SUMMARY:

I have 11 years of experience helping teams deliver quality products to their organizations. I have led 40 plus teams through agile transformations by coaching them to adopt Scaling, Scrum, and Kanban as frameworks for their development. I have led app development teams for custom web apps (java/.NET), automation, ecommerce, ERP, and CMS systems using agile core values and principles. In addition, I bring a capability of being a servant leader that motivates people into becoming self - organizing and self-managing teams that solve complex problems together.

TECHNICAL SKILLS:

• Scrum
• Jira, Rally, and TFS
• SAFe and Spotify model for scaling
• Mobile App Dev (Android and iOS)
• Kanban
• Windows App Dev (.NET)
• Web App Dev (Java)
• Ecommerce App Dev
• MS Visio and MS Project
• Quality Assurance: HP Quality Center and Quick Test Pro
• SQL Server Management Studio
• Workflow tools: SharePoint and custom in-house built apps

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE:

Confidential, Durham, NC

Agile Coach

Responsibilities:

• Agile Coach for 4 app dev teams. The teams build web apps and bots for automating manual business processes. These bots provide a cost savings of millions of dollars across the program yearly and enables employees to concentrate on more strategic work items.
• Transformed 4 teams from waterfall to using agile for development through workshops with senior leaders and teams to inform them how their roles changed from command and control to trusting and empowering their employees to do their jobs.
• Performed agile trainings and refreshers with the teams on topics such as: Scrum events and artifacts, Kanban, scaling, user story writing, estimation, metrics, definitions of ready and done, team agreements and vision, sync meetings (Scrum of Scrums), and the benefits of communities of practice.
• Reviewed the Agile Manifesto and Agile Principles, emphasizing that agile and Scrum for example are not the same - that agile is a methodology and Scrum is one of many frameworks used for delivery.
• Changed the organizations mindset from focusing on resources and projects plans to people and epics by converting to a scaling model for building plans, roadmaps, and fostering collaboration.
• Worked with the architects on the environment changes that were needed to enable the continuous delivery, continuous integration and test automation required for rapid agile development.
• Modified Jira to allow the teams to have 3 levels of requirement definitions to unlock the clarity they needed to fulfill business need. These levels were epic, feature, and user story.
• Helped teams focus on delivering features that met a minimum viable product (MVP) by instructing the product owners to prioritize the essential work needed to get the right products to market quicker.
• Conducted agile maturity reporting on all teams. Revisited the team’s progression every few sprints at the beginning to every PI planning session (5 sprints) and came up with plans for continuous improvement with the team’s input after reviewing the results of each assessment.
• Highlighted the importance of regular communication within and across teams to certify that silos were not reforming to keep knowledge flowing via face to face interactions, sync meetings and demos.
• Influenced behavior changes from an issue escalation culture to a partnership culture for dealing with conflict and team dynamics. Additionally, encouraged leaders to scale trust and not processes to help model the behaviors they wanted to see in their organization’s changing culture.
• Championed relentless improvement by ensuring teams continued inspect and adapt sessions, retrospectives, and communities of practice meetings so that information and experiences were shared.
• Coached that the product visions are sponsored and defined by the business, solutions driven by the team, and the work is supported by management.
• Empowered teams to identify their own impediments and to have face to face conversations to resolve items with other internal or external entities prior to escalating to leadership.
• Assembled cross functional teams that could confidently deliver and accept work without wondering if they are truly capable of developing systems that are outside of their control or skillset.
• The organization is enjoying the benefits of scaling since it allows them to see how different teams are dependent on each other and that they can work out their dependencies prior to any sprinting.
• Coached leaders on how to be advocates for their teams by helping to remove impediments, working with other teams to help change the culture and working out dependencies at the leadership level.
• Entrusted scrum masters and product owners to be the change agents at the team level when I’m working with others through knowledge transfers and training. This enables the team to be self-managed and self-organized.

