LaWanda Smith

***** **** ***** ***** ******** Heights, MI 48312 727-***-**** ac4gaz@r.postjobfree.com

Certified Scrum Master Certified Scrum Product Owner Project Manager Business Analyst

SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT & CUSTOMIZATION ENTERPRISE IMPLEMENTATIONS SYSTEMS ADMINISTRATION

Information Technology Agile Coach, Senior Scrum and Kanban Master with a superb track record of managing complex cross functional projects in the State Government, Financial Service, Mortgage and Banking vertical. Over 10+ years of experience managing stakeholder’s expectations while managing projects. Proficient using SharePoint, RTC, and JIRA collaboration tool to track and manage agile development while ensuring the business stakeholders has a direct line of site to the team’s progress. A deep understanding and the ability to apply both the theoretical and practical aspects of agile development. Strong strategic and business acumen have the ability to work effectively and efficiently with clients to define, develop and document current and future state business requirements to ensure the business needs are captured and critical components are enhanced and/or developed. Proven ability to cultivate excellent relationships with business partners and vendors to ensure functional and technical specifications adhere to the business vision and goals. Proven ability to lead/train a cross functional team of Agile Product Owners, and Scum Masters.

Skills Summary

IT Project Management

Strategic Planning / Customer Relationship Management

Risk Management

Financial Management / Budget Management

Change Request Management

Project Requirements Gathering

Conflict/Resolution Management

Project Scope-Approach Consensus Building

Business Strategizing & IT Planning

Organizational Effectiveness

Customer Service Management

Business Process Reengineering

Team Building, Agile Coach & Mentoring

Vendor Management

Experience and Core Competencies

Team leader capable of motivating development team to achieve desired end state goal.

Proven ability in building effective partnership with diverse groups in multiple locations/environments.

Aptitude for learning and using technology for both teaching and action research.

Able to garner respect throughout the organization at all levels.

Thought Leader - Challenge status quo and grow every day.

Able to build trust and earn respect at all levels within the company

Communicative and facilitative with all levels of the organization from Scrum team members to executives.

Lead and demonstrate value-add principles to a team in a collaborative way and influence employees at all levels.

Ensure Agile/Scrum concepts and principles are adhered to, be a voice of reason and authority, make the tough calls and manage conflicts.

Continually growing ones craft, learning new tools and techniques to manage oneself and a team.

Managing with Metrics – Able to help leaders & teams define clear metrics and coach them to have a data driven approach for decision making.

Willing and able to quickly gain a high level understanding of the technical and business domains of the Scrum teams.

Outstanding presentation and communication record (conference presentation, professional community events)

Superb conflict resolution and consensus building skills.

Understanding of fundamentals of iterative development, software development processes and procedures.

Professional Experience

Strategic Staffing Solutions, (Headquarters, Detroit, MI) 11/2016 – Present

Client: USAA, San Antonio, TX

Senior Scrum Master in the Investment Management Company (IMCO) Financial Advice & Solutions Group (FASG) Division at USAA, I am responsible for responsible for facilitating the adoption, implementation and sustainability of Agile processes, principles, and practices.

Facilitate iteration planning, retrospective, and daily activities related to stand-ups and sprint burn down; as well as maintain relevant metrics that help the team see and understand their progress during a sprint.

Work diligently with the Lead Product Owner in ranking the Product Backlog based on the most viable product. This ensure the business is driving out customer focused most valuable features to its clients.

Within four months being engaged as a Senior Scrum Master within the IMCO Division my team has successfully deliver 30 releases for the Money Market Reform Project, AMA and FTS/XBP transactions and trade processing of retail and brokerage accounts.

Reduced the defect count by 25% by ensuring all code was code reviewed before moving to the QA team for testing.

Work with the Lead Development Product Owner in prioritizing/ranking the product backlog according to the most valuable features (MVP).

Provide high-touch and hands-on team guidance, support, and coaching in close cooperation and collaboration across all roles and functions, to facilitate increasing maturity at a sustainable pace.

