Scrum Master Project Manager

Professional Summary

Advanced Certified Scrum Master with over 11 years of diverse experience in Information Technology, specializing in Scrum Master roles, Quality Assurance, Cloud Computing, and UI development.

Proven expertise in facilitating scrum ceremonies, including daily stand-ups, user story/backlog grooming, retrospectives, and planning meetings.

Proficient in using agile tools such as Jira, Confluence, Azure DevOps (ADO), and LeanKit to manage and track progress.

Strong understanding of agile metrics and techniques, including Burn Down/Up charts, Velocity tracking, Aging stories, WIP limits, Sprint planning, User Story estimation, and Splitting techniques.

Skills & Expertise

Experienced Project Manager with broad knowledge of SDLC, quality assurance processes, defect management, and software testing life cycles (STLC).

Skilled Cloud and DevOps Engineer, with hands-on expertise in automating, configuring, and deploying instances in AWS Cloud environments.

Proficient in CI/CD pipeline management using tools such as Jenkins.

In-depth knowledge of XP (Extreme Programming) and TDD (Test-Driven Development) agile methods.

Exceptional ability to motivate and inspire scrum teams, improving productivity and fostering team collaboration.

Professional Contributions

Delivered results as a Combined Scrum Master, BA, and QA across multiple projects.

Expertise in requirements gathering, analysis, and mapping to project objectives.

Created and prepared user stories/use cases to assist teams in understanding requirements.

Frameworks & Concepts

Skilled in scaling agile teams using frameworks such as SAFe, Nexus, and Sempra Agility Framework.

Advanced proficiency in building and configuring virtual data centers in the AWS Cloud, including Virtual Private Cloud (VPC), Public and Private Subnets, Security Groups, Route Tables, Elastic Load Balancer, CloudWatch, CloudTrail, and Security Management VPC.

Agile Methodologies

Deep understanding of principles and best practices for Scrum, Agile, Kanban, Scrumban, and Waterfall methodologies.

Familiarity with cloud concepts and resources such as EC2, ELB, S3, SQS, SNS, Lambda, and ASG.

Testing & Quality Assurance

Comprehensive experience in Functional testing, Integration testing, UI testing, Regression testing, Performance testing, load testing and Restful Web Services API testing.

Expertise in OWASP Security Testing and UAT testing for client-server and web-based applications.

Exposure to all stages of SDLC and STLC, creating positive and negative test scenarios to ensure project robustness.

Strong knowledge of Unit testing, Smoke testing, and System testing.

TECHNICAL SKILLS

Technologies

Scrum Master, Agile Processes, Requirement Analysis, Acceptance Criteria, TDD

Mapping requirements to projects, Testing (Security, Manual, Performance, API, Automation)

Cloud Computing

Tools

Planning Poker, Jira, Confluence, Leankit, Azure DevOps (ADO), Rally

Miro, Microsoft Whiteboard, OneNote, Bugzilla, ClickUp

Postman, SwaggerUI, Apigee, Kibana, Datadog

Selenium, SVN, Maven, GitLab, Jenkins, BitBucket

vSphere Client, Hyper-V

Database

Oracle, SQL Server, MySQL, MongoDB.

Languages

JavaScript, HTML, CSS, Java, Python.

Operating Systems

WINDOWS, iOS, Linux.

Certifications

Certified ScrumMaster (CSM), Advanced CSM (A-CSM)

AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner (AWS CCP)

EDUCATION

Master of Science: Software Engineering - M S Ramaiah Institute of Technology (2012)

Bachelor of Science: Computer Science - Visvesvaraya Technological University (2010)

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

San Diego Gas and Electric June 2024 – Present

Domain: HR Data Solutions and HR Corp Enterprise Applications

Role: Principal Scrum Master and Agile Coach

Spearheaded Agile transformation initiatives for HR IT teams, achieving significant improvements in productivity and customer satisfaction.

