PMO Director at Modus Create
Scrum Day 2023 welcomes Amanda Pitzo to its roster of enthralling speakers. Amanda is the PMO director at Modus Create, a global team of technologists that propels enterprises forward with digital products, platforms, and processes. Amanda is a Certified Scrum Master (CSM) and certified Project Management Professional (PMP). She leads a team of skilled project managers and Scrum Masters who facilitate client engagements and continuous improvement.
Modus Create is an Atlassian Platinum Solution Partner, creator of the project management tools Jira, Confluence, and Trello.
Amanda's official backstory:
Amanda began her professional journey as a project manager relying on conventional project management approaches. Amanda says she embarked on an Agile path when her company adopted Scrum. “The Scrum practices resonate with me, as they match my management style, emphasizing adaptability, communication, collaboration, openness to change, and various other factors.”
What will you be speaking about at Scrum Day?
Amanda will cover how to eliminate inefficiencies and streamline Scrum events and processes using Atlassian tools. She’ll illustrate how teams can eliminate common inefficiencies and focus on value delivery. “Atlassian's tracking and progress-monitoring tools make it easy to stay organized and aligned with the project's ultimate goal.”
What makes Jira a go-to tool for Agile teams?
Amanda is a Jira power user because of its many Agile compatible features. “As a project manager, I tend to look through a lens of the big picture,” she says, adding “I want to see where everything is right now”.
Amanda's favorite features:
Customization
Projects are not one size fits all. Jira is customizable to fit the specific needs of teams and projects. It can be integrated with other tools, making it a central project management and collaboration hub.
Reporting
It has robust reporting capabilities allowing teams to track real-time progress. This allows for communication and sharing with stakeholders and the ability to continually look at how the team can improve.
User interface
The user interface is easy for any team member to navigate and get familiar with quickly.
Add-on apps
Many apps give you additional functionality to achieve almost anything.
Success with Jira
Amanda says she feels privileged to lead an exceptional group of project managers and Scrum Masters who share her passion for Agile. Together, they focus on continuous learning and development, individually and as a team. Modus Create has integrated Atlassian tools into its internal processes to manage team growth. “Our approach includes prioritizing and managing a backlog of learning topics, using Confluence to share process documentation and content, tracking creation progress and creating schedules to ensure timely content releases, and maintaining knowledge repositories to support our internal teams.” She adds that they believe in applying the same processes they use in their project teams to themselves.
What are you looking forward to most about Scrum Day?
Connecting with and learning from the community!
See Amanda's Scrum Day bio here.
Scrum Day is scheduled for September 14, 2023, at the Alliant Energy Center in Madison, Wisconsin.