Sagar Talekar

Professional Summary:

• Deep Agile experience as an Agile Coach, Agile Program Manager, and ScrumMaster in many successful large Agile organizations.
• Extensive project and program management experience in executing multi-team, distributed, and complex technology projects through the entire lifecycle of SDLC.
• Results oriented approach with strong focus on developing exceptional teamwork and collaboration. Well versed in bringing order out of chaos to align people and work.
• Excellent communication, facilitation, and presentation skills. Generalist, Innovator, and continual learner.

Core Competencies:

• Building great software development teams through effective processes to transform corporate vision to customer delight
• Brings experience from increasingly significant roles and management aspects including -- product, program/portfolio, release, stakeholder, change and risk management. Well versed in Vendor management, and Resource planning, building QA and automation infrastructure, Onshore/Offshore Team collaboration. Prior background in hands-on technical contribution in software design, and development.
• Agile Coaching- ability to coach and influence without authority from individual to executive levels and by building consensus and working agreements to enhance and performance of teams
• Seamlessly combining Traditional (PMM/Waterfall) and Agile (Kanban/Scrum) development methods in distributed and hybrid organizations
• Managing cross-functional, matrix, and international teams for setups ranging from startups to large corporations
• Streamlining and aligning processes, tools, governance, and teams to optimize value delivery of development programs
• Working collaboratively across organizations to eliminate waste, solve complex problems, deliver business value
• Advanced expert and a capable trainer for regular users in industry leading tools in Rally/CA-Agile, Jira, Confluence, SharePoint, Microsoft Suite (Project/Excel/PowerPoint/Visio etc.)

Qualifications/Certifications:

• MS CS; BS EE; CSM; CSD; ICAgile Certified Agile Coach and Facilitator, Pragmatic Certified Product Manager.

 

Professional Experience:

Consulting Agile Coach            Visa, Digital and Mobile Prod Development, Foster City, CA                Mar 2016 – Current

Coaching DMPD software development teams in effectively using in house process, and agile practices building an enterprise Mobile payment platform and solutions.  (35+ globally distributed teams)

• Providing process governance to 1 to 2 DMPD verticals at a time in using DMPD Agile Product development framework, and Visa Project Management Methodology(PMM), blending in industry standard agile and program management best practices.
• Contributing immensely in customizing DMPD Agile Development Framework for each vertical by incorporating feedback from stakeholder, leaders, and learnings from team sprints to keep DMPD process framework relevant.
• Playing the role of Agile expert to support Agile PMs, and Feature Owners (Technical Leads) in all phase of software development lifecycle - from inception, estimation, and planning to execution, release, and post production to adhere DMPD process, generate artifacts based on Key controls.
• Collecting sprint metrics, trends, and publishing periodic reports for Vertical leads, executives, as well as DMPD Portfolio and Business Management team to enable risk identification, make roadmap tradeoff and prioritization decisions at every level of program execution
• Building Custom Dashboards in Rally, and Jira for Vertical leads and execution teams to measure value delivery, tracking and managing capacity and cost for program governance
• Assisting Product and Program Managers in prioritization, capacity, roadmap planning at the yearly (AOP), quarterly, and release level. Providing actuals like realized velocity to enable forecasting in their focus areas
• Training new hires, and teams in DMPD Agile process framework, Scrum, Kanban practices, as well using tools like Rally, Jira, and building custom apps and reports.
• Building and handing over reports about team progress, status, and key action items on vertical’s roadmap. Making the data around release and team progress, collaboration and dependencies visible to PMs/FLs
• Facilitating various feedback sessions (Deep Dive, Solutioning, retrospectives and RCA) to help build program improvement agenda and provide visibility for leads and executives to assist and guide program maturity agenda

 

 

Accomplishments:

• Assisted DMPD verticals in evolving “one size fits all” DMPD Agile process to tailored DMPD Agile Process Framework suited to each vertical per its context. E.g. VCO and VDCA moved to 2 week sprints (regular 3 weeks)
• Guided VTS, and VCO teams through a DMPD reorganization. Rebuilt deliverables and responsibilities through complete revamp of individual roles, and full transformation of PMO and Technology leadership team
• Assisted VCO in getting through external audit without a blemish – highly credited for tracking sprint retrospective information, timely kept records, and building the audit support documentation

