Andrea Provaglio
Agile Executive Coach, Agile Organizational Coach, Keynote Speaker, Mentor
As an independent professional, I help organizations to implement better ways of doing business with Information Technology (IT); and I coach teams and individuals who want to improve technically, relationally and culturally.
My main contribution is in assisting executives, leaders and managers, who appreciate the business advantage of effective knowledge work, to evolve their company and teams into healthier, more modern organizational and cultural models (which includes, but it's not limited to, Agile and Lean).
In over two decades of professional experience, I had clients in three different continents and I worked with a wide range of companies and organizations, both in the private and in the public sector, ranging from the United Nations and large multinationals to small and dynamic IT companies.
My services and workshops are primarily aimed at:
- Enterprise adoption of Agile and Lean methods: Scrum, Extreme Programming (XP), Kanban (both on large-scale and for individual teams)
- Management consulting and coaching during Agile transitions
- Team training and coaching on the Agile practices and culture
- Agile project portfolio management
- Collaboration, communication and socio-relational skills in knowledge-based organizations
As part of my regular activities, I enjoy sharing what I know by speaking at major international conferences, on past occasions in front of audiences of over 1000 people.
Currently I work in Europe and I'm based in Italy. I've also worked in the USA for four years on a O-1 work visa for "extraordinary abilities in Sciences".
Certifications and Awards
Current
- Certified Scrum Professional Ⓡ
- Certified Scrum Product Owner Ⓡ (certified with Martine Devos)
- Certified Scrum Master Ⓡ (certified with Mike Cohn)
Past
- U.S. O-1 work visa
for "extraordinary abilities in Sciences" (1999 - 2003)
- Microsoft Certified Trainer, Microsoft Certified Solution Developer
(1997 - 2001)
Publications
- 2000: "Fast, free Prototyping in Python". Article on Software
Development Magazine, March issue
- 1998: A technical appendix for Bruce Eckel's best-selling book
"Thinking in Java"
- 1997: Technical editor for the Italian edition of the book "Inside
COM" from Microsoft Press
- 1994-1995: Articles in PCWeek Italy on object-oriented development
tools and techniques
- 1992: Conference papers for I.C.O. Graphics 1992, Milan, Italy,
about a multimedia station developed for a C.N.R. Special Project (see
Chronology)
- 1992: Conference papers for the IX and X Symposium on Computer
Music, Milan, describing a C++ class library for digital sound
processing and a real-time application for live computer music
performance, both developed by Andrea Provaglio
- 1991: Farnetani, E. and Provaglio, A.: "Assessing variability of
lingual consonants in Italian." Quaderni del Centro di Studio per le
Ricerche di Fonetica del C.N.R., Vol. X, 117-145.
- 1990: A contribution to the book "Scritti in onore di Lucio Croatto"
("Writings in honor of Lucio Croatto"), published by the Italian CNR,
describing part of the research work for the above-mentioned CNR/ESPRIT
project
- Papers from several European and US conferences
Technical Skills
Current
- Agile practices and organizational change: Scrum, Extreme Programming, Kanban
- Object-Oriented Programming, Analysis and Design (several methods)
- Unified Modeling Language (UML)
- Design Patterns (GoF), Design Patterns for Enterprise Applications
- Web and Enterprise application architectures
Previous
- Java2 Standard Edition (J2SE), Java2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE)
- Ruby and Ruby on Rails
- C++, Python, Object Pascal, Smalltalk, Pascal, Fortran, C, PL/1 and
some Assembler languages
- CORBA (with C++ and Java)
- Microsoft (D)COM(+)/OLE/ActiveX, Visual C++, ATL
Essential Chronology
- 2009-today: I provide consulting and coaching to several companies,
including a few multinationals, for the adoption of Agile methods in
their software development teams; I'm active as a speaker at Agile
conferences in Europe and U.S.; I developed and teach, in different
European countries, a workshop on self-organization of development
teams, which includes social/relational dynamics and organizational
systemics
- 2004-2009: I assisted several large- and small-sized clients in
Europe, including the European Commission in Brussels, mainly on the
development of large Java/Enterprise applications
- 2004-2007: I've been the main supplier of Java/J2EE training for
Unicredit, a major European bank, on a population of about 400 students;
I've also provided consulting services to the bank's infrastructure
group, to assess and validate their proprietary J2EE architecture
- 1999-2003: I moved to San Francisco, CA, on a O-1 visa for
"extraordinary abilities in Sciences", as an associate of MindView Inc., the company founded by
Bruce Eckel – a world-wide known author, famous also for his best-seller
"Thinking
in Java". For MindView I taught almost every public and in-house
edition of the “Thinking in Java Hands-on Seminar” developed by Eckel,
and of the “Java2 Enterprise Programming Seminar” which I developed. I
also assisted a few MindView's clients on their projects and I spoke at
several major IT conferences in the U.S.
- 1994-1999: I was a member of the teaching staff at Mondadori Informatica Education
(MIE), the leading Italian training company for Microsoft products and
technologies; I taught the courses on ANSI C++, MFC/ATL, COM/ActiveX and
Java. I also spoke at the nation-wide conferences organized by MIE and I
supported a few MIE's clients on their projects
- 1992-1993: I collaborated with Borland Italia, teaching several
seminars on Borland C++ nation-wide; I also provided in-house support to
companies that used Borland products
- 1990-1992: I worked with the Institute of Phonetics and Dialectology
of the Italian National Research Council (CNR; a government organization
that promotes, co-ordinates and regulates scientific research and
technological progress in Italy), where I was head of the software
development for two research projects: the first project, funded by the
EEC, studied co-articulation similarities in seven European languages;
the second, a CNR Special Project, developed an Apple-based multimedia
station to teach reading to normal and handicapped children
- 1983-1990: I worked with the Center for Computational Sonology of
the Padua University, Italy, where among other activities I implemented
a voice synthesizer on an IBM 370/MVS mainframe and created several
utilities for digital sound and voice processing (quite advanced
projects at that time)