About
Neil Killick, Owner and Principal Consultant
✫ Globally regarded product development practitioner and leader
✫ 600+ professional skill endorsements and dozens of testimonials from past clients and colleagues (including executives)
✫ Expert in Agile, Lean, Lean Startup, Scrum, Kanban, XP, Theory of Constraints and other modern management and development approaches
✫ Expert in product management, portfolio management, business analysis, process improvement, prioritisation (strategic, economic and tactical), agile coaching, transformation and operating models
✫ Author of many seminal industry articles, and an invited international keynote speaker
▶ 𝗘𝗫𝗣𝗘𝗥𝗜𝗘𝗡𝗖𝗘 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗘𝗗𝗨𝗖𝗔𝗧𝗜𝗢𝗡
✫ 28+ years industry experience in a broad range of roles, companies and industries
✫ 15+ years of management and leadership experience — including leading teams of Product Owners, Agile Coaches, Business Analysts, Scrum Masters, Software Engineers and Testers — in roles such as Global Product Manager, Lead Agile Coach, Agile Capability/Coaching Lead, Head of Engineering, Portfolio/Program Manager, Lead Business Analyst, Project Manager, Scrum Master, Team Leader and Technical Leader
✫ 12+ years extensive Agile/Lean experience as a Leader, Coach and Developer in Scrum/Kanban teams
✫ BA (Hons) degree in Accounting with Computing from University of Kent
✫ Click here to see my complete professional background on LinkedIn
▶ EXPERTISE
✫ Modern, iterative and incremental product development and management
✫ Product Management and Ownership
✫ Leading, coaching, training, facilitating and mentoring teams, managers and executives in effective (rapid / sustainable / incremental / high quality) software delivery
✫ Story slicing (I am the inventor of the "Capability Slicing" and "Slicing Heuristics" techniques):
- Extreme Programming (XP) co-founder and Agile Manifesto author/signatory Ron Jeffries credits me for teaching him the "1 acceptance test" slicing heuristic:
- My article "The Essence of Story Slicing in Agile Development" is the number 2 ranked article on Google about story slicing
✫ Project Management
✫ Program / Portfolio Management
✫ Strategic, economic and tactical prioritisation
✫ Scrum Mastery
✫ Documentation (technical, business and user guides)
✫ User Experience (UX)
✫ Agile / Scrum / Extreme Programming (XP) / Lean Startup / Personal Kanban / Team Kanban / Systems Thinking / Theory of Constraints / DevOps
✫ Agile at scale (including frameworks and models such as SAFe, LeSS, Scrum-of-Scrums, Nexus, Portfolio Kanban, Spotify)
✫ Agile contracts
▶ 𝗖𝗘𝗥𝗧𝗜𝗙𝗜𝗖𝗔𝗧𝗜𝗢𝗡𝗦
𝗦𝗰𝗿𝘂𝗺.𝗼𝗿𝗴
✫ Professional Scrum Product Owner (PSPO II*)
✫ Professional Agile Leadership + Evidence Based Management (PAL I, PAL-EBM*)
✫ Professional Scrum with User Experience (PSU I)
✫ Scaled Professional Scrum (SPS)
✫ Professional Scrum Master (PSM I)
✫ Professional Scrum with Kanban (PSK I)
✫ Professional Scrum Developer (PSD I)
𝗦𝗰𝗿𝘂𝗺 𝗔𝗹𝗹𝗶𝗮𝗻𝗰𝗲
✫ Certified Scrum Master + Product Owner (CSM, CSPO)
✫ Certified Scrum Professional (CSP*)
𝗢𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗿
✫ Scrum Fundamentals Certified (SFC)
✫ Kanban Foundation (KIKF)
✫ Apply team participation skills; Demonstrate inclusive communication skills; Listen and respond in a range of contexts; Mentor individuals or groups (TAFE)
*𝘈𝘥𝘷𝘢𝘯𝘤𝘦𝘥
▶ 𝗦𝗣𝗘𝗔𝗞𝗜𝗡𝗚
✫ Keynote at Agile Online Summit and Agile Spain
✫ Speaker at Agile Lean Ireland, Agile Australia, Oredev, Agile Singapore, ScanAgile, Scrum Australia, Australian Testing Days, Quality Software Australia, LAST Conference, 1st Conf, DDD Melbourne, Agile Testing and Test Automation Summit, Dev Day Sri Lanka, SIGiST
✫ Submission reviewer at Agile Australia
✫ Host / speaker at many Scrum, Agile and Kanban Meetup groups and Brown Bag / Lunch n'Learn talks
▶ TOOLS AND TECHNIQUES
✫ Story Slicing ✫ Agile Requirements (User Stories, Acceptance Criteria, Functional and Non-Functional Requirements) ✫ Wireframes ✫ Clickable Prototypes ✫ User Story Mapping ✫ Impact Mapping ✫ Process Mapping ✫ Continuous Improvement (Toyota Kata) ✫ Lean Canvas ✫ Project Inceptions ✫ Cost of Delay (CD3, WSJF) ✫ Miro ✫ Planview LeanKit ✫ Kanbanize ✫ Jira ✫ Confluence ✫ Microsoft Office 365 ✫ Google Cloud / G Suite ✫ Mac and Windows OS
▶ VOLUNTEER WORK
✫ 2 years of mentoring high school students for the RAISE foundation
✫ Taught English to a Vietnamese migrant
✫ Invited submission reviewer for Agile Australia
✫ Invited track chair for Agile Online Summit
✫ Created and maintained the website for his son's football (soccer) team, including tracking and updating player statistics
▶ HOBBIES
✫ Snooker
✫ Kayaking with my family
✫ Playing piano
✫ Occasional running (when not injured!)
✫ Watching movies
✫ Watching football