Paul A. Barrera
Summary
Dynamic Agility Enablement Leader with a proven track record at Frost Bank, driving Agile transformations and enhancing team performance. Expert in JIRA and Scrum methodologies, I champion continuous improvement and foster collaboration, achieving a 30% reduction in defects. Adept at aligning strategic objectives with actionable outcomes, I empower teams to excel in fast-paced environments.
Overview
26
26
years of professional experience
Work History
Agility Enablement Leader/Manager and Sr Scrum Master III
Frost Bank
09.2021 - 09.2025
- Direct managerial responsibility for a team of 10 scrum masters supporting their performance, development, and alignment with Agile best practices.
- Partnered with executive stakeholders to translate strategic objectives into team-level outcomes, manage escalations, and drive Agile maturity throughout the organization.
- Guided scrum masters and empowered them to identify and resolve workflow inefficiencies while addressing broader organizational impediments to Agile delivery.
- Created metrics dashboards for teams and executive level stakeholders to track several product, development, and quality KPIs (e.g., Feature completion rate, Change Failure Rate/Defect Leakage Rate, Backlog Aging Rate, as well as agile team Cycle time, Lead time, and feature level burndown tracking and forecasting.
- Helped drive consistent application of agile principles through governance forums, metrics reviews, and Communities of Practice.
- Championed continuous improvement through mentoring, facilitating cross functional alignment, and enabling and advancing agile capabilities at the team and enterprise level.
- Revised onboarding process to streamline tasks allowing new hires to transition quickly and begin serving their teams much faster.
- Served as both scrum master and Project Manager for enterprise messaging platform migration interacting with several lines of business and IT groups.
- Instituted new Data Solutions intake process for fulfilling data and reporting requests using JIRA Service Desk (JSD) and JIRA software.
- Co-led effort to shift pilot applications to containers using RedHat OpenShift (Docker and Kubernetes).
- Co-led agile transformation across the enterprise with PMO to develop hybrid frameworks applying Lean practices to enable agile and predictive waterfall projects to co-exist and run effectively.
- Created custom solutions inside JIRA to more effectively manage and automate workflows, isolate bottlenecks, and to ensure overall higher quality for features going to production.
- Created dashboards in Confluence pulling in data from JIRA for executive stakeholders to review team progress and forecasts to predict delivery timelines for stakeholders.
Sr Technical Project Manager
HEB
03.2020 - 09.2021
- Project manager with responsibility for an enterprise Data Governance and Data Lineage project effort introducing Informatica’s Axon, EDC, and Data Quality modules across multiple business and technology teams.
- Gained valuable experience with modern data platforms such as MicroStrategy, Informatica, TIBCO, ADLS, Azure, and AWS.
- Served as Scrum Master and Project Manager for multiple project teams.
- Proficient communicator to mid-range and executive levels on project status, risk identification and mitigation, and path-forward approach.
- Well versed at leading teams through quarterly planning, Epic and Sprint planning as well other Scrum ceremonies (e.g., Standups, Retrospectives, Backlog Grooming, and Stakeholder Reviews).
- Introduced custom workflows in JIRA to streamline how teams manage their work and enhanced the team’s Intake Process to more rapidly identify incoming priority work using JIRA Service Desk in combination with JIRA software.
- Highly effective using both traditional waterfall, Scrum, and Kanban frameworks.
Agility Coach and Scrum Master II
Frost Bank
01.2019 - 03.2020
- Agile coach and scrum master for eCommerce organization undergoing an enterprise digital transformation effort (Nov 2019).
- Coached other junior agility coaches and product owners.
- Led effort for large data extraction (2+ yrs of data) from JIRA for use with Tableau reports for executive dashboards in addition to teaching several teams how to leverage macros in JIRA and Confluence to seamlessly integrate those tools.
- Led multiple teams through Scrum and Kanban activities to more effectively manage work and taught scrum masters and product owners on how to use Atlassian tools and plug-ins to expand our effectiveness in measuring and delivering value to our users.
