Ashish Kalapala

Scrum Master +1-940-***-****

ad3xdc@r.postjobfree.com

www.linkedin.com/in/ashish-kalapala-605288132

Professional Summary:

A servant leader, facilitator, a team coach with strong communication skills in building high-performance agile & product teams. I bring value in supporting the Product Owners and stakeholders in building the Product Backlog and supporting the development team in early value delivery. I help in removing impediments and bringing cohesiveness to the team to foster clear communication and collaboration.

Core Competencies:

•Coaching and mentoring teams in Agile practices.

•Advocate of various Agile frameworks (Scrum, Kanban) at both team and scaling levels.

•Successfully facilitated numerous Scrum teams in Sprint planning, Daily stand-ups, Sprint reviews, and Sprint Retrospectives.

•Help align Development teams and Product Owners to refine user stories and prioritize backlog effectively.

•Cultivated self-organizing team environments, removing obstacles to maximize throughput and meet deliverables.

•Clear and concise communicator, successful conflict resolution, and managing stakeholders’ expectations

•Proficient in utilizing Jira for issue tracking, SharePoint and Confluence for content management, and PlanView for time tracking.

•Preparation of Jira Dashboards and Status Reports for the executive team.

Technical Skillset:

Agile framework : Scrum, Kanban, Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe), & eXtreme Programming, Training & Development, Strategic Planning & Roadmaps.

Tracking Tools : Jira, Rally, Azure DevOps

Work History:

Client: Amex, New York, NY

Scrum Master Feb 2022 – Present

Responsibilities:

•Facilitating scrum ceremonies Daily stand up, Backlog refinement, Sprint Planning, Sprint Review, and Sprint Retrospective.

•Continuously involved in removing cross-team impediments, and coordinated efforts to keep the team focused on the sprint goals.

•Implementing innovative ways of facilitating Retrospectives to encourage continuous improvement.

•Facilitating Systems Demos regularly with the Product Owner and at the program level as needed.

•Facilitating Roadmap creation meetings for teams and teams of teams.

•Monitoring and presenting Team health status based on collaboration/communication and deliverables to higher leadership.

•Participating and contributing to the scrum community of practice to maintain and learn continuously in scrum evolution in the industry trends and learn and teach back to the community.

•Continuously learning in the team technical space to gain understanding to empathize and encourage best practices.

Client: Equifax, Atlanta, GA

Scrum Master Oct 2020 – Feb 2022

Responsibilities:

•Facilitated support group meetings as part of the Agile Centre of Excellence (CoE) Scrum Masters group.

•Created training documentation and assisted in training teams in Scrum framework & Agile mindset.

•Coached and trained team members in Scrum and empowered them to be self-organized.

•Coached, coordinated, and assisted Product Owners in Backlog Refinement & backlog prioritization.

•Provided proactive Metrics & Risk updates to leadership using Information Radiators.

•Allocated team members for programs and prepared program/project timelines and financials for reporting.

•Facilitated Scrum of Scrum meetings for projects with cross-functional teams.

•Guided cross-functional teams through the entire project lifecycle as a Scrum Master.

Client: MindPal, San Diego, CA

Scrum Master Mar 2019 – Sep 2020

Responsibilities:

•Monitored and kept the team in progress by removing impediments and resolving conflicts.

•Managed multiple products as a strategic, resource, and financial planner.

•Assisted Product Managers in multiple product biddings.

•As a Scrum Master continually engaged with the team in mentoring in Agile framework and practices.

•Managed the product backlog, prioritizing user stories and ensuring that it is kept up-to-date and visible to all team members and stakeholders.

•Facilitated daily stand-up meetings and sprint release planning.

•Change agent of software development Life Cycle (SDLC), tools, and technologies, enabling effective communication and collaboration with development teams.

•Assisted the Product Owner and team in creating and refining user stories during sprint planning meetings.

•Facilitated teams in creating Working agreements and governing teams.

•Drove Agile best practices and foster continuous improvement.

Client: Alliant Credit Union, Chicago, IL

Scrum Master Feb 2016 – Mar 2019

Responsibilities:

•Conducted Daily Scrum Meetings with the team, and maintained task board and burndown charts.

•Worked with customers and product manager to pipeline epic/user stories in the backlog and prioritize the requirements and releases.

•Worked closely with Product Owners and the QA team to groom the backlog and sprint planning.

•Facilitated sprint Retrospectives for grooming the team.

•Helped the team to accomplish tasks on time and resolved obstacles for the team.

•Coordinated and participated in weekly estimation meetings to provide high-level estimates (Story Points) for backlog items.

•Delivered Test Effort Estimates, Test Strategy, Test Plan, Test Schedule.

•Monitored Test Execution to Defect Validation, Defect Tracking & Test Management using MTM.

•Experience in preparing various reports (Daily, Weekly, Monthly, and Quarterly) Metrics Reports for the QA Team.

•Responsible for Requirement gathering, Business Process Flow, Business Process Modelling, and Business Analysis with Document and Records Management.

•Managed multiple and cross-functional projects of high complexity using MS Project, Jira, and other communication tools such as Slack, Chalk, and Outlook.

Certifications:

•Professional Scrum Master (PSM) Certification.

Education

•Bachelor’s from Kakatiya University. (India)

•Associate of music from California College of Music. (California)

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