Scrum Master Agile Coach

Olu A. Fowoju, A-CSM, SSM, ICP-ACC

Haslet, TX 469-***-**** ǀ ***********@*****.*** ǀ www.linkedin.com/in/olu-fowoju

A knowledgeable and highly motivated Scrum Master and Agile Coach with comprehensive expertise in change management, reporting/documentation, requirement gathering, facilitations and demonstrations, and modeling/forecasting. Excels at leading software development initiatives as well as product and project management teams in Scrum and SAFe environment. Foster the adoption of true Agile mindsets, including practices that demonstrates ownership and self-organization for cross functional team. Works to create and execute improvement plans with teams to facilitate the consistent achievement of product goals and expected business value.

Release Management

Stakeholder Engagement

Staff Coaching/Mentoring

Conflict Resolution

Strategy Development

Servant Leadership

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

WEX, Portland, Maine Scrum Master, 2021-2023

Reduced Cycle time by 49%, WIP 48% and Throughput by 50% within 8 months compared to historical data. Optimizing workflow of teams and brought visibility to team’s metrics.

Created environment for teams to thrive by fostering greater psychological safety for team members to raise concerns, ensuring everyone remained heard and seen while valuing opinions and filling skill gaps as needed.

Introduced Monte Carlo delivery date simulation using probabilistic forecasting to make reliable project delivery commitments.

Empowered teams by giving each member overall autonomy to individual work and product effective increasing team’s sense of ownership and creativity on product development and self-organization.

Fostered culture of continuous learning and improvement resulting in 51% increase in velocity in nine months by planning on team’s true capacity (to avoid over-committing and under-delivering), Enacted peer programming and engagement, with continuous backlog refinement sessions identifying most valuable that can be deliverables.

Ensured development team practiced core Agile principles, improved collaboration among teams, drove prioritization of work, and promoted team accountability to each other and visibility of information radiators.

Recognized by leadership as a key contributor to leading teams to Agile maturity.

Allstate Insurance, Dallas, Texas ǀ Scrum Master, 2019 – 2021

Mentored and trained Scrum Masters across various project workstreams driving increase in agile adoption in the first 6 months.

Worked with the product owner and development teams to deliver business value to customers up to 85% frequency.

Led and collaborated cross-functionally to enhance effectiveness of Agile within the organization.

Created metrics to boost transparency for stakeholders and teams.

Coached teams to achieve higher levels of maturity at more sustainable and scalable pace.

Reported timely updates, effectively highlighting decision-making Scrum/Kanban metrics to the PMO, stakeholders and sponsors to achieve alignment to project KPIs.

Enable understanding of product vision and goal, resulting in a healthy backlog.

oIntroduced backlog grooming sessions to provide coaching opportunities for the POs in maintaining a healthy product backlog prioritization, with teams now choosing stories based on prioritization rather than cherry picking user stories.

oSupported the product owners in cleaning the backlog, creating better visibility and transparency while also eliminating mismatched and orphaned stories.

oStreamlined planning and estimation by working with the product owner on the effective use of product backlog practices through prioritization and writing INVEST-ready user stories, definition of ready and well detailed acceptance criteria.

●Strengthened servant leadership behaviors from Scrum Masters across the organization by establishing a Community of Practice.

●Collaborate with Product owners and distributed development teams despite Covid-19-centric delays to continuously identify dependencies and plan Iteration reviews, leading to 65% increase in productivity (compared to pre-pandemic effort)

●Identified and effectively removed impediments to progress, effectively cutting off wait time by 20% while improving activity ratio by cultivating self-organization on teams.

●Enabled development teams to reduce technical debt by 45% by fully Introducing engineering practices like peer programming, code review and collective code ownership.

●Reduced cycle time by 75% and increased the teams’ activity ratio by proactively establishing clear definition of done.

●Facilitates three-learning day workshop into the PI as well as a knowledge transfer session to enhance overall collaboration to foster a culture of relentless continuous improvement.

●Enabled the Agile teams to increase throughput by introducing benefits of swarming around features and peered programming. Ensured team created high-value products due to the lack of impediments, distractions, and complacency.

●Cultivated work environment of relentless and continuous improvement at behavioral level through strategic coaching and influence.

Acuity Eye Group ǀ Dallas, Texas ǀ Scrum Master, 2018 – 2019

●Implemented Agile mindset, methodologies, principles, and practices to plan and deliver solutions, including backlog tracking, burndown metrics, velocity, and task definition. Introduced effective Agile techniques, including user stories, BDD, TDD, continuous integration, continuous deployment, testing, pairing, and automation. Fostered a continuous improvement mindset at the behavioral level among team members.

●Improved velocity for a project sprint (and subsequent sprints).

oDiscovered developers did not conduct unit testing or peer reviews, which led to defects in coding.

oAfter investigation, discovered the team’s lack of an extra code review prior to QA submittal.

oRecommended unit testing and peer review and drove adoption of the new Agile methodology.

●Defined solutions and drove progress by creating working collaboration system with product owners, team members, and other Scrum Masters within the organization. Cultivated a collaborative environment to help teams and stakeholders to interact.

●Managed all lifecycles for technical projects.

oEnsured deliverables met schedules, budgets, and KPI goals.

oDeveloped comprehensive project plans based on features, level of effort, user stories, and release timelines.

●Increased the team’s velocity by 50% in three months and capacity utilization from previous projects by identifying and consistently removing roadblocks to success, protecting teams from uncontrolled injections, and managing dependencies.

●Accelerated product delivery by conducting knowledge transfer reflecting on best practices, driving higher productivity.

●Transformed mindsets and improved morale by leveraging one-on-one engagement and collaborative exercises to transition team members from demotivated states to energized, committed mindsets.

RCCG North America (RCCGNA) ǀ Dallas, Texas Scrum Master 2015 – 2017

●Spearheaded implementation of all Agile and Scrum practices, including sprint planning, reviews, and retrospectives, daily scrums, backlog refinement, capacity planning, and Agile coaching. Analyzed projects and processes to guarantee collaboration. Identified and removed impediments to team success.

●Used burndown, burn up, and team velocity methods to track key metrics and radiate progress to teams or stakeholders.

●Scheduled and facilitated Scrum events, meetings, and decision-making processes.

●Assessed activities and performed one-on-one feedback sessions to ensure all development teams practiced core Agile principles (i.e., collaboration, prioritization, team accountability, and visibility).

●Reduced defect backlog from 100-plus to less than 2% visible defects at product launch, significantly improving product quality.

oLeveraged Agile processes with a two-week sprint cadence, frequent releases, and continuous integration.

oPrioritized iterations, implemented acceptance testing, and facilitated delivery of iteration.

●Accelerated efficiency for timely product delivery by supporting implementation of Scrum and related Agile methods.

EDUCATION & CERTIFICATIONS

Business Administration Degree ǀ Moshood Abiola Polytechnic – Nigeria

Certified SAFe® 5.0 Scrum Master (SSM), Advanced Certified Scrum Master (A-CSM),

Certified Scrum Master (CSM), ICP-ACC

Contact this candidate