Scrum Master Team Lead

Location:

Charlotte, NC

Salary:

125000

Posted:

December 11, 2023

Contact this candidate

Resume:

Name: Bhaskar Guntaka

Phone: +1-470-***-****

Email: ad1vc3@r.postjobfree.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bhaskar-guntaka-21b50b26a

Professional Summary:

14+ Years of experience in Project & Release Management and DevOps. Successfully played Release Lead role–Team Size-(13-125). Team Lead for Wireless project Portfolio.

Responsible for implementing and managing release processes for code through development, test, and production environments.

Prepare/Share Plan the release windows and cycles across a portfolio. Lead and co-ordinate the Go-Live activities including the execution of the deployment Plans and checklists.

Manage/Coordinate work between different teams at different locations. Conduct Release Readiness reviews, Milestone Reviews, and Business Go/No-Go reviews

Coordinate with Development and QA to resolve to build questions and problems. Maintaining documentation on all Release processes and procedures. Provide support for CM processes and tools.

Certifications:

Scrum Master Certified

Agile with Atlassian JIRA Certified

Certified in Plutora Technical Training Release (PTR-101)

Technical Skills:

ITSM Service Transitions and Transformation- National Health Service, Finance (Banking), telecom Service Delivery Management, IT Operations Management (Incident and Problem Management), Project & Release/Change Management and Vendor Management

Project implementation, Release management including tracking and evaluating schedules, managing change control, coordinating the activities of all organizations involved in the implementation, issuing project reports, and implementing project controls.

Working with the core ITIL disciplines and ITIL Procedures. Experience in coordinating with Internal and External Business Partners and Vendors.

Experience in Managing multiple projects and efforts. Conducted one-on-one interviews and group discussions.

Conflict Management resolution skills. Excellent skills in leading, coaching, and mentoring teams to instil a service culture.

ITSM & Other Tools: Service Now, BMC Remedy (8.1), Rally, SharePoint, Jira, slack, puppet, Teams, and Lotus Notes

MS Office Suite: PowerPoint, Word, Excel, Access, Visio, Projects

Application software’s: Linux, windows, GIT, Jenkins, AWS, Azure, DevOps, Java. Salesforce

Programming Skills: SQL, HTML,

Documentation: Functional Spec Documents, Process flows, Flowcharts, Test Cases, SOPs (Standard Operating Procedures)

Core Skills:

AGILE methodologies Waterfall m

ethodologies Change Management Project Management Release

management SDLC ITIL methodology Deployment process improvement Strong problem solving

troubleshooting skills Prioritizing workload Security Improvement Automation Release calendar

Implementation plans Version Control Production Support Change Control Board CI CD On-call support ServiceNow Change Control Board Configuration Management Scheduling releases DevOps Salesforce

Professional Experiences:

TIAA Financial Services- Charlotte-USA

Role: Sr Release & Change Manager (Immediate Annuity Project) Sep-2023-Till date

Responsibilities:

Responsible for owning the Release Management process and methodology acting as the gatekeeper to the live production environment, while ensuring a smooth delivery of digital releases.

Lead a team of 21 members. Experience in Developing and implementing the process for Digital Departments.

Worked with different areas to build the necessary tools to execute the processes. Professional approach in Requirement gathering and Requirement Analysis. Functional expertise in driving change and delivering high quality results.

Demonstrable experience operating in a complex, federated organization with a geographically dispersed team.

Worked with 401(k) plan project, looking after the Batch execution of different environments and processors to make sure they are running properly and collect the logs.

Making sure the files are generated and then sent to corresponding teams for validation and processing. Monitoring and measuring performance at a project level. Drafting and submitting budget proposals. Error estimation, tracking and keep the CMDB updated. Conducted CAB meetings to discuss release scope and/or roadblocks.

while detailing code deployments, data refreshes, code freezes, and patch windows. Monitor quality of releases and interim development, triage, and assign issues. Evaluate release processes and identify areas for efficiency improvements and automation for successful on-time delivery.

