Shubhi Arora
Summary
Building growth mindsets and value driven culture
CAL - I |PSM – I|AHF | SAFe SA 5.0| SAFe SSM 5.0 | SAFe POPM 5.0 | KSI | KSD | ICP- CAT with LCM | ICP- ACC | ICP- ORG | ICF- ACC (continuing)
A passionate Agilist, who believes in ‘Be the change you want to see'! With over 16 years of extensive Software Industry experience, I serve teams/programs/initiatives, towards continually delivering value and learning, by empowering & engaging highly motivated teams through coaching, mentoring, consulting, and learning. I worked towards building a culture of continuous learning & growth mindset. I have worked as an Agile Coach, Scrum Master, Product Owner, RTE, Team Coach & Mentor, Trainer in my agile Journey so far. I have experience in implementing different Agile frameworks. In my spare time, I love to escape from the city; I live & travel for gastronomic pleasures and to experience different cultures around the world
Overview
16
16
years of professional experience
14
14
Certification
4
4
years of post-secondary education
Work History
Agile Coach / Agile Delivery Lead
Capital One
10.2021 - 01.2023
- At portfolio & Program level, Work with different business groups (distributed teams) to build internal agile programs; like: Recognition tools, Associate success program, speed mentoring
- Build and maintain ART for complex product development teams
- Developing and sustaining high performing teams to ensure demonstrable value
- Manage end-to-end delivery for high profile customers and enterprise using an agile-centric approach for distributed pods in North America
- Own processes, scope, and engagement methodologies while growing 4 Cross-functional teams the organization applying SAFe framework
- Train teams & individuals to embrace & adopt business agility and agile mindset
- Develop meaningful metrics to measure success and help team to leverage those to improve continually
- Mentor Scrum Masters to be able to grow and learn new techniques & tricks for building high performing motivated teams
- Coach the Team Members, Product team and leadership towards the Agility Mindset shift, breaking the Silos, overcoming the communication gaps & working towards a common goal
- Guide Product team to adopt agility, share the product vision, and client's feedbacks with the team on a regular cadence
- Facilitate Business Units to shift from Project delivery setup to Product development with valuable outcomes
Sr. Scrum Master / Agile Team Coach
CIBC
08.2019 - 09.2021
- Partner with Lines of Business (LOBs) to design and implement scaled Agile transformation initiatives focused on driving business outcomes and optimized end-to-end delivery
- Coordinate and facilitate the Agile COE's Liftoff workshops to enable the roll out vision and adoption of Agile archetypes
- Provide hands-on consulting support to LOBs on their agile adoption and maturity journey by recommending and implementing best-in-class approaches and practices aligned with the agile mindset
- Work with others in the Agile COE communities to evolve the enterprise Agile standards, processes, and methodologies
- Provide ad-hoc coaching and mentoring to agile practitioners
- Collaborate with the agile COE and practitioners to build strong, self-reinforcing communities of practice across the company
- Continually enhances own skills and builds knowledge in all aspects of the organization, the business and information systems
- Prepares and delivers presentations to technology partners and senior management selecting the appropriate approach based on the audience
- Contribute to the development of content and intellectual property for the Agile Knowledgebase
- Coach Product Teams, Business Units & Leadership on Agility, Scrum, Kanban & Scaling at organizational level
- Train teams & individuals to embrace & adopt business agility and agile mindset
- Mentor Scrum Masters to be able to grow and learn new techniques & tricks for building high performing motivated teams
- Introduced the concept of Agile, Scrum & Kanban to people with non-technical background
- Coach project managers to understand and adopt business agility and help them transform into a control free work manager over people's manager
- Coach the Team Members, Product team and leadership towards the Agility Mindset shift, breaking the Silos, overcoming the communication gaps & working towards a common goal
- Guide Product team to adopt agility, share the product vision, and client's feedbacks with the team on a regular cadence
