agile coach, scrum master, project manager, business analyst

STACY KANAN, Agilist *****.*****@*****.***

Geneva, IL linkedin 630-***-****

BACKGROUND

Stacy is an Agile leader with over 25 years of proven experience implementing Agile transformations with DevOps on technology-enabled business optimization projects. She is a trusted adviser who assesses and provides achievable recommendations for agile project delivery; a servant leader who focuses on enabling teams to achieve goals and objectives through facilitation, mentoring, and training; and intuitive change agent leveraging Agile methodologies, collaborative tools and techniques, and broad experience to adapt delivery processes to quickly deliver transformational solutions that align with organization strategy, culture, and needs. As an early adopter of the Agile philosophy, Stacy encourages teams to self-organize and guides them using Agile principles. She is open, honest, direct; values diverse opinions and cultivates trust; develops other leaders; fosters team building; and can leverage informal techniques where warranted. Stacy is a business architect who invests in understanding business vision, strategy, and goals; organizational structures and culture; and business processes and needs before solutioning to ensure projects deliver business value.

SKILLS

Agile transformation: works with executives while performing Agile assessments, collaboratively developing Agile adoption roadmaps, and introducing and implementing Agile with global, cross-functional teams

Coaching: provides leadership mentoring for servant leadership, guides product owners to follow product management practices and ensure teams understand vision and backlog, and mentors teams on ceremonies and adhering to agile principles

Training: Agile and Scrum, Product Management, Scrum Masters, Servant Leadership, Facilitation, Requirements

Methodologies: Scrum, XP, waterfall, SAFe, TDD, BDD, UP, CMMI, Fusion™, project management

DevOps tools: Teams (admin), Azure DevOps (admin), Jira (system admin), Sharepoint, HP (admin), et. al.

Industry experience includes: benefit administration, derivatives, insurance, consumer lending, professional services, marketing services, healthcare, consumer products, telecommunication, energy, manufacturing, transportation, and market research

Application expertise includes: 401k benefits, reconciliation, originations, funding, underwriting, customer service, collections, claims, content management, order management, catalog management, web to print, human resources, expense management, CRM, and asset management

Technology: HTML, XML, Visual Basic, SQL, Oracle, SQL/Server, IBM Websphere, Amazon Web Services, FileNet, SAP, Peoplesoft, Mercer, CSC nBa, et. al.

Certifications: Capgemini University Agile Trainer, Certified Business Architect

EXPERIENCE

Sogeti—Manager Sep 2017—May 2020

Ms. Kanan led several Insurance Auto Auction global data science and development initiatives, Ms. Kanan worked with teams to map CRISP-DM to scrum; configured Teams and Azure DevOps for initiatives and COE; assisted with establishing CI practices, facilitated daily scrum of scrums; coached teams on product vision, backlog management, task management.

For the Insurance Auto Auctions Agile transformation, Ms. Kanan conducted an assessment, provided a continued transformation roadmap and worked closely with the agile coach to guide the teams in product management and servant leadership.

As a scrum master on the Follett eCommerce Digital Transformation, Ms. Kanan led the Node microservices team. She facilitated ceremonies, resolved impediments, and provided scrum mentoring for her team. She administered Jira and managed the program backlog; provided Agile coaching for the business analysis team and testers; and mentored senior program management in Agile principles.

As an Agile Coach at Abbott, Ms. Kanan conducted an Agile assessment, provided training, presented an Agile transformation roadmap to the executive team, and completed implementation with pilot Scrum teams.

SPR Consulting—Project Manager Consultant Nov 2015—Feb 2017

As the Scrum Master for several US Foods custom development revenue management projects, Ms. Kanan managed cross-functional teams for contract manager productivity improvements and tools for expiring deviations and investment spending analysis. She was responsible for Agile coaching, daily standups, retrospectives, backlog grooming, sprint planning, removing impediments, assisting with the product backlog. Projects also required authoring the project charter, scheduling and facilitating IT leadership project reviews, managing the project budget, producing status reports, reviewing key deliverables for completeness, refining estimates and timeliness as scope was negotiated, and configuring Sharepoint and Jira.

