VASAVI Challa
Austin,TX
Summary
Vasavi has over 16+ years of experience in helping organizations succeed by leveraging their People, Processes, and Technology. As an Agile Transformation Leader, led organizations in their Agile transformation using SAFe, DevOps, Lean Change Management, and related scaling practices from other popular frameworks. Strong leader and problem-solver dedicated to streamlining operations to decrease costs and promote organizational efficiency. Uses independent decision-making skills and sound judgment to positively impact company success.
Overview
8
8
years of professional experience
Work History
Enterprise Agile Transformation Coach
Department of VA
07.2022 - 06.2023
- Moved SAAS-based application delivery from output based to outcome-based improving value-based delivery by 80% and customer satisfaction by 100%
- Led Organizational change management leveraging Agile and OKR-base model to ensure tracking and traceability of delivered outcomes to portfolio, product vision, and strategy
- Implemented and coached product team on customer-centricity concepts and techniques in requirements management to better understand customer needs and behaviors, thereby improving requirements and backlog sanity by 90% due to reduction in requirement errors and gaps
- Guided and coached team in implementing agile best-in-class practices, tools, and processes to collect data, member feedback, derive insights and inform product decisions
- Created product playbook, vision guidelines, and Business feature writing guidelines, to enable business product teams to learn product principles
- Devised and implemented automation measures to improve the system flow time of new enhancements development resulting in the reduction of cycle time by 70%
- Trained and coached various team members in their roles such as Scrum Master, RTE, and Product Management on their roles and responsibilities as laid out in the agile center of Excellence playbook and SAFe standards
- Defined and implemented program-level and team-level dashboards to monitor delivery efficiency, agile maturity, and teams’ performance
- Trained, coached, and educated teams, product groups, scrum masters, and RTE agile delivery practices, meeting the deadlines/commitments throughout the delivery pipeline leveraging SAFe/lean processes and practices (Flow, WIP, Pull Vs Push, etc.)
- Trained and coached product teams on product management best practices, user flows, customer journey maps, product vision, strategy, backlog creation, feature writing, backlog hierarchy, and backlog management best practices
- Coached executives’ leaders on lean agile implementation, enterprise strategy creation, and adoption
- Applied principles of change management, organizational design, and business process improvement to stimulate customer interest and attract untapped demographics.
Agile Delivery, Product Management Leader
CVS
11.2019 - 04.2022
- Lead all aspects of the Agile/SAFE evolution in the Retail Pharmacy portfolio
- Implemented a 90-day agile evolution plan improving agile implementation by 60% in a span of 3 months
- Led the transformation of business and organization (OCM) and drove business agility by defining New Intake Process, leveraging product management best practices and Agile operating framework improving outcome-based delivery by 90%
- Built an efficient framework that supports the value-driven delivery framework and improvement in the IT-Business Collaboration model by 100%
- Defined and orchestrated new Technology product strategies and led the team to define product strategy for a product portfolio, product line, or group and oversees the development, analysis, and alignment of product strategy and roadmaps
- Guided teams in implementing data-driven methodologies across multiple channels, including emerging technology and mobility, to optimize end-user experiences to drive KPI/KRIs
- Guided and coached team in implementing agile best-in-class practices, tools, and processes to collect data, member feedback, derive insights, and inform product decisions
- Created product playbook, vision guidelines, and Business feature writing guidelines, to enable business product teams to learn product principles
- Defined and implemented an OKRs-based improvement model to measure the success of the agile ways of product implementation
- Created coaching frameworks and coaching strategies for new product managers and product teams to enable them to agile product development principles
- Led coaching and training sessions to product managers, product owners, and Business analysts on Product vision, roadmap creation, business features writing, user story writing etc.
