Scrum Master Continuous Improvement

STEVEN G. LARSON MBA, PMP, CSM, SA

*** * ***** ***** *****, North Salt Lake, UT • 801-***-****

**********@*****.*** • https://linkedIn.com/in/stevenglarson

TRUSTED AGILE DELIVERY LEADER

Agile Transformation • Agile Coach • Agile Delivery • Senior Scrum Master • Product Owner • RTE • SAFe • Product Intake and Prioritization • Effectiveness and Efficiency • Streamlined Processes & Workflows • Relationship Building and Collaboration

WORK EXPERIENCE

FedEx; Memphis, TN (Remote) Oct 2023 – Present

Sr. Scrum Master (contract)

● Train and organize new scrum teams in greenfield project responsible for auditing international shipments.

● Facilitate accountability team development, self-organization, and continuous improvement.

● Investigating organizational barriers and relationship building with stakeholders.

● Enhance throughput through workload balancing, cross training, eliminating bottlenecks, establishing WIP limits and escalating issues.

● Coach product owners, teams, and leadership on prioritization, business value, plan work, set a sustainable cadence, Agile mindset, and deliver value.

● Facilitate meaningful and effective Scrum ceremonies and events. Participate in Coach Sync (Scrum of Scrums), ART Sync, PI prep, System Demo, etc.

● Created metrics, scorecards, dashboards, and information radiators for leadership, stakeholders, and continuous improvement at all levels.

● Establish better practices and culture, effective Definition of Ready and Done, working agreement, metrics.

● Addressing and escalating issues and blockers.

● Weekly reporting to leadership and sprint end reporting and metrics to leadership.

● Experience with Teams, Slack, Miro, Mural, Trello, Jira, Azure Dev Ops, MS Office Suite.

Navitus; Appleton, WI (Remote) May 2023 – Oct 2023

Scrum Master/Agile Coach (contract)

●Assess organization/team maturity.

●Teach Scrum, Agile and Kanban basics to knowledgeable waterfall development team and new product owner.

●Execute priorities defined by RTE, architects, and product management.

●Investigate organizational barriers and recommending mitigation and resolutions.

●Coach product owners, teams, and leadership on prioritization, business value, plan work, set a sustainable cadence, Agile mindset, and deliver value.

●Participate in Coach Sync (SoS) and Agile Community of Practices, and train needed topics.

●Facilitate Scrum ceremonies each sprint and Backlog Refinement as needed.

●Created metrics, scorecards, dashboards, and information radiators for leadership, stakeholders, and continuous improvement at all levels.

●Facilitated team development, self-organization, and continuous improvement.

●Established best practices: team working agreements, definitions of ready and done, remove impediments and mediate conflicts, process improvement.

Progrexion; SLC, UT (Hybrid) Nov 2022 – April 2023

Release Train Engineer, Sr. Scrum Master (FTE)

●The entire company was laid off/shut down after losing a federal court battle.

●Promoted to RTE and given bonus for contributions to Agile program after two months.

●Increased team predictability through estimation and relative sizing training.

●Teaching, coaching, advising teams on scrum, agile, and SAFe principles and practices.

●Established team health checks to advise the leadership on issues and employee morale.

●Aligned strategic vision, goals, and priorities with stakeholders, architects, and leaders.

●Coached product owners, teams, Scrum masters, and leadership on how to prioritize business value, plan work, set a sustainable cadence, Agile mindset, and deliver value.

●Improved the effectiveness of business and development efforts by facilitating improved Agile adoption and maturity across the enterprise.

●Enhanced workflows through workload balancing, eliminating barriers and bottlenecks, and escalating issues in the organization.

●Executed PIs, Scrum of Scrums, and Agile Community of Practices, and reported Agile metrics.

●Assessed organization and team maturity and coached Scrum, Agile, Lean, and Kanban concepts and principles accordingly.

●Facilitated Scrum ceremonies including Sprint Planning, Daily Standups, Sprint Retrospectives, Sprint Reviews/Demos, and Backlog Refinement.

●Created metrics, scorecards, dashboards, and information radiators for leadership

●Facilitated team development, self-organization, and continuous improvement.

●Established best practices: team working agreements, definitions of ready and done, remove impediments and mediate conflicts, process improvement.

