Summary
Mark Shead is a seasoned software engineering leader and president of Xeric Corporation with 15+ years helping organizations accelerate delivery and increase ROI from software development. He specializes in transforming legacy change-management cultures—designing development and deployment pipelines that shrink release cycles from months to hours—often while working side-by-side with teams on code and practices. Mark has coached Agile, Kanban, TDD and BDD across high-stakes environments including the U.S. Treasury and multiple Federal Reserve Banks, and he combines technical know-how with facilitation skills that improve team dynamics and measurable performance. He also coaches startups on viable first-release engineering and has a knack for quantifying the business impact of development choices. Outside of consulting, he creates popular Agile cartoons and speaks at conferences, bringing a creative, accessible voice to process change. Based in Fort Scott, Kansas, his background spans hands-on engineering, IT leadership, and an ALM in Software Engineering from Harvard.
15 years of coding experience
5 years of employment as a software developer
MMA, Music Composition, MMA, Music Composition at Pittsburg State University
ALM (Masters) in IT, Software Engineering, ALM (Masters) in IT, Software Engineering at Harvard University
BMA, Music Composition, BMA, Music Composition at Oral Roberts University