Summary
Overview
Work History
Education
Skills
Certification
Timeline
Generic

Sowmya Katkuri

Frisco,TX

Summary

A goal oriented professional with about 8+ years of experience scrum master. Experienced in multiple software lifecycle methodologies, and client facing leadership. Keen ability to understand and build complex systems.

PROFESSIONAL SUMMARY:

  • Scrum Alliance - Certified Scrum Master with around 8+ years of experience
  • Industrial domain experience in Banking-Payments, Healthcare
  • Focused on customer-centric methodology drawn from agile methodologies like Scrum, Kanban, LeSS, SaFe framework which includes all the phases of SDLC right from the requirement elicitation to build and release management to deployment
  • Collaborator who believes that Agile is the better way to work and personally subscribe to the process and benefits it brings to enterprises and teams
  • Coached agile mindset to more than ten teams in my professional career
  • Interacted with product owners, product managers and other stakeholders to assist in identifying product road maps, scale down epic level requirements to user stories
  • Hands on experience in Jira,Jira Align, Rally, Confluence, M.S.Project, Excel and other project planning and implementation software
  • Experienced coach of Agile Methodology and Lean Principles at the team and program levels
  • Expert in project planning, project tracking and reporting, resource planning, resource on-boarding
  • Experience in in business product owner role with agile, requirements gathering, requirements elicitation, gap analysis, use case creation, functional specification document (FSD) creation, building product backlog, backlog refinement, authoring user stories, user stories prioritization, sprint planning, sprint demos
  • Monitored program risks through an on-going process and employed suitable risk mitigation techniques
  • Managed project increments, ensured they are on schedule and meet DoD
  • Experience in Business reviews, Functional and system level requirements and design review
  • Collected actionable sprint metrics like Sprint Velocity, burn down charts, backlog health, commitment reliability etc. and radiate the information through periodic reports
  • Tight grip on Agile Estimating and planning
  • Resolved impediments encountered at various stages and saved the team from external interference

Overview

13
13
years of professional experience
1
1
Certification

Work History

Senior Scrum Master

Fidelity Investments
Dallas, TX
03.2022 - 03.2024
  • Scrum master for 3 person MDM acceleration agile teams/Squads working on moving the Related Parties and Identifier data from existing Integrated Beneficiary database to MDM(Master Data Management) and building the new Rest APIs and decommission IDB
  • Responsible for establishing and ensuring the squad follows agile principles, processes and practices and Accountable for removing impediments.
  • Coached agile practices within the own Squad and worked collaboratively with Squad leader to deliver on its mission
  • Partnered with Squad leaders, Chapter Leaders and product area leaders to provide Knowledge and insight to assist with decisions that impact my own domain and potentially across domains.
  • Facilitation of Scrum events, identifying and implementing improvement opportunities, ensuring refinement of the backlog and coaching the squad to practice agile principles
  • Worked closely with Release Train Engineers to communicate the impediments and dependencies reported by my Squads and collaborate with other Person MDM squads(Contact, Consent, Tax, Employment,Identifiers, related Parties, preferences, compensation, enrollment, bank, indicative) to ensure smooth release
  • Served as primary Liaison to technical teams such As Security/login, APIs, Architecture & Infrastructure, Release management, performance Testing, Production Support
  • Conducted Agility Health Assessments for various Squads to quickly measure current state, build actionable plans and enable self learning and growth at all levels of the organization

Associate Business Analyst/Scrum Master

JPMorgan Chase & Co
Dallas, TX
10.2016 - 05.2021
  • Worked for a Business Middleware(BMW/HLTWS) as a liaison between the front end and backend teams as a technical business analyst and scrum master
  • Tech Refresh project where the legacy systems were migrated to GAIA cloud technology along with business projects
  • Worked on engaging and migrating 50+ clients to new cloud platform
  • Worked with Design authority, ADM and demand management on end to end process that includes sizing, modeling and commitment process
  • Managed defects by assigning to right development teams to work on and assisted client teams to close the defects in timely manner
  • Worked with design authority and analyzed Olympus project where the existing BMW/HLT architecture was moved to Olympus Microservices APIs
  • Facilitate the scrum ceremonies for 3 Agile teams
  • Implemented Agile mindset by conducting burndown chart, team velocity and continuous improvement initiatives
  • Implemented LeSS framework for scaling scrum to multiple teams who work together on a single product
  • Worked with Product Owner to define project scope and objectives
  • Gathered the information from all the scrum teams to facilitate Sprint review to product owner
  • Empowered the team to make system and process improvements captured in sprint retrospective meetings
  • Use key Scrum metrics (burndown, velocity) to help deliver committed work
  • Manage sprint backlog items and tasks and all scrum boards (physical or virtual)
  • Coaching and mentoring other Scrum Masters on our program team and multiple teams across the product
  • Partnering to ensure that our ways of working are consistent across teams
  • Liaising between developers and project stakeholders fostering quality communication between engineering disciplines

