Meet Our Training Experts

Our trainers build fun and engaging classroom experiences that demonstrate frameworks like Scrum and Kanban as fundamentally workable approaches for building and supporting great products, backed up by a wealth of hands-on experience using them in the real world. Even among the small community of Certified Scrum Trainers (a pool of less of 300 persons in the world licensed to teach CSM and CSPO courses), our CSTs are widely recognized as two of the most effective Agile instructors in the field, as shown by our fiercely loyal customer base that return again and again.

Richard Cheng

Richard Cheng is the Vice President of Training and Chief Product Owner at NextUp Solutions Training. A graduate of Virginia Tech and renowned Agile expert, Richard has presented keynote speeches at conferences and events around the globe, authored publications on Agile and product management, and is a member of Mensa. Richard has extensive experience working with the federal government, large companies, small startups, non-profit organizations, and associations. In addition to being one of the few Certified Scrum Trainers (CST) accredited by the Scrum Alliance, Richard is also a Certified ScrumMaster (CSM), Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO), Certified Scrum Professional (CSP), Certified LeSS Practitioner, Project Management Professional (PMP), PMI Agile Certified Practitioner (PMI-ACP), and SAFe Program Consultant (SPC).

Classes

Certified ScrumMaster (CSM), Advanced Certified ScrumMaster (A-CSM), Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO), Advanced Certified Scrum Product Owner (A-CSPO), and Agile and Scrum in a Day

Dr. Patrick McConnell

Agile Coach and CST at NextUp Solutions Training, Patrick specializes in Agile Transformation in the Public Sector and Scaling Agile Frameworks. A criminologist by training, Patrick transitioned from developing geospatial applications in Agile Teams to coaching and training Agile methods and frameworks. He has served as an Agile Coach and Trainer for over 50 US Government organizations, as well as the States of Alabama, Maryland, and New York.

Classes

Certified ScrumMaster (CSM), Advanced Certified ScrumMaster (A-CSM), Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO), Advanced Certified Scrum Product Owner (A-CSPO), and Agile and Scrum in a Day

Trent Hone

Managing Consultant at NextUp Solutions, Trent is a Lean Kanban University AKT. He provides consulting services to commercial and federal clients in the Washington, DC area. Trent coaches, mentors, and trains clients in understanding their systems and improving them through Kanban and other Lean and Agile methods. In 2015, he was a finalist for Lean Kanban’s Brickell Key award for excellence in the Kanban community.

Classes

Team Kanban Practitioner, Certified Kanban System Design (KMP I), and Certified Kanban Management Progessional (KMP II)

Mark Grove

Agile Coach and Management Consultant with NextUp Solutions and an ICAgile Authorized Trainer and Lean Kanban University AKT, Mark coaches individuals and teams to continuously deliver value to the customer by embracing an Agile mindset while maximizing business performance and team potential. He provides coaching and facilitation expertise on a variety of Agile topics as well as creates and delivers training on a broad range of Agile subjects. Mark holds a Master’s degree in Information Systems and multiple Agile certifications from various certifying organizations.

Classes

User Story Workshop (USW), Team Kanban Practitioner, Certified Kanban System Design (KMP I), and Certified Kanban Management Progessional (KMP II)

Sean Killeen

A .NET Specialty Area Lead and Managing Consultant with NextUp Solutions, Sean currently serves as the technical lead for a team of 12 on a project that was rated more complex than the moon landing. Over his 15+ years of software delivery, he has developed a love for Agile principles and automation and has employed them with great success. He is passionate about helping others “level up” their skills and continually improving his own. Sean is an ICAgile Authorized Instructor and holds certifications including Certified Scrum Developer (CSD), Certified ScrumMaster (CSM), and ITIL v3 Foundations. In his spare time, you can find him speaking in the Washington metropolitan area, pretending to understand how to fix things in his new home, singing, or blogging at SeanKilleen.com.

Classes

Certified Scrum Developer (CSD) and Certified Agile Testing and Automation (CATA)

Noura Saad

An Agile Product Coach at NextUp Solutions, Noura has broad experience in the IT profession serving a wide variety of disciplines including software development, business process and requirements analysis, and Agile coaching. She coaches and mentors individuals and teams to continuously improve and deliver value by adopting an Agile mindset. Noura holds a Master’s degree in Organizational Sciences and is an ICAgile Authorized Instructor. She also holds certifications including Certified Professional in Agile Coaching (ICP-ACC), Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO), Certified Scrum Master (CSM), and PMI Agile Certified Practitioner (PMI-ACP).

Class

Certified Agile Testing and Automation (CATA)

Jill Stott

A Senior Agile Trainer at NextUp Solutions, Jill has decades of experience working in different IT roles and has led many organizations through successful Agile transformations. Jill ensures her classes are highly informative, engaging, and fun(!). She has trained thousands of people of diverse roles and organizational levels (virtually and in-person) on a variety of Agile topics and specializes in coaching the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe). Over 95% of her participants passed the SAFe exam. She has both a detailed knowledge of SAFe and practical experience applying it and has personally led many diverse organizations through the SAFe Implementation Roadmap from start to finish.

Class

Leading SAFe® – Certified SAFe® 5 Agilist (SA)