KAISER UMER (Zee)

(***) *** - ****

ac66tr@r.postjobfree.com

https://www.linkedin.com/in/00zee-k00/

SUMMARY

Agile Coach and Scrum master with emphasis on Agile transformation & adoption for teams across multiple sites in the US and Internationally.

Passionate about Agile, cross-functional collaboration, group dynamics, and coaching.

Acting as a servant leader to project teams – open-minded, listening, empathizing, influencing without formal authority and thinking beyond day-to-day activities

Sharp, fast learner with intrinsic curiosity

Strong oral and written communications skills that demonstrate a professional demeanor and the ability to interact with others with discretion and tact

Demonstrated ability to develop and use engaging, informative and compelling presentation methodologies

Strong critical thinking and problem-solving skills

Strong conflict management, interpersonal and negotiation skills

Demonstrated ability to influence, motivate and mobilize team members and business partners

Strong collaborative skills, applied successfully within team as well as with other areas

Tracking delivery metrics for the teams to help improve velocity/quality.

Coached leaders and teams through the transformation and provided the necessary training and references to enable the ideal management and team structures.

Wider knowledge in Agile flavors, Scrum benefits and Scrum ceremonies.

Possess good experience in Scrum advanced process such as Release planning, poker estimation, sprint planning, velocity improvement measure, agile/scrum metrics & reports.

Provided input to business-delivered training materials (Training Manuals and Work Instruction documents).

Facilitated Daily Scrum / stand up, Story Point Estimation, Sprint Planning, Backlog refinement, Sprint Review, Sprint Retrospectives and Sprint Kaizen

Proactively helps the team identify and resolve impediments and shields team from interruptions during the Sprint.

Worked with business clients to identify and document Change Requests and communicate to development team.

Agile tools

Microsoft TFS, HP / Microfocus AGM, JIRA, Version One

Other Softwares

MS Project, MS Visio, MS Office Suite, Oracle 11i for Financial Services SQL, MS SQL, MicroStrategy, Data Mining, OLAP, Lotus Notes, Visual Basic, Visio 5.0, HTML, Web Logic Tools, DOORS, Order Management and Fulfillment Analytics, Performance Scorecard, HP ALM, Eclipse, Selenium with Cucumber, Java, Jenkins

Education

Master’s in Business Administration – Stratford University, VA

Majors: Marketing – 2009

GPA 4.0

Bachelors in Computer Science – COMSATS Institute of IT

Graduated 2003

Certifications

Scrum Fundamentals Certified

Six Sigma Yellow Belt

Professional Scrum Master (PSM)

Certified Kanban Coach (IBQMI)

ICAgile: Agile Team Facilitation (ATF)

PROJECTS

Client: Impex Consulting LLC (SES Satellites) July 18 - Present

Location: Manassas - VA

Position: Agile Coach Scrum Master

Contracted as an external agile coach to support and coach team facilitation activities and increase organization’s agile awareness.

Mentored scrum masters at team facilitation skills.

Enabled product owners to accurately define the backlog items.

Created organizations’ agile playbook.

Originated Agile Community of Practice and worked with line / resource / delivery managers for a common agile flavor.

Coached teams on importance of various ceremonies and worked to improve them.

Coached and enabled product Teams. Coached transforming project managers to scrum masters and helped them at different levels of the organization to understand the benefits of working agile.

Introduced backlog grooming strategies.

Conducted and improved on agile training.

Planned, scheduled, monitored, and reported on activities related to the project.

Performed agility assessments on state of agile across teams and programs.

Facilitated Agile Community of Practice Retrospective sessions.

Curiously investigated everything, solved problems analytically, creatively and collaboratively.

Scrum Master for 3 product development teams.

Worked on organizational readiness towards agile.

Client: FEPOC CareFirst BCBS Aug 15 – May 2018

Location: Washington - DC

Position: Sr. Scrum master

Application: NextGen Member 360

The Member 360 project combines related and linked customer information from different sources – enrollment, claims, and other sources - into a consolidated portal view, which enables Customer Service Representatives (CSRs) to:

Facilitate service to members and providers, Track and manage member inquiries and Take actions on behalf of members.

Member 360 also provides a suite of services that will enable systems integration between local plan applications and FEP wide member 360 data.

Served teams of software engineers, Test Engineers and Business Analysts, in multiple Scrum teams, guiding the team on how to use Agile/Scrum practices and values with the goal of getting the most out of self-organization.

Supported and guided the team to remove impediments by engaging the right stakeholders within the organization and partner organizations.

