Edward Forward

ICP-ACC SAFe-SA *.* SPC-SAFe in Nov CSM CSPO Scrum@Scale Lean Agilist

704-***-**** adz1j8@r.postjobfree.com

ACITIVE CERTIFICATIONS

ICP-ACC

SPC-SAFe in Nov 2023

SAFe: RTE

SAFe 4: SA

Scrum@Scale

Leading Teams and Organizations

CSPO

Lean

Effective Leadership

CSM

LeSS

Emotional Intelligence 1.0 & 2.0

SKILL SET

Agile Project Management Tool

Jira & Confluence, Atlassian, Rally

Methodologies

Agile (Scrum/Sprints), SAFe, Kanban, LeSS, XP, TDD, BDD

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

Fannie Mae May 2022 – Current

Senior Agile Coach

Cultivate and sustain the Enterprise Agile way of working within Teams and Squads

Help anticipate and resolve bottlenecks and/or impediments that prevent the squad from completing work

Establish Intake Models at the Portfolio and Team level to create alignment of priorities based off Road Map using business value to prioritize

Coaching, training, and mentoring multiple Teams, Leadership, SMs and the PMO across the frameworks of Lean, Scrum and Kanban

Facilitate Road Map sessions to understand long term vision and create OKR’s to metric progress…where are we now, what are our goals, how to measure the progress

Developed the EOM (agile assessment tool) to measure Agile maturity at Team and Portfolio level

Work directly with PO’s and SM’s to better understand their role and areas of improvements: Backlog maintenance, communication with Stakeholders, finding/removing impediments, different testing theories, and working within JIRA

Extensive knowledge in Jira to manage SCRUM Boards, Epics, User Stories, Tasks, Team Capacity, Velocity Chart, Burn-down Charts, and other Metrics

Created our Agile Community of Practice, with a bi-weekly cadence, attended by Scrum Masters, Product Owners and RTE’s

John Deere; Remote March 2021 – May 2022

Senior Agile Coach

During 10-week immersions, coaching 18 Enterprise Cyber Security product teams and leadership from waterfall to agile across multiple departments applying SAFe, Scrum@Scale, Scrum and Kanban Frameworks

Created OKR’s “metrics” to establish baseline and future goals at team, portfolio, and action team level

Lead/Created CoP’s with SM and POs with US/India teams to help break down silo’s and upskill

Teach LMP-Lean Portfolio Management skills are the org, leadership and team level

Establish Sprint Planning ceremonies (PI Planning) at team and scaled level; Roadmap, Portfolio and Team Level

Coach on DevOps, TDD, User story mapping, PI Objectives, Stretch Objectives with Business Value and Actual Values with show Team performance report metrics

Extensive knowledge in Jira to manage SCRUM Boards, Epics, User Stories, Tasks, Team Capacity, Velocity Chart, Burn-down Charts and other Metrics

Work directly with PO’s and SM’s to better understand their role and areas of improvements: intake, clean up backlog, how to prioritize backlog, communication with Stakeholders, finding/removing impediments, different testing theories, and working within JIRA

Bank of America; New York, NY. August 2020 – Feb 2021

Senior Agile SAFe Coach

Created Agile Playbook – Customized for Enterprise, Portfolio and Team Level within the Corporate Investment Banking Vertical

Facilitate Portfolio and Team level value stream mapping sessions to identify impediments/bottlenecks and highlight opportunities of improvement

Drive coaching communications across the extended organization and share best practices with a focus on Scrum, SAFe, Kanban and Scrum@Scale

Work with leads to setup Communities of Excellence (CoE) with each discipline

Significant experience in Roadmap Planning utilizing AGILE methodologies and tools, Project Financial Management, PMO & Business Process Optimization to strengthen accountability and enhance decision making

Highly skilled in leading the exploration, analysis, and synthesis of issues affecting the performance of value streams and business processes