Liaise with DevOps to ensure the Env's are ready for code deployment and pipelines are updated for the new releases. Looked after meta data changes from Dev sandboxes to QA, UAT and production following SCRUM agile via Jira, confluence & kanban. Engage effectively with the development team. Understand technical challenges, provide insights, and propose solutions to enhance the release process.

Open bridge/conference calls to facilitate deployments, acting as the owner of the change as it transitions into a live environment, enforcing the implementation plan and steps agreed upon by stakeholders. This may also include facilitating the decision to rollback if deemed necessary.

Identify process gaps and work with necessary teams to establish, build, and implement standard processes and procedures to drive operational efficiencies and stability (certificate installations, monthly patching, communications, ticket queues, etc.)

Monitoring and measuring performance at a project level. Drafting and submitting budget proposals. Error estimation, tracking and keep the CMDB updated. Conducted CAB meetings to discuss release scope and/or roadblocks.

Vendor-Prominds

Client-Verizon Global- UK/India Aug 2019 -Aug 2023

Role: Project & Sr Release Manager (wireless)

Responsibilities:

Business requirements gathering and analyzing. Experience in User Experience for Customer facing websites.

Project planning, including preparing statement of work, developing project objectives, developing work breakdown structures, developing schedules, identifying quality acceptance procedures, and documenting a project plan.

Project implementation, including tracking and evaluating schedules, managing change control, coordinating the activities of all organizations involved in the implementation, issuing project reports, and implementing project controls. Manage changes to the ART PI plan and Migration of applications.

Drive, plan, provide status and deliver Infrastructure Release work streams in support of mid to large scale projects requiring direct management and coordination including data center migrations/modernizations, firmware upgrades, storage additions, firewall upgrades and migrations, etc. as they transition into the Production Environment.

Lead the team of 11 to 125 members. Experience in Developing and implementing the process for Digital Departments.

Demonstrable experience operating in a complex, federated organization with a geographically dispersed team.

Experience with User Interface Designs Specs and Style guides to maintain the enterprise standards. Experience in coordinating with Internal and External Business Partners and Vendors while assisting migration of applications.

Experience in Managing multiple projects and efforts. Conducted one-on-one interviews and group discussions. Setting expectations to scripter for test cases automation. Ability to work very well in Agile Projects.

Experience in Defect Analysis and Defect Management. Identifying Risks, Dependencies, mitigations, and Contingencies. Review and approve IT change requests for routinely scheduled IT Hosting maintenance windows.

Evaluate current ITSM processes and recommend new procedures for Change Management based on ITIL framework.

Collaborate with senior management on identifying organization metrics and KPIs for the IT organization.

Provide weekly, monthly, and quarterly metrics and KPIs for IT organization along with analysis and recommendations.

Provide monthly compliance auditing confirmation. Introduce quality controls for change management.

Audit IT Change Management documents to ensure procedures meet compliance requirements. Design next generation change request process workflow and change form to improve reporting and governance controls.

Experience at developing risk management and contingency planning for production changes

Successful track record of applying operational readiness techniques to complex feature implementations

Successful track record of partnership across organizations to build trust and achieve shared goals.

Good communications and presentation skills. Able to communicate sophisticated and technical issues effectively and concisely to leadership. High professional standards and expectations for self and others.

Professional stature and gravitas to collaborate with and influence team members with credibility and confidence.

Promoting positive team morale ensuring harmonious working relationships with key partners. Ensuring that all elements of a project are executed accurately and within budget.

Escalating issues when necessary, finding out what the client wants to achieve. Accurately estimating and meeting deadlines. Identifying risks and roadblocks that may hinder a project.

Establishing milestones, anticipating issues, and monitoring adherence to project scope, schedules, and requirements.

Responsible for the overall quality of delivered software. Mentoring members of the project team. Agreeing the timescales, costs and resources needed. Trouble-shooting software and hardware issues.

