Senior Scrum Master - St James's Place - Cirencester (hybrid role)
(2023-11)
Scrum Master for 2 teams who are responsible for the delivery of data to support the Organization's Consumer Duty Responsibilities. The team specializes in analyzing business needs, developing queries and views using multiple disparate data sources, and using Snowflake, Matillion, PowerBI and Tableau to surface data into configurable dashboards that can be used throughout the business.
- Developing and maturing the team to work together effectively and focus on delivering high value features incrementally
- Facilitating all scrum ceremonies and coaching of team members to develop their knowledge and understanding
- Leading the removal of impediments and the drive for continuous improvement
- Removal of silos to improve better collaboration and understanding of the business requirements, ultimately leading to high value features being delivered quicker and more efficiently
- Use of metrics to better understand team effectiveness and support discussions focused on improvements
- Jira Admin for the team including day to day board management, dashboard production, bulk imports and migrations, etc
- Active member of the Scrum Master community, facilitating Communities of Practice sessions, writing blog posts and being an advocate for agile practices and principles throughout the business
Scrum Master - Lloyds Bank - Bristol (hybrid role)
(2022-08 - 2023-11)
Scrum Master for data specialist team responsible for the analysis, requirements engineering and design of key assets within a major finance transformation programme.
- Facilitation of all scrum ceremonies and coaching of team members to develop their knowledge and understanding
- Introducing and embedding helpful agile practices e.g. use of metrics, establishing definition of ready and done, breaking down of work, story pointing
- Coach and support of the Product Owner in their role
- Servant to the team, supporting them in removing blockers and enabling them to be as effective as possible
- Active member of Scrum Master community, helping the community have valuable sessions that support learning, development and alignment
- Establishing consistent and effective use of tools such as Jira and Confluence to support transparency of work to the team, key stakeholders and the wider business
- Working with stakeholders and other teams to ensure plans are aligned
Scrum Master - Kingfisher Group - Remote
(2021-08 - 2022-07)
Scrum Master for two software development teams responsible for delivering a new store ordering system.
- Facilitation of all scrum ceremonies and coaching of team members to develop their capability
- Working closely with the Product Owner and team to establish a medium term product roadmap focused on delivering the highest value features
- Lead quarterly PI planning sessions to ensure value based, aligned and feasible plans were produced that the entire team had contributed to
- Scrum Master with a new team, helping them develop good working relationships with strong agile principles and practices
- Active member of Scrum Master community, building a library of shared resources for others to use and contribute to
Agile Coach / Scrum Master - Hargreaves Lansdown - Bristol
(2017-04 - 2021-07)
A leadership role responsible for introducing and embedding agile practices to enable the business to deliver the best value services to its clients in the most effective manner.
- Working with leaders to educate and support them in understanding how agile principles and practices can be exploited to make their teams higher performing
- Scrum Master for a number of digital initiatives including: HL Mobile Application (responsible for 3 squads delivering both iOS and Android applications), MyAccounts (working with a cross functional squad made up of UCD, development and test capabilities), Platform (an IT Ops squad focussed on providing an AWS Platform for other squads to utilise), and Marketing Squad (a development team responsible for delivering new features to live on behalf of the marketing function)
- Working with Scrum Masters in a coaching capacity to support them in performing their role and developing professionally
- A wide training remit, proactively and reactively providing agile education throughout the organization
- Introducing and supporting the growth of an Agile Community of Practice and a Coaching Community of Practice
Delivery Manager / Scrum Master - Eduserv - Bath
(2016-04 - 2017-02)
Leadership and line management responsibility for a team of project managers, digital producers, business analysts and 3rd line application support team. The team were primarily focused on providing digital solutions to public and third sector organizations such as British Red Cross, Guide Dogs for the Blind and the Information Commissioner's Office.
- Leadership and management of the digital project management function, including coaching of the team in agile methodologies
- Acting as Scrum Master and Project Manager on a number of key projects. Often these were the initial engagements with new Customers, establishing relationships and ways of working
- Introduction of a DevOps capability, improving efficiency and reducing issues caused by human error
- Operational management including budgeting, forecasting, monitoring and reporting
- Introduction of Kanban within application support team, significantly reducing the number of open and breached calls and improvement in customer satisfaction
- Coaching and development of the application support team, improving performance
- Use of financial forecasting tools to ensure there is improved clarity and greater emphasis on achieving targets
Development Manager / Scrum Master - Eduserv - Bath
(2008-01 - 2016-04)
Leadership and line management responsibility for a team of developers and testers delivering software systems to public and third sector organisations.
- Migration of the team and clients from traditional project lifecycles to working collaboratively using agile principles and practices
- Acting as Scrum Master and Project Manager on a number of key projects. Often these were the initial engagements with new Customers, establishing relationships and ways of working
- Establishment and regular refinement of software development processes, from requirement definition through to deployment and support. These also included how we managed projects and interfaced with Customers
- Introduction of tools that are more aligned with agile teams and increased productivity, including Jira, Confluence, TeamCity, Git, Selenium, OctopusDeploy and NewRelic
- Establishment of a specialist QA function with a focus on automated testing
- Introduction of resourcing tools, increasing utilization and supporting proactive planning and prioritization
- Restructuring of the team to improve efficiency
- Developing and maintaining standards for best practice in conjunction with ISO9001 and ISO27001
Project Manager - Praxis High Integrity - Bath
(2007-01 - 2008-01)
Project Manager of a number of key projects at Praxis.
- Project Manager of projects with total value exceeding £1,000,000 per annum
- Project Manager of 10 staff
- Full financial control and responsibility of all projects
- Resourcing all team members to ensure optimal productivity
- Business Development - pricing of tasks, production of bids
Information Services Manager - BMT Defence Services - Bath
(1999-04 - 2007-01)
Manager of the software team at BMT that specialised in delivering web applications (ASP.NET, C# and SQL Server) to the public sector.
- Line Manager of eight analysts and developers
- Project Management of the majority of software projects
- Developing and maintaining standards for best practice in conjunction with ISO9001-2000 and TickIT accreditation
- Leading the Information Services overall technical direction including adoption of new technologies and standards
Systems Analyst - 3S Electronic Publishing - Bath
(1996-08 - 1999-03)
Systems Analyst and software developer for a company delivering software.
