Vikas Gautam

About Vikas Gautam

As a Sr. Scrum Master at Freddie Mac, I leverage my 10+ years of experience and multiple certifications in agile methodologies to lead, coach, and deliver enterprise applications. I am passionate about supporting the creative process of software development through Agile, Scrum, and Lean principles, while eliminating waste, delivering business value, and ensuring quality and compliance.I have successfully coached numerous teams with various experience and agile maturity levels, and facilitated agile activities and ceremonies across cross-functional teams. I have also developed strategies to enable agile transformation of a program or a portfolio, and guided teams and stakeholders on how to adopt and fine-tune agile best practices. I have extensive experience in project management, business analysis, process re-engineering, and process enhancement, and I am proficient in using Jira, Crucible, and Confluence tools to manage and monitor agile projects. I am always eager to learn new technologies and skills, and to empower teams to collaborate and perform at a sustainable pace.

Experience

1. Agile - Scrum Master Specialist

   Freddie Mac

   Feb 2022 — Present · VA, US

   Coach team on established IT and corporate standards (e.g, security, quality, and architecture) to minimize operational and repetitional risk- Served in the Release Train Engineer (RTE) role, performing all pre-planning and facilitation of PI planning sessions to launch agile release trains- Assisted with tracking the execution of features, capabilities, efficient in setting and communicating the annual calendars for Iterations and Program Increments; provided visibility into delivery targets, commitments, and progress- Collaborate closely with the product owner to manage the backlog- Effectively manage user story estimation and forecasting- Proactively identified impediments and appropriately resolved using a network of peers and formal channels (including escalation if required)- Worked on Metrics to reflect committed features for a PI like Feature Progress Metrics, Risk (Resolved- Owned, Accepted and Mitigated), Release and coordination, dependencies, blockers or impediments- Tailored coaching plans based on Agile Maturity of the team; Helped teams grow exponentially with Agile mindset- Assisted teams to focus on daily and Iteration goals in the context of the current Program Increment (PI) or Release Objectives- Led team efforts in relentless improvement, helped the team improve and take responsibility for their actions- Coached problem-solving techniques and helped teams to become better problem-solvers for themselves- Facilitated discussion, decision making, and conflict resolution within the team to improve team level performance and value delivery. Organize and facilitate agile activities and ceremonies including daily stand-up meetings, sprint reviews, retrospectives, sprint and release planning, and product backlog refinement sessions.

Education

• University of Dayton

  Master's degree, Computer Science