Udaya Shankar Basavaraju - CSM®, SAFe SA *.*®

Sr Scrum Master / Project Manager

Mobile: +1-609-***-**** Email: ac41p4@r.postjobfree.com Visa Status: Green Card

SUMMARY

Certified Scrum Master with hands-on experience of 5+ years in leading software development projects that meet demanding time restraints and exceed all expectations. Solid experience and knowledge of SDLC methodologies, Agile best practices including SAFe methodologies. Experienced at leading cross-functional and distributed teams across a variety of business transformation and modernization initiatives including hardware and software deployments and application development. Skilled at identifying opportunities to optimize and improve existing business processes and delivery methods to drive efficiency.

TECHNICAL & MANAGEMENT SKILLS

Overall 15 + years IT industry experience with over 5+ years of experience in Scrum Master, Agile/ IT development and PMO leadership.

Skilled in agile methodologies: Scrum and Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe)

Experienced in SCRUM & incremental development showing increasing business value every SPRINT.

Servant Leader for cross functional teams and also fostering collaboration with partner teams geographically distributed as well as co-located product teams.

Experienced in Facilitating ceremonies such as PI Planning, Sprint planning, estimation, daily scrum meeting, Sprint review and Sprint retrospective meetings.

Orienting teams to work with agile techniques: User stories, TDD, automated testing, continuous integration, and guiding teams to become self-organized

Collaborate with project team, key stakeholders, and management to define project goals, gather customer requirements, and develop detailed and high-level project plans/ roadmap

Experienced in Agile coaching and mentoring, improving development team motivation, process innovation, removal of project impediments, working with business/product owner to maximize business value and ROI in shorter period.

Vast experience leading multi-disciplined, geographically distributed as well as co-located product teams

Convincing presentation and communication skills, Strong analytic and problem-solving skills

Excellent workflow management and product planning competencies

Able to work through ambiguity and drive to continuous improvement

Extensive experience with Project/Program management tools like Version1 & TFS

COMPANY PROFILE

Cognizant Technology Solution April 2005 – Till date

RelQ software Pvt LTD Nov 2003 – April 2005

CERTIFICATION

Certified Scrum Master from Scrum Alliance

SAFe® 4 Certified Agilist from Scaled Agile Inc.

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

Client: TRS (Teachers Retirement System) Location – New York, NY, USA

Role: Sr Scrum Master / Coach Nov ‘16- Till Date

Key Responsibilities:

Experienced with SAFe Framework worked on Program/ Portfolio and Release Planning.

Servant-leader for two Agile Release Train helping team achieve the Sprint and PI goals with efficiency.

Facilitating Scrum ceremonies (standups, Sprint planning, retrospectives, Sprint Demos, etc)

Participate and contribute in PI Planning meetings to set the PI goals/objective.

Identify any integration and dependencies with other teams and get their agreement.

Drive sprint planning with adding tasks and estimated hours to respective team members

Identify impediments and resolve them by interacting with appropriate personnel / team and escalate to PMO.

Working with RTE, PMT and SAT to create the program roadmap and helping them to meet the program objective.

Leading Integration team for the cross-functional dependencies and tracking them.

Ensuring that the teams are fully functional/productive and there are no distractions

Ensure that grooming is completed before sprint starts

Updating TFS to provide transparency on sprint backlogs and supporting the Product Owner with grooming backlogs.

Participate in Scrum of Scum to provide the current status of the sprint and discuss on dependencies and risks.

Updating Dashboard daily basis with current status of User story and Tasks.

Engaging internal stakeholders in critical discussions and facilitating them build consensus for decision making

Orienting teams to work with agile techniques: User stories, TDD, automated testing, continuous integration, and guiding teams to become self-organized

Partnering with Product, Development & Deployment teams to see that deployment happening on time and schedule

Facilitating discussion and conflict resolution at all levels of the organization in order to improve team productivity while promoting continuous improvement.

Facilitating teams on fixing deployment issues, enabling close collaboration among all roles/functions (including both collocated & distributed teams).

Ensuring consistent quality and on-time delivery Tracking and communicating team velocity and sprint/release progress to management

Communicating cross dependencies among teams and aligning these on timing.

Performance feedback/ Appraisal with 360 view.

Coaching teams to attain SAFe maturity at a sustainable pace.

Ke

Key Achievements:

Leading Integration team (Secondary role) to ensure Integration Dependencies/ objectives are met. This was appreciated by client leadership

Implemented TDD (Test driven development) to address any Dev understanding gaps.

Contributed towards Program roadmap to meet overall program goals and objective.

