LAKSHMAIAH UMESH HALEPALYA SAFe® SPC*, CAL, PMI-ACP®, ICP-ACC, KMP, OKR, CSM

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AGILE TRANSFORMATION COACH

Results-Driven Thought Leader Innovator Motivator

Agile Leader with extensive experience directing organizations and leaders towards business agility and innovation through digital and significant process transformations. Demonstrated capacity to build high performing, self-organizing teams that deliver quality solutions with low operational overhead. Passionate about growing, designing, and scaling organizations and teams from good to great through Agile and Lean methodology adoption.

Highlighted Qualification’s:

IT Professional with more than two decades of experience implementing and leading Agile and Waterfall methodologies within Fortune 100 organizations across the insurance, banking, financial, and telecom industries.

Expertise in Scrum, SAFe, Kanban, Lean, and Xtreme Programming and applying the practices for better outcome

Facilitated certified SAFe trainings such as SAFe® for Teams, Leading SAFe®, SAFe® Scrum Master, SAFe® DevOps, SAFe® POPM and Release Train Engineer

Track record of establishing cultures with an agile mindset focused on continuous improvement, continuous delivery, system, and design thinking, and experimentation. Working experience in organizational change management.

Dedicated leader and business agility coach with an extensive background in training, mentoring and coaching employees at all levels to utilize their skills to deliver the most value delivery. Discipline expert in agile practices and experienced with IT, Business and Digital transformation.

Hands-on experience and accountability to make practices to outcomes and to delivery. Applying coaching techniques to improve self-managed Agile teams and Scaling at teams and program level

Known for the ability to create high-performing teams through trust, collaboration, self-organization, action-oriented, positive attitude, flexible, adaptable and empowerment, advancing to educate and mature Agile adoption

Coach and train the teams and leadership in identifying and defining OKR’s. Strong collaborator in cross-functional teams on technology, design, business, and operations. Applied consulting and coaching techniques as required.

Responsible in leading program initiatives to agile development, improving higher productivity, lead a scrum master/Product Owner CoP & CoE, promoting agile practices at organization levels

Strong influencer; able to gain buy-in from leadership and staff to effectively navigate change by inspiring, motivating and focusing on achieving the goal.

Experience in Project Manager on large/medium projects and engagements. Worked with Project and PMO leadership.

Experienced in IT infrastructure projects like upgrading Servers, DB, OS, Services, Software, etc.

Methodologies/Framework/ Tools:

Agile: Scrum, Lean, SAFE, Kanban, XP, DSDM, FDD, ATDD, TDD, BDD, DevOps, Lean Startup, Kaizen and Actionable Agile Analytics

Tools/others: JIRA/Confluence, Miro, Mural,Microsoft Team Foundation Server (TFS), HP ALM, IBM – Rational Portfolio Manager (RPM), Rational Team Concert (RTC), Rational Requirement Composer (RRC), Salesforce, Clarity, Clear Case, Visio, Microsoft Office, PeopleSoft, Java, SQL, Big data, CI/CD, cloud computing, Microservices, selenium, SDLC, PDLC and TDLC

EDUCATION & CERTIFICATION

SAFe SPC6.0, ICP–Agile Coach Certification (ACC), PMI Agile Certified Practitioner (ACP), Certified Agile Leadership (CAL), Kanban Management Professional (KMP I), OKRCCP, AI and Agility, Scrum Master (CSM), ISTQB, QTP & Load Runner

Bachelor of Engineering, Computer Science Kalpataru Institute of Technology, Bangalore University

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

Agile Coach, Sun Life Canada May 2022- Present

Involved in building insurance solutions DE model, supporting and executing Digital Enterprise Agile transformation in insurance/SLGI business units using scaled agile methodologies. Executed mobilization activities with Platform/Hub leaders and squads, and continued training, mentoring, and coaching at all levels.

Supported the design, deployment, and consolidation of a Digital Enterprise scaled transformation with the objective of bringing IT and business together on client centricity.

Trained and supported the leadership team in setting org-level OKRs to business unit-level OKRs, planning, executing, and reflecting on them based on outcomes on a quarterly basis.

Supported and executed Lean Value Card from Initiative to story from APM, Platform, and Hub and squad level. Successfully trained/coached the leadership team in splitting Initiative to Capabilities and Features. Built JPH Kanban policies, and outlined activities at all levels when features are moved to different statuses

Built a model for better ways of splitting Mainframe stories and coached the squad.

