Sam Shah
Toronto,ON
Summary
Results-oriented Scrum Master specializing diverse industries, with Canadian Reliability Status clearance and 10+ years of experience in facilitating cross-functional teams through successful project delivery.
- Successfully aligned business objectives with technological solutions using Lean-Agile, Waterfall, and Hybrid methodologies.
- Skilled in both independent and collaborative problem-solving for complex issues.
- Experienced in supporting leadership to achieve departmental initiatives.
Efficiently facilitated teams transition between Waterfall, Agile, and Scaled Agile practices. - Demonstrated strong servant leadership, fostering transparency, creativity, and psychological safety through team empowerment.
- Adept in stakeholder engagement through effective communication and collaboration, with a focus on conveying complex messages clearly.
- Proficient in risk management and adaptation for agility, emphasizing continuous learning and improvement.
- Experienced in coaching and mentoring teams, showcasing courage, commitment, and shared accountability for project success.
Overview
10
10
years of professional experience
1
1
Certification
Work History
Senior Scrum Master
National Bank
05.2023 - Current
- Facilitate two cross-functional teams, focused on development and enhancement of Options trading app
- Facilitate Scrum ceremonies including Backlog Refinement, Daily Scrum, Iteration Planning, Reviews & weekly Retrospective meetings at the team level to ensure transparency, collaboration, and progress towards the sprint goal
- Work closely with Agile Coaches and consultants, implementing roadmap for transition of Scrum teams to Scaled Agile framework (SAFe)
- Assist researching and defining custom cadence, and length of SAFe ceremonies to minimize resistance and smoother adoption among teams
- Coach Scrum teams, four other Scrum Masters / stakeholders, to clarify on doubts, fears regarding scaling practices
- Work with ‘Product Owner’ managing long-term roadmaps, creating user stories, refining backlog, ensuring backlog items meet ‘DOR’, defining iteration goal and collaborate with SMEs, stakeholders, as and when required
- Collaborate with other Scrum Masters preparing “Dependencies and ROAM” boards during PI Planning sessions, then during “Coach Syncs” ensuring prompt resolution of cross-team dependencies and risks
- Maintain an “Impediment & Improvement Tracker” to facilitate quick removal of impediments, and work on improvement opportunities
- Allocate resources to every iteration, plan capacity, update budget forecasts sheets, track progress, compare forecast vs actuals, analyze reasons for variances (if any), and plan to narrow it down in future sprints
- Use JIRA to track progress, manage work, and collaborate
- Tracking key metrics including release / sprint burndown, scope change, velocity, team capacity, escape defect, cycle & lead time, to prepare periodic and ad-hoc reports radiating progress to teams, program management, and stakeholders
Senior Scrum Master
Delta Airlines
05.2022 - 04.2023
- Facilitated Scrum ceremonies, maintained open communication and feedback channel among developers, PO and Stakeholders, to foster transparency, collaboration, and value delivery to client
- Worked closely with PO during requirements elicitation, analysis, drafting stories and, prioritization, ensuring product backlog alignment with project goal
- Facilitated frequent backlog refinement sessions with PO, Dev lead, and team, to optimize value delivery
- Coordinated with other Scrum Masters, ensuring timely resolution of cross-team dependencies and risks pertaining to up-stream data flow and downstream data integration, critical for seamless operation of booking and reservation
- Facilitated process streamlining for managing web inquiries, flight booking, web check-in, boarding pass access, and managing Delta SkyMiles account
- Managed an Impediment & Improvement Tracker to remove bottlenecks and capitalize on improvement opportunities
- Conducted numerous assessments to understand moving motivators, assess level of psychological safety, empowered teams, and encouraged collaborative environment, to foster agility and help teams adopt change amicably.