Actively build and contribute to the company's Agile Community and develop Communities of Practice, mentor Agile practitioners.

Monitors the burn-up/burn down charts, team’s performance/progress using the Rational Concert tool.

Track, escalate and remove impediments to ensure the team can successfully deliver work based on commitment during the Iteration Planning Ceremony.

Facilitate the creation and adoption of working agreements and definitions of done, including use of appropriate tools, standards and best practices.

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), Saint, Petersburg, Florida 07/2015 – 10/2016

Client: PSCU Financial Services

Senior Consultant/ Business System Analyst/Scrum Master responsible for researching problems, assisting with proactive planning solutions, make software, hardware and system recommendations, and assist with coordinating development to meet project requirements. Acted as liaison between the business users and development team (onshore/offshore).

Provided guidance with the production applications which consist of Oracle EBS 11i/r12 as well as web based applications and other third party tools. This includes provide production support, bug triage, issue resolution, user administration and monitoring of system status.

Assisted the New Product Development team with writing detailed business requirements for Web Based application systems.

Created the functional design documents Analyzed the prior documentation and business processes for full understanding of the project.

Removed team impediments on a daily basis to allow the team to deliver the sprint goals and deliverables.

Working with business partners for requirements gathering, technical solution architecture and building the product backlog.

Identified and removed any impediments/roadblocks that interfere with the team’s ability to deliver the product within the committed sprint.

Worked between business and IT to finalize the requirements and then converting them into functional specifications.

OnDemand Consulting, Dayton, Ohio 08/2013 – 06/2015

Product Owner/Scrum Master responsible for defining detailed actionable requirements at the feature story level from the high level requirements provided by the Product Managers. Additional responsibilities included, but not limited to working diligently with the business stakeholders to elicit, understand, analyze, document, and communicate business needs, so that the technical teams can build effective solutions.

Lead the analysis, documentation, and business requirements meetings to ensure requirements were fully understood by the technical development team.

Converted a service organization of millennials from Scrum to Kanban improving deliveries and reducing effects of interruptions. Within one year the execution team delivered 64 release over 15 products simultaneously.

Acted as an Agile Coach to the scrum teams and modified the processes to get everyone in the organization a better line of site to management, and business stakeholders. Feedback loops were created to keep decision making as low in the organization as possible. The result were the teams were better engaged and productivity and quality greatly increased.

Worked with the product managers to define the product features and prioritized product backlog.

Worked with business and Enterprise stakeholders to understand, validate and help shape business strategy and vision, and customer needs.

Developed, maintain and manage relationships with stakeholders, keeping them informed of key issues and engaged throughout project lifecycles

Organized and facilitated sprint planning, daily stand-up meetings, reviews, retrospectives, release planning, demos and other Scrum-related meetings.

By driving out self-organization within the execution team increased the productivity of the teams by 16% and the quality of deliverables by 22%.

Tracked and managed product backlog, burn-down metrics, velocity, and task break-down. Improved team velocity by incorporating capacity planning into sprint planning sessions.

TEK Systems/CSG Inc., Detroit, Michigan 08/2011 –07/2014

Client: State of Michigan Unemployment Insurance Agency (UIA)

Senior Business Systems Analyst for the State of Michigan (SOM) Unemployment Insurance Agency (UIA) Modernization Technology Initiative. Responsible for working with the Project Control Office (PCO), multi vendors in managing a $2.5M for the upgrading of the SOM Certification and Claims Processing Application Systems. The first phase of the project included upgrading the agency Legacy Systems to a Linux Platform. The second phase included the integration of a new Genesys Voice Platform integration with a web based service application.

Worked with a cross-functional teams of up to 15 technical consultants.

Managed the sub testing process for the Certification and Claims processing IVR Application Systems.

Completed Status Reports and reported project status to the executive management teams to ensure they had a clear understanding of the project current state.

Analyzed and provided feedback on the business design and technical design documentation to ensure

Estimated the number of test cases needed to run full regression testing, and assisted the QA teams with designing test cases, test case steps and executing those steps.

