SHARON ANN MANNING
Scrum Lead/RTE/Project Coordinator
Bayonne,NJ
Summary
Dynamic, result oriented and accomplished Agile and Technology Lead with 15+ years of experience in Project Management, RTE, Scrum Lead, Data Management, Business Analysis, , Business Intelligence and Client Relations across Investment Banking and its Platforms, Trading (ETFs), Treasury, and Wealth Management advisory Solutions. Certified SAFe 6 Release Train Engineer (RTE), SAFe 6 Scrum Master (SSM), SAFe 6 Agilist (SA), Scrum Master (CSM) with ITIL Knowledge, specializing in Investment Banking platforms, ETF, Treasury Services, and Wealth Management advisory solutions. Known for driving high performing Agile teams, delivering complex initiatives end-to-end, enabling cross functional collaboration in complex, fast paced environments with global stakeholders across the US, EMEA, and APAC regions.
Overview
25
25
years of professional experience
8
8
Certifications
1
1
Language
Work History
Scrum Lead/Project Coordinator
BNY
11.2024 - Current
- As a Scrum Lead demonstrate strong organization and facilitation of Agile Ceremonies, proactively managing impediments and dependencies to ensure timely value delivery for two pods – Data Acquisition and Data Delivery. Empower the team through clear metrics and backlog management contributing in meeting critical deadlines and impactful delivery solutions for Data Management Orders Dataset and API upgrades efficiency.
- Roles and Responsibilities:
- Facilitating all Scrum Ceremonies, coaching pods for continuous improvement, and utilizing ROAM to identify and address risks and issues to improvise process enhancements. Consistently using performance metrics to monitor and enhance team outcomes, integrating retrospective feedback and leveraging AI tools like Eliza agents to boost productivity and contributed to a culture of improvement
- Address and integrate interdependencies and facilitate seamless coordination across different platforms and groups
- Agile Practices and Compliance – Led teams in adopting Agile Methodologies aligned with the Core POM framework, maintaining disciplined tooling standards and audit readiness. Supported successful Wave-4 POM transitions, implemented ROAM risk management, and ensured compliance with operational mandates, resulting in reliable and transparent reporting
- Support Product Owners and Tech Leads with Backlog management, refinement and grooming sessions and ensure deliverable timelines are aligned, viz., updated NEXEN Digital extracts interface in reporting queries
- Champion Scrum Principles and values – Courage, focus, commitment, to drive collaboration, accountability, and high performance while adhering to BNY's Platform Operating Model and Agile framework
- Act as a liaison Between Product Management, Development Teams and Quality Engineering, facilitating Open communication among all stakeholders
- Leading by influence and credibility to promote transparency and coach the team on Agile metrics, improving velocity while maintaining a visible product backlog and sprint burn down chart
- Translate company vision and goals into actionable sprint and product objectives, empowering teams through transparent KPIs and regular inspect-and-adapt cycles
- Optimized Delivery Execution for ETF Data Management & Registered Funds by proactively communicating challenges and risks and supporting all month-end ad-hoc releases on weekend/s as applicable
- Stakeholder Management – Fostered inclusive, transparent communication and cross-team collaboration, effectively managing complex projects and timelines with dependencies. Achieved strong partnership behaviors, facilitated conflict resolution, and ensured 100% targeted deliverables with improved collaboration outcomes
- Compliance Automation – Increased Zephyr Scale coverage and traceability automation; defining thresholds for “audit ready” sprints to help avoid broken sprints
- Developed comprehensive product roadmaps to guide project planning and align with business objectives.
- Conducted retrospective meetings to identify areas of improvement, leading to more effective future sprints.
- Resolved impediments efficiently to maintain steady progress toward sprint goals, ensuring timely completion of tasks.
Scrum Master/Sr. Project Coordinator- Agile
BNY
08.2021 - Current
- As a Scrum Master assisted the Team in focusing on developing an Agile mindset to create, deliver, and sustain complex products and services for Pershing as the leader in clearing and custody services that provides global financial solutions to advisors, asset managers, broker dealers, investors including Wealth and institutional firms helping them operate their businesses more efficiently through highly competitive solutions and technology tools. Pershing brings together high-touch service, an open digital platform and the BNY Mellon enterprise to deliver a differentiated experience for every client
- Provided support to Project Managers and cross-functional Teams in enhancing the process of gathering requirements, analyzing data and project information in understanding Stakeholder Needs and compile those Needs into documentations related to Business Requirements that are aligned with Business Objectives.
