Lekisha Berko Thomas

Scrum Master

advk91@r.postjobfree.com

074********

Personal Statement

An exciting accomplished, and self-disciplined Scrum Master, with over 6 years of experience across multiple organizations and teams, building solid relationships with overseas clients to ensure quality customer service and lean product development. Supporting teams to deliver higher valuable increments which leads to a quality working product with a servant leadership approach applying Scrum principles, Kanban practices, Scaled theory, and fostering XP behavior. As a certified change agent, I have the unique ability to help teams navigate organizational change. I am also an advocate for building diverse and inclusive teams and am passionate about building a strong culture within my organization. Agility is a lifestyle- ("Individuals and interactions over processes and tools. Known for putting forward new, creative, and exciting ideas to ensure the continuous improvement of a work environment.

Highlights

Ability to work well under pressure

Facilitation (events, meetings, and conflict)

Leadership and serving

Competent in risk management and tracking

Confident in engaging with new people

Third-party and stakeholders management

Team-working and people skills

Mentoring, teaching, and coaching

Administrative skills (Reporting)

Rich expertise in many frameworks and execution

Employment History

CFC Underwriting - Scrum Master - Nov 2019 - Present

Proactively manages dependencies, overcomes obstacles, and gets the best value against constraints

Monitoring Progress of tickets and story points/estimates

Shields the team from distractions

Made sure the captured requirements for each ticket are concise and able to be worked on- Tickets should be in acceptance criteria mode - user stories should be written during backlog review

Facilitates PI Planning readiness by fostering a Continuous Exploration process that drives stakeholder alignment to the company's top priorities via Epic Syncs, Backlogs, and Pre- and Post-PI Planning meetings working closely with the RTE.

Coordinates inter-team cooperation and helps the team operate well on the train. Facilitates Nexus Daily Scrum meetings for representatives of multiple teams working to deliver the same product to discuss dependencies issues and increment integration issues.

Encouraged an environment whereby team members are courageous to flag out blockers or impediments as soon as it is discovered. I facilitated meetings and decisions to resolve or remove them.

Responsible for protecting the team's efficiency at all costs, even if what's attacking it comes from other internal resources.

Support the team - Increases team productivity by helping the team remove impediments that may obstruct the pursuit of their sprint goals, and preserves flexibility and ability to rapidly respond to changes on the team

Support the program & stakeholders - Ensures clear communication and organization of all team objectives/roadmap/work in process using electronic and physical information radiators, using agile charts and value-based metrics, where appropriate.

Actively participating in the Scrum Master/Agile community by sharing and re-applying skills.

Actively facilitate sessions between stakeholders to promote collaboration, build a shared roadmap and help the teams overcome any delivery roadblocks.

Lloyds Banking Group - Scrum Master - Nov 2017 - Nov 2019

Ensured teams follow agile principles throughout the scrum cycle.

Delivered stakeholder and team training sessions to help improve collaboration and delivery.

Led the team through user story creation, backlog grooming, and story estimation in refinements which enabled better sprint execution.

Helped the team to achieve a self-managing and high-performing state

Supported the team in breaking break down requests into manageable stories, prioritizing the backlog, and facilitating discussions on assigning story points, defining the definition of done and acceptance criteria.

Reported and monitored the progress of the team activities during sprints to ensure sprint goals and objectives are met.

Fully present in the ‘end-to-end’ involvement, by supporting, facilitating, and driving the right process, behaviors, and outcomes at each stage of the development lifecycle, interacting with teams both within and outside the Agile Framework, and driving optimal collaboration.

Continuously improving the team(s) and their functions using empirical methods to define and measure continuous improvements, using information metrics where possible.

Coaching the team to identify and address their own impediments, providing assistance where needed or seeking an appropriate escalation.

Utilized a Kanban board approach to analyze workflow visualization, and used WIP limits and metrics to manage work scopes better.

Participated in the company’s leadership meetups; contributed innovative ideas when needed to enable improvement to the current working process, how to manage people better, and use current tools more efficiently

Responsible for protecting the team's efficiency at all costs, even if what's attacking it comes from other internal resources, as my focal reward is the team's success.

Lead and coach around agile principles, ways of working, mindset, and behaviors – Agile principles over and above specific Agile methods.

WIPRO - Junior Scrum Master - Jan 2017 - Nov 2017

Providing quality hands-on support to all employees and collaborating with people across widely varying levels and roles, to lead them toward further understanding and adoption of Agile.

Supporting the Product Owners, Delivery Leads, and teams to continually improve and to be advocates of agility.

Supporting team(s) to have clear, concise, and deliverable Product Backlog items at the right time.

Identifying and removing potential impediments that may hamper the delivery of the agreed sprint outcomes.

Managing any emerging dependencies and ensuring the team remains successful and on schedule.

Shielding the scrum teams from outside distractions and unintended dependencies or interference.

Assisting the team to reach the Definition of Done through estimation and prioritization techniques.

Teaching and mentoring team members and the wider organization on Agile Principles, Values, and Scrum practices to ensure that they become more self-organizing and enable them to have effective Scrum events.

Education

Certified Scrum Master, Scrum Alliance

Professional Scrum with Kanban, Scrum Org

BSc Psychology, University of Hertfordshire

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