Helped the leadership team identify new release dates when they were struggling to meet existing release dates using probabilistic forecasting.

Coached different types of squads working in API, Mainframe, and Web applications through Scrum and Kanban frameworks. Successfully ran Agile Clinic to support teams without Agile coaches and answer any problems they bring.

Ran SAFe Scrum Master and Product Owner trainings. Successfully trained, mentored, and coached Project Managers to become successful Scrum Masters and Product Owners.

Designed a model to improve Retiring and SMEs to cross skills or poly skills, which helped the organization retain and improve the skills.

Successfully executed leadership-level retrospectives to identify action items to improve change management activities.

Developed best practices for collaboration tools such as JIRA, Confluence, and Miro, including better utilization of JIRA plan, Time in status for lead time and cycle time, and dashboards for PH and squad to track/support day-to-day activities.

Coached the ADL to facilitate QIP Planning, Scrum of Scrums, System Demo, I&A, and Relentless improvement. Organization-wide implementation of Agile & DE principles and practices.

Conducted GMM and Shu-Ha-Ri at all levels to improve JPH, SM, PO, and squad level.

Agile Transformation Coach, All State Canada Aug 2021- April 2022

Act as a change agent by leading all levels of the organization through a Lean-Agile transformation at scale. Accountable for coaching leadership while ensuring predictability in overall delivery, strategic & tactical planning, introducing new agile processes and governance.

Identify potential areas of focus to address delivery problems, team dynamics, and systemic issues and recommend strategies for improvement.

Coached the teams within Document Generation and HR&C on writing SMART OKRs – Objective and Key Results based on program objectives.

Define strategic roadmap for enterprise agile adoption.

Mentored the team on effective ways of capacity planning, for PI and managing dependencies across multiple PIs.

Building coaching plans, conducting maturity assessments (Business & Team agility), coaching based on agile metrics.

Provide thought leadership and coaching to leaders thereby facilitating a smooth transition into the Agile mindset across the organization and assisting the organization with change management practices.

Assess the Business agility and maturity of teams to improve Agile performance and reduce lead times. Develop training programs, workshops, and tools to train the organization in a unified Agile development methodology

Identifying, implementing, launching, coaching and facilitating the Agile Release Trains. Identifying the Value Stream and executing within the ARTs.

Refining role description for the Agile ways of working and facilitating Role Clarity Clinics

Building a Scrum Master Roadmap. Train motivated team members to become Scrum Masters and Agile Coaches. Implementing a Community of Practices (CoP) for Scrum Masters and Product Owners. Working on Implementing the Scrum Master CoE

Building organization specific training contents and facilitating trainings to larger groups or role based trainings

Agile Coach, Finastra Aug 2020- Aug 2021

Lean- Agile transformation at scale by training and coaching multiple teams across the organization, such as SAFe® for Teams, Leading SAFe®, SAFe® Scrum Master, SAFe® DevOps, SAFe® POPM, and Release Train Engineer.

Coach the teams, Scrum Masters, Product Owners, Product Managers, and Executives on Agile values and principles to promote continuous improvement in practices and artifacts and to achieve the benefits of scaling to business agility and KPIs.

Coach the Agile Release Train (ART) to facilitate PI Planning, Scrum of Scrums, System Demo, Inspect & Adapt, and relentless improvement. Implement organization-wide Agile and SAFe principles and practices.

Build new Agile teams and provide coaching and consulting to support their development and ongoing improvement to become self-organizing, self-managing, and highly functional. Implement and coach engagements to support LACE goals.

Proactively analyze and make recommendations for improvements to existing organizational practices and patterns at the team level. Share best practices and insights across the organization to remove impediments to the implementation of Agile.

Assist the organization with change management practices, train and coach the organization to achieve the benefits of scaling to business agility. Experienced in identifying, defining, and establishing value streams.

Promote the Agile culture and mindset throughout the organization. This includes leading teams and influencing leaders and their partners as they learn and adopt Agile practices by supporting them through coaching, mentoring, facilitating, and teaching.

Sr. Agile Coach, Manulife Insurance Jan 2018-Dec 2019

Implemented Agile transformation across multiple business units using Lean and Agile methodologies, gaining buy-in from key stakeholders; initiated the best use of the Actionable Agile Analytics tool, improving the squad outcome on small batches of deliverables, and the prioritization of the backlog

Coached and mentored agile coaches/SM/PO on prioritizing backlog and maintain for a couple of sprints. Built new agile teams and provide coaching to the teams to become high performance teams for both new and existing teams.

