Peter Kappus

PNK Industries Limited

Founder / Agile, OKR, Organisational coach

Nov 2010 - Present

PNK Industries Limited is my boutique consulting firm providing organisational development, change management, agile and OKR training and coaching for a broad spectrum of clients including HSBC, Diageo, Doctors Without Borders, Wikimedia Foundation, Société Générale, Credit Suisse, the UK government, multiple household tech companies, investment banks, hedge funds, and dozens of start-ups and scale-ups.

• Building strategic narratives to align & drive outcome-based investment
• Aligning strategy to hands-on delivery via data-driven performance management with OKRs
• Complex change management (engagement, comms, delivery, kaizen)
• Enabling greater psychological safety
• Introducing & propagating agile comms
• Lean portfolio management
• Hands-on agile delivery for programme/portfolio/services
• Hands-on business/workforce planning
• Introducing & managing various improvement & communication forums
• Introducing & maintaining metric-driven multi-team performance improvement
• On-site & remote Agile & OKR training workshops
• Facilitating team and org-scale agile & OKR events
• Individual and team coaching
• Executive & leadership coaching
• Nurturing internal OKR communities of practice
• OKR evaluations/auditing
• OKR tooling selection, roll-out, & configuration
• Pretending to be an engineer 🤔

Department for Science, Innovation, and Technology - Central Digital and Data Office (CDDO)

OKR & portfolio Consultant

June 2024 - Nov 2024

After a couple of false-starts, the Central Digital & Data Office within DSIT decided to bring in some expert help to get OKRs rolled out across their 200+ person organisation against the backdrop of a new government and transitioning from Cabinet Office to DSIT. Teams were sceptical and busy, with little time to try OKRs for a third time.

• Leadership enthusiastic about OKRs
• Several false starts
• Sceptical, overworked teams
• 200+ people in 40+ teams across 4 directorates
• Portfolio Management group was struggling
• Confusion around what OKRs are

What I did

• Reviewed existing OKRs & training materials
• Identified "OKR Ambassadors" within the organisation
• Designed & facilitated dozens of workshops covering setting, aligning, check-ing, and closing OKRs for leadership and teams
• Held regular Q&A drop-in sessions to support enthusiastic teams and win over sceptics
• Created bespoke internal guidance with 20+ pages of documentation and videos show how to set, align, check-in, and close OKRs enhanced with concise videos
• Trained OKR Ambassadors and enlisted their help to design and run additional sessions
• Procurement constraints prevented us from purchasing an off-the-shelf product so I used GenAI to build a light-weight custom OKR reporting solution based on Google Workspace with Vue.JS and Google Apps Script
• Produced regular newsletters updating people on OKR adoption, celebrating success, making clear asks, and inspiring others
• Trained another portfolio management team member in Vue.js, Tailwind CSS, Github, VS Code, Google Apps Script, and more.
• Introduced agile ways of working (kanban) to the portfolio management team to increase visibility of work and improve delivery cadence

Lasting impact

• Senior leaders & 30+ teams using OKRs
• All teams regularly checking in and receiving visual "nudges" as needed
• OKRs are part of the portfolio management process
• senior leaders are using OKRs to talk about impact
• OKRs inform workforce planning and budgeting conversations
• OKRs have helped CDDO to navigate the transition from cabinet office to DSIT
• OKRs are informing wider portfolio & transformation conversations with DSIT
• fewer, shorter, & more effective meetings

Exscientia PLC

Senior Organisational Development Coach

October 2021 - December 2022

Added organisational agility, technical excellence, product focus, and outcome-centric goal transparency to enable the world's best scientists and engineers to work together using advanced Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning (AI/ML) tools to design, synthesize, test, and release life-enhancing drugs faster than ever before.