On Havi Global Solutions’ Oracle Agile Specification Management project, Ms. Kanan was responsible for managing vendors, business and IT resources to replace an existing packaging specification management system, migrating specifications to the new solution, implementing integrations and coordinating supplier and internal user change management, communicating and training on an exceptionally aggressive timeline. She also coached the team on the Agile delivery process the vendor was following. To streamline and better manage an underestimated and unwieldy project, she restructured the project into workstreams and implemented a new standard to track risks, action items, issues, etc. She was also responsible for project management on an Environmental Legislation Reporting project.

Lake Shore Associates Consultant—Project Manager Dec 2014—Jul 2015

As the Project Manager on an executive-sponsored strategic US Cellular initiative to eliminate the Rewards program while improving customer experience, Ms. Kanan led a matrixed business and IT team and coordinated with development partners and external vendors to close the Rewards program and achieve cost savings noted on the Annual Report. Due to the initial confidentiality, she successfully identified, escalated and managed risks with thorough contingency planning. Also, since the project didn’t align with the client’s standard EPM processes and delivery cycles, she creatively negotiated and coordinated cross-functional teams to solve unique development and delivery challenges. While on this project, Ms. Kanan also shared and implemented best practices to streamline project management activities using Sharepoint.

On the Project Intake Process project at McDonald’s Corporation, Ms. Kanan collaborated with newly created departments to develop an intake and requirements management framework based on SAFe concepts and release train to eliminate tasks and resources earlier in the process to improve efficiency and effectively reduced the process time by 80%. Through the effective change management and negotiation, she obtained mutual understanding, acceptance and buy-in with both teams.

Apex Systems Consultant—Project Manager Feb 2013—Jun 2014

As a Project Manager for a Northern Trust Derivatives Program near-term strategic initiative, Ms. Kanan managed a global, cross-functional team that implemented a COE as part of a re-engineering effort leveraging SaaS replacement. She tightly managed scope ushering change requests through regular meetings with the Global Executive Advisory Committee to ensure the project stayed aligned with changing and conflicting business objectives. Additionally, she modeled best practices in project management methodology, tools, and processes for IT division heads, IT managers, and other project managers. To address perceived project delays, Ms. Kanan worked with the executive team and IT leadership to implement a release-based iterative project plan (in a waterfall environment).

For the Mercer Benefits Administration system implementation, Ms. Kanan was the Grant Thornton IT Project Manager that led the team that successfully delivered integrations on-time, defect-free.

Consultant—Sr. Project Manager Sep 2010-Dec 2012

Predominantly in an advisory role, Ms. Kanan provided coaching and oversight for one Veolia Environmental Services division on a global revenue cycle business transformation program to ensure its business process and technical requirements were clearly documented, communicated and effectively tested according to plan. She monitored the vendor schedule and worked with the RS Medical business team to smoothly implement Concur Expense with limited IT engagement. For National Express she validated the RFI/RFP, requirements, and associated vendor evaluation process being used by a consulting group for a systems replacement project.

ARAMARK Healthcare—Project Manager Oct 2008-Sep 2010

Ms. Kanan led/built the Governance practice (project management, business analysis and quality assurance), defined and implemented governance framework/methodology, organized associated training, spearheaded effort to implement Borland Caliber Analyst studio for requirements elicitation and requirements management. She improved overall delivery quality through effective coaching and peer reviews for project managers, business analysts, and testers.

As a Project Manager, she also piloted and modeled the governance practices. She introduced use-cases and championed HP Quality Center use on an IBM Websphere implementation project that replaced a simple informational web site with an interactive customer portal, driving additional sales for a highly profitable service.

Consultant—Senior Business Analyst/Project Manager Mar 2007-Oct 2008

With ARAMARK Clinical Technology Services, Ms. Kanan was the Senior Business Analyst responsible for managing and delivering a business process modeling project. She worked with senior leadership, conducted high-impact facilitated sessions, coached a junior business analyst, and completed business architecture deliverables.

As Senior Business Analyst, Ms. Kanan was responsible for functional requirements and use-cases for a web-based operations and analytics platform that provided real-time, GPS-data-based fleet information enabling Laidlaw dispatchers to plan routes, define driver schedules, proactively communicate delays, redefine routes on-the-fly based on driver availability or traffic conditions, and review driver performance. She also facilitated hardware configuration management process definition and assisted with defining the structure and contents for and outsourcing RFP for development and application operations.

