MAVIS ADWOA NKANSAH, CSM, ESMC, SFC

740-***-**** ac7so9@r.postjobfree.com

PROFESSIONAL SUMMARY

An innovative IT professional with 5+ years of professional, technical experience, and over 3 years’ experience in the capacity of Scrum Master working with Agile teams to coach, facilitate, and teach Scrum principles and values in order to adhere to organizational adoption of Agile methodology

Worked closely with the Product Owners to successfully breakdown Epics into user stories, prioritize user stories, groom the product backlog, create and document acceptance criteria, estimation, and prioritize product releases

Collaborated with the Scrum Team through facilitating and coaching, with a focus on Agile principles, framework, and practices.

Worked closely with the Scrum Team in facilitating scrum ceremonies such as Daily Scrum Meetings, Sprint Planning Meetings, Sprint Review Meetings, Sprint Retrospective Meetings and Product Backlog Grooming Meetings

Supported and educated the Scrum Team, especially with respect to self-organization, while facilitating and leading meetings to ensure progress on solutions and products, and making sure the scrum team finalize tasks for sprint backlog

Communicated with the Scrum Team during each sprint towards a shippable product release, while working closely with the Product Owner to make sure each User Story in the Sprint Backlog is being attended to

Worked with stakeholders and customers in identifying, understanding and documenting epics, and developing these epics into acceptable user stories which are prioritized based on business values and risks

Experience working with cross-functional development (QA, Developers, Designers, Legal, Marketing) to execute roadmap and bring new functionalities to the product

Built and maintained a strong working relationship with all levels of management, with a proven ability to understand the business environment, strategies and objectives.

A proven capacity to work in an extremely fast paced environment, meet deadlines, and perform at high standards with limited supervision, including an ability to manage project team members located across multiple delivery sites

Excellent work ethics, analytical skills, and outstanding organizational skills for strategic planning, prioritization and execution coupled with excellent communication, written and interpersonal skills describing a committed team player

TECHNICAL SKILLS SUMMARY

SDLC Methodologies:

Agile Scrum, Kanban, Waterfall-Agile Hybrid, Waterfall,

Project Management Tools:

MS Project Professional, MS Project Server

Agile Management Tools:

JIRA (User & Administrator), Rally (User & Administrator), Version one

Modeling Tools:

Rational Requisite Pro, HPALM, UML, MS Visio, Rational Doors,

Databases:

MS SQL Server 2012/2008/2005, MS Access.

BI Reporting Tools:

Tableau, IBM Cognos, SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS), Power BI,

ETL Tools:

SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS), Informatica, Teradata, Hadoop.

QA Testing Tools:

HP-ALM, HP Quality Center, JIRA, Load Runner, Mercury QC.

Documentation Tools:

MS Office Suite, SharePoint, OneNote, Microsoft Visio, DocSpace

Data Warehousing:

Data Marts, OLTP, OLAP, Query/Reporting, Multidimensional Analysis Web

Technologies:

Restful, XML

Ajax, HTML, Sandbox, CSS, Angular, JavaScript, jQuery, SOAP, Python

WORK EXPERIENCE

TD Bank New York, NY

Scrum Master December 2015-August 2018

Participated in Business Requirement Definition (BRD) workshops along with clients and Subject Matter Experts.

Facilitated meetings with users and stakeholders to identify problems, resolve issues and improve the process to ensure the system meets all the goals of the project

Assisted the Product Owner on process related work for grooming and prioritizing features and user stories in JIRA

Worked closely with Product Owner in backlog refinement and continuous delivery of features, goals and milestones

Assisted Product Owner to create user story, groom user story, prioritize user story, and schedule release plan

Facilitated the scrum ceremonies; Daily Stand Up, Backlog Grooming, Sprint Planning Meetings, Sprint Review Meetings, Sprint Retrospective Meetings

Worked within collaborated environment, and assisted in calculating velocity and capacity of the team for each sprint

Managed and maintained issue tracking systems and coordinated release activities

Coached, taught, educated and reinforced scrum methodology and agile framework to team members

Periodically assessed the Scrum Team maturity (during retro) and organization, and coached team to higher levels of maturity

Removed obstacles and manage risks to enable team efficiency and effectiveness.