- Facilitate Business Units to shift from Project delivery setup to Product development with valuable outcomes
- Help transformation from Metrics oriented approach towards Outcomes, OKRs, value focused delivery across the bank
Scrum Master/ Release Train Engineer
DealerTrack, Cox Automotive
12.2017 - 08.2019
- Promote team performance by liaising with cross functional teams, ARTs in an agile environment in line with SAFe framework
- Coach the Team Members, Product team and leadership towards the Agility Mindset shift, breaking the Silos, overcoming the communication gaps & working towards a common goal
- Coach Product team to adopt agility, share the product vision, and client's feedbacks with the team on a regular cadence & build interactive product roadmaps
- Coordinate b/w 3 scrum teams as Release Train Engineer and other groups like DevOps, dealer support group etc
- Guide the team members to maintain work life balance while still fully covering production support and Bi-weekly production releases
- Facilitate communication & collaboration for the production support & releases; And maintain the artifacts like: Prod
- Support, QA RCA across ARTs
- Protect the team from outside interference, removing impediments, roadblocks and ensure team's continuous delivery
- Owner and facilitator for Scrum CoP, Lean Coffee and other SAFe based knowledge sharing platforms within the organization
- Building Agile based meaningful metrics & reports for data analytics and finding the optimized solutions for delivery & introspection
- Maintain transparency across ART and share right metrics with Stakeholders and Leadership
- Guiding teams to deliver through high business values & shippable product
- Organize and facilitate the quarterly planning, release planning, sprint planning, demos & reviews, Scrum of scrums, daily stand-ups, grooming & retrospectives, product sync-ups etc
- Collaborate with Product team to maximize ROI and attainment of objectives, creating user stories and formulate acceptance criteria
- Help team to minimize the gap between committed v/s delivered work
Scrum Master & QA Manager
Bridge Group Consultants
11.2014 - 11.2017
- Introduced, mentored & trained the Professional Services on Scrum framework, and successfully transformed non-Agile units into ARTs
- Facilitated Scrum Ceremonies & Kanban boards for internal Scrum Teams
- Facilitated QA CoP for the Organization on a biweekly cadence
- Lead the QA group to support deliver high quality products with aiming to zero production defects through Continuous Improvement & Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) Pipeline
- Collaborated with stakeholders from all business units and 3rd parties to define and document business processes
- Improved test planning & execution methods through the development of Quality Assurance processes based
- Facilitated the provision of software requirements for technology initiatives including online products, content management and business information systems
- Delivered the high-quality products by managing the testing of the firm's website designing and Enterprise Portal
- Validated the testing process for content marketing cloud-based products
- As owner of the QA department, I was involved in developing the QA team by hiring the best recourses, mentoring them in their career path development, establishing policies and procedures, annual reviews, and timely feedbacks
QA & Testing Consultant
Diabsolut Inc
10.2012 - 11.2014
- Managed end-to-end Change and release Management up to 6 concurrent testing environments including Deployment Verification Testing for Enbridge Gas for ClickSoftware
- Responsible for test delivery of Web Application including ClickSchedule and ClickMobile: IOS & Android
- Designed test case documentation, summary reports and defect management process to enhance functionalities
- Championed building of documentation and product catalogues around the pre-packaged components offered to customers by Diabsolut
- Improved the performance of different internal units by creating business processes for all Professional services
- Supervised Click Mobile implementation at Enbridge Gas and handled by Diabsolut
- Coordinated the complete lifecycle of the client's release and deployment for the ClickSoftware at Enbridge Gas
- Utilized Salesforce application testing and requirement gathering as well as handled test planning and resources of projects and work effort estimation
Associate (QA Lead & BA)
Cognizant technology Solutions
01.2010 - 10.2012