Attended meetings to discuss issues and troubleshooting those issues.

Facilitated internal solution discussions and analysis with IVR architects, developers and to establish a holistic functional and technical vision on how processes will be executed.

Communicated and collaborated with the business and with the IVR Information Technology staff to clarify business requirements, answer questions and resolve problems throughout a project; provides on-going support.

Supported the development and maintenance of project plans, business requirement documents, standard operating procedures (SOPs), as well as maintain these areas and other project artifacts to reflect current versions.

Better Minds Consulting, Carnegie, PA 15106 11/2010 – 07/2011

Client: PNC Mortgage a Division of PNC Financial, Miamisburg, OH

Senior Business Systems Analyst worked diligently with the Default Operations Divisions and Risk Control Governance team to identify risks within business processes to adhere to the Department of Justice (DOJ) and Office of Comptroller of Concurrency (OCC) Requirements.

Worked with key executives to identify all key risks and key controls in processes, identify gaps in processes in order to meet Basel II Capital Accord and Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) requirements.

Maximize productivity by setting clear expectations and proactively communicating project status, issues and risks to internal stakeholders and top management.

Advised senior management and c-level executives on best practices for OCC compliance.

Conducted a Strengths-Weaknesses-Opportunities-Threats (SWOT) analysis to assess the strengths and weaknesses of the internal and external environments and identified opportunities and threats that may arise in the near future.

Led a cross-functional team of Junior Business Analysts in evaluating current business processes to drive out improvement for future state processes.

Ensured accurate and complete documentation of team processes and procedures and quality internal and external team communications, and supported project management of short and long-term team deliverables.

Conferred with business unit management and staff by scoping business problems and analyzed processes, losses, and risk exposure.

Facilitated consensus meeting in order to validate process flows for the default operations business unit.

Reviewed customer documentation and organized requirements to determine the scope of work (SOW) required.

Identified key problem drivers and reinforced operational procedures with appropriate internal controls.

Assisted with identifying and measuring operation risk and performance for the company.

Conferred with Assist Vice President and management of assigned business units to understand business processes, procedures, information flows, and handoff process.

Analyzed operating conditions and known risks and vulnerabilities in order to assist in the development of operational risk and performance metrics.

ERSA Group, Plymouth, Michigan 08/2007 – 10/2010

Project Manager responsible for the wireless infrastructure project for the State of Michigan Palace of Auburn Hills facility.

Reviewed/Updated and negotiated on the Statement of Work (SOW) contracts.

Independently provide general day-to-day project management support and advice on all assigned projects

Lead and facilitate client meetings and work/track action items to completion.

Monitored project metrics for significant deviations in quality, cost, or scheduling.

Verified implementation readiness based on defined criteria; tracked implementation issues to closure.

Identified technical issues and escalated to the appropriate team.

Assisted with the validation of technical design documentation and infrastructure requirements.

Adhered to Project Management Office policies, procedures, and methodologies.

Coached and mentored individuals on the project teams and provided performance feedback to their senior/executive project leads.

Mitigate risk by identifying, escalating and resolving issues across multiple delivery groups and/or projects.

Prepared monthly project status reports, which included milestones and schedule updates, issues/risk items, and resource planning projections.

Support a wide range of strategy projects (e.g., product management, strategic planning)

Map complex business processes and communicate process solutions to the client

Technical Skills

Project Management Tools

MS Project, MS Visio, MS Excel, and Project Portfolio Management, UML, RUP, Rational Rose, Rational Requisite Pro

Operating Systems

Windows 2000, Windows NT, Windows XP, Windows 7

Business Process Modeling

MS Visio and Action Workflow

Databases

MS Access and SQL Server 2000/2005

Testing Tools

Bugzilla, Quick Test Pro, and Redmine

Reporting Dashboard Tools

RTC and JIRA

Methodologies/Processes/Frameworks

Waterfall, RUP, and Agile

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