Summary
Overview
Work History
Education
Skills
Timeline
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Valerie A Kemp

Certified SAFe Scrum Master
Cedar Hill,TX

Summary

Experienced Certified SAFe Scrum Master, passionately supporting teams to adopt Scrum/ Agile Methodologies. Using over 8 years of expertise in relationship building, communication, work planning and prioritization, along with change management and conflict resolution in a way that continuously improves teams capability to effectively self organize in addressing complex problems to maximize generated business value.

Overview

18
18
years of professional experience

Work History

Agile Scrum Master

Quest Diagnostics
Remote, NJ
02.2023 - 02.2024
  • Assisted teams in the Infrastructure of a CX Hospital Portal from ground zero into production.
  • Facilitated and improved scrum ceremonies (i.e. backlog refinement, sprint planning, daily stand-ups, retrospectives and PI planning).
  • Identified and implemented ways to strengthen agile teams and the organization through agile/scrum concepts and principles.
  • Supported teams to align with the project goals and vision and communicated the teams progress to stakeholders.
  • Encouraged cross-team coordination with other Scrum and Kanban teams to manage dependencies between teams and external contributors.
  • Assisted the Product Owner with prioritizing technical debt and identifying trade-offs between short- and long-term benefits to drive shared vision.
  • Collaborated with other SAFe practitioners to share and learn to contribute to the continuous improvement of SAFe within the organization.
  • Implemented changes that resulted in a 50% increase in velocity across CX - ART that delivered more features sooner in efforts to reach Beta launch timelines.
  • Monitored key performance indicators for agile metrics dashboards (velocity monitoring and improving, burn down, lead/cycle time, etc) within agile tools.
  • Communicated progress, dependencies and bottlenecks with stakeholders on delivering realistic and true timelines based on team's maturity and velocity, to help protect the team from uncontrolled expansion of work.
  • Supported the prioritization, software development and delivery of user stories within the sprints for each program increment. Validate the user stories against acceptance criteria.

Scrum Master

2-10 Home Warranty
Remote, CO
04.2022 - 12.2022
  • Assisted teams with the implementation of CLM Salesforce and incident management.
  • Supported and coached team members, stakeholders and leadership on benefits and practices of Agile in Scrum.
  • Identified Anti patterns and address them with the team, offering creative suggestions.
  • Facilitated the prioritization and removal of impediments, with particular attention to cross functional team dependencies.
  • Led daily Scrum stand-ups and Agile development sprint planning meetings for multiple, concurrent projects.
  • Assessed team metrics and worked to drive improvements and innovate new approaches.
  • Used conflict resolution skills to redirect team members to the sprint commitment and goal, with empathy, support and knowledge of scrum best practices.
  • Worked closely with Product Owner to ensure the effective management of team backlog, PI objectives and priorities are align with overall business strategy and roadmap.
  • Elevated teams performance by 20% by celebrating small wins and encouraging the agile methodologies to improve team self-organization for benefit of the team's maturity.

Agile Scrum Master

Mr Cooper
Irving- Hybrid, TX
11.2015 - 04.2022
  • Planned and facilitated critical agile ceremonies while providing guidance.
  • Tracked project progress against goals using agile methodologies such as burndown charts, velocity tracking and task boards.
  • Organized sprint planning sessions to ensure team members understand user stories and acceptance criteria.
  • Supported multiple teams with values and principles in order to enhance the customer experience.
  • Recommended optimal Agile practices and increased business value with over 60% "Done" projects, by assessing 100% of the organization and delivery environment.
  • Ensured that JIRA boards Sprint Stories are complete and up to date.
  • Participated in Scrum of Scrums to ensure scrum effectiveness and improve its practices with the Scrum framework.
  • Increased team efficiency by 15% by inspiring motivation and changes for quality and timeliness.
  • Managed multiple on and offshore scrum teams, ensuring effective collaboration and communication.

Scrum Master/Business Analyst

JP Morgan Chase
Dallas, TX
04.2011 - 11.2015
  • Supported team members on the best and most effective ways to use Scrum processes to improve efficiency and reduce production times.
  • Led daily scrum stand-ups and facilitated discussion, decision making and conflict resolution across 3 cross-functional teams
  • Assisted in team development while holding teams accountable for their commitments and leveraging organizational resources to improve capacity for project work increasing the average time to deliver new features by 10%.
  • Defined workflows and processes in fast-paced, Agile environment and distributed models through whiteboarding and mind-mapping.
  • Ensured user stories were 100% ordered, defined and ready to be worked on by team.
  • Enforced Kanban principles as a scrum master that resulted in reduction of cycle time by 20% and increasing the teams output in less than 8 weeks.

Business Analyst

JP Morgan Chase
Irving, TX
04.2007 - 04.2011
  • Guided business in improving processes, products and services using data analysis.
  • Uncovered areas for improvement to develop and implement solutions.
  • Defined functional requirements and system interfaces to improve efficiency and usability.
  • Tested the functionality and quality of new software tools to ensure best use for company.
  • Consistently worked to identify project risks, initiate risk mitigation and implement risk reduction action plans.
  • Recommended improvements to existing or proposed systems to enhance solution functionality.

Business Analyst

Citi
Las Colinas, TX
01.2006 - 04.2007
  • Defined functional requirements and system interfaces to improve efficiency and usability.
  • Identified and analyzed user requirements, procedures and processes to develop optimization strategies.
  • Guided business in improving processes, products and services using data analysis.
  • Developed solutions to improve productivity and incorporate technology.
  • Uncovered areas for improvement to develop and implement solutions.

Education

High School Diploma -

John McDonogh High School
New Orleans, LA
05.2000

Some College (No Degree) - Nursing

Our Lady of Holy Cross College
Algiers, LA

Some College (No Degree) - Biology

Xavier University of Louisiana
New Orleans, LA

Skills

  • Certified SAFe SM 60/ SAFe POPM 51
  • Microsoft Suite/ Office 365
  • Rally/ JIRA/ Salesforce
  • MURAL/ Teams/ Zoom/ Sharepoint
  • Team Leadership
  • Relationship Building
  • Verbal and Written Communication
  • PI Planning and Prioritization
  • Test-Driven Development /SDLC processes
  • Agile Best Practices
  • Change Management and Process Improvement
  • Coaching and Conflict Resolution
  • SAFe/ Scrum/Waterfall/ Kanban

Timeline

Agile Scrum Master

Quest Diagnostics
02.2023 - 02.2024

Scrum Master

2-10 Home Warranty
04.2022 - 12.2022

Agile Scrum Master

Mr Cooper
11.2015 - 04.2022

Scrum Master/Business Analyst

JP Morgan Chase
04.2011 - 11.2015

Business Analyst

JP Morgan Chase
04.2007 - 04.2011

Business Analyst

Citi
01.2006 - 04.2007

High School Diploma -

John McDonogh High School

Some College (No Degree) - Nursing

Our Lady of Holy Cross College

Some College (No Degree) - Biology

Xavier University of Louisiana

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Valerie A KempCertified SAFe Scrum Master