- Designed and implemented Telecom Certification including Training Material and Question Bank for the organization
- Handled requirement analysis and impact assessment for currency upgrade from Singl.eView 6.0 to Singl.eView 6.01
- Recognized as Subject Matter Expert and Administrator for the application (EMM & Singl.eView)
- Trained and equipped business users with new resources on Singl.eView and EMM
- Planned and managed the set-up of documentation manuals for user training and development for EMM
- Utilized customer's inputs and feedbacks gathered through meetings to improve application to suit their business needs in an Agile environment through iteration Inspect & Adapt approach
- Coordinated defect management, test planning, Test case preparation & execution, test summary reports preparation as well as user acceptance testing
- Managed the QA team of 11 with 6 offshore and 5 onsite resources at Cognizant for Amex
Lead Onsite QA/BA
Mahindra Satyam
12.2006 - 01.2010
- As a part of Total Quality Management team, mentored department heads, engagement managers, PMs to implement six sigma processes- improve efficiency and reduce defects, coached them on implementing best practices
- Responsible for converting functional requirements into technical requirements as well as attended requirement workshops to create functional specification
- Prepared various design documents, Master Test Plans, Detailed Test Plans for different testing life cycles, System Testing, SIT, Defect Management as well as conducted UAT
- Liaised with geographically dispersed teams to ensure successful completion of all undertaken projects
- Facilitated Onsite UAT for a Public Sector Telecom Giant in New Delhi for 18 Months
- Successfully conducted diverse testing including Functional, Regression, System integration, & UAT for Tech Mahindra
Education
Course - Quality Management in Project
University of Toronto
Toronto, ON09.2016
Bachelor of Engineering - Information Technology
Maharshi Dayanand University
India 08.2002 - 07.2006
Skills
- Coaching/ Mentoring/ Shadowing/ Training on Mindset Shift towards Agility
- Delivering awareness workshops to grow the Agile Mindset at team, program & enterprise level
- Business process improvement, Value stream mapping & system design
- Helping the organization to choose the best fit; on how to organize and implement best practices of the Agile Frameworks
- Facilitate and maintain beneficial Scaled agile/SAFe based processes, methodologies within Scrum teams & Release trains by conducting daily stand-ups, managing Task boards, Story Boards, sprint retrospective, sprint planning, demo sessions, Scrum of Scrums, Product Sync-ups, and other ceremonies/ meetings
- Inspire leadership to build the meaningful tracking/ reporting based on Agile derived outcome based OKRs, Metrics
- Build the right Agile reporting for different audiences varying from Scrum Teams, Program Management, Senior Leadership & Stakeholders
- Pioneered advocating and teaching Agile based processes, ensuring that the team is always looking for opportunities for continuous improvement through I & A method
- Empower the teams to self-organize and minimizing/resolving impediments and prevent distractions
- Building a Safe environment for the teams yet ensuring transparency & high performance
- Collaborating with Product & Technology teams to develop product vision, Roadmaps and set up the milestones for the ARTs into a workable plan
- Initiating, Facilitating CoPs, Lean Coffee, Meetups, and similar knowledge sharing platforms at the Enterprise level
- In-depth knowledge of Processes including Configuration Management, Requirement Analysis, Functional Specifications Creation, Workflow Designing, Change Management, Risk Mitigation Planning, and Production Support Investigations
- Great understating of HSE/ OSHAS/ ISO Standards, Conducting Audits
- Excellent experience in designing and streamlining of processes as well as Implementing Six-Sigma processes
Accomplishments
- Developed a fully decentralized recognition tool with the embedded principle of Agile, which is adopted at Capital One, Canada and is being used by 600 associates to recognize and be recognized in a continual process.
- Build a centralized associate success program, to cater the personal growth needs of all associates at C1. Which resulted in 20% less iteration within the organization
- Mentored a group of 50 Scrum Masters to achieve their PSM – 1 certification by facilitating Study Group, with a 100% success and saving 65000 CAD to the bank.