 

Consulting Agile Coach            Cisco InterCloud Services, San Jose, CA                                    Dec 2014 – Jan 2016

Agile coach and facilitator to multiple teams adopting Agile practices building a large enterprise InterCloud program (CIS). Core member of agile PMO team, coached and mentored a business unit with newly formed 25+ and growing distributed teams spread across multiple geographic locations

• Facilitated quarterly release planning cycles focusing on grooming and prioritization leading to it (CIS implementation of SAFe/PSI planning). Aligned CIS teams to optimize value delivery based on available capacity.
• Led training session on Agile/Scrum/Kanban. On demand training classes for over 200+ team members covering topics like Decomposing Epics, and Story writing, agile estimation, product owner orientation, Scrum, Kanban topics, retrospectives as well practical tips on Agile PMO collecting and using agile metrics and reporting.
• Built organizational working agreements to define roles and responsibilities and practices around Release Planning, Scrum-of-Scrums, sprint reviews, capacity management and calculating delivered value
• Built innovative reports and custom apps for by customizing Rally reports for data consistency, impediment visibility, dependency management, blocker resolution, and roadmap tracking
• Assisted new team formation by taking up hands on ScrumMaster for 1-2 teams at a time to assist learning
• Improved Program health and by enhancing organizational maturity – co-created and contributing to PMO community of practice, set up regular presentations on PMO best practices, etc.

Accomplishments:

• Successfully facilitated Business Unit Deployments of two high profile, high quality enterprise cloud solutions
• Stabilized platform program by focusing and persisting on agile best practices, resulting in an over 30% reduction in high priority defects over last two quarters in FY 2015

 

Agile Program Manager                      CyberSource (Visa)-Now MAP PD                                   Jun 2011 – Dec 2014

Managed and energized many cross-functional agile teams, building and enhancing an international payment management platform for payment processing, security, and fraud management.

Program Management:

• Contributed building and executed product generation processes for predictable delivery, spanning multiple product programs
• Owned product portfolio and roadmaps with Product Management, Technology, and other stakeholders. Managed yearly product plans, budgets, as well as teams for CyberSource Payment Portfolio (growing 8+ teams)
• Guided Release Planning, team deliverables and maintained program alignment by facilitating periodic roadmap reviews and tradeoffs.
• Analyzed KPIs, metrics, built reports, and maintained Enterprise dashboard for Executive leadership for reporting progress, program status, and risk monitoring.
• Continually adopted efficient PMO practices, enhanced record keeping like change, risk and issue logs, as well as audit support and readiness.

Agile Leadership and Engineering excellence:

• Co-coached product and technical managers in effective use of Agile strategies and provided guidance from program management perspective
• Built and trained cross-functional teams (8+ new teams) to increase agile maturity and expedited learning through frequent and faster feedback cycles and elimination of waste
• Continuously improved processes by strengthening the definition of product readiness from various aspects including configuration and source code management, automation of deployment and validation, builds, and procurement, connectivity, etc.
• Contributed to Agile Community of Practice, Scrum of Scrums, organizing Agile brown bag sessions, and building organizational improvement agenda

Accomplishments:

• Enabled multiple, simultaneous overlapping product roadmap cycles from inception through twice a month incremental production release cycles as the payment program grew more than two times bigger in over 3 years.
• Increase in team velocity by an average of 30% through adaptive approaches and self-organization.
• Seamlessly integrated CyberSource merchant interface for Visa Checkout(V.Me) enablement
• Delivered 35+ CyberSource-Through-Visa (CTV) processor connections over 18 months (6X cycle time improvement)

 

International Game Technology (IGT), Reno, NV, USA                                                            Feb 2003– May 2011

  Agile Leader IGT SbX Systems - Server based eXperience (SbX) Team                                  Oct 2008 – May 2011

Core member of agile transformation team leading IGT Product Development building an industry changing solution to enabled casino operators, deliver customized player experiences.