Coached teams on Agile best practices, including TDD, BDD, empiricism, delivering working software every iteration, peer reviews, prioritization techniques, client collaboration, and fostering accountability through cross-functional, self-organizing teams.

Developed Azure DevOps (ADO) metrics to provide transparent insights into team performance and workflows.

Designed and implemented the QP Readiness ADO Dashboard, enabling teams to consistently meet the Definition of Ready (DoR) for Features and align delivery plans with Working Agreements. This tool also supported PMs in mapping budgets to appropriate investments and enhancements.

Enhanced data quality by decommissioning over 200 outdated reports, resulting in improved performance and optimized storage utilization.

Coordinated cross-functional collaboration with over 40 software developers and external teams, including OKTA, Cybersecurity, SSO, Fieldglass, and DevOps teams.

Guided teams in analyzing and leveraging the Sempra Agility Framework to identify areas for improvement, streamline processes, and drive efficiency.

Facilitated user story mapping sessions with the scrum teams to help them visualize the user journey across various personas, prioritize features for MVP identification, identify gaps, and document known dependencies and risks.

Starbucks Sep 2022 – May 2024

Domain: Data Analytics, Insights, and Business Operations

Role: Sr. Scrum Master and Agile Coach

Supporting three teams as a Scrum Master.

Collaborated with the product management, Product Owners, and Business Analyst to create a project roadmap.

Helped the team to break down the entire Product into investments and initiatives using user story mapping and impact mapping.

Couching the new teams in DAIBO and helping them in the transition to agile.

Formed and led new Scrum Teams in both EDAP and Data Democratization.

Helped the team migrate from ClickUp to Jira.

Facilitated all the scrum ceremonies and team activities – Sprint Planning, Daily Stand up, Sprint Review, Retrospective, SoS, and Backlog refinement using Miro and Jira.

Collaborate with the Product Owner and the developers to determine the goals for each sprint iteration.

Used Kanban Board to track DevOps issues.

Prepared and reviewed Sprint Cadence for all the teams.

Coached the teams to understand the best practices, Agile principles, and scrum values.

Documented DoR, DoD, and Working Agreements to the team and made sure that the team adhered to these agreements.

Communicate with other Scrum Masters and the leadership team to report on status, risk, and dependencies.

Encourage discussion, conflict resolution, alternatives, and different approaches by eliminating waste and fostering an environment of continuous improvement.

Actively participated and contributed towards Agile Lunch and Learn sessions.

Enabled team to become self-organized and self-managed through consistent coaching.

Led the agile transformation and change management at the organizational level.

Scaled agile teams using Nexus framework.

Marsh McLennan Mar 2022 - Aug 2022

Domain: Insurance

Role: IT Project Manager and Scrum Master

Led 2 Scrum Teams, which are spread across the globe in delivering the software product related to BLUE[i] Specialty and digital division of Marsh McLennan, on time and with high quality.

Formed and led a new Scrum Team for a new application with new Team members.

Facilitated all the scrum ceremonies and activities – Sprint Planning, Daily Stand up, Sprint Review, Retrospective, and Backlog grooming using Atlassian suite of tools like JIRA, Confluence, and BitBucket.

Coordinated and conducted successful PI Planning sessions, ROAM meetings – Risk mitigation and Dependencies Trackers, Management Review meetings, Individual Team breakout sessions, and other SAFe Metrics like Inspect and Adapt, System Demo, etc, pre-PI sessions.

Captured all the user stories and the technical stories in JIRA as per the INVEST method.

Improved communication and interaction between Tableau Developers, Big Data Lake Engineers, QA Team, Product Managers, and Business Teams by following the Agile Scrum Framework, leading to shorter turnarounds, defined solutions, and better transparency.

Delivered tight-deadline Projects within the given timeframe using XP.

Worked with a team of Technical Architects, UX researchers, and UX designers to redesign the User Interface. Worked closely with usability experts to extract deeper insights from customers by actively engaging and conducting interviews with external customers.

