Aaron Samad
Canyon Country,CA
Summary
Experienced Agile Project/Product Manager passionate about improving people, process, and helping companies transform. Effectively coached agile teams towards being high-performing, versatile teams with collaborative, problem-solving and self-management skills. Driving meaningful results providing servant-leadership enabling teams to deliver results via effective Lean-Agile practices.
Overview
13
13
years of professional experience
Work History
Product Manager/ Scrum Master
Nationwide Insurance Mutual Co.
Scottsdale, AZ
01.2022 - 05.2024
- Increased product adoption by developing and implementing effective marketing strategies.
- Streamlined the product development process for faster time-to-market and improved efficiency.
- Launched successful products by conducting thorough market research and identifying customer needs.
- Optimized product performance with data-driven analysis and continuous improvement initiatives.
- Led cross-functional teams to deliver high-quality products on time and within budget constraints.
- Implemented Agile methodologies for more efficient project management and team collaboration.
- Reduced production costs through strategic supplier negotiations and process improvements.
Project Manager/Scrum Master
Northern Trust
06.2021 - 12.2021
- I was brought in the company to lead the transition an agile/six sigma hybrid environment to more Agile centric
- Delivered the cloud transformation project from inception to production including Web and iOS platform application
- Set up the teams and the process for seamless and efficient delivery
- Enhanced the project using various tracking methodologies like capacity utilization, estimation variance, defect leakage and backlog health etc
- Helped the product team with SWOT analysis of the product and features
- Tracked the project using burndown, burnup, cumulative flow diagram, trend release velocity and reported the progress to stakeholders and updated the product increment
- Set up cadences at team and also at organizational level
- Implemented and got a sign off on Definition of Done and Definition of Ready
- Help team understand the value of continuous delivery and continuous improvement by understanding the team’s capacity first and then working towards improving the velocity
- Guiding POs to write user stories based off on INVEST model
- Making sure the team is empowered, confident and comfortable enough to speak up and clear doubts during daily scrums, retrospectives and refinement sessions
- Applied BIRD technique on the root cause analysis document with key stakeholders to identify the problems, propose solutions and quantify the improvement.
Agile Transformation Lead
MUFG Union Bank
09.2018 - 06.2021
- Led Bank’s effort to launch first ever Mitsubishi product ‘Digital Account Opening’ in the U.S under Union Bank’s Digital Banking banner
- Setup the implementation org under Digital banking, from hiring new teams and setting up a process to funnel requirements into a product backlog
- Took the org from waterfall to Agile starting with Scrum to Scaled to Kanban
- Served the front-end team responsible for the web application of DAO (Digital Account Opening) and iOS/Android team responsible for delivering the mobile version of DAO
- Coached the stakeholders and teams alike to understand and utilize Agile methodologies efficiently
- Was part of the team responsible for getting external vendors onboard
- Facilitated Scrum ceremonies including Daily Stand-up, Sprint Planning, Sprint review and Sprint Retrospective
- Provided Agile coaching and servant leadership for scrum teams
- Enabled a productive environment for high-performing, self-managing and self-organizing scrum teams by resolving impediments and organizational dependencies
- Maintained a healthy backlog by coaching agile teams in various story-splitting techniques enabling teams to break down complex business intent into its basic components with a well-defined acceptance-criteria
- Created an environment for relentless improvement by promoting a continuous learning culture, facilitating problem-solving workshops
- Empowered team to improve their skillset by designating improvement stories each iteration and facilitating training workshops hosted by subject matter experts within the organization
- Empowered team to deliver built-in quality by shifting team’s focus towards technical excellence and good design adopting best practices for test-driven development
- Facilitated cross-team coordination and collaboration
- Supported organizational growth by participating in Scrum master Community of Practice and sharing experience, knowledge, and skills
- Promoted transparency and trust by ensuring Executives, Program Management, and stakeholders have clear understanding of team’s Program Increment Objectives and facilitating system demos during each Program Increment.
