Haitham Zaki

Joined the project after the second sprint and found numerous challenges. The team was doing Agile without being agile. The product owner was not technical and couldn't communicate the requirements clearly to the team. User stories were vague and did not address the real value of it. There was a gap between what the business needed and what the team understood from the product owner. They were not applying scrum correctly.

Actions taken:
I conducted a GAP analysis session by identifying the issues and roadblocks. Agreed on the improvement strategy, enabled an agile mindset to ensure the team felt the value of the practices. I asked to have a business analyst fill the gap of understanding the requirements and help the project manager write user stories and acceptance criteria. Conducted a retrospective after each sprint and communicated progress to the business, which was very satisfied with the value-driven approach and results.

Managed the migration of 4,000+ users from Skype for business to MS teams in 85 sites in four regions. I led more than 30 stakeholders from three entities. The project had a complex and non-standard design where I had to migrate pilot sites as a proof-of-concept. The project structure and processes were a mess, I rebuilt them by dividing the team into four scrum teams working in the four regions according to the business priorities.

I developed a new collaborative approach with the customer and stakeholders, used Jira, and taught the teams to track the projects and visualize the workflow and processes, spotting the roadblocks at the daily stand-up meeting. I let the teams conduct retrospectives every four weeks to gather lessons learned and agree on improvement actions. The customer acknowledged the early value created and gave us the support and trust needed for the teams.

In this project, I acted as the agile coach the first month, building the agile mindset and processes with the team and customer. Next, as agile project director, I facilitated the communication and reporting between teams and the customer, removing all obstacles and impediments, leading to a successful completion of the project.

Led the agile transformation program of the Excellence & Solution Center across different countries. Coached different departments in the organization as an agile coach, delivering training and acculturation sessions, teaching several agile frameworks (Scrum, Kanban, Agile games, user stories, XP).

Delivered agile training and consultations to teams starting from top management down. Involved in all major agile development activities across OBS worldwide. Communicated progress and success to senior management in an agile way to ensure value was driven out of the program and applied a project management methodology in compliance with the company's methodology. Utilized industry-recognized best practices to ensure project deliverables were managed effectively and with integrity, documented accordingly.

Joined global Agile leadership transformation program, launched with cohort of 20 managers to teaching and coaching them empowerment, servant leadership and Agility, It had significant impact on the moral and productivity of the different teams.