- Led effort to train eCommerce IT department on becoming power users of JIRA and Confluence to optimize capabilities by leveraging Adaptavist Script Runner tools for automating and integrating several JIRA projects.
- Began effort to promote Scaled Scrum for several feature teams.
- Created custom JIRA workflows and screen layouts for UX, Data, and Marketing teams to then segue into development team work.
- Led effort to onboard several other IT and business departments to using JIRA (Agile Transformation) and transition from Trello to Office365 Team Planner applications.
Scrum Master, Project Manager, Sr Business Systems Analyst
Capital Group
10.2005 - 01.2019
- Scrum Master and Project Manager for several large projects ($2M+) supporting strategic initiatives.
- Project implementation responsibility for two application teams included: Business and Software Requirements Definition, Project Scheduling/Planning/Execution, Risk Mitigation, QM Test Coordination, User Acceptance Testing, Cost Management, Business and Technology Product Roadmaps, Vendor Management, and Budget Planning.
- Successfully utilized Agile Scrum and Kanban methodologies on large and small projects using a test driven and risk-based approach to effectively utilize all team members and reduce defects by 30% with incremental releases.
- Worked with several business and IT teams on integrating Scaled Agile Framework as well as coached and mentored other scrum masters for onboarding Agile practices (Scrum of Scrums).
- Served as project manager for ~ $1.3M hardware replacement project utilizing a blend of Kanban and Scrum techniques.
- Consistent producer ensuring projects delivered on time, within budget and scope.
Sr. Business Systems Analyst/Team Leader/Project Manager
FedEx IT
10.1999 - 10.2005
- Responsibilities included: Business and Software Requirements Definition, Project Scheduling and Monitoring, Project Plan and Risk Mitigation Plans, QM Test Coordination, User Acceptance Testing, Cost Management, and Budget Planning.
- Managed the successful implementation of several major software upgrades leading to increased revenues of over $25 million dollars per year.
- Successfully implemented Agile SDLC methodology.
- Managed multi-tiered application architecture using Weblogic, Java, and XML, using both Oracle and Sybase on Sun and HP platforms.
- Organized several customer usability tests.
- Created organizational WIKI for maintaining software coding standards, project related documentation, production support logs, configuration management standards, and weekly project status.
- Responsible for improvements to FedEx Hotline customer issue identification and escalation procedures resulting in 20% reduction in problem resolution times for large customers (HP, Apple, Motorola, NEC, etc.).
- Received multiple awards recognizing outstanding customer service.
Education
MBA – Information Systems - Software Project Management
Colorado Tech
Masters Level Certificate - Project Management (CPM)
Colorado Tech
BS - Finance
New York State University
Skills
- MS Project
- Excel
- Word
- PowerPoint
- Visio
- JIRA
- Confluence
- Adaptavist Script Runner
- XML
- JSON
- SQL
- Splunk
- DataDog
- Lucid Spark
- Lucid Charts
- Mural and Muro
- Scrum and scaled scrum
- Kanban frameworks
- Informatica Data Governance (Axon)
- Data lineage (EDC)
- Data quality (IDQ)
- Agile transformation and coaching
Timeline
Agility Enablement Leader/Manager and Sr Scrum Master III
Frost Bank
09.2021 - 09.2025
Sr Technical Project Manager
HEB
03.2020 - 09.2021
Agility Coach and Scrum Master II
Frost Bank
01.2019 - 03.2020
Scrum Master, Project Manager, Sr Business Systems Analyst
Capital Group
10.2005 - 01.2019
Sr. Business Systems Analyst/Team Leader/Project Manager
FedEx IT
10.1999 - 10.2005
MBA – Information Systems - Software Project Management
Colorado Tech
Masters Level Certificate - Project Management (CPM)
Colorado Tech
BS - Finance
New York State University
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