Project Manager Scrum Master

ASHRAF BADAR

**** ******** **, *********, ******* L1X 0C9

Phone: 647-***-****, *********@*****.***

PROFILE

Certified Scrum Master with close to 6 years of Agile Scrum experience.

Publisher of several highly appreciated blogs on Agile Scrum methodology within organization.

Experienced in running multiple teams and successfully delivering projects in Agile Scrum model.

Empathetic project manager successful in balancing client expectations and team capabilities resulting in high quality, timely deliveries with pleased customers and satisfied, happy team members.

Fourteen+ years of software design and development experience in embedded software. Best known for quick ramp up, rock solid design and solving some really tricky issues. Successful in project team leadership, analysis, troubleshooting and mentoring new team members.

Excellent written, oral and interpersonal communication skills.

Master’s Degree (M.Tech) in Electronic Engineering.

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

Project Manager, Scrum Master 2014-2015

KsiberSafe

Lifomation

Worked as a Technical Project Manager, Scrum Master to help create the Lifomation product ( www.lifomation.com ) at this startup company. This is a personal information management solution targeted to manage information for individuals and families.

Scrum Master

oWorked with Product Owner on backlog grooming and sprint planning. Held sprint planning, daily standups, and sprint end retrospectives for the team.

oAdhering rigorously to Scrum, even in a startup environment ensured that product change could be handled very well and the product could evolve in response to market feedback.

Project Manager

oSuccessfully managed project to release a demo version of product as per schedule in 3 months and in the allocated budget.

oManaged project plan, human resources and risk to effectively slash release delivery time by 20% thus lowering cost by about 25%.

Scrum Master, Senior Project Manager 2009-2014

Persistent Systems

SMART Technologies

Worked as Scrum Master and Project Manager for SMART a Calgary, Alberta based company. Managed a team of up to 25 members with over five million dollar revenue over the four years.

Scrum Master and Project Manager for two 10 person teams on the Notebook project-

oHelped on-shore Product Owner/project managers with backlog grooming, sprint planning.

oHeld daily standups, sprint planning and retrospectives for both the off-shore teams.

oSuccessfully got the teams to implement various process and quality improvements identified as part of retrospectives.

oGot the customer to agree to a planned and spaced out code commit schedule throughout the sprint to achieve a near 100% user story completion rate.

oCreated a bug-to-user-story conversion template which was highly appreciated and enthusiastically adopted by the customer.

Managed a 4 person team over 3 months to create a lightweight version of product to enable free viewing on Notebook files on any PC or Mac. Product delivered on schedule.

Managed a 6 person team to deliver two Response Connectors allowing students to take tests using electronic clickers. The results of tests can be directly uploaded to the appropriate web-site allowing for easy marking and grading of students and reduced paperwork for teachers. Both connectors were delivered on time and with high quality. Customer satisfaction for this project was 4.9 on a 5 point scale, among the highest in the company.

Customer site visit to Calgary, Canada in 2012 for team connect and visibility with upper management at SMART.

Project and Account Management

Worked as Senior Project Manager, Account Manager and Scrum Master for 4 teams. Have managed different sized teams with total reporting headcount of around 50 at times. Established a reputation of successfully handling and delivering on-time the most demanding projects in the company.

Handled 4 projects – EOD (Expense On Demand), LO-Symantec, Ascentive and Message Management besides being involved in Mobility Practice and Innovation Initiative at the center.

For EOD (a very demanding UK based client), in addition to project and account management, handled the Scrum Master role. All planned deliveries were completed a month before schedule. Oversaw a smooth transition to the client’s new development partner.

Responsible for team delivery and managing and matching client expectations with respect to schedule and quality.

Team handling to ensure team members are motivated and are performing their jobs optimally. Handling team members’ career aspirations, promotions.

Managing resourcing to ensure that team members with the right skill set are matched to the job-profile and team size is proper to handle the volume of work.

Ensuring teams adhere to corporate quality and process requirements.

Monthly invoicing to clients for services performed and following up with clients to ensure monies are received.

As part of COO Club Initiative, worked with other senior managers to define a process for effective requirements management in Agile Scrum (offshore model) that is being implemented corporate wide.

Mobility Practice at Persistent Center

Established a very successful Mobility Practice at the center.

Trained over 25 team members in Mobility platforms – both Android and iOS.

Under our guidance the team ideated and implemented eight apps – one of which (Where’s the Bug) is currently on the Apple Appstore (https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/wheres-the-bug/id785278237?mt=8 ), another one of which was a winning entry corporate wide (Easy Archiver), and a third (Emergency App) spawned several initiatives and apps across the company like Women’s and Workplace Safety (Travel Safety).

First point of contact across Persistent Centre for Mobility related projects, staffing and resourcing.

Reviewing and authoring mobility proposals to clients resulting in several client wins.

Mobility projects –

oBeckman Coulter – Android App- A four person, three month app development project delivered on-time and with high quality and low defects. A fixed bid project run in Agile model with high customer collaboration and periodic demos. Client ‘extremely pleased’ with delivery.

oJohn Deere- Claims management solution including Android App- Successfully started a 10 member team including a 3 member Mobility group on the project. The complete project is divided into 3 phases. Currently 2 phases have been successfully delivered.

oOther mobile apps like YogaPoint and Persistent internal apps like Travel Approval App, PI and PECA delivered on time.

