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Sanjana Gandham - Senior Scrum Master

[email protected]

Location: Austin, Texas, USA

Relocation: project is ended

Visa: h4ead

Experience Summary: Result driven servant leader with 10+ years of IT experience in developing, implementing, and managing complex, cross functional projects and driving successful implementations. Extensive experience in Agile product delivery to achieve customer satisfaction. Coaching geographically distributed, multiple cross-functional teams and maintaining positive and productive working relationships with stakeholders. Extensive experience facilitating Daily Scrum meetings, Sprint Planning, Sprint Review, Demo & Decision making, Sprint Retrospective, Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment. Team player with proven leadership, conflict, risk and dependency management, collaboration, and client handling skills. Facilitating team to deliver high business values with a focus on quality and continuous improvement. Facilitated various scrum ceremonies, events, estimation workshops using facilitation techniques like -tomato timer, planning poker, divergent and convergent way of thinking. Helped team reach consensus on all the project deliverables and deadlines using dot voting and fist of five technique. Extensive experience in Agile (SCRUM & SAFe) methodologies with knowledge of other approaches such as Lean, Kanban, XP, TDD. Highly experienced in capturing and tracking team progress using various agile metrics like Burn-down chart. Velocity trends, Density leakages, Estimation efficiency, Commitment Reliability. Assisted the product owner in backlog refinement and prioritization using various techniques like -KANO analysis, MOSCOW technique, Affinity Analysis and Ranking method. Oversaw 6 successful consecutive release cycles in Cummins which included releases from 7 teams - decreasing defect rate by 35% and assuring 100% committed functionality with each cycle. Achieved employee recognition for 6 times for being proactive with managing dependencies, risks and for improving project outcomes. Efficient in managing conflicting personalities within teams. Expert at driving the adoption and enforcement of scrum values, removing impediments, and fostering self -management and organization. Highly proficient in using tools like JIRA, Confluence and Rally in tracking project team progress. Has led various agile community of practice (CoP) sessions which were attended by more than 80 employees across all groups in Cummins. Mentored 3 cross- functional teams with more than 20 employees in delivering quality products which led to over more than $2M in revenue. Responsible for creating and onboarding project teams, integrating them into the organization and providing a clear vision of the product. Facilitated communication and information exchange between external groups and the project team. Also monitored project progress, provide timely feedback, and drove a culture of agility and learning. Skill Synopsis: Skills Agile Transformation, Continuous Improvement & Delivery, Project Planning, Execution & Delivery, Cross-functional Leadership, Coaching and Development, Communication & Collaboration, Change Management, Estimation and Dependency and Risk Management. Tools Atlassian JIRA, Confluence, Rally, Microsoft office, MS Excel, MS Word, Power point. Certification SAFe Agilist- Certified SAFe 5.0 Domain Technology, Banking, Finance, Power Technology. Education: Bachelor s in pharmacy Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University (Hyderabad, India), March 2014. Project Experience: Client: Cummins Inc, Indianapolis, USA Role: Senior Scrum Master Project: Prognostics Alerts (March 2022- Till date) Current capabilities at Cummins sends a notification to a customer about a failure only when it occurs, which can lead to unplanned downtime, inability to complete the mission and subsequent business impact for customers. Prognostics insights provide predictive alerts/ notifications of a failure up to 90 days in advance that allows avoiding unplanned downtime, reducing service costs, enhancing overall fleet operations and customer experience. This project aims at improving market share and growth for Cummins products and digital services. Responsibilities: Facilitating sprint ceremonies- stand-ups, sprint planning, sprint review, retrospective sessions, Inspect and Adapt Sessions (ART), Problem solving sessions, Defect triage sessions, Infant Care Sessions (To monitor releases). Helping the team in the forming stage by regularly coaching them on various agile principles. As a lead Scrum master I was able to bridge the gap between the stakeholders and development team and ensured the requirements were converted into meaningful user stories. As a change leader I ensured to enable a culture where agile teams can flourish and accomplish the project goals. Assisting and guiding team in every step of release management process Helping development team come up with release dates, code freeze dates, planning SIT (System Integration Testing), UAT (User Acceptance Testing) for a release, deployments into various environments, after deployment activities like co-ordination with production support team to monitor impact of release on end customers, planning infant care sessions (to help with any bugs that are encountered after a release). Ensure code quality by constantly evaluating and reflecting on the practices followed by development team. Documenting all dependencies using JIRA plans with appropriate description, due date, dependency type and team. Co-ordinating internal and external dependencies on a timely basis, keeping a track of all dependencies and closely monitoring the dependencies from start to end of project. Raising risks/ or highlighting any impediments promptly to RTE and stakeholders. Coaching teams by promoting cross- functionality, facilitation of retrospective sessions for cross teams to reflect and improve processes in ART. Coaching the teams and helping them to self-manage and self -organize, coaching product owners in effective agile product management techniques, coaching the organization and executives by leading, training the enterprise in agile and SAFE adoption. Constant collaboration with stakeholders to understand their requirements, concerns and act as a liaison between stakeholders and development team. Facilitate information and communication exchange between all concerned parties. Facilitating sprint review meeting, preparing, and documenting sprint reports which includes summary of the entire sprint number of user stories committed vs completed, bugs or defects reported during the sprint, unforeseen risks or impediments encountered during sprint, velocity, burndown charts, dependencies resolved and communicated. Sprint reports helped build transparency with stakeholders. Constantly encourage teams to follow Agile engineering practices like Continuous Integration, end-end automation testing, focus on quality and integration, practice pair-programming. Ensuring all three constraints are met for every project- cost, time, and quality