• Trained and coached 250+ people across 30+ teams in theory and practice of OKRs
• Facilitated dozens of Agile & OKR ceremonies across 5+ teams (setting, aligning, checking in, stand-ups, demos, retrospectives, sprint planning, refinement, etc)
• Shepherded a community of 20+ agile & OKR coaches within the organisation
• Created and managed internal communication forums for strategy & delivery via OKRs, lean portfolio management, and agile ways of working
• Introduced agile delivery management and product ownership at all levels
• Hands-on delivery management for the Machine Learning Operations (MLOps) team
• Advised on organisational development, value-stream based target operating model design via Team Topologies
• Facilitated internal working agreements within and across 20+ teams (team charters)
• Designed and facilitated multiple key strategy sessions for senior and executive leadership (30+ people)
• Mentored 10+ individual delivery and product managers

Genomics England Limited

Senior Organisational Coach

October 2020 - April 2022

Helping to build faster, more accurate, more robust AI/ML powered pipelines for genomic medicine and genomic research for NHS England and the world at large.

• Trained and coaching 250+ people in defining, aligning, checking in, and closing OKRs
• Team reduced deployment cadence on the healthcare pipeline from 12+ weeks to < 4 weeks
• Recruited for and kicked off the agile delivery community
• Coached product owners and scrum masters across 2 major services and 7+ teams to introduce agile ways of working (scrum, kanban, retrospectives, systems of work)
• Helped define & codify internal best practices via "The GEL Way"
• Facilitated agile learning sessions with key stakeholders in NHSE
• Designed and implemented end-to-end agile service management practices
• Provided hands-on delivery management for multiple teams

Société Générale Corporate & Investment Banking (SGCIB)

Senior Agile & OKR Coach

27 May - 20 Dec 2019 and 5 Feb - 31 July 2020

Lead Agile and principle OKR coach across two tribes as part of an ambitious Agile at Scale transformation programme with one of the world's biggest and oldest investment banks.

• Defined transformation MVP (including Target Operating Model) for two tribes (150+ people) spanning 5 regions
• Teams deployed both SAFe and Spotify model for scaling agile
• Coached multiple teams including product owners, delivery managers, and leadership in agile practices including backlog refinement, story mapping, Definition of Done, Definition of Ready, Jira, retrospectives, estimation & velocity, Scrum/Kanban/Scrumban, OKRs, and continuous improvement
• Coached internal coaches and led the UK agile community
• Coached both technical and non-technical/onboarding/service teams
• Scope included mission-critical platforms for listed derivatives, cash equities and algorithmic trading at a global scale with better than 24x6 99.999% availability

British Broadcasting Corporation - Proteus Team

Agile & OKR Coach / Delivery Manager

Nov 2017 - Feb 2019

Agile coaching and delivery management for the 15+ year old legacy Proteus platform which handled commissioning and scheduling of every second of audio played on BBC Radio and managing meta-data for hundreds of millions of briefs, proposals, commissions, programmes, episodes and transmissions covering 90+ years.

• Reduced mean time between releases from 4 months to 8 days
• Reduced deployment time from 4 hours to 5 minutes
• Reduced regression testing time from 2 weeks to 1 day
• Migrated 8,000+ source files from SVN to Github
• Improved code quality and understanding via pairing and Pull Requests
• Introduced test automation and continuous integration via Jenkins, Ansible, & Rundeck
• Re-platformed from 15+ year old bare-metal stack to Cloud infrastructure

Technologies: Confluence, Scrum, Kanban, BDD (Serenity, Capybara, Cucumber), Jira, Java (Spring, Struts, Hibernate), Jenkins, Docker, AWS, HAProxy

British Broadcasting Corporation - Design + Engineering

Agile / OKR Coach

Jun 2017 - Dec 2018

Coached 400+ people in 20+ teams including senior leadership across TV & Radio (e.g. iPlayer) in adopting Objectives and Key Results.

• Improved visibility across multi-million pound change portfolio
• Led OKR setting, aligning, check-in and closure workshops and training sessions at all levels
• Designed and implemented bespoke tracking & reporting tools
• Mentored finance teams to join up investment and delivery
• Refreshed portfolio governance to incorporate OKRs

Technologies: Confluence, OKRs, Google Docs/Sheets, Jira, Ruby on Rails, Cucumber, Docker, Vagrant, AWS, Cloud Formation, Postgres

Government Digital Service (Cabinet Office, UK Government)

Benefits Realisation Delivery Lead

Nov 2016 - Apr 2017

Within the Common Technology Services programme which is rolling out common technology solutions such as shared wifi, shared print, and mobile computing with stronger commercial arrangements across government.