- Helped more than 2500 Canada's leading bank associates to adopt and understand Business Agility, Cultural Agility, Scrum, Scaling of scrum, Kanban. etc. by conducting multiple classroom and Virtual trainings
- Successfully established three high performing, self-organized Agile teams of 24 people alongside DevOps and Support teams at DealerTrack resulting in 160% performance bonus
- Mentored the launch of complete Lender – Dealer Automotive Financial Solution within in a short period of 10 months with newly formed teams worth $ 7 million initiative
- Defined measurable & meaningful agile based Metrics to track continuous improvement and progress of ARTs (Agile Release train) at DealerTrack, communicating the results with Stakeholders
- Star performer for three years in a row 2007/2008/2009 at Tech Mahindra
- Independently developed the courseware for the certification of Telecom Billing advanced level at Cognizant, taken by over 1500 people within a year
- Recognized by senior management for capabilities as leader and domain specialist. Tasked me to customize and delivery of workshops like QA & Testing, Six sigma, Health & Safety framework, for over 500 people
- Trained over 500 internal employees, with an average class of 30-40 people. Received exceptionally high feedback, resulting in 195% in performance bonus
- As a part of Total Quality Management team, mentored department heads, engagement managers, PMs to implement six sigma processes- improve efficiency and reduce defects, coached them on implementing best practices
- Perused Quality Management in Projects, University of Toronto and completed with a score on 86%
- Demonstrated excellent communication skills while organizing various official cultural events in coordination with HR at Tech Mahindra, Cognizant & Diabsolut
- Created and implemented current business processes for QA department at Diabsolut Inc
- Cognizant client's exceptional recommendation Cloud based Testing for American Express
- Recognized as best Technical Trainer for QA/testing courses within Cognizant Technology Solutions, India
- Received recommendation for exceptional Testing (Regression & System) for Click software at Enbridge
Certification
- ICF ACC (Continuing)
- ICAgile Certified Professional in Agile Coaching (ICP ACC), 2023
- ICAgile Organizing for Business Agility (ICP ORG), 2023
- Coaching Agile Transitions with LCM, 2022
- ICAgile Certified Professional with Coaching Agile Transitions, (ICP CAT), 2022
- Kanban System Design, 2021
- Kanban Systems Improvement, 2021
- Effective Interpersonal & Organizational Communication, 2020
- SAFe 5.0 Agilist (Leading SAFe), 2019
- CAL- 1 (Certified Agile Leadership), 2018
- Agility Health Facilitator, 2018
- SAFe 5.0 SSM Scrum Master, 2017
- SAFe 5.0 POPM Product Owner/Product manager, 2017
- Professional Scrum Master, 2016
- Quality Management in Project, University of Toronto, 2016
- Six Sigma Greenbelt (Satyam CS), 2007
- Ranbaxy Labs Ltd. (Internship), 2005
- HFCL Connect. (Internship), 2004
Tools
- Agile Management: Rally, JIRA, Jira Align, Tableau, Planning poker, Google Suite, Hindsight, Trello, Prioritization Tools, Confluence, SharePoint, Lucid Spark, Mural, Miro, MS 365 suite
- Agile Metrics: OKRs, Team Agility Health Assessment, Burnups, Burndowns, Team Velocity/ Capacity, Lead Time, Satisfaction Surveys/ Polls, Prediction & Projections, Calculating Business Value, Prioritizing & Relative weighing, Commutative Flow Diagrams, Feature Progress Reports, PI Performance Reports
Techniques
- Business Agility
- Teaching & Trainings
- SAFe 5.0
- Various Agile Frameworks
- Health Agility Radar
- Situational Leadership
- Planning & Estimation
- Agile Performance Evaluation
- Prioritization Techniques
- Cognitive biases
- Foster Agile Mindset
- Conflict Resolution
- Team Building
- Meaningful Agile Metrics
- Coaching & Mentoring
- KANBAN Methods
- OKRs, KPIs and meaning metrics
- Create High Performing Teams
- Lean Six Sigma/HSE
- Total Quality Management
- Inspect & Adapt Techniques
- Facilitation
- Team Engagement
- Planning and Coordination
- External Communications
- Group and Individual Instruction
- Training Initiatives
Timeline
Agile Coach / Agile Delivery Lead
Capital One
10.2021 - 01.2023
Sr. Scrum Master / Agile Team Coach
CIBC
08.2019 - 09.2021
Scrum Master/ Release Train Engineer
DealerTrack, Cox Automotive
12.2017 - 08.2019
Scrum Master & QA Manager
Bridge Group Consultants
11.2014 - 11.2017
QA & Testing Consultant
Diabsolut Inc
10.2012 - 11.2014
Associate (QA Lead & BA)
Cognizant technology Solutions
01.2010 - 10.2012
Lead Onsite QA/BA
Mahindra Satyam
12.2006 - 01.2010
Bachelor of Engineering - Information Technology
Maharshi Dayanand University
08.2002 - 07.2006
Course - Quality Management in Project
University of Toronto