Modi Puthuran

Summary:

 Resourceful and dynamic Agile Professional Scrum Master with 8+ years’ experience in diverse
domains like Financial, Trading, Credit Card and Healthcare with outstanding analytical,
communication, and people skills.
 A committed team player with excellent facilitation and conflict resolution skills.
 Served as a Scrum Master within multiple scrum teams in facilitating the transition from Waterfall
methodology into Agile.
 Comprehensive knowledge and cross-functional teams experience in all facets of Software
Development Life Cycle (SDLC) with business process models: Waterfall, Scrum, Lean, XP,
Kanban and Scrumban methodologies.
 Committed lean-agile thinker focused on continuous improvement with high degree of metric.
 Result driven servant leader with skills in delivering projects by effectively and efficiently
collaborating, facilitating, coaching and counseling multiple scrum teams.
 Proven ability at driving and motivating the adoption of scrum rules, removing impediments,
fostering self-management and empowering my team.
 Excellent technical command to work with Agile project management tool like Rally and JIRA.
 Experience working on multiple projects, with both experienced and new agile teams and ensuring
delivery of high quality projects within budget & schedule.
 Strong Problem-solving skills, excellent communication skills and a superb ability to multi-task.
 Proficiency in using issue tracking and agile management tools such as JIRA, Confluence and Rally to
document user stories, conduct sprint planning, track sprint progress and monitor the team's
statistics.
 Helped the business stakeholders envision future enhancements of the product and how their work
will need to be prioritized/modified for an optimized product increment to generate maximum
revenue.
 Participate actively in Scrum.org/Scrum Alliance forums and learn from various Agile
implementations.
 Assess the Agile implementation of different projects teams, identifying any gaps or improvement
areas.
 Fostered organizational agility through agile values, principles, and practices for software delivery
by working with the executive, mid-senior management and development teams.
 Strong interpersonal skills, effective communication and organizing skills, matched with the ability
to manage stress, time and people at an enterprise level.
 Comprehensive problem solving and multitasking ability with willingness to take ownership
facilitate teamwork and lead activities.
 Ability to work in fast-paced environment and track multiple projects running in parallel.

Technical Skills

Methodologies: Waterfall, Agile

Processes: Scrum, Kanban, XP, Lean

Agile Tools: Rally, JIRA and Confluence

Office Tools: MS Word, Excel, Microsoft Project, SharePoint & PowerPoint SDLC

CRM tools: Aprimo Marketing Studio (AMS)

 BI/ETL/Big data tools: Micro Strategy, Tableau, Big data Tools

Bug Tracking/Testing: Quality Center, JIRA, CA Rally

Other Skills: AWS, Microsoft Azure, Agile/Scrum Coaching & Servant Leadership,
Capacity Planning & Risk Mitigation Development, Conflict Resolution
& Relationship Building.

Professional Experience:

Anthem Inc, Norfolk, VA Oct. 2019- Current

Agile Scrum Master

Responsibilities:
 Managed three Agile teams with 7 members each and helped them to work in an Agile
environment
 Organized and facilitated Agile and Scrum meetings, which included Sprint Planning, Daily
Scrums, Sprint Check-In, Sprint Review & Retrospective, in 2-weeks sprint..
 Capable to understand the basic fundamentals of iterative and incremental
development.
 Should have strong knowledge of Scrum theory, rules and practices.
 Required knowledge of other agile approaches, like: Kanban, Crystal, FDD, XP, etc.
 Validated that only approved features are contained within a release by reviewing Rally/JIRA
to ensure all stories tagged to a release is in an “accepted” state.
 Knowledge about other methodologies other than Agile Scrum, in order to motivate the
entire team about various other methodologies.
 Basic knowledge of software development processes and procedures to understand his
team needs.
 Worked with various Agile techniques like: User Stories, Continuous Integration, ATDD,
TDD, Continuous Testing, Pairing, Automated Testing, and Agile Games.
 Ability to take and understand the commitment to deliver the product on time.
 Know about the value of metrics and incremental delivery.
 Knowledge about tasks, backlog tracking, burndown metrics, velocity, and user stories
etc.
 Familiar with common development practices, Service oriented environments, and
Agile practices.

Bank of America, Charlotte, NC Sep. 2017- Sep. 2019

Business Analyst/Agile Scrum Master

Being part of Fraud Detection & Claims Team, the main objective of the project was migrating from
legacy system to a new technology. This is used by Analysts to improve the customer satisfaction,
reduce time to handle each fraud alert case. This project helped create one application for customer
care analysts to provide all the information related to the customer for easy handling of the alert cases.
The Application is created for different Line of Businesses like Credit card, ATM Deposit/Debit, ACH,
Mobile Wallet, and Check Fraud.

As a part of Communication letters and Translation services team, engaged in creation of workflow
process coordinating Communications, Translations and Letter build teams. This ensures capturing
reviews and approvals from Legal, Compliance, Fair Lending and audit with strong controls for Multiple
Lines of Business within the company.