Got the work done by the scrum teams, without assigning, or dictating the work. Facilitates discussion, decision making, and conflict resolution.

Assisted with internal and external communication and improving transparency.

Provided support to scrum teams using a servant leadership style whenever possible and leading by example.

Followed the Agile playbook and processes at the FEPOC to support agile delivery.

Facilitated release planning, sprint planning, daily stand ups, grooming, retrospectives, product demonstrations and other scrum ceremonies.

Supported and educated the Product Owner, with respect to grooming and maintaining the product backlog.

Worked with Product owner and other supporting teams to enable seamless delivery.

Engaged with business stake holders on need basis to educate, learn and provide input to support/improve Agile delivery.

Provided input and implementing Agile process improvement initiatives based on team/external feedback.

Supported culture changes to improve delivery agility.

Provided coaching to team members who are new to Scrum and Agile practices.

Supported Team building and Team development by utilizing the abilities and skills of individuals and fostering a feedback culture.

Worked on any related Project Management deliverables as assigned or needed to support project delivery.

Worked cooperatively with integrated team of FEPOC/ FEPDO/BCBSA Plan staff to successfully address any associated risks and issues.

Supported agile execution on other projects, by helping teams adapt the methodology to their environment, and coaching Scrum Masters in the company.

Identified gaps in process execution, through proactive engagement with multiple stake holders and influence changes to FEPOC Agile process to enable continuous improvement.

Facilitated daily scrum meetings, spring planning, spring review, and spring retrospective in the Program.

Managed Product owner expectations On Artifacts Such as Product Backlog, Spring Backlog, Sprint Burndown, and Release Burndown.

Managed the overall performance and delivery of cross-functional teams within the Delivery and Services Department.

Facilitated sprint planning as a Scrum master for multiple Scrum teams following the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe).

Provided visibility to team impediments/risks and helped eliminate them.

Mentored & coached client organization, project teams in Scrum principles, practices and processes, provided Agile Training such as Agile 101 class, etc.

Introduced an optional innovation day concept to welcome new ideas.

Participated with other teams towards the common goal of CI/CD.

Developed and delivered presentations, Coached executives & various levels of stakeholders to align their expectations for working within an Agile environment.

Identified and removed impediments & any distractions that interfered with the ability of the team to deliver sprint goal. Driven continuous improvement through encouraging the adoption of agile practices, improving agile execution and building skills and capabilities.

Established and maintaining good working relationships with the Product Manager, teams, vendors and Stakeholders

Facilitated weekly walkthroughs with leadership and other team leads for calling out dependencies and discussing roadmap

Escalated Impediments in timely manner and made sure they got resolved else called out risks

Client: Phase One (Now Accenture Federal Services) May 13 – Aug 15

Location: Arlington, VA

Position: Scrum Master

Project” of major and minor projects driven by internal organizational reform, acquisitions and incubation of new ventures as well as being an internal provider of project management capability through deployment of resources based on the best practices frameworks.

Facilitated Agile 101 sessions for the team to make sure team members were on the same page regarding what scrum is and what different ceremonies mean.

Encouraged and helped the Product owner along with the team to break stories into vertical small sliced by facilitating grooming sessions. This overall helped the team to understand and deliver small chunk of work at a faster speed

Coordinated ART Level Sprint Demos and Retros.

Assisted multiple teams to help integration testing and making sure teams called out dependencies and risks.

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

Instructed and modeled core Agile principles of collaboration, prioritization, team accountability and visibility; ensured consistent application of scrum methodologies across the enterprise

Acted as a change agent, fluent in using both Agile and Program Management to resolve conflicts and shift an organization through any resistance to change.

Developed a strategy on how best to structure the program from projects (agile) to releases and coached the program leadership to move towards it.

Defined value streams and aligned program capabilities (based on target operating model) with SAFe Framework.

Stood up multiple Scrum teams, coached the team through various phases of restructuring to align with Agile principles.

Coaching teams, Scrum Masters, Product Owners, Managers and Executives on Agile values and principles to promote continuous improvement in practices and artifacts.

Coaching product owner on identifying and writing user stories, acceptance criteria, guiding on release planning, identifying dependencies, help understand capacity planning.

Mentored team on agile engineering practices such as TDD, ATDD, CI/CD, Refactoring, etc. and promoting DevOps practices.

Client: Cardinal Health Mar 12 - May 13

Location: Dublin - OH

Position: Scrum Master

Scrum master for various ongoing projects. Supported ADR (Auto Deferral Resolution) for various regions across North America, projects consisted of creation and testing of new business rules. Later compiled them as a product for various regions to Opt in and Opt out of these new rules.

