SUMMARY

• Strategic, dynamic and business - technology savy with 10+ years of progressive experience as a Scrum Master, Agile Coach, Release Manager, Project Manager, Business Analyst and QA Engineer.
• Demonstrated ability to motivate, organize, lead and coach Scrum teams across multiple locations Onshore and Offshore with a verifiable track record of managing complex projects while delivering on time, under budget and above expectations.
• Proficiently organized and facilitated daily stand-up, sprint backlog refinement, retrospectives, sprint and release planning.
• Coordinated and supported a major paradigm shift with the focus on technology strategy, architecture and development standards to support new business processes.
• Collaborated closely with product owner on backlog grooming to keep product backlog relevant and prioritized, ensuring acceptance criteria were agreed upon and stories were ready for sizing.
• Experienced in software development lifecycle like Agile Scrum and Kanban with exceptional skills in project management, planning, organizing, documenting and business support.
• Effectively tracked teams progress by structuring burn down, velocity and release forecasting reports.
• Creatively and efficiently managed product backlogs and worked closely with product management teams to ensure that proposed features are captured, estimated and prioritized.
• Proactively worked with Scrum Masters across multiple sites to prepare for and facilitate potentially shippable increment planning sessions.
• Implementaed Agile best practices such as continuous integration, transparency, accountability, self-management and conflict resolution.
• Proficiently worked on FRDs, Wireframes, User Stories, Use Cases and Process Flows for the successful implementation of the project.
• Created and executed test scripts and test cases for the Web, mobile iOS and Android applications.

TECHNICAL SKILLS

Utility Tools: JIRA, Confluence, Microsoft TFS, Rally, Quality Center, MS Visio, Charles Proxy, Unified Functional Testing, Balsamiq, Sharepoint, SoapUI, Postman, Test Rail, Redmine, Mingle.

Databases: MySQL, SQL Server, Oracle, Postgres

Languages: Java, JavaScript, HTML, VBScript, CSS, .NET, C#

Other: MS Office, MS Outlook, SharePoint, Bitbucket, PuTTY, SaaS Model

Protocols: TCP/IP, HTTP, HTTPS

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

Confidential, Chicago, IL

Lead Scrum Master/Release Manager

Responsibilities:

• Confidential acquired NEX group in 2018 which enabled their clients worldwide to trade futures through Confidential Globex platform, fixed income trading via BrokerTec and foreign exchange trading on the EBS platform.
• Supported the convoluted IT transformation initiative by incorporating NEX products into Confidential platform, which required coordination and collaboration from multiple software development teams.
• Enforced scrum principles as a scrum master that resulted in reduction of cycle time by 20% thus increasing team's throughput in less than 8 weeks.
• Utilized Agile Scrum practices to help the team increase their velocity by 60% within the first three months of Agile adoption.
• Coordinated all Scrum ceremonies including Sprint Planning, Daily Stand-ups, Sprint retrospectives, Sprint Demos, Backlog Grooming, and Sprint planning and Release Planning.
• Tracked and effectively communicated team velocity and sprint/release progress to all affected teams and management. Used key Scrum metrics (burn down, velocity) to help deliver committed work.
• Effectively coordinated with teams located offshore in Bangalore and Tel Aviv to complete and deliver the features by the due date.
• Worked directly with technology teams to help coordinate prioritization of front door requests, maintenance fixes and security vulnerabilities.
• Worked closely with the IT portfolio team to update staffing plans; received guidance from supported teams on staffing allocation based on the capacity and project demand.
• Coached team members on agile principles and providing general guidance on the methodology.
• Coached and collaborated with other Scrum Masters on our program team. Partnered to ensure that our ways of working are consistent across teams.
• Maintained release schedule for supported applications; monitor change requests and worked with operations team to schedule release weekends and identify potential conflicts.
• Acted as liaison between developers and project stakeholders; fostering quality communication between engineering disciplines.
• Worked with IT compliance team to ensure applications remain compliant.

Confidential, Chicago, IL

Sr. Scrum Master/Defects Manager

Responsibilities:

• Organized and facilitated daily stand-up meetings, reviews, retrospectives, sprint and release planning, project planning and other Scrum-related meetings.
• Tracked and effectively communicated team velocity and sprint/release progress to all affected teams and management. Used key Scrum metrics (burndown, velocity) to help deliver committed work.
• Coached Product Owners in creation and maintenance of Product Backlog.
• Updated Agile tracking system to provide transparency on product’s continuous integration process.
• Worked with the Scrum Team and the Product Owner to negotiate the minimum viable product for delivery. Facilitated the story points estimation during sprint planning.
• Triage defects by coordinating with the product owner and then have an appropriate team member to resolve and deploy to production.
• Assisted with internal and external communication, improved transparency, and radiated information.
• Provided all support to the team using a servant leadership style whenever possible and led by example. Assisted with prioritization and resolution of software defects.
• Removed obstacle for the team by escalating an issue to leadership resulting in early delivery of customer issue solution.