Client: Freddie Mac Location – Mclean, VA, US

Role: Scrum master (Cognizant) Oct‘14- Nov’16

Key responsibilities:

Leading Daily Stand-ups, Sprint Planning, Sprint Reviews /Retrospectives.

Facilitated Iteration Planning meetings and coordination of release management activities for deployments

Closely tracked iteration progress reporting velocity and managing capacity

Developed and implemented repeatable processes related to production and fostered an environment of continuous improvement

Ensured that the project meet corporate SDLC standards, compliance and industry best practices

Making working partnerships with business/cross functional stakeholders to create enterprise culture of trust and transparency that are essential for Agile development/project management

Forming skilled development teams, empowering them and ensuring that they are self-organized to resolve minor issues. Implementing XP practices such as test driven development, continuous integration and re-factoring

Coordinating with Product Owner to prioritize requirements/Product Backlog based on Delivery schedule, SPRINT summary, Business Value based on ROI calculation

Identifying dependencies, Risks and mitigations to ensure smooth releases.

Facilitating Release planning, Agile estimation (story points), SPRINT planning, Daily SCRUM, SPRINT review and Retrospective meeting to track progress, eliminate project impediments and setting strategies

Creating metrics such as “Burn-down” and “Velocity charts” for each SPRINT and tuning/adapting the subsequent Product Backlog/development/Release Plan to meet feature delivery deadlines

Inviting active participation from stakeholders in user acceptance testing for every SPRINT delivery and focusing on pro-active customer collaboration rather than customer negotiation

Client: NASDAQ OMX Location: Marlborough, MA

Role: Scrum Master (Cognizant) Jul ‘12- Sept’14

Project Summary: NexGen Globe newswire application provides end-to-end solution for release submission for registered clients and partners. This will provide a platform for the clients and their partners to submit a self-service or full service release publishing. The main objective is to replace the legacy JMS system into new Nexgen platform with enhanced features. Key challenge being distributed team across geography and FDD best practice was followed for successful delivery.

Key responsibilities:

Responsible for establishing Scrum practices and rules and ensures the process is followed.

Enables close cooperation across all roles and functions and removes barriers.

Document, implement, monitor & enforce all processes for testing as per standards defined by the organization.

Facilitate Sprint Planning, Daily scrums, Retrospectives, Stakeholder meetings & software demonstrations.

Protect development team from outside distractions, impediments or team conflicts, and maintain focus on product backlog and project timeline.

Work closely with Product owner in backlog management and continuous delivery of features.

Make the Team aware of impediments and facilitate efforts to resolve them.

Working with Product Owners, Managers and the Development Team (including architects, testers, etc.) to evolve the organization.

Serve as a coach and mentor to members of the Team, as improving the velocity of the team.

Identify & recommended process improvements & best practices.

Ensured productivity and make sure scrum teams have the tools and know-how they need to succeed. Motivated the team to come up with quality shippable product and meet the product goals.

Key Achievements:

Key challenge was team was geographically located and teams needs co-ordination was the key.

Successfully lead the team during transition process from Waterfall to Agile.

Internal and external appreciation for leading the team successfully.

Client: Dow Jones & Company

Location: South Brunswick, New Jersey, US

Role: Test Manager (Cognizant) Oct’ 11 – Jul’ 12

Key Responsibilities:

Test Manager for B2B Newswires & Release Mgmt cluster at Onsite.

Project Management: Tracking, resource management and resource allocation.

Handling of any escalation from client.

To track and meet the all-key SLA as outlined in SOW.

Building up rapport with Client QA Managers and Client Project Managers.

Provide required statistics on the progress of the project to all stakeholders.

Implementation of new test process as part of Transformation initiative.

Provide decision on Go/ No go for any major deployment from QA.

Timesheet maintenance and T&M billing.

Client: ACE AOG UK Services

Location: Onsite (Crawley, UK)/Offshore (Chennai, India)

Role: Onsite Transition Lead (Cognizant) Nov’08 – Sep’11

Key Responsibilities:

Test Manager for Genius and Web App clusters.

Resource Management for AOG resources.

Mentoring QA teams and assisting teams to deliver Quality Deliverables.

Risk/ Issue Management for Genius and Web apps cluster.

Review of Test plan and related test artifacts. Handling of any escalation from client.

Involved in the Weekly meeting and Defect triage meeting with clients.

TECHNICAL AND TOOLS

Defect/ Test Management tools– HP ALM, Quality Center,

Agile tools – Version one, TFS

Other Tools – SOUP UI, Compare XML

Microsoft tools – MS Office (Word, Excel), MS Powerpoint, MS Project

EDUCATION

Bachelor of Engineering (B.E) Bangalore University (India)

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