Career Profile
Experienced Scrum Master and Agile Coach with over 20 years of expertise in Agile methodologies, project management, systems analysis, and software development. Skilled at fostering collaborative, high-performing teams by cultivating a culture of trust, innovation, and continuous improvement. Adept at enhancing team performance and streamlining processes through the application of Systems Thinking, Theory of Constraints, Lean, and Flow principles, ensuring the successful delivery of complex products. Recognized for delivering innovative technology solutions and exceptional customer service, with comprehensive experience spanning all stages of project initiatives and implementations.
Experience
- Focused multiple teams on delivering their Sprint Goals & PI Objectives leading to an increase in Epic completion from 15-40% to 90-100+%
- Provided actionable data and asked questions to guide teams towards improvements
- Introduced ART Syncs to collaborate on cross-team dependencies
- Coached Leadership, Scrum Masters, Product Owners on Agile / Scrum / SAFe best practices
- Shaped & facilitated Scrum Master Community of Practice
- Coached Scrum Masters on theories, techniques, and practices in order to mature teams
- Delivered SAFe certification courses
- Scrum Master & Agile Coach for organizational Agile transformation
- Coached Leadership & teams on Agile methodologies & best practices
- Coached Scrum Masters on theories, techniques, and practices in order to mature teams
- Helped setup first Agile Release Train
- Focused multiple teams on delivering their Iteration Goals & PI Objectives
- Persuaded seasoned developers to shift to an Agile mindset by incrementally changing old habits and increase Epic completion rate from 25% to 90%
- Coached newly formed team to progressively improve practices to increase value delivery and consistently achieve Epic completion of 100%
- Coached Leadership to allow teams to experiment
- Helped stand up new Agile Release Train
- Mentored Scrum Masters & Product Owners to improve Agile process
- Designed a location-based SMS marketing and e-commerce product
- Coached a local medical company on upgrading their workflow system
- Facilitated design review meetings and translated requirements to developers
- Guided Olive Media on their Managed SEO solutions strategy and products
- Advised local law firm on website strategy and solution
Service Delivery Manager
April 2015 - March 2016
- Program Management of Special Loans within Default Mortgage
- Responsible for reliability and availability of systems and applications
- Created remediation plans to bring 41 legacy applications into mortgage technology infrastructure
- Chaired technology audits to identify, manage, and mitigate risk in 81 applications and systems
- Helped setup first Agile Release Train
Project Manager
August 2012 - April 2015
- Managed application and systems development (including release management), infrastructure upgrades, and technology audits
- Controlled a suite of websites and 60 web services to transfer data with vendor's workflow system as mortgage servicing platform changed from mainframe to iSeries systems
- Orchestrated relocation of 100 servers across multiple locations during divestiture of Getzville, NY operations center
- Facilitated meetings with stakeholders to identify and gather business requirements and convert into functional requirements
- Organized Business Impact Analysis meetings to create Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery plans
- Managed remote teams spread throughout United States and India
Software Engineer / Team Lead
May 2008 - August 2012
- Spearheaded an Agile approach to software development within my department
- Served as Scrum Master and/or Product Owner
- Served as Scrum Master facilitating all Scrum ceremonies: release planning, sprint planning, backlog grooming, daily scrum, sprint review, retrospectives
- Served as Product Owner being the voice of the customer, prioritizing features, and ensuring the team understands the work needed
- Created a web application used by call center associates to determine scripts for customers to establish eligibility for Imminent Default programs. Using an Agile approach, followed a short release schedule to continuously add features and respond to government mandates. Enabled customer service team to decrease number of call center associates taking calls from 300 to 20 and average call length from 55 minutes to under 15 minutes, saving $500k in operating costs
- Directed a team in the remediation of 44 legacy applications onto mortgage technology platform
- Guided a team to streamline struggling REO charge-off department. Transformed the process to determine, track, and execute weekly charge offs of loans. Reduced decision errors to <1%, boosted efficiency tenfold, and ensured the weekly deadline was met 100% of the time
- Engineered process improvement solutions for default mortgage applications
- Converted and automated production jobs and data feeds from MSP/Black Knight mainframe data to CACS, DAL, RMS iSeries data
- Initiated a production wiki to enable team members the ability to quickly fix production errors, decreasing downtime and increasing customer satisfaction
- Supervised developers
- Managed client accounts across various industries including government, media, law firms, manufacturers, distributors, health services, and retail
- Vendor management
- Executed Cloud migration of data and applications
- Delivered custom application development projects
Programmer/Analyst
November 2000 - June 2005
- Produced custom applications, content managers, e-commerce websites, extranets, and intranets
- Served as scrum master and/or product owner
- Created OrderVault, a component and software package for end-to-end encryption of customer data for transfer over the Internet
- Launched a tool for a start-up company of retailers and distributors to collaborate on producing advertising campaigns
- Collaborated with clients to gather business requirements and turn into functional specs
- Designed and managed relational databases
- Administered database, web, and file servers
- Demonstrated, trained, and provided technical support for users on applications
- Reconciled production and risk issues and updated legacy code
- Researched new technologies, determined their application, and integrated them into clients’ systems
- Established documentation procedures
- Installed network cables and setup devices at client locations
Community Leadership
- Responsible for all applications and systems utilized by the Buffalo Chapter of PMI
- Created the Chapter's 3-year Technology Roadmap
- Determined yearly budget
- Managed team supporting technology driven projects
- Managed Vendors
Director of Applications
January 2023 - December 2023
- Responsible for the technical support of all applications and systems utilized by the Buffalo Chapter of PMI
- Research and development of new technologies, systems, and applications
- Collaborated on the Chapter's 3 year Technology Roadmap
- Responsible for supporting technology driven projects
- Ensured standard operating procedures (SOPs) are documented
- Coordinated with vendors
Certification
Awards
Bank of America - Mortgage Technology Gold Award
eMason remediation effort
eMason remediation effort
Bank of America - Mortgage Technology Bronze Award
Migrating Mortgage Line of Business applications into Mortgage Technology
Migrating Mortgage Line of Business applications into Mortgage Technology
Bank of America - Mortgage Technology Bronze Award
MHA (Making Homes Affordable) Imminent Default Eligibility application effort
MHA (Making Homes Affordable) Imminent Default Eligibility application effort