John Saakoe Jr.
Lombard,IL
Summary
- Agile Scrum Master with over 8 years of leadership and technical experience across diverse sectors including logistics, healthcare, and finance. Proven track record in leading cross-functional teams to deliver projects on time and within budget. Expertise in fostering collaboration, resolving conflicts, and driving continuous improvement through agile methodologies. Achievements include enhanced team productivity and successful project delivery across multiple industries.
Overview
9
9
years of professional experience
1
1
Certification
Work History
SAFe Agile Scrum Master
Navitus Health Solution
05.2023 - Current
- Coordinated two scrum teams of 15 members to successfully migrate the Prescriber Portal to AWS, enhancing deployment efficiency, and reducing deployment time by 30%.
- Successfully delivered three key projects: Discount Card, Integrated Cash Solutions, and Rebates, by coordinating cross-functional teams, including Product Owners, Business Analysts, and developers.
- Led the development of an external consumer/sponsor website, effectively managing collaboration across ETL, Unix, cybersecurity, and UI teams.
- Worked with the Product Owner to document and prioritize requirements from the business, making sure the requirements have all necessary information to meet our definition of ready.
- Documented and tracked teams committed progress on our objectives for the PI, and made sure all risks and dependencies are mitigated or resolved. Program level risk is escalated to the appropriate SMEs.
- I made sure the team is staying ready for the incoming PI by getting all features accounted for, documented with the benefit hypothesis, problem statements, DOD, acceptance criteria, and estimates.
- Working with the team on capacity versus velocity to understand the predictability and work intake for the PI/Sprint.
- I took on the responsibilities of Product Owner while helping the new PO in the Industry Relations pod get up to speed with the onboarding process.
- Organized and facilitated scrum teams (Daily Stand-ups, Backlog refinements, Sprint planning, Retrospective, PI planning breakout rooms, Sprint Review, impediment review meetings, etc.).
- Teaching, mentoring, and coaching the team during 1:1 sessions on a sprint cadence, or during retrospectives, to inspect, adopt, and improve.
- Weekly collaboration with the PO to discuss upcoming work with the business and update the business on the progress of the sprint and PI.
- Organizing the team on how to intake injection work (production support) during an ongoing sprint.
- Working with other Scrum Masters and RTEs on coach sync to track progress, learn, and better improve as a community.
SAFe Scrum Master
Sentara Healthcare
01.2023 - 05.2023
- Worked with IOS and Android Developers on the Sentara and Optima mobile app. My team and I worked on the login portal, ticket for scheduling and added some new hackathons ideas, such as adding new languages, dark mode, adding username login as an option and tech debt to improve code quality.
- Work with PO & BSA to review PBIs to ensure requirements are accurately captured, stories are well written and teams have good & shared understanding of stories in the backlog.
- Organized and facilitated agile ceremonies, Backlog refinement/grooming, Sprint planning, daily stand up, iteration review, retrospective, release Planning etc.
- Assisted teams with making appropriate commitments through user story selection, tasks definition, story pointing during estimation Assisted teams with making appropriate commitments through user story selection, tasks definition, story pointing during estimation.
- Excellent verbal and written communication skills and the ability to interact professionally with a diverse group including clients, external executive managers.
- Collaborated closely with the Product Owners on maintaining a healthy backlog by continues refinement, and effective prioritization and this led to an increase in velocity by 40%.
- Teaching, coaching and mentoring agile team members on Scrum processes and provide constructive feedback. Train and help transform teams to implement agile and coach and mentor teams on SAFe core values, SAFe principles and agile manifesto.
- Engaged team in retrospective to promote the continuous growth and improvement of Scrum framework, practices, personal growth and growth as a team.
- Work closely with the RTE and other Scrum Masters during SoS to identify risks, maintain coordination and dependencies (in Jira Align) among teams within the Agile Release Train (ART)
- At the end of the PI, I work closely with the Product Leads, POs, PM, and RTE to prepare for the PI System Demo, which includes all teams within the ART and get my team ready for the demonstration.
SAFe Scrum Master
US Foods
06.2021 - 01.2023
- Acted as Scrum Master for cross-functional product team of 10, delivering software features contributing over $10.2 million in revenue for 2021-2022.
- Persuaded and implemented built-in quality practices, increasing US FOOD revenue by 5% year-over-year.
- Led Scrum teams to ensure successful project implementation through effective use of Jira and Confluence.
- Coached team members in agile methodologies, ensuring adherence to task execution processes.
- Managed simultaneous Scrum and Kanban teams with distributed offshore members, delivering high-quality increments.
- Fostered a positive environment to facilitate product owner assessment of sprint progress.
- Collaborated with product owner to refine Definition of Ready (DOR) and establish criteria for Definition of Done (DOD), enhancing team velocity by over 50%.
- Monitored defect resolution using ADO and Jira Align, escalating impediments as necessary.
Sr Scrum Master
American National Insurance Company
01.2020 - 07.2021
- Collaborated with Project Owner and Delivery team on product roadmap and release planning.
- Served as Scrum Master, guiding teams to enhance operational efficiency.
- Coached Scrum teams in agile values to foster continuous improvement across projects.
- Tracked and communicated team velocity alongside sprint and release progress.
- Protected teams from overcommitment by managing backlog and prioritizing defect resolution.
- Organized sprint planning, daily standups, reviews, retrospectives, and backlog refinements.
- Advised Product Owner on developing a cohesive product vision that aligns with stakeholder needs.