Ms. Kanan was a Senior Business Analyst/Lead responsible for project management, analysis, testing, and solution implementation for McDonald’s Corporation store technology migration tool rewrite and the energy management tool rewrite.

Aspen Marketing Services—Senior Project Manager May 2006-Jan 2007

As part of the PM/BA leadership team, Ms. Kanan coached project managers and business analysts in the areas of industry standard development methodologies/processes; change management, scope and issue management; project management and scheduling; requirements gathering and definition; and project delivery. She was also responsible for ensuring the delivery of solutions that meet needs of internal and external clients; facilitating process improvement in, supporting and ensuring adherence to the IT development process standards; introducing the use of MS Project, use-case based requirements gathering, and an iterative development processes. The projects she was specifically responsible for include:

Web2Print: working with vendor to ensure development and delivery of a web-to-print application for direct mailenrollment programs as well as managing the internal BA team responsible for documenting business requirements

Web-Based Direct Mail Enrollment Programs: managing teams responsible delivering web-based direct mail enrollment solutions; involved project and schedule management, risk mitigation, issue resolution, change management, requirements definition, status reporting, coordinating multiple release deployments

JP Morgan/Chase Insurance—Project Lead Aug 2004-May 2006

As a Business Analyst/Lead and Delivery Lead, Ms. Kanan was responsible for instituting a master project plan and resource pool using MS Project; managing and coaching other leads and project managers on actuals capture, weekly resource leveling and allocation, and metrics analysis for overall plan management; and establishing standards for integration requirements and documentation. Specifically, she was also accountable for project planning/ leadership, status reporting, issue management, and final delivery of projects as well as business and technical requirements, facilitation, collaborating on technical design, and providing coaching and guidance on testing activities for the following projects: New Business Accelerator (nbA) - FileNet integration, ACORD 103 new business transaction submissions to nbA, general agent status communication integration with nbA, and nbA - data warehouse (and SAP) integration, and FIPSCO Illustration software.

Consultant—Project Manager, QA Manager, Senior Business Analyst Apr 2003-May 2004

Ms. Kanan delivered the Office Max B2B catalog site redesign with template-based administration effectively reducing the amount of IT effort associated with releasing customized versions of the catalog for customers.

For Administrative Management Group online pension administration system project, Ms. Kanan implemented a new approach for requirements gathering in order to increase productivity and effectiveness while improving quality of requirements delivered to the development team. She also managed, trained and coached an automated testing team that was responsible for manual integration testing.

Ms. Kanan accurately completed system documentation through process modeling sessions and interviews to help CNA HR understand where system integration points were to effectively enhance the recruiting system.

Sherwood International—Client Services Manager Aug 2002-Mar 2003

As a Client Services Manager, Ms. Kanan was responsible for salvaging a major client implementation after the previous project manager had failed to deliver. She accomplished this by modifying the standard delivery approach to utilize the appropriate UP best practices, introducing use cases. She also developed and educated colleagues on a sales-oriented facilitated session that not only better qualified leads but also expedited sales.

Cap Gemini Ernst & Young—Manager Feb 1996-May 2002

As a Manager, Ms. Kanan managed a global service offering of a suite of highly specialized facilitated sessions. She supported sales and delivery, maintained a knowledge repository, provided training, and maintained global communication. Ms. Kanan also established the foundation for the global test service offering including standards, processes, pricing, training, and sales materials. In North America, Ms. Kanan counseled colleagues and projects in the areas of consumer lending, project planning and leadership, business analysis methods and tools, testing processes and tools, CMM, RUP, and facilitation and training. She recruited college and experienced hires, trained new consultants, and worked closely with counselees to achieve desired promotions.

Ms. Kanan’s project experiences includes reinsurance vendor evaluation, loan/lease originations vendor evaluation and system implementation (5), SAP/Siebel testing, web-based data warehouse, B2B catalog site, collections/customer service system implementation, and FileNet imaging for clients like GE Capital Auto Financial Services, Ameritech, American Stores, Caterpillar, Bank One, The Associates, Summit Bank, Nalco, Aon Reinsurance, Farmers, Sprint, GMAC, and AC Nielsen.

EDUCATION

Master of Science degree in Management Information Systems from Northern Illinois University

Bachelor of Science in Management/Management Information Systems - University of New Orleans

Bachelor of Science in Marketing - University of New Orleans

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