Career Profile
Highly skilled Scrum Master and Agile Coach with over 20 years of experience in Agile methodologies, coaching, project management, systems analysis, and software development. Passionate about improving people and processes while leading the delivery of complex products. Adept at delivering top-notch customer service and technology solutions, with extensive experience in all phases of project initiatives and implementations.
- Team Management
- Implemented policies and procedures for department and team
- Supervised developers to design and deliver solutions, on-time and within budget
- Managed remote and offshore teams
- Ensured objectives were accomplished in accordance with outlined priorities
- Adapted and responded to deadlines and changing priorities
- Effectively communicated with cross-functional professionals and all levels of management
- Served as Scrum Master and Product Owner
- Project Management
- Planned and managed system, application, infrastructure, and ad-hoc projects
- Drove projects, increasing revenue or cutting costs, to completion, on-time and on-budget
- Determined potential risk factors to the success of projects
- Skilled to overcome project and departmental obstacles including budget constraints, staff shortages, scope creep, and various business and user needs
- Waterfall and Agile (SAFe, Scrum, Kanban) methodologies
- Financial Management
- Prepared and monitored budgets for departments and projects
- Analyzed results of operations to discover more efficient ways to utilize resources
- IT Infrastructure Management
- Executed infrastructure upgrades and moves
- Managed web, application, and database servers
- Systems Administration
- Monitored hardware and software lifecycles
- Assessed security vulnerabilities
- Established disaster recovery plans and procedures
- Programming and Development
- Gathered business requirements (BRD) and wrote functional specifications.
- Systems Analysis and Design
- Full Stack Development (created web applications, desktop software, web services, databases, components)
- Database design and management
- Formulated test plans and scripts
- Performed risk assessments and vulnerability remediation
- Provided level 3 support
- Resolved production incidents and performed root cause analysis
- Skilled with all phases of the Software Development Lifecycle
- C#, ASP.NET, Visual Basic, ASP/VB Script, JavaScript, HTML, XML, DHTML, CSS, JQuery, JSON, IIS, COM/COM+, PHP, Perl, MS SQL, Stored Procs, MySql, Oracle, Access
Experience
- Scrum Master for multiple teams on multiple Agile Release Trains facilitating all Scrum team & ART ceremonies
- Focused 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, and Scaled Agile Framework best practices
- Shaped & run Scrum Master Community of Practice
- Coached Scrum Masters on theories, techniques, and practices to mature teams
- Collaborated on Agile Task Force to evolve organization’s Agile maturity
- Scrum Master and coach for organizational Agile transformation
- Coached Leadership and teams on on Agile methodologies & best practices
- Helped setup Agile Release Trains
- Scrum Master for multiple teams on multiple ARTs facilitating all SAFe team ceremonies
- Protected Agile teams to allow them to focus on work
- Persuaded seasoned developers to shift to an Agile mindset by incrementally changing old habits and increase Epic completion from 25% to 90%
- Helped stand-up a new Agile Release Train
- Coached newly formed team to progressively improve practices to increase value delivery and consistently reach Epic completion of 100%
- Backed up Release Train Engineer (RTE) and facilitated ART events when on leave
- Mentored Scrum Masters and Product Owners to improve Agile processes
- Coached Leadership to allow teams to experiment
- 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