- Handled Projects for Strategic Clients and Digital Authorization/Asset Movement including Trade processing initiatives for CITI, Cetera Financial Group.
- Coordinated and supported various other Initiatives under Market Driven Enhancements for Account Services, Reference Data and Rules Engine projects for various clients.
- Roles and Responsibilities:
- As a Scrum Master, performed the day to day activities in delivering the Project.
- Served as Scrum Master for business and software delivery teams; trained individuals to adhere to Scrum principles.
- Facilitated all the Sprint Ceremonies: Backlog Refinement / Grooming, Sprint Planning, Daily SCRUM, and Sprint Review / Retrospective.
- Time boxed Daily SCRUM meetings and resolved all impediments faced by development team.
- Maintained and monitored SCRUM Artifacts-Sprint Backlog, Sprint Tasks, and Sprint Burn-down Charts using JIRA. Worked extensively with multiple cross functional and distributed teams on Scrum.
- Built and coached high performing development teams leveraging data, coaching individuals and reinforcing Agile Manifesto.
- Worked with business analysts to identify the appropriate data elements for required Project capabilities.
- Analysed the existing reports of the reporting system in the database and identified new process updates for the Team as part of agile transformation.
- Ensure all requirements are provided and captured in a Reference Document along with Process guide for new joiners.
- Responsible for managing, determining, extracting, anticipating and classifying these requirements, as Functional and Non-Functional Requirements and to Support end-to-end Project Implementation.
Release Train Engineer (RTE) - Agile
BNY
06.2022 - 11.2024
- As an RTE undertook the Primary responsibility of supporting and coaching an Agile Release Train (ART) by steering it to success and navigating the complexity of delivering software in large, cross-functional environments. This role also included facilitating program level processes and execution by driving continuous development, managing risks and escalating impediments as part of Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe).This included demonstrating the accountability for planning and coordination along with execution and delivery of value through the program and projects.
- Roles and Responsibilities:
- Communicate status and timeliness to Portfolio Program Management
- Present information professionally to large audiences and executives by working closely with Operations, Technology, Product Management and other Stakeholders to ensure strategy and execution alignment.
- Facilitates program events, including PI Planning, ART Retrospectives, Scrum of Scrums
- Liaison for the Release Management functions
- Facilitates processes and program execution, escalates impediments, manages risk, captures recurring metrics, drives program-level continuous improvement
- Establishes the annual calendars for sprints and PIs
- Ensures agile practices are current, coached and practiced across the ART
- Ensure Client Reviews/Demos are being held during solution construction
- Contribute to Value Stream Status report by PI/Release for Executive Management and Release Management
- Coordinate cross ART dependencies
- Assist with resource allocation
- Drive continuous improvement through the “Inspect and Adapt” process
- Generated and created Dashboards in JIRA which was widely consumed by the Leadership to track the Program.
- Helped the Program transition from Waterfall to Agile methodology.
- Knowledgeable in Agile principles and successfully influence across the organization.
Sr. Project Coordinator
09.2017 - 08.2021
- Created, prioritized, managed and documented assigned projects using the Jira 18 and Jira Data Center application to standardize project tracking and documentation. Recorded project details such as track progress, resources costs and allotted budgets, generate performance reports for key leaders. Facilitated meetings with key leaders and collaborated with project teams to ensure timely decision-making and maintain effective communication.
- Coordinated Major Efforts related to;
- IE11 Retirement EOL Plan for NetX360.Net and NetX360.COM – Trading Banking Platform/Services, in migrating Vendor Screens to EO Chromium along with Configuration and Code Changes with re-directs to Edge for Multiple Business Functions.
- Logo Change for various IBD's for NetXInvestor – A Banking Trading Platform/Service that included OTP/Email/Markit on Demand (MOD) Alerts to reflect the New Logo Update.
- Wealth Users in Security Description for IBD and Single Account Context for Account Holdings and Consolidated Positions Screen for Fixed Income Securities that involved API Changes.
- Client Conversions a Pre-Sale Viewing Setup for PNC Investments and other various IBD's (T. Rowe, Citi, Hewitt etc.) that involved CID Level Interface Setup Replacing the Old Setup, reflecting, a New Interface while ensuring no changes were made to the URL Structure for both NetX360 and NetXInvestor – Trading Banking Platform/Services.
- NetXInvestor – Trading Banking Platform/Services for Branded Mobile Apps for IBD's including English to Spanish Toggle.
- Implementation of OFX 2.2 and Credentials Authentication between Northwestern Mutual/Pershing and (H&R Block and Intuit SSO) to be able to send Financial Data – Investment Transactions Related Data, required for Tax Calculations.
