Mark Palmer is a Scrum Alliance Certified Scrum Trainer (CST) and Certified Team Coach (CTC) with over 25 years of experience in business and technological innovation. As founder of Great Fish Agility, he has led Agile transformations inside Fortune 100 companies, government agencies, and nonprofits — including Capital One, Phillips 66, State Street, and Anthem — and has trained more than 12,000 practitioners, from Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, and Pfizer to the U.S. Air Force and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
His work starts with a single uncomfortable question: was this team ever designed to succeed? Most of the time, the answer is no — and the fix isn't a better retrospective format. From rescuing a $7M project at Phillips 66 forecast to fail, to turning a "Never" burndown at Capital One into a launch 6 months ahead of schedule, Mark's interventions are structural, not ceremonial.
"A mechanic fixes a broken machine. An architect designs a space where humans can thrive. When we design teams split across five projects, we aren't just being inefficient — we are stealing the professional dignity of our people."
Mark is absolutely amazing! I had the opportunity to work with him as he coached our Agile Transformation for an org I led at Capital One.
Mark was instrumental in assessing our current state, identifying goals to get back on track, building team confidence, and strengthening the quality of deliverables.
Mark very quickly impressed me with the ability to help our team not just 'do Agile' but truly 'be Agile.' His patience, deep knowledge, and hard work were invaluable.