- Facilitated collaboration across agile release trains to manage cross-dependencies and risks.
Scrum Master
Lyft
02.2019 - 02.2020
- Created a viable working atmosphere with developer, as well as multiple product owners for two co-located sprint team and one offshore team.
- Identified and removed impediments, conducted daily stand ups, retrospectives, planning sessions, and created tracking plans such as the turndown & burn up charts.
- Provided all supports to the team by using servant leadership style and implemented quality built in practices.
- Avoided distractions by identifying and removing impediments
- Participated in developing high performance development teams by implemented quality practices like peer programming, code reviews, continuous integration and demo as you go.
- Motivated the team to towards continuous improvement by addressing things that didn't work in the previous sprint and getting them ready for the next sprint, usually through retrospective.
- Collaborated with Product owner to identify potential risks and assisted with the Development of preventive plans
Scrum Master
State Farm Insurance
09.2018 - 03.2019
- Implemented agile Scrum Master Methodology, leading daily stand-ups and ceremonies to enhance communication and transparency across departments.
- Defined requirements and specifications while managing multiple projects simultaneously.
- Ensured scrum teams adhered to core agile principles of collaboration, prioritization, accountability, and visibility.
- Conducted planning sessions and status meetings to monitor project progress.
- Proactively developed risk mitigation plans, resolved issues, and managed dependencies.
- Created weekly project reports and monthly dashboard updates for stakeholder review.
- Gathered project requirements and developed work breakdown structures to clarify scope.
- Utilized problem-solving skills to analyze operational issues and drive goal achievement.
Scrum Master
PNC Bank
07.2017 - 10.2018
- Demonstrated the behavior of a Servant Leader with a Lean Agile Mindset. Help team embrace SAFe Core Values, adopt, and apply SAFe Principles, implement SAFe practices.
- Transformed product team from Waterfall to agile Scrum by reinforcing scrum rules, Built in Quality practices from Extreme Programming (XP), work in process (WIP) limits from Kanban, and any other process rules the team has agreed.
- Developed and maintained quality relationship with other teammates, SME, PO and project manager to maintain a strong, functional team working environment.
- Led daily standup and other scrum ceremonies for two different projects. Worked with Product Owner in backlog grooming and prioritizing work for both projects.
- Improved team velocity by over 55% after implementing capacity planning, and doing team estimate as a whole team exercise into sprint planning sessions.
- Ensured Agile principle of transparency, inspect and adapt
- Specialized in detecting and removing impediments by using servant leadership practices
- Collaboratively worked with teams and Product Owner to develop sprint release plan, and ensured the backlog remains groomed and ready for team's consumption.
- Collaborated with other teams in the Agile Release Train to manage cross dependencies and risks.
- Accustomed to using metrics such as burn-down and burn up charts, velocity, and capacity to visually track team's progress.
Scrum Master
BP Energy Partners
02.2016 - 08.2017
- Facilitating Release Planning, DSU, iteration planning, Backlog refinement/Grooming and retrospective meetings
- Removing team impediment daily to allow the team to deliver quality and fast.
- Helped product owner with writing effective user stories, improved and effective prioritization, iteration planning and review.
- Worked with Technical teams to identify options to meet business requirements
- Daily tracking of the execution progress, creating a fun and motivate working environment, and constantly observing team.
- Continuously learning and improving agile/Scrum techniques and sharing with the team
- Protecting the tram from outside distractions, impediments, team conflicts, and maintaining focus on executing.
- Worked with team to co create and refinement team working agreement, definition of ready "DOR" and definition of done "DOD'.
Education
Associate Degree - Business Administration and Management
College of DuPage
Glen Ellyn, IL01.2017
BS - Business/Corporate communications
Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration
Accra, Ghana01.2014
Skills
- Excel and PowerPoint
- Azure (AKS, Azure DevOps)
- Agile methodology and coaching
- Collaboration and conflict resolution
- Data analysis and performance management
- DevOps practices
- Google Workspace proficiency
- Jira and Kanban usage
- Leadership and people management
- Program and project management
- Requirement analysis and resource allocation
- SAFe principles and scaling agile
- Product backlog management
- Effective communication skills
- Continuous improvement strategies
- Stakeholder engagement and risk identification
- Cross-functional collaboration and coordination
Certification
- SAFe Scrum Master, Scaled Agile Framework
- Certified Scrum Master (CSM), Scrum Alliance
Affiliations
- Continues Improvement Committee
- Mentored junior Scrum Masters
- Helped scale Agile across departments (e.g., SAFe,)
- Recognized in company newsletters or performance reviews for Agile leadership
- Reduced sprint carry-over by 50%
- Achieved 90%+ team satisfaction in retrospectives over 4 quarters
- Attended Agile-focused workshops or seminars (e.g., "ICAgile Coaching Bootcamp")
Timeline
SAFe Agile Scrum Master
Navitus Health Solution
05.2023 - Current
SAFe Scrum Master
Sentara Healthcare
01.2023 - 05.2023
SAFe Scrum Master
US Foods
06.2021 - 01.2023
Sr Scrum Master
American National Insurance Company
01.2020 - 07.2021
Scrum Master
Lyft
02.2019 - 02.2020
Scrum Master
State Farm Insurance
09.2018 - 03.2019
Scrum Master
PNC Bank
07.2017 - 10.2018
Scrum Master
BP Energy Partners
02.2016 - 08.2017
Associate Degree - Business Administration and Management
College of DuPage
BS - Business/Corporate communications
Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration
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