- Roles and Responsibilities:
- Supported Complex Epics, Features and User Stories – often involving multiple internal and external constituents and matrixes partners such as Infrastructure, Security, Privacy, Functional and Application Development Management (ADM) areas, and supporting Clients, Vendors and Internal Users.
- Defined Development and Testing Scope and Outlined the Order of Magnitude (OOM) Estimates and Timelines for each Team and Phases of the Project along with Delegating tasks to Team members.
- Monitored tasks and made decisions on issues and defects during Testing and Identified and Highlighted Risks and Escalated Impediments to the Product Manager and tweaked defects and addressed risks.
- Tracked Execution of Vendor Screens Migration and Enabling of EO Chromium in Various Builds during Development and Testing including Vendor Screen Integrations (Citi/Credit Suisse/AG Vision 2020/Wealth2k, etc.)
- Collaborated and coordinated with the Product owner with respect to drafting Client Communications for the various Banking Platforms in relation to the IE11 Retirement EOL Plan.
- Using Agile and SAFe methodologies while managing the Co-ordination, Status, Reporting, Schedules, Budget and Stability of various IE11 application oriented Agile work efforts.
- Worked closely with Business and Clients in analyzing requirements and identifying the changes for Implementation and documenting Project Requirements along with outlining Scope.
- Worked closely with Quality Engineering and co-ordinated with QA leads in defining the configuration quality, code quality and quality check points by developing test scripts and test screens while migrating from Liberty to Aqua Browser and EO Chromium and also for Security Description for Account Holdings.
- Generating reports and dashboards as requested by the Business Users and Senior Management.
- Interacted and Communicated with Client Relationship Manager/s on a Regular Basis to clarify, confirm and ensure the Client Conversions for New User Interface were done as per Design.
- Gathering requirements to Run Adhoc Aggregator Reports based on Subscriber ID's for IBD's (First Republic/TD Wealth), while working with the Database Team for In-house Data conversions and generating reports for NetXInvestor – Trading Banking Platform/Services. Understand end-to-end business cycles.
- Successfully Implemented a Knowledge Based Guide to deliver Sign-Off Documentation and Artifacts along with tracking Defect Logs for both NetX360 and NetXInvestor related Projects.
Team Lead – Project Coordinator
08.2014 - 09.2017
- People Management, Supervision and Handling Administrative Tasks/Workflow for various Project Teams to ensure each Project is running smoothly. Communicating effectively within various Teams to bridge gaps and identify point of contact between Development and QA. Ensuring each Team has the Process Documents, Implementation Guide and Tools required for meeting all Project milestones. Creating Project Schedules to include estimates and resources required.
- Roles and Responsibilities:
- Assisted in liaising with Clients to determine the Project's Objectives and Organizing Schedules.
- Communicating the requisites for each Project including resources, scope and timelines including stakeholders.Identifying and Aligning Resources and ensuring to obtain budget approvals for the aligned resources.
- Assisted in Planning each phase of Projects from construction to development, into testing the developed changes and making sure the changes deployed work well and are ready for Release to Production.
- Researching and preparing Presentations for Clients and Internal teams
- Assisted Project Manager by bridging gaps in Workflow Coordination and designing and controlling the Project Schedule.
- Developing strategy, direction & governance processes utilizing Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) V3 Practices; implementing those processes.
- Tracking and Communicating Project Risks and Progress and Ensuring deadlines are met.
- Ensure build phase of projects are delivered on time with high quality and within the allocated budget.
- Provided Administrative Support in attending Stakeholder Meetings and Organizing Project Team meetings and recording Minutes.
- Participate in Internal UAT Testing and guide the testing team in identifying and report the defects.
- Participate in preparing UAT Test Cases and UAT Test Scenarios.
- Create, maintain and update Project Plans using JIRA.Maintained and monitored Artifacts using JIRA
- Ensure Customer/Client Satisfaction, Stakeholder Management and resolve business process issues for the identified Customers and Clients.
- Assisted in documenting various Project Phases and creating Summary Reports.
- Develop and Implement Test Plans for IVR and Virtual Hold Project and scheduling bi-weekly Meetings with Business Telecom Team for IVR and VH Project and aligning Resources for Testing.
- Facilitated problem-solving and decision-making Techniques and ensure On-time Delivery of Projects and its Solutions.
Workforce Management Lead
09.2013 - 09.2014
- Providing Operations with efficiency updates and uphold high customer service standards through real-time monitoring from CMS Supervisor including Analyst productivity reports along with generating weekly metrics and average talk time for Live Chat, E-support and Calls.
