Scrum Master Software Engineer

Poornima Pentapaty

******.********@*****.*** 301-***-****

SUMMARY

Scrum Master & Agile Leader

Dynamic and results-driven Agile practitioner with 4+ years of experience leading high-performing, cross-functional teams. Proven ability to drive delivery excellence through Agile best practices, optimized JIRA workflows, and a strong focus on continuous improvement. Skilled in stakeholder engagement, sprint planning, and creating a collaborative team culture that consistently meets and exceeds business goals.

Senior Software Developer Technical Strategist

Seasoned software engineer with over 15 years of experience designing, developing, and deploying enterprise-grade web applications using Java, J2EE, and multi-tier architectures. Adept at database design, UI development, and system integration. Recognized for bridging the gap between technical execution and business vision, and for leading complex projects from concept to successful release.

WORK EXPERIENCE

United States Pharmacopeial Convention Inc. Jul. 2011 – Present

Project Lead ScrumMaster July 2020 – May 2025

Scrum Master & Agile Leadership – Driving Project Performance Through Team Empowerment and Delivery Excellence

Agile Facilitation: Personally, led all core Scrum ceremonies—sprint planning, reviews, retrospectives, and daily stand-ups—creating a culture of ownership and transparency. These ceremonies became key drivers for improved team pacing, accountability, and consistent on-time delivery.

Process Optimization: Streamlined daily stand-ups and introduced mid-sprint check-ins, enabling the team to surface blockers early and recalibrate when needed. As a result, sprint completion rates improved, morale lifted, and stakeholder satisfaction increased with more engaged, feedback-driven sprint reviews.

Backlog Management & Predictability: Took initiative in refining backlog grooming by collaborating with Product Owners and Technical Leads, resulting in 95% sprint commitment accuracy. Predictable releases became the norm, and confidence in delivery timelines increased across the board.

Removing Delivery Blockers: Identified and resolved recurring issues in our CI/CD pipeline by working closely with DevOps. This reduced story cycle time by 30% and removed common friction points that had delayed deployments in the past.

Data-Driven Execution: Leveraged JIRA and reporting tools to create visibility into team velocity, capacity, and impediments. Standardized story point estimation and sprint documentation, which improved planning precision and cross-team reporting.

Retrospectives & Continuous Improvement: Led retrospectives that focused on actionable takeaways rather than routine reflection. This fostered a mindset of continuous improvement and helped the team implement changes that led to measurable performance gains.

Estimation Accuracy: Improved story estimation by involving technical leads early and using tools like poker apps for fair and consistent LOE assessments. This reduced planning time and increased delivery reliability.

Architect & PO Engagement: Built strong working relationships with architects and product owners to balance tech debt, design clarity, and sprint scope. Facilitated early design alignment to ensure stories were well-defined and development-ready, leading to fewer mid-sprint blockers.

SQA & Deployment: Partnered closely with QA and deployment leads to plan UAT cycles, ensure AWS environment readiness, and uphold release quality. My coordination efforts helped avoid last-minute surprises and reduced post-release defects.

Cross-Team Coordination: Acted as the connective tissue across teams, especially during integrated testing and feature delivery phases. This collaboration ensured dependencies were tracked and resolved early, accelerating end-to-end delivery timelines.

Facilitate productive conversations between developers, architects, and product owners by asking relevant questions and translating requirements into practical terms.

Encourage sustainable design decisions by highlighting potential pitfalls and long-term implications that might not be obvious from a purely business perspective.

Foster team alignment by helping all stakeholders understand the "why" behind technical choices, ensuring that everyone is on the same page early in the development process.

Anticipate potential delays and help the team navigate around them by suggesting alternative approaches or connecting them with the right resources early.

Diagnose the root causes of issues more effectively—whether they stem from code-level bugs, environmental issues, or unclear requirements.

Project & Stakeholder Management – Driving Delivery Through Strong Leadership and Trusted Collaboration

Project Leadership: Personally led high-impact product enhancements and cross-system integration initiatives, working hands-on with business analysts, architects, and UX/design teams to shape clear, technically sound requirements. My early engagement in the discovery process helped reduce rework and accelerate development start times.

Timeline & Resource Management: Proactively collaborated with project managers to align resource availability with project demands. Anticipated roadblocks and created contingency-based deployment strategies that safeguarded delivery timelines while maintaining quality. Successfully kept multiple parallel projects on track—even during shifting business priorities.