Letter automation was a pilot effort to automate multiple letters in a phased manner.

Standardized and normalized lean Release management and customer support process and communication

Introduced best practices through retrospective oversight to improve performance of both development team and support teams.

Suggested techniques like recording demos for globally located support team to familiarize with new functionality, weekly check with development team to be in line with product knowledge and other scrum events

Suggested best practices to improve team harmony and trust like weekly Lunch and Learn sessions in a fun learning environment, outdoor retrospective.

Established and explained scrum ceremony schedule, frequency and purpose and to all teams.

Facilitated daily standup (scrum), effort estimation (planning poker), sprint planning, release planning, sprint retrospective and sprint review (demo) meetings.

Developed Capacity Planning, risk logs, Defect triaging and deferment and milestone deliverable maps.

Resolved team impediments at team and organizational levels.

Employed agile best principles like TDD, Pair programming, Continuous integration to avoid any future technical debt.

Shielded teams from external forces like helpdesk tickets that were not properly analyzed, server and network pitfalls, release management, etc.

Trained Product owners in the importance of being available to the team daily to collaborate and plan for next day.

Employed transparency by making all scrum artifacts and events are well understood by all.

Mentored PMs, Dev Leads, QA Managers, System Engineers and Business Analysts in becoming a cross-functional Scrum team member adhering to the prescribed Agile Scrum process.

Mentored teams on the 5 values of Scrum through retrospectives, agile games and team building events.

Mentored teams through team management, one on one and retrospective activities on how to act as a self-organized, cross functional, ALL-STAR team with winning the game as the only goal in mind.

Fostered team communication by advocating direct face to face communication, avoiding fear of confrontation, uncompromising yet understanding conflicting opinions to come to the best decision as a team.

Instilled the situations where the team needs expert opinion as opposed to team agreement and the hidden perils of the democratic system in areas of less expertise.

Gradually shifted the team’s mind set from command and control and status report driven to compassion and working together with the whole team excellence in mind.

Client: Expedia Group Feb 11 – Mar 12

Location: Bellevue, WA

Title: Process Analyst

Ongoing project with the goal to migrate 80 percent of Expedia’s mission-critical apps from its on-premises data centers to the cloud in the next two to three years by using AWS, allowing travel-booking services across its flagship site Expedia.com and about 200 other travel-booking sites around the world.

Defined Scrum roles and mentored scrum process, meeting rules and other relevant agile methodologies.

Mentored PMs, Developers and Leads in the Agile methodologies and standards for managing.

Coached team to establish regression test automation and implemented unit testing and test-driven development practices.

Conducted scrum of scrums as needed for related scrum teams working on same product backlog.

Coordinated and audited daily scrum, effort estimation (planning poker), sprint planning, release planning, sprint retrospective and sprint review (demo) meetings.

Generated standard reporting templates for sprint burndown, release burndown and team velocity.

Trained team in coding best practices, refactoring, pair programming and mandatory code review for high coding standards as part of performance and quality improvement.

Engaged team in team building activities and agile games to foster agile principles and values.

Conducted sprint backlog refinement (backlog gorming, backlog estimation) meetings 3-4 days prior to each sprint to ready team for next sprint planning meeting.

Managed project budget report, scheduled milestones, project timelines and deliverables using SharePoint and MS project tools.

Developed defect management into sprint planning and adapted estimating defect resolution as part of evolving User Stories.

Established Change control board and change control process to properly monitor, account, triage and analyze the impact of all changes coming from client and team discovery as the product evolved.

Developed Budget forecast, Earned Value graphs and program/Project progress reports w.r.t Quality, Scope and Budget.

Established communication plan, stakeholder management, and vendor management as part of PMO process development.

Conducted biweekly lunch and learn to introduce and emphasize on new process improvements and potential process bottlenecks.

Client: Broadridge Financials Nov 09 – Feb 11

Location: Owings Mills - MD

Position: Process Analyst

Worked for Print on Demand and PDF Manipulation Technology and served around 45 clients as AMF (American funds), MMF (mass mutual), WFC (Wells Fargo), ABI (Alliance Bernstein), TRP (T. Rowe Price), ACY(JP Morgan), GS(Goldman Sachs) and Fidelity etc for their print and mail needs. Broadridge provides services for designing, printing and mailing out client packages like 401k Plans, Investment opportunities, Pension plans etc. The printing facilities are located in Owings Mills MD and Edgewood NY.