Experience of ITIL/ITSM and DevOps Release Management principles. Provide key release management expertise on agreeing and improving approaches (Electric flow Automation). Review service design packages for new and enhanced services and key involvement in the service transition activities. knowledge of Software Configuration Management (SCM), Version Control Systems (VCS) and Agile project Management principles

Experience with Atlassian tool set - JIRA, Confluence, etc. Experience managing Cloud (AWS, Azure) Application releases. Experience in managing AWS code deploys to automate deployment in any instance. Good knowledge of Electric flow Release Automation.

Familiar with Service Ownership and DevOps best practices with Release automation and Circle CI tool. Solid understanding of CI/CD concepts (DevOps). Knowledge in both on-premises and cloud-based CI/CD environments, alongside a comprehensive understanding of SAFe Agile principles.

Knowledge/Hands on with Jenkins. Worked with SAFe agile and integrating with continuous integration (via Jira)

Understand well DevOps culture & CI/CD workflow using Jenkins with Git & GitHub version controls. Utilized terraforms to verify state is consistent.

Demonstrable ability to effectively communicate and coordinate between multiple teams including Infrastructure, Support, Development, QA, SMEs, Architects, and Business Stakeholders

Liaise with DevOps, Dev and Tech Leads to ensure the release is built, validated and documented in the release notes. Liaise with the SIT manager to handover the release for testing after successful deployment.

Liaise with the localization teams to handover the Core release to them after successful SIT testing.

Facilitate Env access for the Dev Leads and SIT Test teams. Setup and lead troubleshooting sessions for environment, deployment or integration related issues, record actions and follow up with owners to ensure timely resolution.

Drive a culture of transparent, repeatable, predictable development processes. Develop tools and document processes to improve software engineering productivity. Coordinate launch feature reviews and tracking across multiple teams.

Exercise technical judgment in working with large, cross-functional teams, and communicate schedules, priorities, and status to all levels in the company.

Assist with formulation and definition of solution scope and objectives while working with a team of developers and analysts on functional requirements and specifications.

Independently perform and assist other team members in providing ongoing system maintenance, research, problem resolution, and on-call support tasks for existing systems. Implemented Lean Agile frameworks, Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe™) and Agile metrics.

Maintain Release Readiness reviews, Milestone Reviews, and Business Go/No-Go reviews.

Communicate and collaborate with team members, working both independently and in small groups with other developers. Support the implementation of systems into production. Research emerging technologies to determine impact on existing services and identify Improvement opportunities.

Engaging with other project managers and customer stakeholders using technical expertise, develops stakeholder relationships, and escalates issues and ambiguous situations as needed. Knowledge of IaC principles.

Adheres to project compliance standards (e.g., confidentiality, privacy) and requirements of the contract Initiation. Support internal and external ensuring compliance with HIPAA regulations and requirements and adherence with requirements. Drive Cross team collaboration in the ART and resolve impediments and other issues.

Drive project initiation for projects of low complexity (e.g., standard offerings, single domain) and/or medium complexity (e.g., multiple offerings, multiple domains) with support from senior colleagues by driving commitment of delivery resources, assigning resources, and creating work breakdown structures (WBSs) with delivery team.

Contracting process by socializing the need for partner resourcing and assimilating partner resources to the project (e.g., filling out forms in line with contract, liaising with partner resource managers, collecting technical requirements for resources).

Establish clear expectations and accountabilities (e.g., reconfirm scope, Responsible-Accountable-Consulted-Informed matrix) with all project team members (e.g., consultants) and stakeholders for teams of low complexity through participation in internal and external kick-off meetings (e.g., sales to delivery handoff, formal kick-off meetings). Interacts with default stakeholders (e.g., customer sponsor, project team members) and engages subject matter experts in holistic planning activities including team validation.

Overseeing core project metrics projects of standard complexity to ensure adherence to key performance indicators (KPIs).