Total revenue earned for the company in excess of $400K.

Senior Software Engineer 1997-2008

NORTEL, Ottawa

Versatile Service Engine (VSE) Team - 3 years

Worked as part of a select team on Nortel’s Next Generation SoftSwitch Platform that brings together Wireless and Wireline networks on a single converged core solution.

Accomplished the introduction of a new card based on Intel’s i686 architecture into the VSE shelf successfully, on time, with 0 defects resulting in no maintenance costs downstream.

Within weeks of joining the team, designed a Command Handler, a complex functionality that enables multiple applications to simultaneously run target code in different processes corresponding to queues. Implemented it in C/C++ with Nortel Carrier Grade Linux as the operating system.

oDespite being a significant piece in the VSE Maintenance software framework it had no major defects, resulting in little maintenance.

oEarned several ‘best in class’ reviews for reliable and expandable design.

Successfully implemented system maintenance software patching. Slashed downtime by 75% for software upgrades, earning kudos from program manager.

SPECTRUM Based GSM, MG4K and TDM Team (1999-2005)

Led a 3 member team in simplifying LAPD maintenance for the product. Removed 65000 lines of redundant, real time expensive code, enhancing system performance. Significant recognition for rock solid design.

Part of high profile 2 member team for France customer-visit in July 2003 to resolve high priority release gating issues. Initiative led to resolution of a problem that had plagued the system for 3 years (SS7 links dropping on hardware switchover).

Led a two person team to implement the Sparing Manager for the sub-rate switching blade (SPECTRUM GSM). Kudos from management for effective team leadership and achieving timely, reliable design in the first try for an important Ottawa GSM design team deliverable.

Successfully resolved an STM Carrier issue on a live customer site in London, UK., and resolved two other high visibility customer gating business critical issues all under tremendous time pressure.

Seeded a successful alternative design in 3 days to an un-patchable piece of code for Succession Solution that was gating product delivery into Verizon for over 6 months.

‘Quality Star’ award for significantly enhancing quality of the Sparing Manager software for access blades by resolving day-one issues and adding audits for self-correction of hardware activity.

Software code owner and architect for Sparing Manager, RM Maintenance, OC3 and STM Carrier Maintenance.

DMS300 and DMSGSP Team (1997-1999)

Ported over 1000 lines of low level C5 protocol primitives to the DMS GSP product single handedly without major issues and under time constraints.

Default Calling Line Identity for TUP and CDR 15 Software Patch Delivery for British Telecom: Award of Merit at Director level for these two features for reliable, timely design and pleased customers.

As owner of Fast Feature Process, enhanced it to achieve 20% time reduction in feature delivery outside of the normal release.

Network Control Systems Analyst at VERIZON (formerly NYNEX) 1996-1997

Computer Generated Solutions INC. New York

Line Provisioning and ASAVP Support Group

Published a DMS100 Switch method within 2 weeks of joining the team- a benchmark for hiring new candidates into the team. Supported several service order flow-through systems.

System Analyst 1994-1996

Tata Consultancy Services

BNR/NORTEL Support Group

Developed a comprehensive SS7 protocol training package for new recruits.

Recognized by Nortel for high quality, timely delivery for enhancing an SS7 tool.

Team leader- CCS7 Test Case Automation- commended for being most productive and delivering high quality test cases to Nortel.

Project Trainee for Master’s Thesis 1993-1994

The National Aerospace Laboratories, Bangalore

Thesis titled- "Four Dimensional Flight Path Reconstruction of an Aircraft using Data from the Digital Flight Data Recorder (DFDR)".

Teaching Experience 1989-1992

Two years in undergraduate program.

One year in telecommunications diploma program.

AWARDS

You Made a Difference Award (Persistent Systems)

Awarded to my team for achieving a hard customer deadline (2011)

Quality Star (Nortel) For substantially improving the quality of the SPECTRUM product (2001)

PRIDE Award (Nortel) For work exceeding expectations (2000)

Award of Merit (Nortel) For exemplary work in customer billing enhancements for British Telecom (1998)

Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering (all India)

Earning Master’s Degree on full scholarship (1992).

PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT

Certified Scrum Master

ISO9000 for Project Leaders

ISO9000 Internal Auditor Training.

Written Communication and Effective Presentation.

Interpersonal Effectiveness and Listening.

Objective Setting.

Decision Making Fundamentals.

TECHNICAL SKILLS

Project management Tools Target Process, Bugzilla, Fogbugz

Operating Systems Linux, UNIX, VxWorks, ObjecTIME, SOS, Nortel Carrier Grade Linux(NCGL), Windows

Languages and Debuggers C, C++, PROTEL, gdb, Guru, Mentor

Application Areas Real-time and embedded software, device drivers, Standard Template Library, shell scripting, Clearcase, PLS

Telecom Protocols SS7, TCP/IP, ISDN, R2 and C5 protocols, ISUP (e.g Q767, Q764)

Hardware VSE shelf (ATCA COTS based hardware), SPECTRUM, DMS100/300 switch, IRIS Graphics Workstation

Standards COTS and Open Source Development, SAF, ATCA (PICMG3.x)

EDUCATION

Master of Technology - Electronics (Nagpur University, India) 1994

Bachelor of Engineering - Electronics (Nagpur University, India) 1989

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