Malena (Maria Elena) Montoya

• Advised top management on agile strategy development, improving organizational agility at all levels.
• Led agile transformation at Alloprof, steering team development and workflow optimization across operational teams
• Boosted team agility and performance through coaching and mentorship, pivotal in facilitating teams alignment, quarterly planning, and reviews, ensuring continuous improvement and goal attainment.
• Boosted development team maturity increasing value delivery by implementing auto-selection team segmentation approach, significantly enhancing productivity and self-organization.
• Increased Agile adoption among operational teams by 30%, solidifying Agile methodologies throughout organization.
• Successfully engaged agile practitioners into Agile Community of Practice (CoP)sessions, fostering sharing and learning culture in agile practices across organization.
• Empowered team members to self-organize, boosting morale and overall job satisfaction.

Collaborated with business stakeholders, marketing, UX, and technology teams to drive value by incorporating agile practices as part of online gaming platform which consolidates multiple entities into universal customer experience.

• Empowered team members by promoting self-organization, accountability, and ownership of tasks within the Scrum framework.
• Facilitated smoother product development cycles by working closely with product owners to prioritize backlog items based on user needs and business value.
• Accelerated time to market by 1 month by leading agile implementation and setting team’s performance objectives.
• Reduced 70% of scrum masters’ facilitation time by delivering agile toolbox and mentoring them.
• Developed customized training materials tailored to meet specific needs of individual teams within the organization.
• Mentored junior Scrum Masters in their professional development journey, sharing insights from personal experiences across various industries and technologies.

Coached and advised teams working on AI and Machine Learning implementation for Datalab department.

• Drove agile adoption, improved teams’ agile maturity, and scaled scrum by facilitating agile workshops, brainstorming sessions and trainings for up to 30 team members.
• Accelerated time to release fixes to 80% by unblocking dependencies, resolve impediments and proactively identifying issues and facilitating effective solutions across teams using Lean-Agile principles
• Improved backlog visibility by 70% by facilitating backlog refinement meetings, collaborating with product owner to align backlog coherence with product roadmap and render visible key indicators on product progression.
• Mentored junior Scrum Masters and team members in Agile principles, promoting best practices within organization.

Enabled 3 business agile teams of 50 people to move from start-up to advanced level in agile maturity and deliver a solution remake of collective insurance site impacting all iA clients.

• Increased team’s alignment by 30% by partnering with POs, RTE and teams in backlog maintenance and bringing clarity.
• Increased teams’ engagement by 30% more by enhancing visual indicators using BI and Jira Metrics and plotting in dashboard, enabling focus group and facilitate problem-solving meetings
• Improved team efficiency by implementing Agile and Scrum practices.
• Facilitated Scrum ceremonies – sprint planning, backlog grooming, daily scrums, sprint reviews, and sprint retrospectives.
• Partnered with Product Owners to refine requirements and ensure alignment with product goals.
• Collaborated with product owners, team members, technologists, and other scrum masters to define solutions and drive progress.

• Drove agile assessments for several company’s customers. Partnered with company’s internal coaches and customers to define and implement a coaching plan. Supported Training division to assess training needs. Supported technical division to accelerate their development ramp up by facilitating product discovery meetings. Provided feedback on training agile videos and capsules.
• Created retention of English-speaking clients by leading diagnostic assessments in agile-maturity and providing a coaching plan
• Added Kanban and Agile approaches training into company’s catalog, delivered and created content for that training.

Coached 1 program team and 2 project teams delivering regulatory compliance for the anti-money laundering (AML) department by enacting system thinking in teams within value-stream mapping workshops, using Lean-Agile principles.

• Resolved impediments to team progress by proactively identifying issues and facilitating effective solutions.
• Gained engagement by 40% by facilitating alignment, anticipating obstacles, rendering portfolio progression more visual and facilitating planning and problem-solving workshops
• Gained portfolio visibility by 50% by partnering with managers, business key stakeholders about business indicators alignment

Coached 3 teams delivering solutions as part of pilot training journey to improve pilot learning experience. Supported agile transformation and culture change by driving agile CoP, designed and delivered agile training to new employees and facilitating ‘lunch and learn’ initiatives.

• Improved teams maturing from forming to performing by coaching agile, best practices, continuous improvement and removing obstacles.
• Save 1 month of team preparation before kickoff in Agile Iterations by preparing them in readiness concerning Agile and Product Scope
• Improved team efficiency by implementing Agile and Scrum methodologies for project management.
• Facilitated Scrum framework – sprint planning, backlog grooming, daily scrums, sprint reviews, and sprint retrospectives.
• Collaborated with Product Owners to refine requirements and ensure alignment with business goals.
• Collaborated with product owners, team members, technologists, and other scrum masters to define solutions and drive progress.

• Improved team efficiency by implementing Agile and Scrum methodologies for project management.
• Collaborated with Product Owners to refine requirements and ensure alignment with business goals.
• Facilitated Scrum framework – sprint planning, backlog grooming, daily scrums, sprint reviews, and sprint retrospectives.
• Collaborated with product owners, team members, technologists, and other scrum masters to define solutions and drive progress.
• Identified potential risks early in the project lifecycle and implemented mitigation strategies accordingly.

• Scrum Master and tech lead for a multi-located delivering a mobile app to enhance interaction with physical jukebox across 65000 bars and restaurants around North America and Europe.

Senior Developer and ultimately scrum master for the Mobile Team delivering apps (B2B and B2C) related to Inventory Management, Expense Management, Travel Expense Approval, Leave Approval, delivered to customers.

• Improved team efficiency by implementing Agile and Scrum methodologies for project management.
• Facilitated Scrum framework – sprint planning, backlog grooming, daily scrums, sprint reviews, and sprint retrospectives.
• Collaborated with Product Owners to refine requirements and ensure alignment with business goals.
• Collaborated with product owners, team members, technologists, and other scrum masters to define solutions and drive progress.
• Conducted daily stand-up meetings, sprint planning sessions, and sprint reviews, ensuring effective communication among team members.

• Scrum Master and tech lead for mobile apps enhancing indoor geolocation experience for all their customers in North America.