Summary
Overview
Work History
Education
Skills
Websites
Certification
Key Qualifications
Timeline
Generic

Kingsley Nkeng

Boston,MA

Summary

Dynamic Agile Coach and Sr. Scrum Master with strong background in leading teams to high performing state to meet or exceed objectives. Demonstrated ability to instill Agile principles, facilitate continuous improvement and foster product development efficiency. Skilled at creating effective communication channels and removing impediments for team members. Impact made through successfully guiding teams towards achieving operational excellence and improving overall productivity.

Overview

11
11
years of professional experience
1
1
Certification

Work History

Agile Coach/Sr. Scrum Master

MFS Investments
Boston, MA
03.2024 - Current
  • Coordinated and managed all Scrum events including Iteration Planning, Daily Standups, Iteration retrospectives, Iteration Reviews, and Backlog Refinement for multiple teams.
  • Supporting multiple teams to execute and deliver business needs and value in an iterative manner.
  • Organize lunch and learn sessions to help teams better understand Agile and its benefits.
  • Coach POs and teams on writing user stories and the importance of having a clear acceptance criteria.
  • Coaching teams on best practices on managing dependencies and risk.
  • Promote continuous improvement values for existing processes while promoting innovation of new product development with a focus on value.
  • Delivering actionable insight to the Agile team during Retrospective events to ensure open discussions. Leaned on metrics to foster open discussions in areas of opportunity for improvement.
  • Collaborated with the PO for effective Backlog Refinement, prioritization, estimation, and establishing Acceptance Criteria.
  • Established a good working relationship with the PO and this has been pivotal in helping the teams during refinement.
  • Coaching teams to a path of self management, and this has elevated the level of productivity and accountability.
  • Collaborated with leadership to align Agile initiatives with organizational goals.
  • Developed metrics to track progress and effectiveness of Agile practices.
  • Developed training materials to educate stakeholders about agile processes.
  • Provided guidance on the use of tools like JIRA to track progress, manage tasks, and identify areas of improvement.

SAFe Sr. Scrum Master

Monster
Weston, MA
06.2021 - 08.2023
  • Coordinated and managed all Scrum ceremonies including Iteration Planning, Daily Standups, Iteration retrospectives, Iteration Reviews, and Backlog Refinement for 3 Agile teams of 8.
  • Formulated and promoted continuous improvement values for existing processes while promoting innovation of new product development.
  • Delivered actionable insight to the Agile team during Retrospective events to ensure open discussions. Utilized Jira and Kanban Board to track key Scrum metrics (burndown, velocity, capacity) to help deliver committed work.
  • Collaborated with the PO for effective Backlog Refinement, prioritization, estimation, and establishing Acceptance Criteria.
  • Leveraged the Scrum of Scrums event to coordinate cross-team dependencies and collaboration.
  • Authored and supervised working agreements to promote transparency and clarity within the Agile team.
  • Enhanced Agile team to be self-manage, resulting in a high-performance team, which met business goals.
  • Collaborated with stakeholders to define project requirements and priorities.
  • Promoted cross-functional collaboration among different teams working on related projects or initiatives.
  • Identified and removed impediments to the team's progress through effective facilitation of problem solving sessions.

Scrum Master

Dunkin’ Brands
Boston, MA
04.2020 - 05.2021
  • Facilitated the delivery of a web and mobile interface for the delivery of mobile services to Dunkin' customers.
  • Organized and facilitated scrum team’s events and related meetings.
  • Assisted Product owners with backlog prioritization, backlog grooming, release planning.
  • Facilitated backlog refinement session to achieve enough ready stories for the next sprint and reduce time of sprint planning.
  • Utilized Jira, Confluence, SharePoint, excel, and PowerPoint to manage and share relevant communication to team members and stakeholders.
  • Monitored progress using the sprint report, velocity, burn up and burn down charts.
  • Coached the scrum team and stakeholders where necessary to agile practices as outlined by the Scrum Framework.
  • Manage the Scrum Event calendar to ensure all event meetings are held and stay within the time box.

SAFe Scrum Master

Wayfair
Boston, MA
06.2018 - 02.2020
  • Coordinated all Scrum ceremonies including Iteration Planning, Daily Standups, Iteration retrospectives, Iteration Reviews, and Backlog Refinement for 2 Agile teams.
  • Influenced continuous improvement values for existing processes while promoting innovation of new product development.
  • Provided actionable insight to the Agile team during Retrospective events to ensure open discussions.
  • Used Jira and Kanban Board to track key Scrum metrics (burndown, velocity, capacity) to help deliver committed work.
  • Assisted PO with effective Backlog Refinement, prioritization, estimation and establishing Acceptance Criteria.
  • Used the Scrum of Scrums event to coordinate cross-team dependencies and collaboration.
  • Introduced working agreements to promote transparency and clarity within the Agile team.
  • Coached Agile team on the value of test automation practices to ensure continuous delivery.