Responsibilities:
 Managed multiple agile development teams responsible for processing triggered Fraud Events.
 Organized and facilitated Agile and Scrum meetings, which included Sprint Planning, Daily
Scrums, Sprint Check-In, Sprint Review & Retrospective, in 2-weeks sprint.
 Coach Product Owner and Development Team on the Agile Methodology while serving as a
guide on the implementation of Scrum values and incorporating the required pillars during our
various scrum events.
 Working as an Agile Transformation Coach where scrum and Kanban Techniques are applied.
 Wrote Agile FAQs, articles and success stories which were distributed via newsletter and posted
on a SharePoint site to improve the Agile maturity level.
 Coached through the transformation and provided the necessary training and references,
building knowledge and skills to facilitate the Agile transformation.
 Established and supported communities of practices to promote organizational understanding
of Agile roles and to help individuals develop into them.
 Championed cultural change and collaborated with other scrum masters on plans and
techniques for accelerating and advancing the transformation.
 Mentored teams, leading them to be self-directed with strong accountability, decision making,
conflict resolution and transparency.
 Validated that only approved features are contained within a release by reviewing Rally/JIRA
to ensure all stories tagged to a release is in an “accepted” state.
 Participated in Scrum of Scrum to increase the effectiveness of the applications of Scrum in the
organization and to ensure cross-team collaboration, coordination of release plans, and to
report overall project status.
 Encouraged and implemented process improvements. Created team-building opportunities.
 Ensured that the teams are on track for each bi-weekly delivery and also that these deliverables
meet the criteria of "Done".
 Managed product backlog prioritization, refinement and sizing using sprint events and ensured
the key metrics like definition of "Done". Burn-Down charts are utilized for transparency across
the board and optimized product delivery.
 Utilized Rally’s team capacity feature to calculate team velocity and ensured that the team
always commits to what they can deliver.
 Customized Rally Dashboards for Agile teams i.e. Kanban, Scrum Boards, Agile Portfolio
Dashboards, Defect Tracking Analysis Dashboards, Product Owner Dashboards and Metrics
Dashboards.
 Identifying key metrics to allow the organization to quantify levels of maturity from an agile
baseline.
 Resolved conflict, improved morale and helped establish clear goals by effectively managing
timelines and shared resources with special emphasis on building relationships across
departments.
 Work with the Product Owner to ensure the product scope does not surpass the intended
budget.
 Facilitates all Scrum ceremonies to promote scrum values and principles within the framework.
 Protecting Development teams from outside distractions, impediments or team conflicts, and to
maintain focus on Product Backlog and project timelines.
 Participating and Leading Scrum adoption practices across the organization and related
Community of Practices.
 Good experience in working for compliance, Risk assessment, Policy and Audit projects.
TD Securities, NY Oct 2015 – Aug 2017
Business Analyst/Product Owner

Description: The project involved working on a Trading Platform which helped end users and traders
to look for different trading positions and analyze, it enabled to attain a high degree of ability to
monitor all client positions across different asset classes trade details could be automatically captured
and passed for further trade processing along with real time monitoring of collateral and credit limits
and automated notifications for any limit breaches. Management of different kind of orders like limit
stop and market orders.

Responsibilities:
 Assisted the Project Manager, to prepare the vision and the scope for the project.
 Prepared Business Requirement Document and Functional Requirement Document for the
gathered requirements.
 Involved in working on interfaces, XML data mapping, web services, integration on multiple
interfaces.
 Worked with the Stakeholders, Project Manager and senior Business & SQA (Software Quality
Assurance) Analysts in defining, documenting the business needs and Business Process flows.
 Facilitated JAD workshops to identify project objectives and limitations and identification of key
performance indicators.
 Used RUP and SDLC methodology and managed the iterative cycles through an effective project
plan created using MS Project.
 Participated in and contributed to as-Is and To-Be Process Modeling Sessions and build process
models responsible for analysis and reporting.
 Created sample XML, with all business rules, for testing.
 Conducted walkthrough sessions with the end users and stakeholders to gather the
modification requests from the user to upgrade or change the business specifications for the
product.
 Worked extensively to write use cases and functional requirement case diagrams, activity
diagrams, sequence diagrams, state diagrams based on UML methodology and business process
flow diagrams using MS Visio.
 Performed feasibility and adaptability study to identify the business-critical areas from User
perspective
 Documented the Functional Requirements (FRD) and the System Requirements documents.
 Performed Gap analysis by identifying existing technologies and documented the enhancements
to meet the end state requirements.
 Worked actively with the QA (Quality Assurance) team for designing Test Plan and Test Cases
for the User Acceptance Testing (UAT)
 Implemented agile methodology for running the project.
 Analyzed test results and reported necessary corrective actions to the development team. Aided
in regression analysis.
 Monitored Defect Tracking system to prioritize defects and devise a plan for future
enhancements.
Environment: MS Office, Mainframes, Share Point, MS Access, Windows XP, Snag IT, Congas, Audit
Studio, MS Office, HTML, ETL, XML, Data Warehouse.