Release Planning & Coordination: Took full ownership of release cycles—tracking progress, facilitating defect triage, managing technical design approvals, and ensuring deployment readiness. Maintained clear and proactive communication with stakeholders, increasing their confidence and reducing last-minute surprises.

Stakeholder Trust & Communication: Built strong, trust-based relationships with cross-functional and executive stakeholders by providing clear updates, raising risks early, and following through on commitments. This transparency led to improved stakeholder engagement and smoother decision-making.

Crisis Management: In high-pressure scenarios—such as critical production issues or compressed timelines—I remained calm and focused, rallying the team around priorities while shielding them from unnecessary noise. My support helped preserve team morale and enabled sustained performance during demanding project phases.

Leadership & Operational Excellence – Driving Results Through Ownership, Learning, and Strategic Alignment

Project Management (Acting PM): Stepped into a leadership role to manage key deliverables such as executive sponsor decks, timeline tracking, and Planview financial updates. Ensured consistent alignment between day-to-day execution and strategic goals by maintaining open lines of communication with stakeholders. This experience deepened my understanding of executive expectations and sharpened my ability to translate vision into action.

Financial & Resource Oversight: Supported financial tracking and sponsor communications with a focus on maintaining transparency and adherence to budget and timeline constraints. Actively monitored resource allocation and raised potential risks early, helping avoid cost overruns and delivery delays.

Performance Tracking & Predictability: Used sprint metrics not only to track output but also to improve workload forecasting and planning accuracy. By analyzing team trends and capacity patterns, I helped improve sprint reliability and supported better decision-making around team bandwidth.

Continuous Improvement & Learning Culture: Promoted a mindset of continuous learning and accountability within the team. Encouraged open discussions on process pain points, led small experiments to improve delivery, and shared learnings regularly. Personally stayed engaged in growth through retrospectives, feedback loops, and leadership mentoring, driving both personal and team evolution.

Team Development & Mentoring – Fostering Growth, Adaptability, and Collaboration

Mentorship & Onboarding: Took a hands-on approach in welcoming and mentoring new team members, helping them quickly ramp up on product knowledge, team norms, and technical workflows. I made it a priority to ensure they felt supported and connected from day one, which accelerated their confidence and contribution to sprint goals.

Cross-Skilling & Growth Mindset: Encouraged developers to step outside their comfort zones—such as backend engineers exploring front-end work—to build versatility within the team. This not only boosted individual growth but also made the team more resilient and flexible in responding to shifting priorities.

Team Empowerment & Collaboration: Promoted self-selection of tasks based on interest and expertise, which led to more ownership and better workload balance. Initiated weekly team forums to share learnings, highlight challenges, and celebrate wins—strengthening collaboration and team cohesion.

Skill Development & Flexibility: Actively championed cross-training opportunities and paired programming to help team members expand their full-stack capabilities. As a result, the team became more adaptive, with improved velocity and fewer bottlenecks during critical delivery phases.

Tools & Workflow Enhancements – Enabling Smarter Workflows and Streamlined Collaboration

JIRA Workflow Optimization: Took the initiative to customize JIRA workflows to better reflect the team's real-world processes—introducing distinct paths for bugs, enhancements, and user stories. Added an “In Review” stage to create a dedicated space for QA and peer feedback, which improved quality and reduced rework.

Platform Setup & Standardization: Led the transition of our product platform to JIRA, driving alignment across BAs, Product Owners, and developers. By streamlining handoffs and removing workflow redundancies, I helped improve team efficiency and reduced delays in story readiness and sign-off.

Documentation & Stakeholder Communication: Maintained clear and current project documentation and used demos and planning artifacts to keep stakeholders aligned and informed. These efforts improved engagement and reduced back-and-forth, allowing the team to stay focused on delivery.

Sprint Formalization & Visibility: Recognized inefficiencies with scattered ad-hoc work and transitioned the team to structured maintenance sprints. Introduced automated “DONE” reports and release logs, increasing transparency, easing deployment coordination, and enabling better sprint planning.

Team Lead Jul. 2020 – May 2025

Instituted weekly one-on-one meetings to support team members needing additional guidance. Focused on promoting individual growth and ensuring timely task completion, particularly for newer team members.

Fostered employee engagement through regular check-ins to address concerns, enhance morale, and maintain productivity. Demonstrated empathy and helped maintain a positive work environment, even when direct solutions were not possible.

Recognized exceptional work, awarding Stars to team members for outstanding contributions and for resolving complex issues with Qualtrics. This approach motivated the team and reinforced positive behaviors.