Managed Sprint Burndowns with scrum team.

Analyzed and reported risks, developed estimates at completion, removed impediments and produced monthly financial contract deliverables and periodic profit/loss analysis.

Gathered requirements for supervised and unsupervised machine learning.

Assisted in aligning classification and regression as a prediction probability for classes vs providing a value for machine learning.

Facilitated scrum events with scrum team (grooming, sprint planning, daily scrum, sprint review, retrospectives)

Followed V-Model for Requirement gathering, validation and development.

Understanding the transaction process of the application and the business rules involved.

Researched on the process flow of the application by communicating with Subject Matter Experts (SME).

Analyzed the impacts of the proposed process, performed risk analysis and cost benefit analysis and developed process flow charts.

Created business cases and translated business requirements into system requirements.

Created an online document repository, standardized the feel of documentation templates; served as intranet developer, managed all technical documentation projects for the team.

For ITIL, assessed the impact of proposed changes, impact and cause of incidents and problems, planned and designed new or changed services, planned technology refresh and software upgrades, planned release and deployment packages and migrated service assets to different locations and service centers.

Posted several reports in the intranet for the management.

Prepared User Documentation to train users and functionality of necessary reports

Aided management in standardizing Web applications by preparing GUI standards and recommending alternatives for incorporation in phased, iterative manner.

Followed UML based methods using Rational Rose to develop use cases and activity diagrams; assisted developers in creating sequence diagrams and collaboration diagrams

Client: US Bancorp Oct 08 – Nov 09

Location: Minneapolis, MN

Position: Business Process Analyst

Worked on IRIS Upgrades in Harness Bond Admin for web-logic 922 and java 5 and later Sybase and Solaris 10 upgrade. IRIS Bond Admin is a huge application with terabytes of data from over 30 years ago. It deals in incoming data from dealers, clients and other financial institutions. The changes performed required compilation using a new compiler which required me to do a lot of coordination among different groups at different locations and the testing effort had to be planned keeping the new compiler in focus.

Followed agile for application development and its implementation.

Gathered requirements from end users of all the regional offices and business units and prepared Business Requirements Documents (BRD).

Analyzed Business Requirements and create Workflow diagrams.

Estimated new efforts, define business cases, and determine resources required from the business and IT to deliver the services. This also included the GAP analysis between the existing applications and “to be” implemented applications

Meet with end users to gather requirements and understand detailed business processes to ensure that delivered solutions satisfy client requirements effectively and efficiently in the integrated system environment.

Developed functional specifications based on the business requirement specifications document.

Communicated functional specifications for development by programming resource

Followed existing change management procedures and ensure appropriate approvals are obtained for all changes.

Ensured training documentation is up to date and training needs are met for both team members and end users.

Ensured effective data management & reporting for functional area.

Developed use cases and activity diagrams to model processes

Tested the application thoroughly. Manual Tests involved Functional testing and Integration Testing.

Participated in Project Management duties such as prepared weekly status reports for senior management on the progress of the project, delivery schedules and commitments from different sub-groups such as QA, Development, Design and Requirements team.

Used MS Project to assist Project Manager in creating Project Plans.

Analyzed test results and created reports based on software testing.

Client: Wachovia Wells Fargo Aug 07- Sep 08

Location: Charlotte, NC

Position: Business / Quality Analyst

Application Overview: Fixed Income Online Money Market is a User Friendly Global Financial Application used for short-term borrowing and lending and Foreign Exchange. Various obligations dealt with are Pre-Determined Fixed Income Products such as Federal Funds, Commercial Paper, Euro Dollars, Master Notes, Money Market Mutual Funds, Repurchase Agreements and Certificate of Deposits. This application is of keen interest to the CIB Division of Wachovia since the daily transactions through this application average 50, resulting in 15-20 billion increases in productivity per month.

Involved in management as the development was done offshore.

Reviewed Business Requirements with Project Manager and Lead Developer to learn the functionality of the application.

Responsible for content management of the application.

Involved in preparing Test Plan and Test Cases based on business requirements.

Automated tests for each and every module of the application using Rational robot and verify against expected results.

Created Excel Method table that called the proper appropriate Rules tables and passed to them the instances of test data for Rules Testing.

Performed Smoke Testing of the application.

To propose a cost-effective test strategy that will provide comprehensive functional testing of the application and uncover any mission critical deficiencies.

Participated in the project meetings.

Created Weekly Reports to track the number of test cases executed, the type and the results.

Performed the Back-End integration testing to ensure data consistency on front-end by writing and executing SQL statements on the Database

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