Wadzanai Thembani
Richardson,TX
Summary
Offering excellent Agile project management, multi-tasking and communication skills to coordinate multiple, concurrent projects with competing demands. Makes sound decisions in high-pressure settings and utilize analytical problem-solving skills to troubleshoot and resolve issues. Articulate communicator with strong customer service skills.
Overview
10
10
years of professional experience
1
1
Certification
Work History
Lead Scrum Master - PMO
Fidelity
Westlake, TX
03.2020 - Current
- A highly adaptable senior Scrum Master with 8+ years of experience in Technology, who seeks to be a voice of the customer advocate in delivering innovative products and the solution.
- Responsible for managing and evolving Scaled Agile portfolios of the highest complexity to adopt and to apply Scrum/ Agile methodologies including SAFe Agile
- Facilitates Scrum of Scrums activities with teams that have significant cross-functional impacts involving projects and the maintenance work while meeting the Definition of Done (DoD)
- Guides the scrum teams and organization to follow generally accepted Agile/Scrum practices and daily activities to actively promote prioritization, team readiness, and commitment for each Sprint.
- Uses empirical data to help the teams assess their Scrum Maturity, to optimize scrum team velocity to organizational KPIs, and to identify improvement opportunities to achieve higher levels of team performance.
- Proactively addresses systemic impediments to team agility and guides the teams on methods to escalate when needed to prevent challenges from becoming blockers.
- Coaches scrum teams to deliver capabilities using agile practices while also following the Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC), business process mapping, and various release processes as appropriate to ensure all risk, security, and development requirements are met.
- Participates in Daily status Meetings, Backlog Grooming, User Story Mapping, Sprint/Iteration Planning, Product Demos and to Retrospective meetings.
- Partners with managers to convey their concerns to scrum teams about governance policies and adherence to corporate standards.
- Partners with Product Owners, Program or Project Managers to communicate delivery of work product from the scrum team(s) and escalates key risks and issues impeding scrum team effectiveness.
Works with Directors, VPs and C-level executives to provide updates and to provide 30, 60, 90 days roadmap.
Contract Senior Scrum Master
Sam's Club
Dallas, TX
08.2019 - 03.2020
- Assessed team metrics and worked to drive improvements and innovate new approaches.
- Trained and mentored team members on best and most effective ways to use Scrum processes to improve efficiency and reduce production times.
- Coached and mentored team members, stakeholders and leadership on benefits of Agile and Scrum.
- Elevated the team’s productivity by tracking and removing obstacles, alleviating internal and external dependencies, and escalating critical issues - while maintaining a proactive relationship with the senior leadership team
- Managed 3 scrum teams and drove projects (i.e., fostering early delivery of a customer issue solution) to drive impact
- Governed project timelines and tracked project outputs to ensure project teams deliver project requirements and maintain critical expectations for scope statements, plans, schedules, and budget constraints
- Elevated Sam's practices for Scrum operations by conducting comprehensive audits to analyze the effectiveness of existing processes, ideate methods to automate practices, and reduce tough loss
- Ascertained business inefficiencies by executing audits of complex business processes, performing site evaluations, and evaluating customer surveys
- Enhanced productivity for team meetings and Scrum ceremonies by crafting agendas and ideating communications materials.
Contract Senior Scrum Master
National Life Group
Addison, TX
01.2018 - 08.2019
- Acted as a right arm to the product owner to define project scope and objectives for a Salesforce migration project - amid juggling project management tasks and projects
- Pioneered and spearheaded team initiatives - while guiding team members through the continual improvement process and empowering the team to make system and process improvements captured in sprint retrospective meetings
- Enhanced project awareness by communicating project statuses and progress to team members, business stakeholders, and executive leadership
- Organized and facilitated project planning, daily stand-up meetings, reviews, retrospectives, sprints, release planning, demos, and other Scrum-related meetings
- Maintained a cadence of communication with team members to create a payment processing system engineered to enable clients to manage their investments
- Protects the team from outside interruptions and distractions.
- Led the team's efforts toward continuous improvement, tracked and removed internal and external impediments, and removed delivery team roadblocks
- Catalyzed the project team’s understanding of all aspects of their prime contract respective responsibilities, contract checklist, and organizational structure.
Agile Project Manager
Genpact
Richardson, TX
10.2016 - 01.2018
- Worked with stakeholders – including, but not limited to: product owners – to define project scope and objectives
- Directed the planning, execution, and closing of sprints to support the delivery of software products for projects and stakeholders across the enterprise
- Empowered the team to evoke a self-organized mindset and coached the team through Agile-related transformation, change management processes, and core principles
- Orchestrated and facilitated sprint planning, daily stand-up meetings, demos, retrospectives, release planning, and workshops
- Mobilized the organization from a waterfall methodology to an agile framework by leveraging tools, adopting new technology, conducting internal stakeholder meetings, and partnering with internal stakeholders
- Leveraged Azure and Jira knowledge and financial, statistical, and operational data analysis acumen to mitigate risk factors, track progress, and remove internal and external impediments
- Trained and mentored team members on the best and most effective ways to deploy Scrum processes to improve efficiency.
Scrum Master
Capital One
Plano, TX
10.2013 - 10.2016
- Led two cross-functional scrum teams focused on integrating wire processing, ACH bank payments, and operating systems
- Scheduled and allocated work, while rendering advice and guidance to resolve problems and meet technical performance and financial objectives
- Defined and deployed new product development processes to facilitate the continuous improvement of existing process
- Mentored and coached teams to evoke a self-directed Scrum philosophy rooted in strong accountability, decision-making, conflict resolution, and transparency
- Coached the team on Agile principles and processes and acted as a gatekeeper to alleviate overcommitment, manage backlogs, and prioritize defects
- Pioneered mutually beneficial relationships with scrum masters to increase the effectiveness of the application of Scrum in the organization
- Elevated production processes and improvements by leveraging publications and professional networks to stay up-to-date on current industry trends, market activities, emerging technologies, and trends.
Education
Master of Business Administration -
Louisiana State University
01.2023
Bachelor of Science -
The University of Texas at Arlington
01.2021
Skills
- Kanban
- Jira
- Jira Align
- SAFe
- Facilitation
- Servant Leadership
- Confluence
- Dashboarding
- SDLC
- Project Management
- Coaching
- Conflict Resolution
Certification
- PMP Certification
- SAFe Program consultant (SPC)
- Certified Professional Agile Coach (ICP – ACC)
- Certified Agile Team Facilitator (ICP – ATF)
- Professional Scrum Master PSM1
- Scrum@Scale Practitioner
Timeline
Lead Scrum Master - PMO
Fidelity
03.2020 - Current
Contract Senior Scrum Master
Sam's Club
08.2019 - 03.2020
Contract Senior Scrum Master
National Life Group
01.2018 - 08.2019
Agile Project Manager
Genpact
10.2016 - 01.2018
Scrum Master
Capital One
10.2013 - 10.2016
Master of Business Administration -
Louisiana State University
Bachelor of Science -
The University of Texas at Arlington
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