Established Metrics at the Team level to assess self-managing teams

Ran workshops with Portfolio Manager, Product Owners, Scrum Masters, Dev Team and Business how to…

oValue Stream Mapping – Team Level “identify organizational/team impediments and throughput bottlenecks”

oHow to setup a Train and new Scrum teams

oRoles and Responsibilities within a Train/Scrum team

oHow to write a user story…how to split user stories

oHow to maximize each ceremony of scrum

Run bootcamp trainings to help setup new Scrum, Kanban and transitioning teams from Waterfall to Agile

Work with Product Owner to understand how to prioritize the backlog and the importance of keeping it prioritized

Duke Energy; Charlotte, NC April 2019-August 2020

Sr. Agilest “Enterprise Agile Coach”

Coaching, training, and mentoring multiple ARTS, Teams, Leadership, SMs and the PMO in Agile (SAFe)

Facilitating and participating in PI Planning sessions. Creating PI plans, Value Streams that included multiple Scrum teams, Product Owners and Business stakeholders

Train and coach teams utilizing SAFe, Scrum, ScrumBan, XP, Lean and Kanban frameworks to become high-performing teams.

Coaching on User story mapping, PI Objectives, Stretch Objectives with Business Value and Actual Values with Multiple CARs, ARTs to show Team performance report metrics

Led transformation from waterfall to SAFe Agile teams with 20 teams in different departments, all successfully delivering working software after 1st PI, never done before within departments

Reinforcing Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) into all ceremonies to ensure that the team is not just going through the motions, but learning the importance of the framework

Work directly with PO’s and SM’s to better understand their role and areas of improvements: intake, clean up backlog, how to prioritize backlog, communication with Stakeholders, finding/removing impediments, different testing theories, and working within JIRA

Work with leadership to increase alignment with Scrum teams, understanding health of teams, identifying key metrics and goals

Coach distributed and co-located agile global teams responsible for development, implementation and maintenance of projects

Created our Agile Community of Practice, with a bi-weekly cadence, attended by 80+ Scrum Masters

Facilitate multiple SAFe/Agile training classes across the organization at Executive, Portfolio and Team level

Secure Edge Networks; Charlotte, NC August 2005-April 2019

Enterprise Coach, Portfolio Coach, Teams Coach, Scrum Master, Product Owner

Lead Research and Development for software development of 1st internal app – introducing Lean Agile to organization

Worked with Executives of 10+ companies to develope metrics that track/evaluate performance of programs, products, services and initiatives

Stood up over 100 teams within Secure Edge Networks and our business partners –introducing Agile frameworks (Scrum, Kanban, XP, SAFe and LeSS

Facilitated Agile Trainings across the organization to get buy in from every level of the organization

Managed the department budget of $50mil to ensure vendors and corresponding Statement of Work (SOW) supported continuous alignment with strategic department and company objectives

Mentored teams, leading them to be self-directed with strong accountability, decision making, conflict resolution and transparency

Extensive knowledge in Jira to manage SCRUM Boards, Epics, User Stories, Tasks, Team Capacity, Velocity Chart, Burn-down Charts and other Metrics

Review existing and proposed plans for business unit process effectiveness and identify opportunities for improvement

Setup the organization with JIRA (Agile tool) iterations for the team and performed JIRA ticket reporting analysis and presentations

Conducted all SCRUM Ceremonies – Sprint Planning, Daily Standups, Sprint Review meetings, Story Grooming sessions, Product backlog refinement, Sprint Retrospectives

Expertise in managing teams for a required project and motivating them to achieve the objectives of a given project

Consistent search to find more efficient techniques in managing the backlog and getting work to “Done”

Performed value stream mapping to improve process of teams and burn down & burn up techniques, various Retrospective formats and constantly improving ways to handle bugs

Professional Soccer; New Zealand & USA 2003-2005

Christchurch Crusade

Wilmington Hammerheads - National Champions ‘04

Carolina Dynamo - National Champions ‘03

Team Wellington - New Zealand National Champions ‘03

EDUCATION

Greensboro College; Greensboro, NC Graduated 2003

Bachelor of Science in Business Administration & Economics

Activities: Soccer (2yr Captain), Conference Rookie of the year, 2yr All-Conference, 1yr All-Region

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