Product Delivery Director
Infosys
11.2018 - 02.2020
- Agile, SAFe Transformation, and, Led the Planning, Design, and implementation of Agile, SAFe & DevOps Transformation for Healthcare and Financial companies by creating Agile and Product Operating models, framework, Transformation & Implementation Roadmaps
- Co-led the Agile Transformation for one of the largest financial Digital Transformation leveraging Agile and Scrum Best Practices with 200 pilot teams distributed across US, Europe, India, and Canada
- Created Agile Execution/Operating models, and playbooks to enable delivery teams, and product teams with agile ways of working
- Created Agile evolution roadmaps and transformation backlog as part of continuous process improvement that focus on improving agile ways of working
- Created Agile vision, purpose & benefits for the portfolio and trained both business and technology leaders on the benefits and approaches of Agile transformation
- Worked with Executives and leaders to identify the strategic drivers for transformation and the major roadblocks in the transformation pipeline
- Created Agile roles and responsibilities for various roles in Delivery and Product teams, trained, coached and enabled in their respective roles
- Created Agile test strategy and played an instrumental role in the enablement of the product testing team
- Coached team on various aspects of Vision, feature writing, user stories, backlog practices etc
- Launched 3 Agile Release Trains with major clients of healthcare, financial and pharmaceutical companies
- Implemented service catalog-driven transformation and trained over 50 SMs, Product Managers and 200 teams in Agile and Scrum best practices, principles and Values and all aspects of Agile and Scrum
- Implemented CI/CD deployment and release pipelines using Azure, Jenkins, GIT, Docker, Maven etc tools and trained teams on DevOps practices and principles
- Launched 2 Agile Release Trains and Coordinated Planning across Business Portfolios
- Established Agile Coaches Clinic, led/coordinated and facilitated Communities of Practice, to provide a supporting platform to evangelize and spread Agile across the entire organization
- Established JIRA portfolio for managing program-level dependencies and trained SM, PM, and teams on its usage
- Clearly defined enterprise-wide guidelines for the implementation of DoR, DoD, Release Planning, JIRA Compliance, backlog management and Dependency management
Agile Delivery Leader – Principal
Charles Schwab
08.2017 - 10.2018
- Tools and Agile Transformation
- Led and implemented the rollout of Atlassian tools: Confluence and JIRA for a 20,000-user base across key departments in the company
- Created tools playbook and training programs for the entire user base to train in Atlassian tools
- Led the implementation of Jenkins CI/CD pipeline for trading portfolio thereby improving cycle time by 80%
- Implemented continuous testing pipeline along with key assessment touchpoints to measure the effectiveness of the testing pipeline
- Continuous testing pipeline reduced defects by 60% and increased quality of applications by 90%
- Implemented standard operating procedure that improved procurement and licensing process while reducing overhead costs by 30%
- Designed and Implemented automation of the Definition of Done process in JIRA at the release level.
Group Manager - Agile Transformation Coach, Delivery Manager
Human Health Services Commission, HHSC
04.2016 - 08.2017
- Managed a team of size 60, including 10 FTEs and 50+ Contractors, including Product managers, Product Owners, Scrum Masters, Developers, Testers, Architects, and Production Support
- Implemented Kanban framework to streamline production support and reduced production defect backlog by 90% in less than a span of 6 months
- Established objectives and outcomes-based product dashboards to communicate product delivery status to stakeholders, leadership, management, business, and IT
- Defined Product strategy, vision, and roadmap and led implantation of 20M SAAS-based behavioral health application that serves mentally disabled patient centers across Texas and led implementation leveraging Salesforce technology
- Monitored customer quality metrics and took proactive steps to implement resolutions and restore acceptable levels
- Developed Scrum and agile process plans, team working agreements, training curriculum and design transformation workshops.
