Mallika Neelala

Professional Summary:

Over * years of IT experience, 2 years of Agile scrum master experience and 2+ years of extensive experience in Release Management and Project Coordination, Support and Maintenance on various platforms. Proven proficiency in negotiations, problem solving, technology selection, change management and consulting, continuously creating value and driving organizational efficiency.

Key member of Agile Transformation team. Enhanced processes and standards to align with Agile methodology and coached teams on the same.

Distinct combination of information technolog, project management and business management skills including Certified Scrum Master.

Skilled in business strategy, program/project management and development across geographically distributed teams.

Experience of working as part of a Scrum team.

Coach and train management and teams on agile process (scrum, kanban etc)

Managed full SDLC, from iteration, to discovery, to execution, then to deployment.

Process leader, mold teams to seek ways to improve backlog management, sprint reviews, quality assurance and in other areas.

Facilitated Daily Scrum Standup, Product Backlog, Sprint Planning, Sprint Review and Sprint Retrospective meetings.

Expert in engaging various techniques like T-shirt sizing and Planning Poker in estimating the User-stories.

Worked closely with product managers, product owners, RTE’s, and architects to develop high performing agile teams.

Communicated the progress to senior management through Burndown Charts. Monitored quality through metrics and mentored teams to understand and practice the core Scrum Principles, Roles and Values.

Proficient with JIRA, Confluence Agile/Scrum tools. Administered JIRA instance by managing 30+ boards.

Coached team members on the agile principles and methodologies.

Experience with widely successful Agile techniques: User Stories, ATDD, TDD, Continuous Integration, Continuous Testing, Pairing, Automated Testing, Agile Games

Tracked & Escalated impediments to address critical bottlenecks.

Strong analytical, organizational and documentation skills with excellent attention to detail.

Strong leadership, interpersonal, relationship-building, conflict resolution and negotiation skills

Technical Skills:

Agile Methodologies

Scrum, Kanban, Scrumban

Scrum Tools

JIRA, Confluence

PM Tools

MS Project, MS Visio

Databases

SQL Server

Operating Systems

Windows 7/10

Utilities

MS Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Intuit Quickbooks, Fax2Mail

Experience:

Altice USA, Plano, TX Sep’ 16 – Jul’ 18

Scrum Master

Responsibilities:

Led multiple cross-functional project teams of various sizes while managing system integration projects for telecom company. Defined and streamlined the processes for both offshore and onshore teams to ensure that the solution quality met client expectations.

Serving as a liaison between stakeholders and users.

Performing user acceptance testing.

Leading on-going reviews of business process and developing optimization strategies.

Budgeting and time schedule for the project.

Managed all phrases of full life cycle implementation projects, including: initiation, planning, design, testing, user acceptance and deployment.

Manage and assist Scrum team of 7 to 9 members with making appropriate commitments through story selection, sizing and task definition; participate proactively in Scrum of Scrums to develop and maintain team standards, tools and best practices

Developed and detailed project plans and estimated based on identified risks and options.

Create User stories, Wireframes and Functional Design deliverables and submitted in sprints

Create EPICs, user stories and acceptance criteria in JIRA and groom them with testers and development

Managed changes and project scope, identified potential crises, and devised contingency plan.

Initiated escalation within the organization to resolve project issues and mitigate risk.

Conduct user interviews and A/B tests to help identify and understand different process for each user while simultaneously identifying their pain points of end user.

Tracked metrics and communicated project progress to project steering committee.

Empower the team to make system and process improvements captured in sprint retrospective meetings

Removing impediments and coaching the team to remove them; coaching the team in modern development practices

Driving agile best practices such as time-boxing, continuous integration, continuous improvement, pair programming, product visioning, acceptance test driven development (ATDD) and test-driven development (TDD).

Update Agile tracking system (JIRA) to provide transparency on product/sprint backlog and track team progress

Conducted Release planning, sprint planning, backlog grooming and retrospective meetings. Maintained task board and produced daily burndown charts.

Improving the velocity and performance of each consecutive sprint, post sprint feedback and analysis from the retrospective meetings.

Resolve impediments for the team by raising awareness appropriately, acting, building effective relationships with others, and bringing cross functional teams together for process improvement.

Improved team velocity by incorporating capacity planning into sprint planning sessions.

Worked with customers and product manager to prioritize and validate requirements.

Monitored development progress throughout each sprint to ensure project was within scope and budget.

Managed the insights and opinions of multiple stakeholders and helped to ensure all stakeholders agreed with the current scope and roadmap of the product.

Motivated staff in terms of goals and objectives.

Lead and manage onshore and offshore resources.

Built and maintained excellent client partner relationships.

LPL Financial, Charlotte, NC Mar’ 15 – Jul’ 16

Release Coordinator/ BA

Responsibilities:

Create and drive product development schedules including tracking issues, managing risks, resolving problems and communicating status.

Managing projects, development project plans and monitoring performance.

Managed expectations by establishing, maintaining and communicating a release schedule.

Define and documented the release recommendation for each release and/or change to production. Includes release scope, schedule, deliverables, and roll back plan. Review release recommendation with key stakeholders.

Responding to technical queries relating to publishing process.

Responsible for the adherence to standards of testing and documentation while advancing development changes through the SDLC process.

Documented and held project plans and meetings in Microsoft Office Suite including Visio, Excel, Word, PowerPoint, and Mind Maps.

Build production implementation plan for each release and run the monthly release meetings as well as the implementation planning meeting.

Archiving software versions and transferring them to other departments for release and distribution.

Monitored and managed program/project baseline to ensure activities are occurring as planned – scope, budget and schedule and manage variances.

Oversee release decisions and processes in terms of the big picture/cross-departmental impacts.

Proactively identify risks and issues for release activities – leading release team to develop risk management and issues management plans.

Orchestrated test schedules for process areas, supervision retesting, and closing defects.

Attend change management such as CABs and deployment planning meetings to collect data and information pertaining to the release.

Coordinate and schedule key change to production activities. This includes the tracking of all elements with team leads as the project moves through testing regions into production. Accommodate a flexible schedule as most releases occur outside of regular business hours.

Follow up on Release artifacts including implementation and rollback plan.

Verify capture of customer acceptance/signoff on deliverables.

Cognizant Technology Solutions, Hyderabad, India Jul’ 13 – Nov’ 14

Project Coordinator for Client UBS Hedge Funds department.

Responsibilities:

Worked closely with the development team to compile project data using various programs for inclusion in reports or presentation materials.

Write and edit programs and system documentation, user manuals, and training materials required to help people use and operate a system.

Assessed user requirements, procedures, and problems to create or improve a system.

Break projects into doable actions and set timeframes

Review SDLC required documents, preparing documentation for checkpoints and SDLC compliance.

Helped to drive the creation of risk-based assessment documents.

Efficiently managed Issues/Risk resolution, follow ups and escalation.

Direct and Manage the Test Cases, Test Plans prepared by the QA team based on Business Line Functional Requirements. Come up with automation and smoke testing methods for the product to improve.

Performed enterprise wide horizontal integration planning and interfaces to other functional systems, including the development of conceptual systems requirements; systems integration requirements; systems phasing plan; business application consultation; problem tracking/management, preparation and delivery of presentations.

Managed program risk through the development and execution of risk management plan.

Coordinated activities between development team, customer, and outside parties.

Ensured standards and requirements are met through conducting quality assurance tests.

Administration support for the teams.

Certification:

Certified Scrum Master (CSM) Scrum Alliance

Education:

Masters in Information Systems, Stratford University, Falls Church, VA

Bachelors of Business Management, Manipal University, India

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