Mark Dalgarno Email & Phone Number

London, United Kingdom

Delivering population-level, sustainable change is certainly CHALLENGING.It’s also POSSIBLE.In fact, since 2017, I’ve been doing precisely that when Darius Pocha and I formed Create/Change.I’ll be posting insights on LinkedIn on digital transformation, so please check-in, and if we’re not connected, let’s be part of each other’s network.Central government & other organisations choose us to work with them on service transformation projects in education, health, social care & public information.Product & policy teams utilise our user-centred design, data and technology services to help tackle complex problems, including:/ Starting a digital transformation or setting up a digital team/ Losing market share due to out of date services/ Failing or costly programme delivery/ Inexperienced leadership/ Underperforming teams/ Poor quality suppliers/ Low ROI from digital delivery or digital transformation work/ A mismatch between sponsor ambition & organisational ability to deliver.Our deep experience equips us to solve problems, like those above, that others can’t.Create/Change is a blend of permanent staff and a network of over 100 super-experienced practitioners. Rigorously curated, it is grown organically by personal recommendation.Agile / Innovation / Lean Startup / User-Centred Design / Digital-First Projects / Digital Services Delivery / Digital Transformation / Government Digital Transformation / Agile in Government / Agile Programme Delivery / Agile Delivery Management / Delivery Management / Agile Coaching / Policy / Delivery / Transformation / Digital

Cambridge, United Kingdom

Freelance delivery coach (now with createchange.io) specialising in digital services, particularly using Agile, User-Centred approaches with service design. Recent (2016-2022) engagements have focussed on digital transformation and programme delivery across three major programmes (£100m+ - £24Bn, multiple teams), building a new Digital team in a large organisation and a new DDaT team in a central government department, Agile health-checks across a multi-million pound portfolio, Agile adoption and transformation, Building an Agile Community of Practice and increasing organisational capability, Governance of Agile services, Agile Delivery Management, Digital Strategy Development, Engineering and Release Management, Government as a Platform, Impact Mapping, Lean Startup approaches, Software Process Definition, Review & Improvement.I work in the private sector, with NGOs and in Central Government.I also help organise practical events for digital, design, lean, agile and software professionals.Founder and Program Chair of the Agile Cambridge, Agile Manchester, Agile in the City, UX Cambridge, UX Scotland, UX in the City, Service Design in Government, the lean event and other conferences. Co-founder of Spark the Change (London), UX Ireland. Since 2017 I've been the organiser of Lean Agile Scotland.BCS Software Practice Advancement (SPA) group chair 2012 - 2015. SPA Conference co-chair 2013 / 2014. SPA committee member. Involved as a volunteer or reviewer on over a dozen other conferences.Founder and organiser of the Software East Network and former Organiser of the London Agilists meetup. Meeting physically and online.

Cambridge, United Kingdom

I led a team at Red Gate responsible for development of the business-critical systems that underpinned Red Gate - a complex architecture of software systems, websites, Business Intelligence systems and shared libraries & services used across all Red Gate products. This involved working with senior management and other stakeholders to develop a consensus on project scope, priority and budget then executing on that consensus working with people across and outside the business.Team size was up to 18 people using Agile approaches and with mainly Microsoft technologies. The team was cross-functional consisting of a project manager, developers, testers, a UX professional and a Business Intelligence sub-team. We typically worked on 3-4 distinct projects at any one time and also had a demanding operational support role.

Cambridge, United Kingdom

Programme manager across a portfolio of customer-facing and internal systems projects. Generally working on 2-3 projects at a time but sometimes had more projects on the go. 100% Agile methods.

Associate Lecturer on the Open University's Masters Research Project in Computing. Advising final year students on research skills, helping shape their research questions, giving feedback and support on their work in progress and marking their final dissertations.Also acted as a moderator on other lecturer's marking.

Taught an in-house version of the Open University's Managing Software-Intensive Systems course - a bespoke version of the course delivered to a multi-national corporation. I looked after a cohort of the class that based based on West Coast USA.Work involved a mixture of on-site and remote coaching, teaching and consultancy.

Cambridge, United Kingdom

In charge of the company's software development group working on multiple COTS scheduling and timetabling products. These products were delivered as web applications, client-server applications and as standalone systems depending on client configuration.Managed a multidisciplinary group of developers, testers, a tech author and a systems administrator. Mainly working in Common Lisp but also in C, C++, C# and assembler.

Cambridge, United Kingdom

Managed a group of developers working on shared libraries and infrastructure to support a software product line of scheduling applications.Main work during this period include enabling COM Automation and OLE-DB interfaces throughout the product line, stabilising and enhancing an in-house ORM, porting said ORM to multiple RDBMS, enhancing an existing in-house scheduling web server, working to improve the organisations build and install tooling, implementing Bugzilla and CVS (subsequently SVN) across the business, customising Bugzilla and integrating it with SVN and internal newsgroups (for change reporting)...

Cambridge, United Kingdom

During this period I was the technical lead on projects developing the second and third generations of Scientia’s P2 manufacturing scheduling product written in Common Lisp.My work on these projects involved meeting with customers and third-party software vendors to agree requirements, identifying future work packages and making work estimates, design and coding of the core product modules (scheduling and object model), managing two developers, monitoring work in progress and liasing with marketing and technical support staff to identify deficiencies and scope for enhancement with the product.

Basildon, Essex

Worked on the Lisp-based CAPE expert system - a tool used by Ford negotiators and engineering suppliers to estimate new part production costs and propose manufacturing methods and process plans. The system was responsible for significant cost savings to the company.My main tasks were to review requirements and designs, to conduct code reviews, to ensure compliance with project standards, to advise junior team members and to code core software features.

London, United Kingdom

My primary role during this period was as Project Manager / Product Manager / Team Leader for the development of Syllabus Plus, a timetabling product for colleges and universities. In all I spent about two years working with external and internal stakeholders and managing 2 developers to take the project from a two-page product proposition, through MVP to a first usable release. Syllabus Plus has been a market-leading product for some years with worldwide sales approaching 700 sites and total revenues approaching £30 million.

Hitchin, Hertfordshire

I was involved in the design, development and maintenance of three modules of a new computer-based training product that used Zetalisp then subsequently Common Lisp. These were - a portable graphics library, a paint package and a simple animation package. Other responsibilities included: troubleshooting, assisting with functional specification preparation and project planning and helping other team members.

Bsc, Computer Science

A broad-based traditional CS degree with lots of programming and solid theoretical work.

M.Sc., Artificial Intelligence, Distinction

Activities and Societies: Also a student rep for the class.A general introduction to a range of Artificial Intelligence topics. (Neural.

Ba, Humanities

Studied various Arts courses, with a focus on Philosophy. Self-funded and studied in my spare time.

Marketing Analytics - The Wharton Business School

Online Marketing Analytics Course