Guillermo
Garcia

Guillermo Garcia

Scrum Master, Agile Coach, and Project Manager for teams that need to ship.

BCS, SPC, RTE, PMP, CSP, PMI-ACP

I help delivery teams plan honestly, clear the dependencies that stall a sprint, and keep projects on scope, schedule, and budget. Based in Vancouver, working in English and Spanish.

20+ yearsin enterprise IT delivery
9 yearsleading Agile teams
7 teamscoached at once
Portrait of Guillermo Garcia

How I work

Ceremonies are the easy part. The value is in what happens around them.

Commitments the team can keep

I coach teams to estimate honestly and commit to sprints they can actually finish, so scope conversations rest on the team’s own numbers instead of on who argues hardest.

Dependencies cleared early

I map hand-offs with other teams and leads before they turn into missed release dates, and I can tell when a delivery risk is really a funding, vendor, or decision problem.

AI with people in charge

I build reporting and workflow routines with Claude and Copilot, and coach teams to use AI for the busywork while keeping ownership of the decisions that are theirs to make.

Ways to work together

Available for contracts and engagements in Vancouver and remotely across Canada.

Contract Scrum Master

Embedded with one to three teams to run the ceremonies, keep the backlog healthy, and clear the blockers that slow delivery.

Project management

Scope, schedule, budget, and risk for technology projects, using Agile or traditional delivery, backed by a PMP.

Agile coaching

Standing up new teams or bringing drifting ones back to the basics, with simple metrics leaders can trust.

SAFe training

SAFe DevOps and Agile workshops for mixed business and technical groups, in person or remote.

Selected results

Highlights from past engagements.

90%+sprint and release predictability across multiple teams, through structured planning and visible metrics
$40Mcore banking system replacements delivered at Coast Capital and Vancity
200+environments virtualized across regions at HSBC, improving deployment efficiency
15%cut from an $800K project budget at Lululemon by streamlining development procedures

Two lines, one career

Two decades of shipping software, first as a release manager and then as a Scrum Master and coach. The two lines meet in 2017, and the release years still shape how I help teams when a blocker turns out to be technical.

  1. 2026 to now

    SystemLabs, in association with Perfiles MKT

    Project Manager and Product Owner

    Leading a B2B and B2C online marketplace for business communities in Mexico, built on the open-source Mercur platform, through my own corporation. Defined the MVP, run two-week sprints with a Scrum team in the State of Mexico, and am assembling the technical team that will customize the platform.

  2. 2024 to 2026

    BOSA Properties

    Project Manager and Sr. Scrum Master

    Stood up two Scrum teams building corporate data applications. Built an AI-assisted quarterly reporting routine that catches scope creep and mislabeled work, and a Monday.com to Jira sync that ended double entry.

  3. 2024

    TransLink

    Agile Instructor

    Delivered two separate two-day SAFe DevOps sessions for development, operations, and business teams, run as working sessions rather than lectures.

  4. 2021 to 2023

    Lululemon

    Sr. Scrum Master

    Managed cross-team dependencies for an app that relied on other teams’ release schedules, and framed the trade-off calls with product owners when release windows got tight.

  5. 2020 to 2021

    UBC Banff Research Station

    Agile Coach

    Set up a new Scrum team for a digital transformation initiative, agreed a definition of done, and introduced simple delivery metrics.

  6. 2018 to 2021

    WorkSafeBC

    Sr. Scrum Master

    Coached seven Scrum and Kanban teams across cloud, data, and IT services. Ran Scrum of Scrums and PI planning, planning around production uptime for a public service.

  7. 2018

    HSBC

    Agile Project Manager

    Led the virtualization of 200+ environments across regions and time zones, run as Kanban with WIP limits to shorten lead times.

  8. 2017 to 2018

    Boeing

    Scrum Master

    Coached two SAFe teams, one building software and one running infrastructure operations, so they could plan as a single program.

  9. 1995 to 2017

    Vancity, Lululemon, Coast Capital, SITA, BC Housing, Best Buy, IBM

    Release Manager and Project Manager

    Release planning, cutovers, and go or no-go calls for enterprise systems, including two core banking replacements and the Bestbuy.ca launch, with teams across Canada, the US, Mexico, India, and the Philippines.

Credentials

Certified across the three bodies that define how most enterprise teams work today, plus a Computer Science degree with distinction from IBERO University in Mexico City.

Scaled Agile

  • SAFe Program Consultant (SPC)2019
  • Release Train Engineer (RTE)2019
  • SAFe Agilist (SA)2018
  • SAFe Practitioner (SP)2017

Scrum Alliance

  • Scrum Professional (CSP)2018
  • Advanced ScrumMaster (A-CSM)2018
  • ScrumMaster (CSM)2016

PMI and UBC

  • Agile Practitioner (PMI-ACP)2017
  • Project Management Professional (PMP)2016
  • Agile Leadership Program, UBC Sauder2016

Teaching

I teach SAFe DevOps as hands-on working sessions, in person or remotely.

  • TransLinkSAFe DevOps, two sessions in 2024
  • PNI Digital MediaSAFe DevOps, two sessions in 2020

Speaking and community

Giving back to the Vancouver Agile and newcomer communities.

  • IIBA Professional Development DaySpeaker, 2019 and 2020
  • DevOps VancouverMeetup speaker, 2019
  • SAFe Community of PracticeOrganizer since 2019
  • MOSAIC and ISS of BCMentor to newcomer professionals
Portrait of Guillermo Garcia

Have a team that needs a steady hand?

I’m open to Scrum Master, Agile coaching, project management, and SAFe training engagements in Vancouver and remotely across Canada.

Email me