Provided constructive feedback for performance improvement, addressing issues like communication delays and incomplete story reviews, helping team members understand areas for growth and enhancing their skills.

Managed workload distribution to balance complexity and prevent burnout, ensuring high productivity and quality while avoiding team member overwhelm.

Encouraged teamwork and open communication, promoting a collaborative team culture where diverse ideas were welcomed, fostering innovation and stronger problem-solving.

Identified and addressed performance obstacles, offering support to team members to overcome challenges and feel supported in their work.

Fostered an inclusive environment, ensuring every team member felt heard and respected. Encouraged a diversity of thought, empowering individuals to grow and learn from different perspectives.

Conflict Handling: Handled conflict with transparency and open communication, resolving concerns and building trust within the team and with stakeholders.

Dedicated time to mentoring team members, guiding them through technical challenges and helping them improve both their technical and communication skills.

Providing Visibility: Created opportunities for team members to showcase their work by encouraging participation in Sprint demos, allowing them to present to the larger team.

Technical Lead Various Projects at USP 2011 – 2020

2019 - 2020:

Led the migration of company’s products to new architecture, ensuring smooth data transfer and integration.

Managed all project tasks in JIRA, ensuring clear communication and progress tracking

across teams.

Collaborated with cross-functional teams to ensure that all systems—from the ordering process to the end-user product experience—were aligned and integrated for a successful release.

Conducted product demos for both internal and external users, showcasing key features and functionality.

2018:

Coordinated development efforts for user licensing product across a team of 6 developers, ensuring timely delivery and quality code reviews.

Proactively managed stress relief for developers during long projects, contributing to resource allocation and assisting with testing and code reviews.

Led the cleanup of legacy product subscriptions data, resulting in a seamless transition to a new subscription model and an increase of over 15K new Access Point users within the first 3 months.

2017:

Spearheaded the implementation of a voting application, reducing annual Livelink subscription fees for over 800 volunteers, resulting in significant cost savings.

Led the development of Online Subscription Phases 1, 2, and 3, automating key generation and renewal processes through a revised subscription management system.

Gained in-depth knowledge of the ERP process and order management lifecycle, expanding understanding of USP’s operations.

Successfully managed subscription Management system projects, delivering high-quality results under minimal supervision, adhering to best practices, and fostering open communication with stakeholders.

Received a “Very Strong” performance rating for handling complex integration projects and demonstrating rapid learning and problem-solving capabilities.

Collaborated with cross-functional teams (Customer Service, PMO, and SQA), elevating the reputation of IT within the organization.

2015-2016:

Led the technical integration of SSO system with the Learning Management System and the other voting applications.

Recognized with an “Exceeds Requirements” rating for demonstrating exceptional thoroughness, teamwork, mentorship, professionalism, and reliability in challenging situations.

Consistently delivered high-quality results by navigating changing requirements, high-pressure situations, and tight deadlines.

PREVIOUS EXPERIENCE

Senior Consultant Booz Allen Hamilton Aug. 2008 – Jun. 2011

FDA - Centre for Veterinary Medicine (CVM)

FDA - Office of Regulatory Affairs (ORA)

Applications Developer/Analyst United States Pharmacopeial Convention Inc. Apr. 2001 – Sep. 2006

Software Engineer (Contract with USP) American Software Resources Inc. Jul. 2000 – Mar. 2001

Software Engineer Intelligroup Asia Pvt Ltd, India Apr. 2000 – Jun. 2000

EDUCATION

Bharathiar University 1994 - 1998

Bachelor of Engineering, Computer Science

CERTIFICATIONS

Certified Scrum Master (CSM), Scrum Alliance (2020-2026)

Sun Certified Java 2.0 Programmer

SKILLS

Agile & Scrum: Certified Scrum Master (CSM); expertise in Sprint Planning, Agile Transformation, Release Management, Poker Estimation, and Scrum ceremonies.

Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC): In-depth understanding of all SDLC phases including Planning, Requirement Analysis, Design, Implementation, Testing, Deployment, and Maintenance.

Project Management & Tools: Proficient in JIRA (including Workflow Optimization), Confluence, Git, Planview, and Microsoft Project.

Programming & Databases: Strong command of Java (Certified), SQL, C++, and MySQL.

Collaboration & Leadership: Skilled in team mentorship, stakeholder engagement, conflict resolution, communication, problem solving, process improvement, and effective resource allocation.

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