Blue Cross of Idaho; Meridian, ID (Hybrid) May 2021 - Nov 2022

Sr. Scrum Master, Agile Coach & Governance (FTE)

●Assess organization/team maturity, teach, coach, advise leaders, product owners, teams on scrum, agile, Kanban, SAFe principles and practices.

●Train, mentor scrum masters, product owners, and program managers on Scrum and Agile practices.

●Facilitate PI Planning, Inspect & Adapt, System Demos.

●Assisted with Agile transformation, governance, and LACE formation.

●Resolving conflicts and organization and team barriers

●Assessed team maturity and coached Scrum, Agile, Lean, and Kanban concepts and principles.

●Conducted Scrum ceremonies including Sprint Planning, Daily Standups, Sprint Retrospectives, Sprint Reviews/Demos, and Backlog Refinement.

●Maintained and published metrics, scorecards, dashboards, and information radiators with Sharepoint and ADO for portfolio leaders and stakeholders.

●Championed team development, self-organization, and continuous improvement initiatives.

●Removed impediments, created working agreements, and defined ready and done.

Humana; Louisville, KY (Remote) Jan 2021 - May 2021

Sr. Consultant, Scrum Master (contract)

●Manage microservices access intake process and requests

●Maintained and published metrics, scorecards, dashboards, and information radiators with ADO

●Championed team development, self-organization, and continuous improvement initiatives.

●Conducted Scrum ceremonies including Sprint Planning, Daily Standups, Sprint Retrospectives, Sprint Reviews/Demos, and Backlog Refinement.

●Removed impediments, created working agreements, and defined ready and done.

Western Governors University; SLC, UT (On-site) Aug 2018 - Sep 2020

Scrum Master (FTE)

●Assessed team maturity, and coached Scrum and Agile principles according to needs.

●Contributed to team development and self-organization, participated in quarterly PI meetings, and scaled Agile meetings.

●Taught Scrum values and Agile principles and concepts to the Scrum team.

●Created metrics, dashboards, and information radiators in Jira and Confluence.

●Implemented metrics, measures, and dashboards to monitor project health and success and report to Agile program management.

●Established working agreements, and definitions of ready and done, and remove impediments.

●Created epics/stories, manage tech debt, backlog refinement and prioritization, approve finished work, demo new features, work with management on changing priorities.

●Oversaw team AWS conversion and containerization efforts.

●Product Owner duties: keep current backlog, build relationships and collaborate with business partners and product management to create define business needs, product vision and roadmap

●Refine epics into features and stories that meet Definition of Ready and Done.

●Develop product intake process to funnel and prioritize business request and stack rank work.

●Sign off on stories, demo sprint deliverables in Sprint Review and elicit feedback for future stories.

Intermountain Healthcare; SLC, UT Apr 2017 - Aug 2018

Care Transformation Analyst, Scrum Master (FTE)

●Executed sprint planning, daily scrums, retrospectives, and stakeholder meetings.

●Increased efficiency by teaching Agile concepts and Scrum values to team members.

●Complete stories, coordinated software releases and conduct regression testing.

●Reported progress and metrics to management to assist with decision-making processes.

Kforce Technical Staffing; SLC, UT May 2015 - Apr 2017

Automation Engineer/Scrum Master (2 yr contract)

●Facilitate scrum ceremonies, coordinate dependencies, blockers with other teams

●Create, execute automated test suite for new REST services using Jmeter, Java, JSON.

●Manual testing of web interface, Report test progress and metrics in Jira.

Fidelity Investments; Salt Lake City, UT March 1998 - May 2015

Project Manager, QA, Automation Engineer, Offshore Lead

●Execute multiple projects in a PMO framework.

●Develop automated and manual tests with JMeter, and Python.

●Test RESTful services on Scrum team.

●Lead test efforts and reported test progress and metrics to management.

●Train, lead offshore testing efforts in Bengaluru and conduct on-site visits.

EDUCATION

Western Governors University, SLC, UT

Master of Business Administration, 2020

TECHNOLOGIES, CERTIFICATIONS, & TRAINING

Technologies:

Microsoft Office, Teams, Sharepoint, Forms, Azure DevOps, Jira, Confluence, Trello, Miro, Mural, Lucidchart, JMeter, Python

Certifications:

SAFe Agilist 6 (SA); Advanced Certified Scrum Master (A-CSM); Certified Scrum Master (CSM); Project Management Professional (PMP).

Training:

Six Sigma & Lean Training

Crucial Conversations

Contact this candidate