SUMMARY:

• Experienced Agile Software Development professional with outstanding qualifications and track record in delivering and managing Agile software projects. Vanessa is responsible for leading project teams and facilitating the Agile approach within these teams. With over five years of hands - on experience as a Scrum Master, Vanessa possesses strong communication skills, ability to effectively manage a technical team, quickly comprehend complex subjects and guide products through the full requirement, release and support lifecycle. Additionally, she arranges meetings, sprints, and demos. Her day-to-day responsibilities of a certified Scrum Master include developing and maintaining Agile training, gathering requirements, providing guidance to the team as well as the customers, ensuring that processes are aligned with the goals of the business, and measuring processes against the corporate quality goals.

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE:

Business Analyst/ Scrum Master

Confidential, Washington, DC

• · Coordinate and communicate with other members of the team to ensure overall project goals are being met in relation to business analysis.
• ·Responsible for identifying and developing requirements, and establishing requirements traceability to the business vision.
• ·Work closely with the technical team in the definition, testing, training, implementation, and support of functional requirements.
• ·Solicit requirements and user stories through interviews, workshops, and/or existing systems documentation or procedures.
• ·Develop project and communications documents, conduct analysis of alternatives, and develop white papers, roadmaps and case studies.
• ·Serve as Scrum Master, to help build high performing teams, build shippable product and be responsible for leading agile best practices, specifically Scrum, and project coordination.
• ·Ensure Scrum is understood, and work with the team to solve problems and to drive continuous improvement and business owner satisfaction.
• ·Organize and facilitate all Scrum related meetings (stand-ups, retrospectives, reviews, demos, etc.).
• ·Work with the team to develop project plans, roadmaps and manage backlog. Communicate team plans, report impediments for escalation, identify risks/concerns to relevant stakeholders to help resolve.
• ·Work with product owners and stakeholders to refine vision and establish goals and metrics.
• ·Update Agile tracking system daily to provide transparency on product and sprint backlogs. Track and communicate team velocity and sprint progress to all affected teams and management.

Scrum Master/Business Analyst

Confidential, Chantilly, VA

• · Manage client relationship and set appropriate expectations
• · Assisted with internal and external communication, improving transparency and radiating communication.
• · Supported and educated the solution delivery managers, especially with respect to grooming and maintaining product backlog
• · Facilitate Scrum ceremonies/events including sprint planning, daily stand up, product backlog grooming, and Retrospective
• · Teach and Drive the use of Lean Agile/Scrum practices on all teams including; user story writing, definition of done, team estimation, timely JIRA updating, etc.
• · Tracked data from the sprint process and report regularly (burn up and burn down charts, defect metrics etc.) to facilitate understanding of where we are and provide basis for future process improvements.
• · Provided agile expertise and guidance for the project management cycle and other IT-related processes.
• · Cross-team coordination and collaboration.
• · Removed impediments
• · Worked cross functionally to align strategy, methodology and execution.
• · Maintained metrics that provide visibility to stakeholders on team-level progress and quality.
• · Actively contributed to the company’s agile community through participation in agile community of practice and Scrum master forums.
• · Provided real time feedback to the methodology team based on experiences with software delivery teams.

Scrum Master/Project Manager

Confidential, Columbia, MD

• Organize and facilitate Scrum ceremonies and backlog refinement under minimal supervision
• Champion Agile software development best practices, acting as a coach to the Scrum teams
• Support the Product Owner in grooming and maintaining the product backlog
• Track and communicate team status and progress via burnup and burndown charts, as well as other information radiators, to the team, management, and stakeholders ensuring it accurately reflects current state
• Take responsibility for managing dependencies between the Scrum team and others, collaborating within the Scrum Master Network especially with regard to items necessary for product release
• Demonstrate sense of urgency and responsiveness to complete work and solve problems, with a strong drive to persevere when faced with ambiguity
• Proactively remove or escalate roadblocks to allow team progress
• Maintains relevant metrics to help the team monitor their performance
• Encourages continual improvement in engineering practices to improve code quality and delivery Coordinates timely response and support to production line customer issues, when escalated

Scrum Master

Confidential, Basking Ridge, NJ

• Facilitating release/sprint planning, grooming, daily stand - ups, retrospectives and demos.
• Tracking and communicating team capacity/velocity
• Ensure the development teams are practicing within the agile framework
• Provide internal and external communications to improve transparency and accountability
• Participate proactively in developing and maintaining team standards, tools, and best practices
• Identify and remove impediments and prevent distractions to the teams
• Empower the team to self-organize and self-manage
• Participate in weekly meetings to report project status/risks
• Utilizing Rally for metrics/reports, user stories and defect tracking

Database Administrator / Scrum Master

Confidential, Elkridge, MD

• Spearheaded Agile/ Scrum implementation plan to move Confidential from Waterfall to Scrum to further the organization's streamlined approach to software development
• Trained the entire Confidential Department of Human Resources (DHR) apps group, and parts of the State of MD in Scrum to better understand agile practices and principles
• Contributed to the authorship of PMO artifacts such as the Confidential Project Charter that redefined the organization's role within the Agile Framework going forward
• Coordinated Scrum ceremonies: Sprint Planning, Daily Scrum, Sprint Review (Demo), Retrospectives, Backlog Refinement to ensure continuous inspection and adaption of software development lifecycle
• Identified impediments and dysfunctions to the teams and the Agile/ Scrum process within organization to limit transitional setbacks and maximize team output
• Negotiated feature and deliverable scope and schedule through excellent client (Product Owner) management to ensure a quality finished product
• Engaged clients, stakeholders and end users to in corporate usability and interface needs in the design to make certain delivered product reflects exact specifications
• Organized and scheduled training of internal and remote users in Agile/ Scrum methodology.
• Taking Backups on scheduled time and Monitoring Scheduled Backups
• Creating and dropping of users, granting and revoking rights as and when required.
• Checking of Oracle files for abnormal behaviors.
• Day to day Performance Monitoring and tuning of database.
• Diagnose and Troubleshoot Database Problems and failures
• Involved in the Design (Logical & Physical) of Databases
• Preparing Backup and Recovery Plan.
• Create oracle databases (single instance) on configured servers using both the DBCA & Database creation scripts.