
  • What can an agile contract look like? 
  • What metrics can be meaningfully applied to agile projects? 
  • What can I do to be more agile? 
  • How can Jira be used with agile teams? 
  • What role can machine learning have on an agile project? 
Copyright 2025 Robert MacGregor