TDSB Jan 2015 – Aug 2015

Business Analyst/Scrum Master
Successfully carried out following tasks and responsibilities
 Coaching and mentoring highly collaborative project teams in Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe).
 Propelled transition of organization from a linear IT SDLC to an Agile Scrum environment
  Defined and championed Agile Vision, Methodology, Practices and Tooling.
 Participated in Program Increment (PI) planning to generate PI objectives to be achieved within
the Agile Release Train (ART)
 Servant leader, facilitated all Scrum Ceremonies like Sprint Planning, Daily Scrum, Sprint
Review/Demo, Sprint Retrospective and other artifacts Information radiators like Burn down
Charts Dashboards in Jira and Creating Team Confluence pages
 Enforced Kanban principles as a scrum master that resulted in reduction of Cycle time thus
increasing team's throughput
 Led team with no dedicated QA resources to incorporate Test Driven Development (TDD) and
Continuous Delivery practices; leading to an increase in quality of delivered product and a
decrease in production defects
 Facilitated Sprint Grooming and story writing sessions with product owner and dev teams.
 Facilitated Planning Sessions and helping team to estimate stories and creating tasks based on
complexity
 Adapted project plans, schedules, and resource assignments as required throughout pilot
projects to respond to emerging requirements and risks
 Maintained visual Scrum Board for visibility and tracking of project progress
 Utilized scrum metrics to convey project status to internal and external stakeholders; Velocity
chart, Capacity Utilization, Backlog Health, Commitment Reliability, Estimation Variance, Defect
leakage, Scope Change, Burn down chart, Burn up Charts, Cycle time
 Removed blockers and also coached teams on how to remove blockers themselves when
required.
 Coached and mentored individuals and teams on effective execution of Agile Scrum
methodology
 Built, refined, and facilitated training and workshops including: Agile Principles and Practices;
effective Story Writing; and Agile Estimation and Planning.
 Tackled team challenges, conflicts and issues that could slow down the delivery of value to
customer
 Maintained and monitored projects' schedules and progress using agile metrics
 Coordinated activities, resolving issues and proactively managing the risks and opportunities.
 Managed software development iterations in the capacity of scrum master for a team.

Putnam Investments, Boston, MA Feb 2012 – Dec 2014

Business Analyst

Description: The firm provides a fully modular solution that allows front office users to focus on their
own asset classes. The system includes a selection of pre-configured windows designed for each
product, including rates, Stocks, Options and bonds. Users also have the option to modify individual
windows to include only the information they require. This would allow the users to control the
centralized operations for the front office as well as customize views of each desks and provide real
time risk and P&NL updates would then allow quick deal to capture for pre-trade analysis prices for
flexible variation in derivatives valuation, also provide on demand pricing, risk & scenario analysis.

Responsibilities:
 Liaison between developers, project manager and process/product analysts to understand the
business processes, identified enhancements and gathered business requirements.
 Use MS SharePoint 2010 to manage documents and help ensure integrity of content.
 Extensive experience in documentation of business requirements and system functional
specifications, including BRD, and FRD.
 Involved in the Integrated Testing, Functional Testing, System Testing and UAT and hands on
experience with the testing tools.
 Created Test data, Test procedures, Test plans, and other related documentations.
  Managed the overall testing schedule to meet project timelines by prioritizing testing efforts.
 Created Test Summary for the verification of results that were either passed or failed.
 Analyzed bugs using Quality Center and reported those bugs to the development team using
Test Track.
 Linked defects to requirements including, tests, test sets, test instances, runs, run steps, and
other defects to determine the status of defect using Quality Center.
 Used QC for defect tracking and maintained defect repository and followed Bug life cycle until
the issue was closed.
 Extensive involvement in preparing and reviewing documentation including business and user
requirements, functional requirements, use cases, project and status reports.
 Captured process flows by preparing activity and sequence diagrams, pre- and post-conditions,
performance requirements, volume estimates, descriptions of data passed between lanes, high-
level business rules, issues, assumptions.
 Excellent Communication and Presentation skills;
 Experience working with business users, developers as well as senior management.
 Provided leadership in process analysis, process and system design, and in the implementation
of business systems that support functional goals and objectives.
 Participated in all the phases of Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) and interacted with
the software developers from time to time.
 Involved closely with the Developer and Testing team during defect resolution phase; conduct
and document UAT
 Performed different phases of Software Testing Life Cycle (STLC) including Smoke testing,
Integration testing, Regression testing, and User Acceptance testing.
 Used Quality Center to manage Testing assets (test plans, test cases), Test Execution (Test sets)
and Defect Management (reporting, tracking and analysis).
Environment: MS Access, MS Excel, MS PowerPoint, Agile, SharePoint, Mercury QC, UML, MS Project,
VB, XML, Oracle, SQL.

Qualifications

Degree Institute Major and Specialization

MBA - GPA 3.8 Westcliff University, Irvine, CA IT Project Management
PG Diploma -GPA 3.25 University of California, Irvine Business Administration & Project
Management
BE -GPA 2.70 CMJ University, Chennai Automobile Engineering
Diploma - GPA 2.75 Systems College, Singapore Computer Science