Program Delivery Manager and Principal Product Architect
Whole Foods, Retail POS
07.2015 - 03.2016
- Systems
- Led the Strategic planning, development, and implementation involving Dual-Track Agile for Globally Distributed Teams and Multi-Vendor environments
- Co-led the migration and deployment of POS applications across the United States for one of the largest Austin Based Retailers with a budget of 25 M
- Created and Designed a Release management strategy of POS for 400+ stores across the US Developed and drove the execution of a user-focused product roadmap via close collaboration with business, senior leadership, design, and engineering teams
- Lead and managed the product testing plan and the Beta program
- Communicated roadmaps, vision, strategy priorities, experiments, and decisions
- Managing the overall Point of the Sale product lifecycle, driving the roadmap & backlog management, capability delivery to support IT and Business strategy,
- Responsible for managing the fiscal year delivery plan/Release plan and building strong stakeholder relationships
- Partnering and collaborating with external product teams, and vendors to strategically plan and deliver the product features by connecting the technical and business worlds
- Responsible for managing risks, escalations and solving complex problems to improve the efficiency of product pipeline, quality, and security
- Managed the delivery of products that meet business demand and enrich the customer experience within Stores and align with product vision and roadmap
- Further Experience available upon request
Education
Master of Science - Science And Technology
University of New Hampshire
Durham, NH12.2005
Skills
- Organizational Change Management Agile Delivery & Development Process improvement
- Product Vision and Strategic Planning Agile Operating Model and Intake Optimization
- Product and Solution backlog management Lean Product Development and Product Taxonomy
- ART Launch DevOps, Automation, and CI/CD implementation
- Portfolio Management and Optimization OKRs, KPIs, and Dashboards (Release, Program, Team)
- Customer Centricity, System & Design Thinking SAAS, Mobile, AI, and eCommerce applications
- Beta Program Management & Training Agile Scrum, Kanban, SAFe training
Key Summary as Agile Transformation Leader/Enterprise Agile Director
- Led the Planning, Design & implementation of Agile, SAFe and DevOps Transformation for several Fortune 100 companies in Retail, Healthcare, Financial domains & Several startups
- Led Global, company-wide initiatives focusing on Agile Change Management, Project / Program Management, Process Improvement, and Quality Management – leading to ISO 9001 Certifications and CMM Capability Assessments at Levels 3, 4, and 5 at different Global Development Centers in US and India
- Led end-to-end transformation of Agile and DevOps at the enterprise level delivering results and outcomes aligning with overall organizational transformation strategy
- Launched several Agile Release Trains in the past 10 years to launch SAFe implementation
Accomplishments
- Created Transformational strategy, backlog, roadmap and approaches to implement, execute and establish an Agile organization that facilitates efficient delivery, cultural change, creation of high-performance product teams
- Co-led the Agile Transformation for the largest retailer Product Platform Development leveraging Agile and Scrum Best Practices with 200 pilot teams distributed across US, Europe, India, and Canada using several tools and techniques
- Led the Agile and DevOPs transformation for one of the major portfolios of the largest Pharma companies from waterfall to Agile
- Created Agile execution models to adopt agile and transform the portfolio of 2000 people from a project-based organization to a product-based organization
- Optimized the current work intake process at the portfolio level and implemented the Agile intake process to align with Agile execution and operating models
- Defined capabilities-based teams’ model to organize agile teams around capabilities
- Defined product taxonomy and conducting technology-based mapping and resource mapping based on the skills sets for one of the largest healthcare organization
- Created Agile vision, purpose, and benefits for the portfolio and trained both business and technology leaders on the benefits and approaches of Agile transformation.
Timeline
Enterprise Agile Transformation Coach
Department of VA
07.2022 - 06.2023
Agile Delivery, Product Management Leader
CVS
11.2019 - 04.2022
Product Delivery Director
Infosys
11.2018 - 02.2020
Agile Delivery Leader – Principal
Charles Schwab
08.2017 - 10.2018
Group Manager - Agile Transformation Coach, Delivery Manager
Human Health Services Commission, HHSC
04.2016 - 08.2017
Program Delivery Manager and Principal Product Architect
Whole Foods, Retail POS
07.2015 - 03.2016
Master of Science - Science And Technology
University of New Hampshire
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