Provided guide and support towards the project completion by liaising with clients and cross-functional team to complete the user stories as listed in the sprint backlogs

Improved team transparency & collaboration and overall maturity by creating new ways to handle RETROs, and tracked impediments and defects in JIRA and escalated when needed.

Walmart Newyork, NY

Scrum Master October 2014-November 2015

Ensured development teams are constantly moving towards continuous delivery, maintaining quality in every release, and improving team velocity through leading Agile practices and retrospectives with the team

Worked with the Scrum Team and the Product Owner to negotiate the minimum viable product for delivery

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

Removed impediments by keeping track of sprints and worked with collocated and distributed teams to set goals and impact measurements that align with department and companywide strategy throughout the cycle

Teach Agile practices and assist the team mature and improve the execution of multiple business plans and workstreams

Fostered strong team values, created an environment where teams were self-organized and continued to explore and implement ways to improve

Ensured delivery team development and continued successful performance of projects with geographically distributed teams, and third-party vendors (for example, software vendors, hardware vendors, photo vendors, content providers)

Promotes and supports company policies, procedures, mission, values, and standards of ethics and integrity

Worked in the SAFe Model – Scrum of Scrum Calls, Identified and communicated dependencies & Risks

Facilitated Release Planning and outlined Sprint Cadence with all stakeholders

Eco Bank Accra, Ghana

Senior Business Analyst/Scrum Master August 2013- July 2014

Reviewed process and ensured all operation departmental controls, reviews, verification and proofs are working as per OPM requirements

Monitored and ensured all audit and internal control exceptions in respect of operation functions are resolved within the required timeline

Responsible for conducting all scrum ceremonies, like daily scrum, release planning, sprint planning, sprint reviews and retrospectives including product and sprint backlog grooming

Facilitated transparency on Product and Sprint Backlogs by improving Agile tool use

(JIRA Agile & Confluence) leading teams to self-organization

Delivered Agile/Scrum focused training for teams to get everyone on the same page with standard agile practices and principles.

Ensured operations regulatory and compliance reporting are completed on target date and ensured regulatory sanctions due to operational exceptions do not reoccur

Organized, facilitated & improved backlog grooming, sprint planning, daily stand up meetings, reviews, retrospectives, sprint & release planning & other Scrum-related ceremonies by adhering to the ‘inspect & adapt’ Agile principle

Ensured proof of accounts are prepared and reviewed for accuracy.

Identified and escalated systems and process inefficiencies typically not covered within documentation, and wherever possible assisted in finding and implementing effective solutions

Facilitated issue resolutions and clearing impediments that affect team velocity to ensure consistent quality & timelines of output

Eco Bank Accra, Ghana

Junior Business Analyst June 2012-July 2013

Conduct and coordinate financial, product, and market related research to support strategic and business planning within internal control department of client group

Evaluate and interrelate research data and present projections for incorporation into strategic decision-making

Coordinate the development of primary and secondary market research studies in support of strategic planning and specific marketing initiatives, as required and presents findings of studies

Perform daily, weekly and monthly reviews and analyses of current processes using operational metrics and reports

Monitor project progress by tracking activity; resolving problems, and recommending actions

Maintain user confidence and protect operations by keeping information confidential

CERTIFICATION

Certified Scrum Master (CSM)

Expert Scrum Master Certified (ESMC)

Scrum Fundamentals Certified (SFC)

EDUCATION

Ohio University, Ohio, US

Master’s in International Development Studies, 2017

African University College of Communications, Accra, Ghana

Bachelor of Technology; Strategic Communication, 2012

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