goals. Assisting product owners in prioritizing and refining product backlog using various prioritizing techniques. Creating separate buckets for all issue types in JIRA to keep the backlog healthy and always refined. Networking with cross teams and external teams to improve work relations which indeed helps me in removing roadblocks and impediments for my development teams. Risk management Roaming risks, creating a JIRA board to document risks with appropriate details, assignees and mitigation plans/path forward, constantly reviewing and monitoring existing and new risks to help mitigate them as quickly as possible. Escalating any new program level risks to RTE s and executives. Coaching team members and product owners on how to use various agile tools like JIRA for product management, task management, bug tracking and confluence for storing and editing project related documents. Maintaining Scrum and Kanban boards in JIRA, Bug tracking, Creating, and analyzing real time metrics from JIRA - velocity reports, burn down charts. Extensively utilize JIRA, Confluence, Easy BI in advanced ways as part of daily duries. Leading Agile community of practice sessions- Constantly coaching team members, product owners, stakeholders on agile principles and best practices using different presentations, real life examples, organizing fun Kahoot quiz games to improve participation and to convey the effectiveness of the topic. Client: American Express, FLL, Florida USA Role: Senior Scrum Master Project: Legacy Migration from batch to Real-Time Services (March 2019 March 2022) Amex migration project aims to migrate Legacy systems (Mainframes) to New Systems (Big Data) includes and Customer profile migration, Matching Framework, Data Standardization which helps is customer onboarding. Responsibilities: Facilitated daily stand-ups, sprint demo, retrospective meetings, and backlog grooming/refinement sessions. Guided the team and organization on proper use of Agile/Scrum practices, frameworks, and values to delight customers. Attended Program Increment (PI) sessions and facilitated system demo, inspect, and adapt workshops for future PIs and Release Management meetings. Worked closely with the Release Train Engineer for the ART in coordinating dependencies between various scrum teams. Confluence was used to maintain project documents such as project plans, project scope, and status reports and to assign tasks. Tracked and reported team progress by creating sprint burndown charts and Release burndown charts and velocity charts. Worked on SAFe framework with other scrum teams, Attended Scrum of Scrums to coordinate dependencies across various other scrum teams in Agile Release train, worked with Release Train Engineer to support integration testing. Ensured that there is effective co-ordination and communication between offshore and onshore teams on project progress and challenges. Provided constructive feedback and direction to offshore and onsite team. Ensured timely review, approval and sign-off the deliverables. Lead the team on self-organization and self- managed improvement methods. Assessed the Scrum Maturity of the team and organization and coached the team to higher levels of maturity, at a pace that was sustainable and comfortable for the team and organization. Aided team in the removal of all process impediments. Built a trusting and safe environment where issues were raised without fear of blame, retribution, or being judged, with emphasis on healing and problem-solving. Supported and educated the Product Owner, on grooming and maintaining the product backlog. Client: American Express, FLL, Florida USA Role: Senior Scrum Master Project : Customer- 360,Realtime Updates to the Database instead of Batch (February 2017 March 2019) As part of this launch, the project includes receiving the account changes from API in real time and applying them to our Customer Database when Account is Replaced (with another Account), Account is Reinstated, and Account is Purged. Responsibilities: Proficiently organized and facilitated daily scrum, sprint reviews, retrospectives, sprint, and release planning, inspect and adapt sessions. Collaborated closely with product owner on backlog grooming to keep product backlog relevant and prioritized, ensuring acceptance criteria were agreed upon and stories were ready for sizing. Effectively tracked team progress, including burn down, velocity and release forecasting. Expertly promoted continuous improvement and helped teams increased productivity and foster innovation. Used various agile metrics to ensure quality and timely delivery of projects which include- velocity trends, burndown charts, defect density leakages, commitment reliability, estimation efficiency. Worked with Technical teams to identify options to meet business requirements. Worked with six scrum team members and project owners to negotiate best practices for service delivery. Updated Agile tracking systems to provide readiness on service and sprint backlogs. Tracked and communicated team velocity and sprint/release progress to internal and external stakeholders. Coached team to understand the fundamentals of agile processes. Shielded the team from internal and external distraction to help them focus on productivity and quality of the deliverables. Focused on the development of a trusted and collaborative team environment. Identified and removed team impediments to enhance productivity and efficiency. Mentored and led team to be self-directed with strong accountability decision making, conflict resolution and transparency. Client: Procore Technologies, Tampa, Florida Role: Scrum Master Project: Power Net (August 2014 January 2017) In this project we aimed at creating a web- based portal to give our end-users the ability to manage their accounts to place orders, check invoices, review pricing Responsibilities: Facilitated and conducted all Scrum ceremonies, including Sprint Planning, daily Scrum Meetings, Sprint Reviews, and Sprint Retrospectives. Involved throughout the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) focusing on Agile Methodology. Engaged with stakeholders to accurately report progress, risks, successes, and failures. Maintained a close working relationship with the product owner, scrum team, and other stakeholders such as product end users. Led working session meetings to discuss scope, schedule, and requirements with product owners. Helped the Product Owner with prioritization, refinement, risk management, and scope changes. Manage product quality, releases, and delivery. Managed and monitored the implementation of various agile techniques such as TDD, BDD, Automated Testing, Continuous Integration, Continuous Delivery, Continuous Deployment. Supported all inter and intra team communication. Calculated ongoing team capacity and velocity. Acted as a mentor to ensure development teams work towards the core Scrum principles of collaboration, prioritization, team accountability, and visibility. Established shared product vision across the development team, product owner and business owners. Keywords: business intelligence information technology microsoft Colorado