Being a servant leader to help remove impediments and facilitate an environment of continuous improvement and adoption of agile/scrum practices.

Helped and trained teams to on DevOps transformation across teams and organization level.

Promoted the Agile culture and mindset throughout the organization. Supported the organization on agile trainings/workshops/leadership training on agile principles, values and Scrum/ Kanban practices or any agile techniques/tools to increase the organization’s level of agile maturity and innovation

Coordinated with multiple different program teams, facilitated preparation for Product Increment Planning, and supported the Agile Release Train (ART) estimates for larger features and capabilities.

Facilitated a PI planning (Big Room) event at multiple program to review program Increment and planning. Guided and launched the playbook, which outlined program goal requirements, enabling product owners/scrum master to facilitate sessions independently, while saving several million in vendor selection.

Introduced the probabilistic forecasting techniques at the squad level and created program health dashboards, providing accurate and rapid project status updates to key stakeholders to overcome challenges

Developed and implemented several tools and techniques across various projects in alignment with Agile methodology, including a reusable ‘Go/No Go’ process on JIRA, which provided compliance traceability and evidence and a Cadence Calendar, enabling the program to follow the set of fixed dates to plan ceremonies and events

Engaged and worked closely with TPMs, stakeholders, business and product owner, scrum masters on prioritizing the features, creating product roadmap, compliance and agile process and practices GBNOW, Insurance and GRS data teams

Facilitated JIRA and Confluence training at the organization level, as well as developed and delivered multiple Agile workshops at Manulife University

Helped, create and rolled out Definition of Done (DOD) at Story level, Sprint level, feature level and Release level

Oversaw the User Journey Mapping, Story Mapping, Dependency Mapping, Impact Mapping, Empathy Mapping, and Assumption Mapping sessions to ensure value delivery and address impediments to organizational agility.

Led and mobilized Product Owner Community of Practice (COP), a platform for SM/PO to leverage upon each other’s Agile knowledge, spreading proven practices, exchanging innovative Agile ideas and seeking insight to resolve issues

Conducted quarterly Agile Maturity assessments and developed monthly team coaching plans to address selected areas for improvement, continuously improving the squad’s Agile Maturity rating

Experience in DevOps IT/digital/business transformations. Continuous improvement development teams, CI/CD, strategy roadmap, support DevOps implementation. Improve policies, processes, workflows, enablement systems, and tools. Improve budgetary, operational constraints, and compliance requirements

Worked and contributed to Manulife's Global Agile Office's transformation efforts such as playbook, assessment, etc., Participated in cross-divisional Agile transformation sharing and co-creation activities

Agile Coach, Bell 2015-2018

Built and trained new Agile teams consisting of Scrum Masters, Product Owners and Development/QA Teams; led regular follow up sessions with leaders and stakeholders and regularly attended team scrum meetings to provide actionable feedback for process improvement, adherence to Agile principles, and remove impediments to progress

Facilitated the transformation of the Bell Conference projects from Waterfall to Agile; established the program release roadmap/planning, prioritized the backlog, and coordinated dependencies across teams, reducing the backlog from 10 years to 1.5 years and resulting in six-figure savings while still delivering the highest customer value

Led project kickoff meetings with the various stakeholders to review requirements and define project scope, milestones, and schedules; identified and managed key risks, assumptions, and dependencies within the project and set up a periodical review of the action taken.

Mentored and coached project teams towards mature Agile adoption; captured and analyzed Agile metrics to inform feedback for continuous improvement. Experienced with HR Resource/Work Human team for agile adoption.

Coached the team/business on backlog prioritization and managing them for a couple of sprints and features to a couple of releases.

Scrum Master/Agile Coach, Nationwide Insurance – IBM 2009-2015

Evaluated project components and needs to develop Agile practices, including building new teams, story walls, implementing pair programming, and TDD, ATDD and BDD techniques

Cultivated a collaborative and productive team atmosphere integrating a servant-leadership model; provided guidance and training on Agile methodology and principles to ensure efficient project flows

Facilitated and improved backlog grooming, sprint planning, daily stand up, sprint reviews and retrospectives

Identified and tracked unique opportunities to improve customer satisfaction, enabling improvements in team delivery commitments and capacity planning for sprints. Extensive experience with offshore and onshore model

Oversaw Agile portfolio planning, from feature estimation, team capacity planning, release I-0 activities, release estimation planning, reporting, risk and prioritization, utilizing Agile frameworks within a DevOps environment

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