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Rekha Balakrishnan - Scrum Master

[email protected]

Location: Ford City, Pennsylvania, USA

Relocation: No

Visa: H1B

Rekha Balakrishnan Certified Scrum Master, Project Manager. 469-459-6394 [email protected] Scrum certified SAFe Scrum Master with overall 10+ years of project management experience with an ability in facilitating agile development and coaching agile teams to become self managing to deliver quality products and features. Skilled in facilitating agile ceremonies, identifying and removing impediments, promoting team collaboration, tracking and reporting teams Progress. Ability to make good decisions and influence cross-functional teams across the organization with excellent client interfacing and consulting skills. Handled diverse responsibilities in Agile Project Management, Quality Management, Risk Management and Team Management across various assignments. PROFESSIONAL SUMMARY Extensive hands-on experience in Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) and agile frameworks. Collaborated with Product Owner in maintaining and refining product backlog, prioritization and forecasting of roadmap based on team velocity and stakeholder requests thus ensuring we met 100% of capacity in PI planning. Established and tracked agile metrics to support data-driven decision making and continuous improvement to increase the team's velocity by 60% over a period of 9 months. Coached and mentored teams to increase their Velocity, reduce churn, reduce cycle time, increase productivity and overall team satisfaction thus delivering 50% more features per PI(Program Increment). Removed impediments and escalated in a timely manner as necessary thus ensuring there was almost 0% of Stories getting carried over. Protected the team from uncontrolled injection of work thus reducing churn to almost 0% percent. Worked closely with RTE (Release Train Engineer) for the ART in coordinating with Scrum teams within the ART and other ART s Supported the team in establishing realistic and achievable delivery commitments while operating at a sustainable pace thus maintaining a stable velocity. Facilitated retrospectives and promoted continuous improvement by implementing actionable plans. Managed Stakeholders by communicating project status and resolving conflicts and issues in a timely and effective manner. Championed agile culture and mindset by promoting and encouraging teams to become self-organizing. Coached and mentored team members, PO, BO on Scrum and Scaled Agile Framework model (SAFe). Participated in and contributed to internal agile communities of RTE/Scrum Master Forums. Working under an Agile Scrum PMO, supported PMO policies and procedures particularly around budget tracking and expenditure classification. Excellent verbal and written skills and capable of presenting findings to both technical and non-technical audiences and team handling. Good exposure to Telecom, health insurance and Medical Transcription domains. Tools & Techniques: SDLC Methodologies Waterfall, Scrum, SAFe, Kanban Reporting Tools Jira, Trello, Rally, Confluence, Kanban Board, MS Office Suite, MS SharePoint, PowerPoint, Tableau, Service Now PM and Modeling Tools MPP, MS Visio Business Skills Stakeholder Management, Change Management, Impact Analysis, Risk Management, Cost-Benefit Analysis, Product Roadmapping, JAD Sessions, Financial Reporting, SWOT analysis, Release management, Resource planning Data Warehousing Data Mapping, Data Validation Web Services and API Tools XML, JSON, Swagger tool, Postman Database Oracle, SQL, MS Access Languages JQL, SQL, HTML Testing Tools HP Quality Center, QTest WORK EXPERIENCE Scrum Master- Project Management - Verizon, Tampa, FL Feb 2022 to Current RESPONSIBILITIES Led multiple Scrum teams of 7 members in the networking division of Verizon delivering features in a SAFe agile framework. Facilitated all Scrum related ceremonies, including: Sprint planning, Daily Stand up, Sprint backlog grooming sessions, Sprint Review and Sprint retrospectives. As part of PI planning worked with BO, PO, Business Analyst, Architects, to plan ahead and ensure product backlog is prioritized, groomed, and has sufficient detail, so that it is ready to be worked on by Scrum teams to avoid any downtime, ambiguity or rework. Execute the backlog according to the priorities set by the Product Owner, making sure that deliverables are on time within the release plans. Coached the team to work on the backlog according to the priorities set by the Product Owner, making sure that deliverables are on time within the release plans. Protect development team from outside distractions, impediments, or team conflicts, and maintain focus on product backlog project timeline Improved the team's velocity by about 50% over a 6 month period. Provided regular updates and recommendations to the Leadership Team (Scrum, Development & Business Management) about the team regarding the agile and scrum processes being followed. Collaborate with the team in performing the sprint retrospective, brainstorming improvement areas and outcomes for future sprints. Applied principles of agile/scrum methodologies to keep projects on track, change requirements, flexibility, close team collaboration, vision, scope and commitment. Manage stakeholder expectations by demonstrating and communicating key indicators of improved efficiencies by the team on a periodic basis. Attended and contributed to all safe agile ceremonies like PI Planning, Scrum of Scrums and PO sync. Scrum Master/ Project Manager - Blue Shield of California, Oakland, CA Mar 2012 - Feb 2018 RESPONSIBILITIES Coached and Groomed the team to move from waterfall to Agile way of working. Helped the team to look at breaking down the existing code base into small deliverable components so it can be done in 1 sprint. Helped the team move from a 3 week sprint into a 2 week sprint and guided the team on making needed adjustments in terms of story size, points, testing etc. Did the capacity planning based on leaves and vacation and identified the number of user story points that the team can do in a sprint. Tracking the User Stories ensuring that they are being worked based on priority. Guided and worked closely with the Product Owner to create smaller stories so the team can do it in a sprint. Coordinating with the Product Owner after the Sprint Demo to decide on priority of stories on backlog Hosting the Retro Sessions after the demo and collecting the team inputs, have discussions, learn from experience and come up with ideas for improvement. Taking care of the deliverables of the minimum marketable features in 2 weeks sprints. Participating in Release Planning Meeting, hosting the Sprint Planning Meeting, Ensuring that the team members collaborate among themselves to achieve the timeliness and Quality of delivery. Responsible for ensuring that productions issues are resolved within the SLA s Work effectively with Executives, Business Partners, Directors, and Product Owners. Protect development team from outside distractions, impediments, or team conflicts, and maintain focus on product backlog project timeline Team Member/Team lead - HealthScribe, Bangalore, India. May 1999 to February 2002 RESPONSIBILITIES Managed multiple projects one of which was an automation project which automated Medical Transcription demographic data gathering. This significantly reduced time and cost. Responsible for managing the projects throughout the entire life cycle starting from requirement through implementation. Participating in project kick off meetings, presenting the project factors in meetings and getting project fund and timeline approval, conducting weekly status meetings, taking care of the approval process during various stages of the project, updating status and tracking project development through Project Plan. Responsible for maintaining the Business Functionality Requirements Documents Scheduling and Tracking the Project Plan using Microsoft Project Plan (MPP). Taking care of the Change management process to maintain the project scope. Responsible for Project Team feedback, requesting the appropriate technical resources, managing escalations, managing change requests, scope creeps, maintaining resource calendars, meetings with the resources as needed, and sending weekly status reports. EDUCATION Post Graduate Diploma in Computer Application, NIIT Bangalore-1999. Bachelor of Commerce, Bangalore University-1998. CERTIFICATIONS AND LICENSES Certified Scrum Master (CSM) Keywords: information technology hewlett packard purchase order microsoft California Florida