Senior Scrum Master
CIBC
04.2018 - 03.2022
- Facilitated in-house and vendor teams replacing legacy CRM with Salesforce FSC (Financial Services Cloud), developing 'Goal Planner' application, upgrading trading application, and maintenance projects
- Facilitated breakout sessions during PI planning, helping teams identify cross-team dependencies and risks
- Created working agreements to streamline processes and align cadence with Agile COP suggested best practices
- Collaborated with Product Owner and team defining spring goal, prevent over - commitment during sprint planning sessions
- Facilitated backlog refinement, sprint planning, daily scrum, sprint review, and sprint retrospective sessions to ensure team collaboration, progress tracking, stakeholder feedback, and process improvement.
- Collaborated with other Scrum Masters in weekly 'Coach Sync' meetings to track progress on interdependencies and risks, and share new learnings
- Tracked metrics to gauge progress, and report performance (through Burn-down / burn-up charts, velocity, etc.), and getting feedback to facilitate continuous improvements
- Coordinated with vendor teams, allocated resources for upcoming iterations, approved weekly resource timesheets, and updated budget sheets accordingly
- Provided weekly progress, variance, risk reports, & other updates to program manager
- Built and facilitated trainings and workshops for Agile Principles & Practices, Story Writing, Estimation, and Planning
- Helped non-technical branch representatives to design and implement Kanban board to streamline operations.
Business Analyst | Project Manager
3i Infotech
01.2015 - 11.2017
- As project manager, led end-to-end project management life cycle activities, created business cases, project charter, budget forecast, baselines, and project management plan, for development of trading software for in-house traders
- As business analyst, conducted documents reviews, facilitated interviews, focused group sessions, etc
- To elicit requirements, analyzed, documented & prioritized for development of mutual fund trading portal for large bank in UAE
- Been part of agile transformation journey led by Agile Coach, for three teams transitioning from waterfall to IWF (Iterative Waterfall) and gradually to agile methodologies, resulting in 50% increase in productivity and 30% reduction in project delivery time
- Interviewed online trading clients, wrote user stories to precisely capture functional and non-functional requirements for Odin client upgrades
- Worked with QA teams to develop test strategies, test cases, facilitate tests including SIT/UAT.
Regional Capital Market Advisor
BMA Wealth Creators
01.2014 - 12.2014
- Been assertive, supervised investment professionals involved in research, trade execution & investment advisory
- Developed & managed business plans including IT system upgrade to support investment research activities
- Established regional equity analysis division to provide focused and tailored advisory for trading & investment
- Supervised discretionary asset allocations, and trade executions based on drafted IPS, for over 40 high-value accounts
- Led training & presentation sessions for clients and advisers to promote various derivatives and structured products.
Education
Master of Science - Finance
ICFAI University
India06.2013
Skills
- Agile Framework and Practices
- SAFe Framework Knowledge
- Agile Project Management
- Agile Practices (Scrum, Kanban, Lean, XP)
- Facilitation and Problem-solving
- Continuous Improvement - Team Leadership and Collaboration
- Coaching, Mentoring, and Team Leadership
- Cross-functional Collaboration
- Conflict Resolution
- Stakeholder Management
- Technical Skills and Tools
- Technical Acumen
- Tool Proficiency (Jira, Confluence, Mural, MS Project, Salesforce CRM)
- Metrics and Reporting
- Quality Assurance & Risk Management - Organizational Agility & Business Acumen
- Agile Transformation
- Agile Project Management
- Training, Coaching, and Workshops
Certification
SASM - SAFe 6.0 Advance Scrum Master
SSM - SAFe 6.0 Scrum Master
CSM - Certified Scrum Master
KMP 1 - Kanban System Design
PMP - PMI certified Project Management Professional
CFA L1 - Chartered Financial Analyst Level 1
CSC - Canadian Securities Course
Timeline
Senior Scrum Master
National Bank
05.2023 - Current
Senior Scrum Master
Delta Airlines
05.2022 - 04.2023
Senior Scrum Master
CIBC
04.2018 - 03.2022
Business Analyst | Project Manager
3i Infotech
01.2015 - 11.2017
Regional Capital Market Advisor
BMA Wealth Creators
01.2014 - 12.2014
Master of Science - Finance
ICFAI University
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