• Developed a robust, flexible and simple process to roadmap and realise £1.5bn+ in cashable benefits over 10 years
• Coached delivery teams in agile (kanban) methods to deliver benefits via rapid, continuous iteration
• Built bespoke contract analysis, management, and forecasting tool (Ruby on Rails)
• Dramatically streamlined internal planning/reporting process while improving transparency

Technologies: Google Sheets w/ scripting, Ruby on Rails, Google Forms, Lean/Agile cost/benefit modelling.

Government Digital Service (Cabinet Office, UK Government)

Portfolio Delivery Manager / OKR Coach

Jun 2015 - Nov 2016

Close engagement with finance, people, and delivery teams combined with strong technical ability added significant operational agility and data-driven, real-time decision-making around a £500m change portfolio.

• Governance of £150m annual budget
• Built bespoke BI platform replacing complex, inflexible vendor ERP solution
• Saved £100k+ while improving accuracy, engagement, and user satisfaction
• Moved from quarterly to monthly delivery/finance reporting cycles
• Streamlined business planning making it light-weight, continuous, and real-time
• Introduced Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) for alignment and transparency
• Created bespoke OKR tracking tool using Ruby on Rails

Technologies: Google sheets w/ heavy scripting, Google Forms, Ruby on Rails, Hyperion, Anaplan, JavaScript, and more.

Government Digital Service (Cabinet Office, HM Government)

Programme Delivery Manager

Nov 2014 - Jun 2015

Delivered the Digital Marketplace, a revolutionary programme (comprising a submission/search/commissioning platform,legal & commercial frameworks, and customer support) transforming how the government buys digital.

• G-Cloud sales £2.4bn+ as of Aug 2017
• Managed multiple, complex stakeholder relationships
• Coached teams in agile methodologies, scrum/kanban, business planning and reporting: resource management, road-mapping, benefits realisation, risk mitigation
• Direct management of ~£3m annual budget for a 30+ person team (product design, user research, engineering, QA, procurement, engagement, support, legal, and analytics)
• Active participant in the Agile delivery community at GDS providing coaching, training, and mentoring

Technologies: Pivotal Tracker, Java (Grails), Python (Flask), Jenkins, SQL Alchemy, git, Postgres, AWS Elastic Beanstalk, continuous integration (CI) with Jenkins, infrastructure automation with Ansible, AWS Relational Data Store (RDS). All code open sourced via github.

Pearson PLC / Edexcel

Delivery Manager | Agile Transformation Coach

Jul 2013 - Nov 2014

Successfully delivered two critical, at-risk programmes by transitioning from a dysfunctional waterfal to a high-functioning, lean/agile practice using scrum, lean, kanban, retrospectives, rapid prototyping, user testing, etc.

• Coached teams and stakeholders in scrum & kanban methods
• Transitioned from legacy ITIL to modern DevOps culture
• Introduced BDD via Capybara, Cucumber, phantomJS, Jenkins
• Delivered complete redesign, rebuild, and platform migration of the Pearson Qualifications website (a £300M+ annual business with 60K+ pages and documents) from SharePoint to Adobe Experience Manager (CQ)
• Delivered a real-time analytics platform using Big Data and Machine Learning to predict subscription renewal rates and remove risk

Technologies: Forgerock SSO, Jira, Adobe CQ (Java), Solr, AngularJS, Apache, Jenkins, Cucumber (Ruby, Capybara, Poltergeist, PhantomJS), MySQL, CouchDB, MongoDB, Python/Flask, SOA/RESTful APIs

American Express (via ustwo)

Delivery Manager | Agile Coach

Nov 2012 - May 2013

Managed front-end/UX delivery and coached technical and leadership teams at a Fortune 100 credit-card company to deliver a customer loyalty programme involving 14 partner organisations targeting 50m households at launch.