- Forecasting volume in NICE tool to manage staffing coverage for achieving Service Levels and assisted with scheduling, processing time-off requests, and generating reports to show productivity and performance changes.
- Complete staff attendance management in NICE tool and Time of Manager tool for 200 employees and contractors.Overseeing and managing cross-training of Analysts in Live Chat and E-Support.
- Producing and sharing the WFM Team scorecard along with accomplishments to Manager for review before uploading it on SharePoint site.
- Collaborating with Global Research Support teams across the BNY Mellon offices globally to facilitate Remote support team's (based offsite) customer issue transfers during high volume periods and ensure uninterrupted services for customers were provided.
Technical Analyst/Quality Assurance Support
03.2011 - 09.2013
- Support mission critical production application responsible for enterprise wide pricing of products
- Planning, coordination and execution of production deployments, system upgrades and emergency bug fixes
- Build and maintain relationships with clients to become their first point of contact when they are in need of assistance
- Managed off-shore/on-shore model multicultural team environments, providing support /guidance to the development teams during the analysis, design, development, and testing processes and deployment of project
- Document and improve new and existing processes and procedures for global team in order to comply with internal and external regulations
- Worked closely with management team to ensure that the Objectives, Business Goals and Business Strategy are aligned together and prioritizing Quality in Business Strategy.
- Calibrated calls and chats and provided support fortraining to improve performance gaps and develop methods to close the gaps with appropriate coaching and feedback.
- Performed Value-added Analysis with a continuous Process Improvement Approach and ensured that Quality was built into every element of the Project/s and Testing.
Sr. Customer Support Exe
WNS GLOBAL SERVICES, Mumbai
02.2010 - 09.2010
- Supporting AVON customers, orders, returns and payments from EMEA.
Process Officer
Citibank e-Serve International BPO, Chennai
02.2004 - 10.2004
- Supporting Citibank Credit Card Customers & Clients/Managing Accounts/Payments/Fraud – EMEA.
Secretary
Mahindra Resorts and Holiday India Limited, Chennai
07.2001 - 08.2003
- Handled all Board Line Phone Calls at the Front Office, Customer Care Client Bookings/walk-ins.
- Handled all Secretarial Duties for G.M. of Sales along with administrative HR tasks and payroll.
Education
Bachelors of Commerce (B.Com) -
Mumbai University
Mumbai, India01.2005
Skills
Release Train Engineer
SAFe Scrum Master
Project Management
Stakeholder Management
Business Acumen
Budget Allocation
Resource Planning
Team Management
Critical Thinking
Conflict Resolution
Quality Management
Enterprise Service Excellence
Coaching & Mentoring
Process Improvements
Value Delivery
Team Leadership
Certification
Certified SAFe 6 Release Train Engineer (RTE) from Scaled Agile
Accomplishments
· Certified SAFe® 6 Release Train Engineer (RTE) from Scaled Agile
· Certified SAFe® 6 Scrum Master (SSM) from Scaled Agile
· Certified SAFe® 6 Agilist (SA) from Scaled Agile
· Certified Scrum Master® (CSM) from Scrum Alliance
· Certified ITIL®Foundation v3 – Axelos, Certificate Number: GR750524895SM
· IELTS Certified (Overall Band 7.5)
· Higher Diploma in Software Management, Aptech Computer Education, Mumbai - India
· Diploma in Oracle 8, 8i, RDBMS from SSI Institute, Mumbai - India
Other Languages
Regional Indian Languages - Hindi, Marathi (read, write, speak) & Tamil (speak)
Timeline
Scrum Lead/Project Coordinator
BNY
11.2024 - Current
Release Train Engineer (RTE) - Agile
BNY
06.2022 - 11.2024
Scrum Master/Sr. Project Coordinator- Agile
BNY
08.2021 - Current
Sr. Project Coordinator
09.2017 - 08.2021
Team Lead – Project Coordinator
08.2014 - 09.2017
Workforce Management Lead
09.2013 - 09.2014
Technical Analyst/Quality Assurance Support
03.2011 - 09.2013
Sr. Customer Support Exe
WNS GLOBAL SERVICES, Mumbai
02.2010 - 09.2010
Process Officer
Citibank e-Serve International BPO, Chennai
02.2004 - 10.2004
Secretary
Mahindra Resorts and Holiday India Limited, Chennai
07.2001 - 08.2003
Bachelors of Commerce (B.Com) -
Mumbai University