Mitch Lacey is an agile practitioner and trainer. Mitch has been managing projects for over twelve years and has numerous plan-driven and agile projects under his belt.

Mitch honed his agile skills at Microsoft Corporation, where he successfully released core enterprise services for Windows Live. While at Microsoft, he transitioned from Program Manager to Agile Coach, working hand-in-hand with groups throughout their transition to Agile practices. After Microsoft, Mitch was the Agile Practice Manager at Ascentium Corporation where he practiced agility on the projects he ran every day while coaching customers on  agile  practices and lessons on agile adoption worldwide.

As a Certified Scrum Trainer (CST) and a registered Project Management Professional (PMP), Mitch shares his experience in project and client management through Certified ScrumMaster courses, Agile coaching engagements, conference presentations, blogs and white papers.

He is the author of “Adventures in Promiscuous Pairing” presented and published at the Agile 2006 conference, “Transitioning to Agile: Key Lessons Learned in the Field” presented and published at the Fall 2007 PMI Global Congress in Atlanta, Georgia and "The Impacts of Poor Estimating - and How to Fix It" presented and published at the winter 2007 SQE Agile development conference in Orlando, Florida. He is presenting at Agile 2008 in Toronto Canada on a variety of topics, as well as the Better Software Conference in Las Vegas, Nevada in June 2008.

Mitch is currently under contract with Addison Wesley to publish a book titled "Adopting Agile: 101 Tips for Surviving Your First Year" scheduled for publication in 2009.

View on map

Upcoming Courses by Mitch

Course Title Date Range City
Certified ScrumMaster 2-3 Dec 2008 La Jolla
Certified ScrumMaster 12-13 Jan 2009 Bellevue
Certified ScrumMaster 23-24 Feb 2009 Vienna
Certified ScrumMaster 26-27 Feb 2009 Zurich
Certified ScrumMaster 30-31 Mar 2009 Phoenix
Certified ScrumMaster 2-3 Apr 2009 La Jolla

Recent Articles by Mitch

How Do We Know When We Are Done? 10 Sep 08
Last week, two practitioners of Scrum shared ways in which their teams have defined done. This week, CST and CSC Mitch Lacey gives his own definition, one he argues is more in line with agile principles, both in its structure and in its formation.
"Four"warned Is Forearmed: How adding a new question to your daily standup can uncover hidden bombshells 28 May 08

We all know the three questions of Scrum: What did you do yesterday? What will you do today? What blocking issues do you have?

We all do our best to answer these questions. So how come so many of our initial demos turn up problems we didn't catch? Maybe it's because, at least at the beginning, we need to add a fourth question to our daily standups.

Resources by Mitch

Done List Creation Exercise
This downloadable PDF was created by Mitch Lacey. It shows one way for you and your team to create a done list. Lacey's article "How Do We Know When We Are Done" describes the done list in more detail.

Recent Comments by Mitch

On "Four"warned Is Forearmed
Hi folks, thank you for the comments and feedback. This article is part of a book that I am writing for Addison Wesley titled "adopting agile: 101 tips for surviving your first year" - you can read more sample chapters on my site at http://www.mit...
On How Do We Know When We Are Done?
Hi Arrie! You’re right, the level needed to get to “done” is a commitment both from the team and especially management. I find that having a done list allows the business to understand just what it takes to deliver software – it’s a wonderful com...