• Led agile ceremonies and coached in scrum/kanban methods across multiple teams (50+ people)
• Multi-million dollar global programme with teams in 3 regions and 4 countries
• Facilitated agile ceremonies including sprint planning, stand-ups, show & tells, and retrospectives
• Ensured timely, high-quality delivery across responsive web, iOS, and Android

Technologies: Jira, Java EE, SDLC, SOA, Scrum, Agile, User Experience (UX), iOS, Android, Responsive Web

Gray Metrics

Product Owner | Data Scientist

Apr 2012 - Nov 2012

Applied agile/lean principles and engineering capability enabling a big data start-up to conceive and deliver a first-gen social media data mining and trend analysis platform for the automobile industry. Included market strategy, product ownership, engineering, and business development. AWS (EC2), MongoDB, Ruby on Rails, Jetty, D3.js, and R

JAM @ Engine People Limited

Scrum Master | Agile Coach

Aug 2011 - Mar 2012

Managed delivery of a real-time social media management and analytics platform to web and mobile channels. Servant leader to engineers, designers, and business owners in UK & South America. Provided individualised coaching to embed lasting agile transformation. JIRA, SOA, RESTful APIs, PHP, MySQL, Apache, Tomcat, Java EE, GNIP, Watir, jQuery, Automated Testing, iOS, Android, Windows Phone.

Credit Suisse (via ustwo)

Senior Delivery Manager

Aug 2010 - Aug 2011

Managed front-end design and delivery of an award-winning Fixed Income (forex) Single Dealer Platform (SDP) for a global Tier 1 investment bank including support for cash, options, and algorithmic trading. Worked with multiple stake-holders across various lines of business including client services, product management, and information technology. Introduced bespoke agile design process within the bank's legacy SDLC. Employed JIRA, Confluence, OmniPlan, OmniFocus, Axure, Nirvana, Java EE, XAML, Silverlight, HTML, CSS, and Javascript.

Cellnovo (via ustwo)

Delivery Manager

Dec 2009 - Aug 2010

Managed delivery of a ground-breaking wireless web-enabled insulin pump with touch-screen UI (requiring CE Mark and EN-60601-1 compliant embedded software). Reported directly to Chief Executive Officer and liaised with in-house and vendor teams in London, Winchester, Poland, and Wales. Applied agile methods to create a robust engineering, UX, and defect management processes prior to arrival of VP of engineering. Routinely met with investors and board members. OmniGraffle, SpiraTeam, OmniPlan, C++, ANT-RF, GSM, ActionScript, WinCE, HaXe.

Design Commission, Inc.

Owner, Managing Director (Technology)

Sep 2006 - Aug 2009

Led 350% revenue growth and grew full-time staff from 2 to 12 people for small digital agency. Responsible for corporate strategy, account management, biz-dev, forecasting/budgeting, employee development, project management, technical delivery, UX and vendor management. Technologies: Ruby on Rails, LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP), jQuery, JavaScript, HTML, WordPress, ActionScript, Flash, Agile/Scrum, BaseCamp, Rally, OmniFocus, OmniGraffle, GTD, Harvest, QuickBooks, Google Analytics, Omniture, TextMate.

Boom Bucket Mobile

Founder / Fullstack CTO

Sep 2005 - Aug 2009

Mobile content aggregation & distribution start-up. Built digital asset management platform for ingesting, cataloging, marketing, distributing, and reporting royalties on thousands of wallpapers and ringtones. Responsible for business development and marketing. Launched at 3GSM Mobile World Congress 2006 in Barcelona. HTML, ActionScript, JavaScript, PHP, and MySQL.

Microsoft, Cisco, Imagespan, others...

Part Time Freelance Fullstack Engineer

Aug 2001 - Sep 2006

Developed interactive web-based marketing colateral for Cisco, Microsoft, and others using PHP, Flash, Action Script, HTML, Perl, SQL, JavaScript, and more.

Corbis, Inc.

Senior Fullstack Producer

Feb 2000 - May 2006

Delivered new Corbis Motion e-licensing platform and multiple online marketing campaigns. Designed, built, and deployed Perl-based CMS and localisation engine enabling localisation of an E-commerce platform with $13M annual revenue to five markets in under two weeks. Flash, ActionScript, ASP.NET, SQLServer, Perl, HTML, and JavaScript.

FunkyTalk.com

Web Developer

Decemeber 1999- Feb 2000

My first job after university: turning Photoshop mock-ups into HTML for Kimbal Musk's start-up. Really. The company was short-lived but the role helped me move to NYC.