Technical Project Lead
JP Morgan Chase
02.2014 - 08.2018
- Supported Agile Transformation of organization by proactively coaching Scrum teams in Agile principles and best practices
- Facilitated all team collaboration sessions and sprint events, including daily stand-up, sprint planning, retrospectives, and sprint reviews
- Enabled team to be a high-performing and self-organized team by protecting team from external noise, resolving blockers and impediments, and focusing on a continuous pursuit of relentless improvement
- Empowered teams into decentralized decision-making practices by enabling a culture of intention, expressing plans, and moving forward
- Facilitate refinement sessions to improve quality of product backlog items by enabling team to break down complex business ideas into their simplest deliverable components, identifying dependencies and risks
- Work closely with product owner to ensure stories meet the team’s definition of ready and ensuring business intent is clearly understood
- Facilitate team’s adoption of DevOps practices to continually explore, integrate and deploy code enabling release on demand by ensuring development team the access to required tools and resources to implement a Continuous delivery pipeline
- Coach team into adopting a Kanban pull system by educating on series of states that define workflow and visualizing workflow
- Collaborated with Scrum Masters across the Agile Trains to provide organizational support in adopting agile practices.
Project Manager
AT&T Worldwide
06.2012 - 12.2013
- Manage the project by initiating, planning, executing, monitoring, controlling, and closing
- Gather requirements to identify scope, develop a project plan, execute and test within the agreed upon schedule and manage deliverables
- Worked on the project for the platform designed to host DirectTV video streaming services
- Work closely with project team throughout the project lifecycle to implement process improvements, identify, manage, and mitigate risks and appropriately document and track through reporting and project updates
- Provide guidance and support for implementation of project
- Meet overall objectives of the Stakeholders and Sponsors, provide effective communication and engagement, and provide training and support through change management efforts and handoff to operational teams
- Established Standardized project workflow to efficiently manage timely completion of projects
- Worked with backend (JAVA/Python) subject matter experts and quality department and regulatory auditors to address compliance requirements and issues
- Effectively saved 4,000 hours of manual work annually by coordinating custom QuickBooks integration into internal invoicing systems.
Web Development Lead
Intuit
03.2011 - 05.2012
- Managed and provided design/code reviews for vendor engineering resources - code reviews, standards enforcement, quality & SLA management
- Participated in the creation and execution of test scripts to validate functionality and expose deficiencies through general testing and debugging
- Led product initiatives, improve product and set examples to mentor front-end teams
- Developed functional and maintainable code utilizing best practices as per product requirements
- Implemented a fully automated selenium test suite for the marketing site for continuous integration
- Interacted and coordinated deliverables with other technical groups internal and external to the organization
- Developed responsive web applications utilizing Bootstrap and media queries
- Developed testing automation framework to ensure quality of the project.
Education
Bachelor’s - Computer Science & Engineering
California State University
Agile Leadership
University of Colorado Boulder
Certified Scrum Master
Scrum Alliance
Advanced Scrum Master
SAFe Scaled Agile
Skills
- Scaled Agile
- SAFe 50 Advanced Scrum Master
- Agile Leadership
- Agile Planning
- Servant Leadership
- Communication
- Impediment Removal
- Leading Cross Functional Teams
- Backlog Management
- Kanban
- Agile Coaching
- Product Development
Websites
Timeline
Product Manager/ Scrum Master
Nationwide Insurance Mutual Co.
01.2022 - 05.2024
Project Manager/Scrum Master
Northern Trust
06.2021 - 12.2021
Agile Transformation Lead
MUFG Union Bank
09.2018 - 06.2021
Technical Project Lead
JP Morgan Chase
02.2014 - 08.2018
Project Manager
AT&T Worldwide
06.2012 - 12.2013
Web Development Lead
Intuit
03.2011 - 05.2012
Bachelor’s - Computer Science & Engineering
California State University
Agile Leadership
University of Colorado Boulder
Certified Scrum Master
Scrum Alliance
Advanced Scrum Master
SAFe Scaled Agile