Monitoring and tracking risks and issues within projects of standard complexity, leveraging technical knowledge to identify and evaluate risks, perform qualitative analyses (e.g., probability, impact, urgency), record and track mitigation plans using available tools to input and update risk, and work with cross-functional groups to mitigate identified risks. Escalates risk scenarios through senior colleagues and customers as needed.

Maintaining quality deliverable (e.g., documents) for projects of standard complexity by identifying requirements, developing plans, tracking outputs. Follows standard quality management processes and accommodates some customer acceptance requirements.

Following established change processes and confirms change with customer before formally initiating the process.

National Health Service. London-UK May 2013 – Jul-2019

Role: Project & Release Manager

Responsibilities:

Execute the BBC’s ITIL based Change and Release Management processes ensuring that there is no disruption or degradation of service during the lifecycle of the change. (SDLC)

Work with Customer to plan and schedule tactical business and technology events, such as software patching, maintenance, or Minor Releases that impact the Managed Cloud Services, in a manner calculated to minimize disruption to Customer's business.

Monitor multiple projects and priorities simultaneously in a fast-paced environment. Provide overall status and communications to the APM Program lead and the APM Delivery lead, leadership and collaborate with the other Prime workstreams to stay aligned.

Coordinate internal and external resources, ensuring projects remain within scope, schedule, and defined budgets.

Own infrastructure releases as the effort transitions into the Production Environment, streamlining user experience and minimizing or mitigating potential downtime or service disruptions.

Analyze project progress and, when necessary, adapt scope, timelines, and costs to achieve maximum benefit. Responsible for organizing and driving SAFe events like ART synch up, Demos, Workshops, Backlog

Assign roles and tasks to assigned team members based on their skills. Coordinate & drive all other scrum masters in the ART towards the goals set collectively.

Achieve organizational goals while upholding project management standards and best practices.

Ensure all parts of an assigned project are processed, organized, and progressing according to predetermined timelines and deliverable dates. Facilitate approval process for change requests and advise senior management of risk, urgency and business needs. Chair weekly CAB (Change Advisory Board) meetings.

Identify Key Performance Indicators for measurements for success. Metric Reporting and Analysis in alignment with 99.9% success Measurements.

Manage risks and resolves issues that affect release scope, schedule and quality. Adopted and implemented Agile practices to deliver high value software solutions that contribute to the success of technology initiatives.

Measure and monitor progress to ensure application releases are delivered on time and within budget, and that they meet or exceed expectations.

Coordinate release content and effort based on the service request backlog, pending service requests, third party applications, or operating system updates.

Develop and maintain project performance reports that track overall progress and the accomplishment of specific milestones. Monitor and assign resources appropriately to streamline project efficiency and maximize deliverable outputs.

Report project outcomes and/or risks to the appropriate management channels as needed—escalating issues as necessary based on project work plans. Experienced with Lean Agile frameworks, Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe™) and Agile metrics. Work in close collaboration with Scrum Master and Agile Teams

Communicate all key project plans, commitments, and changes including requirements, QA plans, schedule, and scope changes. Experience working with ServiceNow, Jira, SharePoint & Confluence. Manage relationships and coordinate work between different teams at different locations.

Improve JIRA security. Set access permissions for JIRA projects and Confluence spaces. Monitoring release Portal JIRA to track and maintain status of changes related to enhancements and non-emergency defects. Solid understanding of CI/CD concepts (DevOps). Worked on installing CI/CD Jenkins server on-premises and cloud-based CI/CD environments, alongside a comprehensive understanding of SAFe Agile principles.

Good working Knowledge with Git Hub. Helped in setting up the deployment automation for terraform scripts using Jenkins. Integrated Ansible play books with the terraform templates to provision the infrastructure in AWS. Integrated Jenkins pipeline for Docker.

Work with JIRA filters, reporting, dashboards, workflows, fields, and JIRA administration. Experience developing automated systems and workflows for release tracking, preferably with JIRA.

Conduct Release Readiness reviews, Milestone Reviews, and Business Go/No-Go reviews.

