SUMMARY:

• Enthusiastic and accomplished professional, with proven history of success and experience in automation and systems enhancement projects, business operations, project/program management, and client negotiation.
• Known for maximizing business opportunities, strengthening client relations, and surpassing organizational goals.
• Resourceful problem - solver and effective mentor as a Servant Leader; capable of building solid relationships with management and key clients.
• Accustomed to working in different environments that constantly embrace new technology.Extensive experience in the whole process of design, development, management of the data architecture and governance; sound business acumen.
• I work with agile teams to make them better and focus on driving high-quality delivery, reduced time to market, and responsiveness to the business.
• I have broad experience across many verticals which brings a perspective that can pull best practices of different industries and team structures to my projects, helping them to deliver better.
• Confidential helps organizations that wanted Agile transformation to move faster and respond to change quickly.
• Confidential is a critical thinker with dynamic communications skills, written and verbal, with the ability to communicate both vertically or horizontally throughout the corporate spectrum who applies proven best practices and best-in-class technical solutions by expertly directing resources and technology on a large scale.

EXPERTISE IN THE FOLLOWING AREAS:

Agile/Waterfall Methodology

Stakeholder Management

Financial Management

Resource Allocation/Management

Client- and Vendor-Facing Experience

Conflict Resolution

Process Analysis/Improvement

Release Management

Project/Program Management

Team Leadership & Engagement

Change Management

Risk Mitigation/Management

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE:

Confidential, Chicago, Illinois

Agile Coach/Scrum Master (Development Manager)

Responsibilities:

• Created an Agile PMO while continuing to go through an Agile transformation to work with stakeholders on aligning on strategy and ROI.
• Led the introduction of a company-wide Agile/Scrum transformation
• Working as an advisor, coached and aided the Business leaders and IT teams, helping them team adapt to the Agile practice
• Made substantial contributions in the managing of projects and implementing the automation of multiple national initiatives
• Launched a branded Teller program and nationwide programs to all points of distribution
• Scoped, developed and managed plans/schedules/artifacts/risks

Confidential, Chicago, Illinois

Scrum Master (Development Manager)

Responsibilities:

• Globally demonstrated advanced project management skills by ensuring the work of the project was aligned with the stated business objectives; set and succeeded customer expectations, escalating issues and changes.
• This position required developing and maintaining relationships with project stakeholders to obtain project objectives while working in a matrix project environment.
• Proficient in Clarity, OpenWorkBench (OWB), Lotus Notes, Cisco Jabber, MS Project Server, SharePoint and JIRA.
• Successfully guided two development teams through transition from Waterfall to Agile development
• Worked collaboratively, utilizing effective communication skills, with project stakeholders to develop and foster not only a good working relationship, but comprehensive project plans based on approved funding provide product vision
• Project plans included: Scope, Scheduling, Design, Planning, Cost, Quality, Organization and Communications, Budget Tracking, Risk and Issue Management, Testing, Dashboards and Change Management
• Aided in implementing Best Practices processes within JIRA for all Scrum teams company-wide
• Improved team velocity by incorporating capacity planning into Sprint Planning sessions
• Created, maintained, and managed of the review and approval of standard project documentation including, but not limited to:
• Statements of Work, Project Schedules, Technical Requirements and Specifications, Process Workflows, Test Scripts, Implementation Plans, Release Plans and related documentation
• Handled portfolio of 10-15 projects at any given time and effectively managed over 50 planned monthly and quarterly releases
• Monitored and reviewed revenue recognition and brought concerns to management, as well as identified, reported and managed risks

Confidential, Chicago, Illinois

Scrum Master (Agile Coach)/Development Manager

Responsibilities:

• Created, managed and coordinated the efforts of the IT resources, including cost/timeline and mentoring along with aligning the IT
• Strategic Roadmap, including IT financial plan, technical infrastructure and platform environment.
• Complete ownership of the IT landscape, projects, vendors and diverse stakeholders along with overseeing the growth and sustainment of the corporate IT department.
• Proficient in Oracle, Clarity, Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), Infor, Mobile, ALM and Google Apps.
• Led Enterprise Procure-to-Pay development project to be utilized by the Purchasing and Finance teams
• Quickly learned the new platform, SciQuest (a SaaS and Mobile solution), using knowledge gained from experience with Oracle and then sunset Oracle, which saved the organization at least $500,000/year in third-party vendor support
• Implemented new Business Intelligence reporting tool, Information Builders’ IBI, with modeling based on relational and cube data for reporting needs; gathered requirements, developed IBI model and presented proof of concepts; assisted with aligning stakeholder’s business and system requirements to overall client strategy
• Led business choices by researching industry trends, publications against business unit’s strategic goals and gathered internal feedback to influence the direction of the product
• Ran daily stand-ups, sprint planning, managed product backlog, grooming sessions, estimations, burn-downs and retrospectives
• Aided in preparing impact and opportunity assessments regarding the cost/benefit of proposed projects

Confidential, Chicago, Illinois

Project Manager

Responsibilities:

• Responsible for creating project plans and requirements documents for the implementation of a new platform for the Reservation System.
• Conducted proactive risk assessments of existing applications to identify new weaknesses previously unknown
• Acted as the key resource for the development teams in the remediation of vulnerabilities discovered by Vulnerability Management, Application Security, or outside vendors

Confidential, Chicago, Illinois

Scrum Master (Development Manager)

Responsibilities:

• Directed process improvement initiatives and supervised ten Developers, three Quality Assurance analysts and a Business Analyst.
• Critically evaluated information gathered from multiple sources, reconciled conflicts, decomposed high-level information into details, and distinguished user requests from the underlying true needs.
• Proficient in SAFe, Kanban, DevOps, Oracle and Confluence/JIRA.
• Managed global team that decreased transaction time by 90 seconds in processing time to allow brokers to handle an additional five to six calls per day, thus increasing personal commissions
• Facilitated three Agile teams across multiple states and India to foster good working relationships and open communication
• Maintained regular coordination with cross-functional teams inside and outside the organization
• Coached Scrum teams on Agile processes from Planning through Development, Quality Assurance, Change, Continuous Improvement/Development (CI/CD) and Continuous Testing (ATDD/TDD, Unit and Regression) through Implementation
• Coordinated and hosted Release Planning, Sprint Planning, Backlog Grooming, and Retrospective meetings
• Resolved conflicting priorities in scope and schedule for projects among various stakeholder groups

Confidential, Hoffman Estates, Illinois

Project Manager

Responsibilities:

• Directed division responsible for gathering and maintaining requirements, managed projects (including Finance, e-commerce and e-mail campaigns with UX/UI design) for domestic and off-shore development and QA teams to ensure they were on schedule and within budget; trained end-users on enhancements and new product offerings.
• Proficient in Kanban, Microsoft Project and Worklenz.
• Leveraged SHC’s SDLC (Agile and Waterfall)-defined methodologies projects that saved $4MM in the first year and increased revenue by $2.5MM each subsequent year
• Developed solution to oversee an optimization-of-costs project that introduced an advanced billing method utilizing the Sears-branded credit card to offer customers installment/multiple billing methods for service contracts
• Mentored/Coached Junior- and Entry-Level Business Analysts on both Agile and Waterfall SDLC methodologies and provided constructive feedback at all times to motivate the team

Confidential, Deerfield, Illinois

Junior Project manager/Junior Scrum Master

Responsibilities:

• Partnered with clients to ensure a complete understanding of the work process and how enhanced/new applications could improve their top line processes.
• Worked as a Junior Scrum Master and performing Daily Standups with the Project Team. Proficient in Confluence/JIRA and Rally.
• Identified opportunities, in an Agile (XP/Scrum) environment, for improving efficiency/reliability of the application portfolio and associated business processes as a means of increasing or maintaining revenue through their new loyalty rewards program, with a cost savings of over $1MM and revenue increase of over $10MM in the first quarter after the initial rollout
• Managed team, as a Junior Project Manager/Junior Scrum Master for QA, that tested solutions to validate that requirements had been met, as well as through the Release of the initiative
• Reported financials and project status back to Business and IT stakeholders, up to C-Level individuals, through process dashboards
• Managed five on-shore and 10 off-shore Development team members and nine off-shore QA team members