Business Analyst/Scrum Master

TekCommands Inc
Dallas, TX
10.2015 - 06.2016
  • Lead 2 Scrum Teams consisting of 12 members
  • Successfully transformed the team's waterfall mindset to agile by developing training materials and coaching in liaison with Agile coaches
  • Implemented and enforced Scrum principles and practices,facilitated continuous improvement (CI), and identified and removed team impediments
  • Established and actively managed all project and key stakeholder expectations and relationships
  • Actively Involved in Pre-Analysis of project with SME (Subject Matter Experts) and developers
  • Participated in the Interviews with SME's and multiple teams for requirement gathering
  • Created System Requirement Specification (SRS) document to describe all data, functional and behavioral requirement of the system
  • Analyzed the gathered requirement and reviewed Business Requirement Document (BRD)/Functional Specification Document (FSD)
  • Wrote Use Case and built Use Case Diagram/ Activity Diagram using MS Visio
  • Worked with QA team for designing Test Plan and Test Cases for UAT and regression testing

Business Associate/Scrum Master

Tech Mahindra Ltd.
09.2012 - 04.2015
  • Facilitated daily scrums, stand-ups, and meetings
  • Conducted Backlog grooming, sprint planning and daily scrum stand-ups
  • Developed exceptional reports which were then submitted to project lead and stakeholders on a regular basis
  • Used JIRA tool for backlog and sprint tracking to provide customizable dashboard views
  • Participated in designing, coding, testing, debugging, configuring, and documenting operating systems and software
  • Gathered user and business requirements through open-ended discussions, brainstorming sessions and prototyping
  • Conducted JAD sessions with the stakeholders, end users and SME, to determine the critical business processes and identify key functional requirements
  • Successfully performed Requirements Gathering and Analysis, interviewed the SME (Subject Matter Experts), both personal and commercial, and ensured that contributors and all key stakeholders were motivated to complete assigned tasks
  • Analyzed Risks involved during the different phases of the project by conducting SWOT analysis to increase the breadth of risks considered and presented ways to mitigate the same
  • Developed use case diagrams, class diagrams, sequence diagrams, state diagrams and activity diagrams using UML to make users and developers understand the system
  • Documented the user requirements analyzed and prioritized them and converted them as system requirements that must be included while developing the software
  • Identified the business requirements from the end users keeping in mind their need for the application and documenting it in MS Excel and MS Visio for the developers
  • Worked closely with the QA Team and played a key role bringing in best practices of test driven development in an Agile environment
  • Used MS SQL server for data storage and retrieval and testing quality of data and validate all the information provided by the business users
  • Applied Unified Modeling Language (UML) methodologies to design Use Cases, Use Case diagrams, Activity Diagrams, and Sequence Diagram

Programmer Analyst

Cognizant Technology Solutions, CTS
09.2011 - 08.2012
  • Identify the business and technical needs of the organization
  • Acted as liaison among the working partners of the project (vendor, users, developers, testers)
  • Assessing and analyzing business structure and recommending suggestions for improvement
  • Provides training to scrum team to ensure Agile scrum is understood and practiced from planning to Implementation
  • Actively worked with the Product Owner and Stakeholders to monitor and prioritize product backlog on an ongoing basis to meet release timelines and value to the business
  • Liaised with client groups and gather user requirements and convert it into requirements document
  • Responsible for translating BRD into functional specifications and test plans
  • Closely coordinated with both business users and developers for arriving at a mutually acceptable solution
  • Conducted JAD sessions to resolve issues pertaining to development and testing
  • Maintained Requirement Traceability Matrix (RTM)
  • Involved in Gap analysis of processes
  • AS-Is and To-Be Processes within the organization for implementation of RUP methodologies
  • Enhanced website to improve usability, optimized web page layout, simplified and improved customer experience using HTML, CSS and JavaScript
  • Testing the product during development phase to ensure that it has been developed as per the business rules specified
  • Conducted User Acceptance Testing (UAT) using Quality Center
  • Participated in weekly design reviews and walkthrough with project manager and development teams
  • Gathers metrics and performs analysis to determine areas of potential improvement and implements process changes as necessary

Education

Bachelor of Information Technology

Sathyabama University May 2011
India
05-2011

Skills

  • MS Office
  • SQL
  • Clarity PPM Tool
  • Gaia Cloud
  • Problem resolution
  • Organizational skills
  • Training & Development
  • Critical thinking
  • People skills
  • Project Management
  • Team building
  • Customer service
  • Agile/Scrum Methodology
  • Strong Interpersonal and Communication Skills

Certification

Certified ScrumMaster(CSM) - Scrum Alliance

Timeline

Senior Scrum Master

Fidelity Investments
03.2022 - 03.2024

Associate Business Analyst/Scrum Master

JPMorgan Chase & Co
10.2016 - 05.2021

Business Analyst/Scrum Master

TekCommands Inc
10.2015 - 06.2016

Business Associate/Scrum Master

Tech Mahindra Ltd.
09.2012 - 04.2015

Programmer Analyst

Cognizant Technology Solutions, CTS
09.2011 - 08.2012

Bachelor of Information Technology

Sathyabama University May 2011

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Sowmya Katkuri