Performed technology onboarding and new application onboarding with MGTI Service TakeOn, Sanction Check, CI Item, PRA – Privacy Risk Assessment, IAM, ARA – Application Risk Assessment, White Hat Scan Set up and ADD – Architecture Design Diagrams, engagement with DevOps Team, Disaster Recovery.

Guided new team members through the daily process and use of tools like Jira/Confluence and Bugzilla for daily project activities. Ensured that the Scrum Framework was utilized in a manner consistent with the corporate framework.

Managed cross-functional projects by providing project leadership and daily management throughout the project from inception to delivery.

Coordinated software release meetings to deploy the software product to pre-production and production for two major releases, OSS2.0 migrations, and White Hat Vulnerability checkpoint meetings.

Coordinated Scrum of Scrums and Leadership meetings.

CareFirst, Washington, DC Apr 2021 - Mar 2022

Domain: Healthcare – AWS migration

Role: Sr. Scrum Master

As a Scrum master, I facilitated the daily scrum calls, grooming, sprint reviews, sprint retrospectives, and planning meetings for three teams.

Led the Scrum teams and updated sprint progress to the product owner/stakeholders regularly.

Interacted with stakeholders/product owners to gather the requirements and map them with the project.

User Story preparations as per the client's expectations and help the team to understand them.

Worked on breaking the Epics and Features into the User stories and loaded them into Sprints.

Helped the product owner in creating the Features and User stories if required.

Worked on ranking/prioritizing the backlog user stories for sprint planning.

Monitored the burn-down charts daily and removed the impediments to the team to maintain the pace of the scrum team.

Followed SAFe Agile framework to scale the team.

Helped RTE in coming up with a program board and solution backlog during the pre-PI meeting.

Knowledge of the various services and capabilities of cloud computing platforms (AWS/Azure/GCP).

Proposed the use of Flowdock communication tools in the team.

Created and maintained the scrum-based flow dock groups and reduced the communication gaps/dependency time.

Used Terraform to write Cloud Formation scripts to automate the provisioning of AWS resources like IAM, EC2, S3, Route 53, SNS, RDS, ELB, and Auto Scaling and make calls to Puppet scripts that provision/configure servers on the instances.

Implemented multiple CI/CD pipelines as part of DevOps role for on-premises and cloud-based software using Jenkins and AWS.

Worked with the Product Owner to prioritize Epics, Features, and User Stories in PI planning.

Organized the daily Scrum calls as a part of agile project methodology.

Gathered all the points shared in the retrospective meetings and prepared the Minutes of Meetings and also the action items.

Addressed the retrospective action items by the scrum team/respective members before the next sprint planning.

Facilitated getting the work done without force, assigning, or dictating the work.

Facilitated scrum of scrum meetings.

Written the Gherkin format (Given, when, then, and) acceptance criteria for the user stories and have worked on ATDD and TDD frameworks.

Worked as a combined BA and scrum master in the project when required.

Ensured that the user stories in the backlog were prioritized and estimated, which included scheduling and facilitating the planning Poker sessions.

Helped the team understand the agile concepts and the agile practices to improve the team’s delivery.

Reviewed the User Stories with the scrum team to identify the gaps in the Acceptance Criteria and update them as required.

Worked with the Scrum team in CI/CD using Jenkins and Maven.

Participated in the bi-weekly Production checkouts and releases along with the team and helped in UAT testing as required.

Suggested a few changes in the communication process and data exchange between Offshore and Onshore, which reduced the dependency or wait time between the teams.

Vacation Club, Orlando, FL Jan 2020 - Mar 2021

Domain: Travel and Payment Portal

Role: Scrum Master

Conducted Scrum Daily stand-ups, Product backlog, Sprint planning, Sprint review, and retrospectives giving importance to the high-priority issues.

Support the Product Owner with grooming and maintaining the product backlog and working with the team.

Involved in monitoring Project Progress and radiated the information to stakeholders. Identified and mitigated team risks and impediments in achieving the goal.

Made sure the team was attending all the Daily stand-up meetings and helped in resolving impediments.