Confidential, Charlotte, NC

Agile Coach - SAFe, Scrum and Kanban

Responsibilities:

• Agile Coach for 3 app dev teams. They work on Salesforce for performance-based underwriting. This functionality provides business banking clients automatic renewal and expedited underwriting of loans which qualify via a decision engine, enabling the bank to process loans more efficiently.
• Provided workshops for teams on how to write and estimate user stories, how to commit to work in a sprint, how to use Kanban to visualize workflow and limit work in progress, and how to scale using SAFe.
• Ushered the embracement of agile as a culture shift by getting teams and other stakeholders to buy into empirical software development through illustrating how they can get more products to market faster by iterating and providing feedback more often than waterfall.
• Interviewed members of my teams separately to connect with them on a personal level to build trust, gain an understanding of their work and how they see the current environment, and to learn what their vision of an agile team is and how it helps the business.
• Converted 3 teams to agile using scrum and SAFe frameworks by supplementing the bank’s training with my own materials and experience. Described the way agile software development works and how it enables a business to get products to market faster by constantly iterating on the last release.
• Taught new product owners on the importance of their role on the team. Informed them that without their availability and input the team cannot function properly and will lack direction on decisions.
• Collaborated with the business and technical leadership on writing the business context, product vision, and architecture vision in preparation for the program increment (PI) planning meeting.
• Helped the teams fill out their sprints based on their PI and stretch objectives. Ensured that they considered their capacity and accounted for risks, enablers, and maintenance needed to deliver work.
• Instructed all team scrum events and ensured that everyone was ready for the PI event by reviewing future features and user stories with the team in refinement sessions.
• Worked with other agile coaches and scrum masters to create a center of excellence for the program to ensure we were all using the same methods and to keep communication going on all integrated teams.
• Created a release backlog to show the progress of planned vs. actual acceptance of features and user stories for the teams.
• Reviewed metrics (velocity, burn-downs, cycle time, and defects) regularly with the team and management to ensure we stayed on task and were able to effectively roadmap future releases.
• Transformed 3 teams from waterfall to agile on inflight projects that were accepted on time.
• Teams are continuing to deliver quality products to their product owners using SAFe for the next phases of the program.
• Made myself available to coach and provide guidance to offshore team members at times that were convenient for the team to ask questions outside of the normally scheduled events.
• Demonstrated prioritization by focusing on end results and displaying a sense of urgency to meet goals.

Confidential, Fort Mill, SC

Agile Coach - Scrum and Kanban

Responsibilities:

• Agile Coach for 10 app dev teams. They work on .NET web apps that are a part of the healthcare supply chain to connect patients to doctors and pharmacies to improve access to their care.
• Promoted and supported scrum adoption to organization and the scrum team by explaining how iterative software development brings products to market quicker vs traditional project management.
• Trained scrum theory, rules, best practices, and values to 10 new agile teams that I transformed.
• Organized and facilitate scrum events: retrospective, planning, refinement, daily standup, and demo.
• Worked with the Scrum Master and Product Owner on making sure that the team understands the goal and scope of the sprint and product backlogs.
• Held refinement workshops on writing clear and concise user stories that increased productivity by 25%.
• Coached the dev team on the importance of self-organization and cross-functionality that helps them produce quality products with reduced software bugs to increase delivered value to the customer.
• Led scrum of scrums to help teams work together and share information across the organization to improve dependencies and identify opportunities for scaling.
• Enabled productive and collaborative workspaces by quickly establishing relationships with the leaders of the program and the team, getting them to work through challenges and resolve impediments.
• Communicated progress on agile adoption and reviewed metrics/maturity assessments with the team.
• Transformed 10 teams to adopt agile and scrum as their method of development.
• Multiple products were launched months ahead of the original target date due to the empirical nature of agile, making the clients and organization satisfied with the outcome.
• Shaped an environment for where geographically disperse teams can work together via daily videoconferences, Skype, detailed emails, optimal meeting times for all locations, and other tools to foster collaboration and feedback from the team.
• Met frequently with app dev managers to discuss how we can work cohesively for the betterment of the team.
• Coached team members by providing an environment that allows them to communicate freely with me about their concerns or improvements they want for the team without repercussions.

