Mahesh Varadharajan

Mahesh Varadharajan is a seasoned business agility enabler and transformation architect with over 15 years of IT experience, including 14+ years leading and coaching Agile teams across automotive, banking, telecommunications, and technology sectors. Currently serving as SAFe Practice Lead at KnowledgeHut, Mahesh trains transformation leaders, designs enterprise-wide agile adoption strategies, and serves as reviewer for leading international Agile conferences. His expertise spans organizational change management, process definition, scaling agile frameworks, and evangelizing the mindset and cultural shifts required for sustainable business agility.

Mahesh's transformation journey includes pivotal roles at Accenture, SolutionsIQ (now Accenture), Cognizant, and PayPal, where he coached teams from small pilot projects to large-scale programs across multiple countries. At a global automotive major in Mexico City, his coaching of a large agile program earned him Cognizant's Voila Award in Q2 2015 for stupendous performance in delivering successful launches. His work implementing backlog management tools as pilot initiatives created turnarounds in how teams were managed. He built trusted advisor relationships with directors and senior managers while positioning strategic accounts for agile transformation success. Mahesh's philosophy emphasizes servant leadership and creating leadership pipelines—teaching Scrum Masters to make themselves redundant as teams mature toward self-organization.

As an innovator, Mahesh developed Dojo Delivery Agility, an experimental non-prescriptive framework augmenting the Dojo way of working through hyper sprints and E-shaped skill development. Built on fundamentals of SCRUM, XP, and Agile Dojo, this approach helped teams unlock productivity and predictability across diverse domains. His SENSI program successfully scaled these capabilities. Mahesh also pioneered the SHE QC grooming technique—a highly structured, time-boxed method for advanced engineering teams to elaborate complex stories, remove second-degree ignorance ("I don't know I don't know"), and operate in hyper sprint mode. These practical innovations reflect his commitment to learning from both failures and successes.

Mahesh actively contributes to the broader Agile community as a conference speaker, podcast guest, and community leader. He presented at Agile Testing Alliance Global Gathering 2014 ("User Story Writing and Estimation for Testers"), Agile Day Chennai 2019 and Discuss Agile Regional Scrum Gathering Hyderabad ("Dojo Delivery Agility"), and Agile India 2016 ("Demystifying Agility in Large-Scale Programs"). In August 2024, he appeared on Scaled Agile's "Tactical Tuesday" podcast sharing Release Train Engineer tips for facilitating dependencies and leading large group events successfully. As a leader in organizing the India Scrum Enthusiasts Community (ISEC), he creates spaces for practitioners to share and learn from each other, fostering collective growth across India's agile ecosystem.