• Led team level Agile transformation, built cross-functional high performing SbX teams (6 teams, 50 professionals)
• Facilitated teams and executives to build vision for change and then enabled successful transformation
• Managed streamlining & alignment of processes, tools, and teams leading to the effective delivery of software development programs
• Built and managed an in house team of ScrumMasters. Collaborated with external coaches in mentoring senior leadership in agile mindset through every stage of development program. Developed processes for release planning, feature backlogs, and user stories management
• Facilitated and socialized best practices and for sprint planning, execution, and other scrum ceremonies
• Created project tracking, program reporting as wells as incorporating customer collaboration protocols during and post launch to understand market acceptance and end user feedback

Accomplishments:

• Delivered of IGT’s largest SbX product installations -- at the Aria (700 + gaming machines), and The Cosmopolitan (1000+ gaming machines) casino floors in Las Vegas -- exceeded customer expectations.

2X feature delivery improvement from cold start to customer release (cycle time)

Technical Product Manager Server Based Group (IGT SBG team)                                          Jan 2006 – Sept 2008

Built technical practices base at IGT by helping three teams to take up XP SDLC practices. Played a hybrid role of product and technical manager to define and execute product roadmap.

• Defined, planned, and executed products of Server Side products
• Interfaced with sales, business product managers, product marketing, support, sales, and customers to define feature roadmap and ensure high customer satisfaction
• Utilized Iterative process to build the product backlog and plan releases. Used 3 levels of planning granularity from concept to execution
• Iintroduced agile principles and XP methods to quickly determine direction and pulse for teams new to XP as well as those moving to the next level
• Established continuous build, deploy and test automation strategy to support lean/agile development

Accomplishments:

• Scaled division results 3x with about 2x less headcount by streamlining portfolio planning processes

Implemented practices to accelerate new product development (+30%), increase efficiencies (40% cost reduction), and greater customer satisfaction (customer impacting issues reduction by 50%).

Technical Manager -- System Interoperability (IGT SbX team)                                                  Feb 2003 – Dec 2005              

Managed a successful Vendor management program to achieve Integration, Certification, and Compliance for two large-scale slot machine floors at The Wynn and The MGM Grand in Las Vegas (over 800 gaming machines).

• Led an engineering team of 15 QA and system engineers and collaborated with external vendors, to test SBG system with vendors (games and systems) at IGT’s GTIC (Technology & Interoperability Center).
• Managed communications, coordination, and relationships, planning and execution of interoperability testing to orchestrate all third party vendors successfully tested their GSA products at the GTIC.
• Managed IGT SBG Interoperability management leadership focus group representing various IGT software system and Architecture teams to provide strategy and alignment on compatibility and Design decisions.

Accomplishments:

• Achieved SBG interoperability compliance from GSA (Gaming Standards Association) and GLI (Gaming Laboratories Inc) as a G2S (game to system) protocol-complaint system.

 

PRIOR RELATED EXPERIENce:                              (Details on request)

Jupiter Consulting Services, Reno, NV                           Year 2002- 2003                Lead Software Consultant

VitalLink Business Systems, San Francisco, CA             Year 2000- 2002                 Sr. Software Engineer                                 

Wipro InfoTech, Hyderabad, India                                Year 1998- 1999                 Lead Software Developer              

Blue Star InfoTech, Mumbai, India                                Year 1996-1998                  Software Developer            

 

Education and Credentials:

BS, Electronics and Telecommunications Engineering -- University of Poona, Pune, India (1996)

MS, Computer Engineering; University of Nevada, Reno, USA (2008)

Scrum Alliance Certified  CSM, and CSD (2008-2014) Pragmatic Certified Product Manager (2012)

Agile Coach Bootcamp Agile Coaching Institute (2014) ICP-ACC: Professional in Agile Coaching

IPC-ATF: Agile Team Facilitator-ICAgile (2014) Leading SAFe 4.5 (2017)