Confidential, Oak Brook, IL

Agile Coach

Responsibilities:

• Guided the team and organization on how to use Agile/Scrum practices and values and also helped them to stay on track with agile techniques, fine-tuning approaches as needed to ensure the overall strategy is being met.
• Removed impediments and guided the team to remove impediments by finding the right personnel to remove the impediment.
• Built a trusting and safe environment where problems can be raised without fear of blame, retribution, or being judged, with an emphasis on healing and problem-solving.
• Facilitated getting the work done without coercion, assigning, or dictating the work. Also, facilitated discussion, decision making, and conflict resolution.
• Assisted with internal and external communication, improving transparency, and radiating information.
• Supported and educated Engineers, Design and Product, especially on grooming and planning to maintaining the product backlog.
• Worked with teams to analyze current systems and processes and design a strategy for the adoption of agile best practices.
• Lead agile workshops for product and development teams, as well as key stakeholders.

Confidential, Schaumburg, IL

Agile Project Manager

Responsibilities:

• Removed impediments and protected team members from interruptions and distractions to maximize productivity. Encouraged and implemented process improvements. Created team-building opportunities
• Tracked end-to-end project lifecycle, ensured that appropriate practices, processes and technology were used in the management of all projects undertaken, and that projects were kept within scope, time and budget
• Removed obstacles for developers and testers. Used key Scrum metrics (burndown, velocity) to help deliver committed work.
• Managed sprint backlog items and tasks. Managed all Scrum boards (physical and virtual).
• Scheduled and allocated work, providing advice and guidance, and resolving problems to meet technical performance and financial objectives.
• Designed meeting agendas and take minutes at Technical core team meetings and publish meeting results
• Coordinated all Scrum ceremonies including Sprint Planning, Daily Stand-ups, Sprint retrospectives, Sprint Demos, Story Grooming, and Release Planning
• Worked closely with Product Owners, coordinating product backlog grooming and story estimation.
• Built relationship with the Product owner and other stakeholders to facilitate team's interaction with them

Confidential, Madison, WI

Senior Business Analyst

Responsibilities:

• Used appropriate tools and techniques to elicit and define requirements that addressed more complex business processes
• Extracted relevant and meaningful information from multiple sources and applied it to solution designs that were scalable and supported by a well defined implementation approach
• Converted high level business requirements into executable, detailed user stories to enabled development
• Documented key business processes and systems and coached teams how to operate/integrate
• Facilitated review of all business and functional change requests via the change review board
• Managed the relationship between IT and key stakeholders and management teams by regularly meeting and identifying all business initiative and future projects
• Wrote user stories with the proper acceptance criteria, preconditions and attached mocks, if needed

Confidential, Skokie, IL

Business Systems Analyst

Responsibilities:

• Engaged client to gather software requirements/business rules, and ensure alignment with development teams
• Translated stakeholder requirements into over multiple tangible deliverables such as functional specifications, user cases, user stories, workflow/process diagrams, data flow/data model diagrams.
• Developed business architecture using requirements such as scope, processes, alternatives, and risks.
• Analyzed client’s business requirements and processes through document analysis, interviews, workshops, and workflow analysis.
• Conducted multiple levels of testing including functional, regression, user acceptance, integration and performance to verify the client’s needs are met.
• Communicated client’s business requirements by constructing easy-to-understand data and process models.
• Provided input into developing and modifying systems to meet client needs and develop business specifications to support these modifications.
• Acted as a liaison between business and technical personnel to ensure a mutual understanding of processes and applications.

Confidential, Hoffman Estates, IL

Automation/Manual QA Engineer

Responsibilities:

• Plan, design, maintain and execute test automation scripts in accordance with the defined automation plans for product releases.
• Identify, track and facilitate proper resolution to outstanding issues and actions related to test automation.
• Created and executed test scripts, cases, and scenarios that will determine optimal system performance according to specifications.
• Developed, iterate and own all testing-related documentation, including test cases, scripts and bug reports assessing quality and associate risk for complex on-demand functionality across all mobile applications and their back-end counterparts.
• Worked with the outsource QA team to define and execute on a vision around agile testing methodology.
• Utilized a bug tracking tool to log and track issues in the current release in testing; verify bug fixes and perform regression testing to see if other impacted features perform correctly; verify all releases before and after deployment to production.
• Developed automated test plans and test cases based on the business requirements, user stories and technical specifications.
• Worked closely with the lead automation analyst and the business analyst to gather automation requests. Evaluated the manual test cases and modify them for automation scripts.

Confidential, Chicago, IL

QA Engineer

Responsibilities:

• Performed testing of B2B native app on different modules of the application.
• Involved in attending Functional Requirement review meetings.
• Review product requirement documents, functional specifications, and involved in developing test strategy, test plan and test case documents.
• Worked in the agile development environment with frequently changing requirements and features set. Interacted with Business Analysts and software Developers for bug reviews and participated in QA meetings.
• Performed Functional, Regression, and smoke testing in QA, Load and Prod environment.
• Attended daily defect review meetings and QA team scrum meetings.
• Executed Test cases and verified Actual Results against Expected Results.
• Bug traced and reported to developers and close defects when it’s fixed.
• Tracked defects using Rally and generated defect summary reports.

Confidential, Chicago, IL

Jr. Database Administrator

Responsibilities:

• Participated and supported SQL server installations both upgrades and standalone installations.
• Worked on various types of system units monitoring and fixing technical problems that might possibly prevent the database instances from their daily run.
• Established Entity Relationship Diagrams to help quicken the data processing and data flow.
• Troubleshoot dev/qa issues with connectivity and interacted with tester/developer in resolving issues.
• Worked with application developers in order to assist in modifying the database structure as necessary.
• Performed user and security administration activities such as enrolling users, granting privileges to users and maintaining system security.