Scrum Master

Cognizant
Albany, NY
06.2015 - 06.2018
  • Ensured all agile ceremonies are administered correctly for 3 agile teams, including Daily Stand Up, Iteration Planning, Iteration Review, and Iteration Retrospective.
  • Coached Agile team to increase their throughput using techniques including built-in quality, and high-collaboration approaches, such as Paired Programming.
  • Leveraged tools, including Jira and Mural, to track team progress and promote collaboration.
  • Collaborated with the PO and Agile CoE to improve agile practices, including user story prioritization, technical debt management, performance improvement and value delivery.
  • Leveraged retrospective events and Inspect and Adapt events to identify and remove impediments for agile teams and team members by applying appropriate problem-solving techniques such as the 5-whys technique and the fish-bone diagram.
  • Lead Agile team to self-managing maturity, resulting in various successful processes improvement.
  • Coached Agile teams on embracing Agile culture using collaboration tools such as Microsoft Teams, Zoom, SharePoint, Confluence and Miro Board.
  • Facilitated and promoted continuous learning culture through the Agile Center of Excellence.

Quality Assurance Analyst

Cognizant
Albany, NY
10.2014 - 06.2015
  • Executed test cases in RQM and raising defects in V1.
  • Prepared test status reports on daily and weekly basis.
  • Participated in Demo sessions to client.
  • Participated in concept sessions to understand requirements and communicate it to the team.
  • Facilitated knowledge sharing sessions within and across teams.
  • Kept track of Defects and closing the defects once they are resolved.
  • Validated functionalities on the application based on business rules.

Education

Bachelor of Science - General Biology

University of Maryland Eastern Shore
Princess Anne, MD

Skills

  • Scrum
  • XP
  • Kanban
  • SAFe
  • Rally
  • Jira
  • Aha!
  • Version One
  • TFS
  • Wiki
  • Miro
  • Mural
  • SDLC
  • Box
  • MS Excel
  • MS Teams
  • Slack
  • ADO
  • PowerPoint
  • Visio
  • Figma
  • DevOps
  • DevSecOps
  • GitHub
  • Test Automation
  • Lean Portfolio Management
  • Continuous Learning
  • Agility
  • Community of Practice
  • Business Analysis
  • Project coordination
  • Risk Analyst
  • Servant Leadership
  • Excellent oral and written communication skills
  • Strategic planning
  • Team mentoring
  • Effective decision-making
  • Excellent time management
  • Team Building
  • Conflict resolution
  • Agile coaching
  • Scrum framework
  • Backlog management
  • Continuous improvement
  • Cross-team coordination
  • Data-driven decision making
  • Stakeholder engagement
  • Risk management
  • Effective communication
  • Time management
  • Problem solving
  • Agile framework expertise
  • Release management
  • Agile metrics analysis
  • Servant leadership
  • Lean thinking
  • Product owner support
  • Scrum mastery
  • Organizational agility
  • Scaling agile
  • Culture building
  • Agile tool proficiency
  • User story writing

Websites

Certification

  • Certified SAFe 6 Release Train Engineer (RTE)
  • Certified Scrum Master (CSM)
  • Certified SAFe 6 Product Owner/Product Manager (POPM)
  • Certified SAFe 6 Scrum Master (SSM)
  • Certified SAFe 6 DevOps (SDP)
  • ICAgile Enterprise Agile Coaching

Key Qualifications

  • Demonstrated Business & Product Development Expertise in an Agile Environment with 8+ years of experience in facilitating stakeholders’ engagement and teams in the development and deployment of software and business technology.
  • Certified SAFe 6 Scrum Master seeking to leverage Scrum and Agile skills, and business analysis skills to ensure organizational success through improving team performance and raise efficiency in product delivery through coaching Agile teams to self-manage and become high performing.
  • Expertise in designing and developing team alignment strategies, team management, strategic planning, and leadership skills.

Timeline

Agile Coach/Sr. Scrum Master

MFS Investments
03.2024 - Current

SAFe Sr. Scrum Master

Monster
06.2021 - 08.2023

Scrum Master

Dunkin’ Brands
04.2020 - 05.2021

SAFe Scrum Master

Wayfair
06.2018 - 02.2020

Scrum Master

Cognizant
06.2015 - 06.2018

Quality Assurance Analyst

Cognizant
10.2014 - 06.2015

Bachelor of Science - General Biology

University of Maryland Eastern Shore

Similar Profiles

CREATE PROFILE