Produce Deployment, Run / Play Books, and Implementation Plans. Experience of ITIL/ITSM and DevOps Release Management principles. Provide key release management expertise on agreeing and improving approaches. Review service design packages for new and enhanced services and key involvement in the service transition activities. knowledge of Software Configuration Management (SCM), Version Control Systems (VCS) and Agile project Management principles

Weekly Release Reporting. Support internal and external Audits. Developing KPI reports and understanding the related data workflow. Communicate release details and schedules to the Business as required. Negotiate, plan, and manage all release activities.

Work with release engineers to understand impacts of branches and code merges. Maintains the release schedule for all core services and ensures alignment across key partners and vendors. Continuously work towards making improvements in the release process

Lead and co-ordinate the Go-Live activities including the execution of the deployment Plans and checklists. Participate in CAB meetings to discuss release scope and/or roadblocks.

Maintains a release repository and manages key information such as build and release procedures, dependencies, and notification lists.

Research new software development and configuration management methodologies and technologies and analyzes their application to current configuration management needs.

Clear understanding of the Agile mindset and the differences between Agile and traditional waterfall methodologies. Conflict resolution through conversation by focusing on scrum values of openness, honesty, and respect.

Servant leader who puts others before them self and helps individuals develop and optimize performance to be successful. Lead through change, advocate for, and influence an agile transformation, Collaborate, and work across the organization.

Liaise with technical teams, such as development, architecture, test automation, and/or DevOps.

Problem-solving and multi-tasking skills with a readiness to put in extra time and effort when necessary. Knowledge of agile development methodologies to include Kanban, Lean, Extreme Programming and others.

Environment: GIT, Apache-Tomcat, Java/J2EE applications, Ant, Maven, Microservices, Autosys jobs, Oracle (SQL

and PL/SQL), Informatica, Jira, ServiceNow, Jenkins (CI/CD), AWS, Kibana, Mainframe, Cassandra, Salesforce,

Copado, Windows, and Linux environment.

BHRNHS Trust (Finance Division)-Essex-UK Aug 2008 – Mar 2013

Role: Release Manager

Responsibilities:

A primary source of management and stakeholder information about the Change and Release Management processes.

Developed configuration management and change management practices Analyzed and evaluated existing.

practices, organization capabilities, processes, and compliance. Provided direct, regular, and frequent interaction with stakeholders (Developers, Testers, Operations).

Configuration Management, Sr. Management, and end users), I ensured that small problems remained small and were addressed immediately. Contained large problems and mitigated risks through early engagement of the right people or escalation to senior Leadership / managers as needed. Release Management of concurrent applications, tracking and reporting in DevOps environments.

Multiple development teams using waterfall, Agile, and Extreme programming methodologies. Identifying risks and defining Risk Mitigation processes

Enforced a regular, published interim release schedule for test and acceptance environments to ensure configuration Management personnel were available and ready.

Was exclusively responsible for all Change Management communication and associated change ticket approvals for projects.

Supported multiple applications, each releasing several times per year with most projects running in parallel. All releases delivered successfully.

Implemented Continuous Integration Environment (Jenkins) and Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) using Jules pipelines Environment.

Prepared implementation (Pre-implementation, implementation, backout and post implementation) for the production weekend and acted as a single point of contact for all the stake holders for the weekend release.

Proven ability to lead complex production releases with zero release related issues. Conducted GO/NO GO Calls after the business validation testing was completed.

Conducted Post implementation review calls for process improvements.

Environment: GIT, Apache-Tomcat, Java/J2EE applications, Ant, Maven, Microservices, Autosys jobs, Oracle (SQL

and PL/SQL), Informatica, Jira, ServiceNow, Jenkins (CI/CD), AWS, Kibana, Mainframe, Cassandra, Salesforce,

Copado, Windows, and Linux environment.

Educational Details:

Post Graduate Diploma in Computers & Information Technology.

Master’s in biotechnology (M.S.)

Courses: Scale of Scaling Agile Teams

Contact this candidate