Facilitated sprint planning meetings by using velocity-driven planning and assisted the team in avoiding.

Technical debt and increase the quality of the product. Involved in Issue Tracking and Defect Tracking using JIRA and Bugzilla.

Educated and reinforced scrum methodology and agile framework to team members and stakeholders.

Worked together with SMEs, architecture group, and technical team leads to create a detailed interface, customized based on different user roles and functions.

Involved in various other enhancement initiatives to include new functionalities and redesign.

Provided training in Agile Development principles and practices to development teams.

Worked on facilitating communication, removing blockers, and making sure the project runs smoothly.

Facilitated scrum of scrums on a round-robin basis.

Responsible for facilitating the implementation of Process improvements.

Viasat, Carlsbad, CA Sep 2018 - Dec 2019

Damian: Networking

Role: Scrum Master

Continuously improved empirical process (Transparency, Inspection, and Adoption) for the Scrum team.

Experienced working with off-shore teams and distributed teams.

Facilitated the daily scrum calls and maintained an impediment log to resolve issues in a timely manner.

Assisted internal and external communication, acted as an information radiator to improve transparency, scale practices, and apply retrospective feedback into action.

Tracked, escalated, and removed impediments and unblocked teams when necessary.

Facilitated Scrum ceremonies like Sprint Planning, Daily Stand Up, Sprint Review, and Sprint Retrospective.

Created a learning environment for team members by brainstorming ideas through guilds, agile events, and learning fast iterations within fixed timelines.

Attended Scrum of Scrum, grooming, design, and ATDD for test automation.

Created JIRA dashboards for team velocity.

Facilitated various events for the Scrum Master Community of Practice and brainstormed ideas.

Collaborated with the Product Owner (PO) and Delivery Manager on a bi-weekly basis to refine the product roadmap, define priorities, capture risk, and mitigate dependencies.

Created metrics for risk and issues tracking and reporting every week.

Created and maintained production release, issues, risks, and impediment metrics and communicated to upper management on a bi-weekly basis.

Experienced in facilitating Risk Management and problem-solving sessions.

Calculated and delegated team capacity every iteration to release train engineer.

Facilitate collaboration of teams from different locations.

Ensured the cross-functional coordination between product owners, analysts, developers and QA occurred early and often, and removed barriers and blockers for the team.

Empowering the Scrum Team and shielding them from outside influences and distractions.

Unisys, India Apr 2011 - Jun 2015

Domain: Cloud Computing

Scrum Master and Software Engineer

Facilitated agile ceremonies (Sprint Planning, Daily Standup, Sprint Review, and Retrospective).

Removed impediments, shielded the team from external distractions, and minimized disruptions so the team could deliver on commitments.

Facilitated Scrum of Scrum for Scrum teams in the US and India.

Managed overall performance and delivery of cross-functional teams.

Collaborated closely with the product owner on backlog grooming to keep the product backlog relevant and prioritized, ensuring acceptance criteria were agreed upon and stories were ready for sizing.

Effectively tracked the team progress, including burn down, velocity, and release forecasting.

Identified training required for the team and managed the training process.

Project estimation, creating a work breakdown structure, scheduling, negotiating task assignments, tracking, monitoring, and reporting project activity. Involved in monthly project management reviews (PMRs) with senior management.

Involved in employee hiring processes.

Escalated issues about project requirements (Software and Hardware Resources) to the Project.

Reviewed project specifications and designed technology solutions that met or exceeded performance expectations.

Developed front-end Secure Private Cloud website using HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and Java.

Managed Test Development, enhancement, automated testing, and security testing.

Performed regression testing, new feature testing, and OWASP security/vulnerability testing.

Developed Test Plan and test execution, regression, Integration, and System testing.

Forecast and estimate the project's future requirements.

Orchestrated efficient large-scale software deployments.

Installed and configured Cloud Infrastructure and tested solutions for functionality.

Revised, modularized, and updated old code bases to modern development standards, reducing operating costs and improving functionality.

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