Confidential, Thomasville, NC

Agile Coach - SAFe, Scrum, and Kanban

Responsibilities:

• Served as the Agile Coach and Release Train Engineer (RTE) for 10 app dev teams. The teams developed custom java web apps, geographic information systems, 3rd party tools, and business intelligence reporting solutions that deal with processing invoices, rating and pricing, and the logistics of transporting freight.
• Initiated the SAFe implementation of the agile transformation by starting with the basics of scrum and Kanban, then introduced the SAFe lean-agile principles needed to synchronize decision making on work.
• Trained product owners, scrum masters, and the dev team on SAFe by explaining the benefits of cadence based planning for teams working on related platforms. This enabled them resolve, own, accept, and mitigate risks and other dependencies in person before features are committed to sprints.
• Facilitated PI planning to ensure that teams are adhering to standards for the agile release train (ART).
• Prepared for the PI planning to make sure the organization (scope, context, business alignment), content (executive, product vision, architecture vision briefings), and facilities were ready.
• Helped teams write specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-bound (SMART) PI Objectives.
• Ran Product Owner sync, system demo, and inspect and adapt workshops to guarantee that the organization was making progress on the PI and that ART was continuously improving at every PI.
• Focused on continuous exploration, integration, and deployment to release value on demand.
• Scheduled and led steering committee discussions for teams that serve multiple business units.
• Monitored progress against the sprint goal through daily scrums and burn-down charts for tracking.
• Provided reports for various levels of leadership on project status for all my teams weekly and monthly.
• Led scrum of scrum meetings to share best practices and retrospectives between the teams. This enables the department to coordinate cross team dependencies and build a collaborative workspace.
• Assisted product owners with refining their backlog by helping them keep it in the order, writing clear user stories, and coached them on the empirical nature of product planning in an agile environment.
• Removed impediments from the development team to keep them focused on the sprint goal, encourage cross functionality to circumvent bottlenecks, and coach the team to self-organize by allowing them to only commit to user stories that can fit in a sprint to avoid over commitment.
• Worked with other agile coaches and scrum masters to ensure the organization was holistically on the same page for utilizing SAFe, helping stakeholders outside of the scrum team understand agility and empirical software development, and planned scrum of scrums and demos.
• Supported team members personal growth by working with them and their managers on plans to help develop skillsets that they want to improve on during sprints and releases.
• Spread SAFe and scrum adoption throughout the organization, releasing quality products, and getting the product owners more involved to ensure that the team is producing what they need.
• All the teams that I served fully understand SAFe and scrum and its agile principles. They understood how scrum gives them the framework for the flexibility and agility they need to effectively produce high quality products during time-boxed sprints.
• Motivated and influence team members toward achieving team objectives through utilizing agile metrics.
• Brought parties together to find common ground and leave with an agreed upon solution for conflicts.
• Escalated when necessary to ensure that individuals and teams are held accountable for meeting timelines.

Confidential, Greensboro, NC

Agile Coach - Scrum and Kanban

Responsibilities:

• Agile Coach on the Confidential Mobile Solutions (EMS) agile project for 4 teams. This project involved creating mobile and web based versions of EMS. This application is being used by Confidential field users globally (in over 90 countries and 20 languages) to evaluate, collect, and document observations made during visits to food retail locations of their cleanliness and the state of their equipment.
• Transformed the organization from a traditional waterfall methodology to agile using scrum.
• Coached agile adoption to both IT and product owners. Explaining that as a result of becoming more agile and using the concept of a minimum viable product, that they could get products to market faster.
• Led all scrum rituals. Groomed and refined user stories with the help of the Product Owner.
• Started scaling initiative to have teams that worked on common solutions plan together.
• Two versions of the application are available to users to ensure that users can input their customer visit information at any time no matter what type of internet connected device they’re using.
• Led team of 5 developers with various backgrounds and skillsets to overcome obstacles (such as requirement changes and turnover) to complete deliverables. The business leadership and field users are excited about the flexibility that they now have as a result of the project.
• Endorsed team members to take on additional responsibilities within the team to promote growth.
• Managed expectations by communicating effectively with various levels of leadership in the organization.