Zain Naboulsi, Project Manager in Katy, TX, United States
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Zain Naboulsi

Verified Expert  in Project Management

Project Manager

Katy, TX, United States

Toptal member since September 13, 2021

Expertise
Project ManagementScrum MasterAgile CoachingAgile Software DevelopmentAtlassian SuiteScrum CoachingKanban
Bio

Zain is a certified Scrum Master and Product Owner with over five years of experience seeking to help cut costs and raise efficiency with teams. He is well versed in IT and development teams' business and technical aspects. Zain has the ability to bridge business needs with technical resources to achieve success.

Project Highlights

IntelliTrace
Worked as one of the scrum masters on IntelliTrace at Microsoft.
Cheetah Transportation Management System (CTMS)
Acted as a scrum master for ongoing iterations of this application that the entire company uses for day-to-day operations.
Drone Detector
Created and launched an integrated hardware and software solution that had never existed before.

Expertise

Agile Software DevelopmentDistributed Team ManagementIT ProjectsProduct OwnerProject ManagementSalesforce Sales CloudScrum MasterSoftware Development Lifecycle (SDLC)

Work Experience

Scrum Master | Product Owner

2021 - 2023
Rural Sourcing inc
  • Worked on multiple consulting projects, acting as scrum master for IT and development initiatives to create a new workflow system for a large food logistics company. Leveraged Salesforce experience to drive customization and workflow optimization.
  • Completed and transitioned to a new data lake system in AWS over six months.
  • Integrated TargetProcess into our team for more efficient effort tracking company-wide.

IT Director | Scrum Master

2017 - 2021
Cheetah Transportation Systems
  • Refined and evolved Agile processes continually for predictable and rapid delivery, resulting in higher quality and on-time delivery.
  • Led all sprint planning, daily scrums, sprint reviews, and sprint retrospectives.
  • Served as the main point of contact to drive effective communication for all project phases, which resulted in the project being on time and under budget.
  • Assisted in team development while holding teams accountable for their commitments and leveraging organizational resources to improve capacity for project work, which resulted in a 27% reduction in time to deliver new features.
  • Transitioned the company from an internal sales process to Salesforce Sales Cloud with additional customizations. Achieved Salesforce Ranger status and became the Salesforce Administrator for this company.

Founder | Scrum Master

2014 - 2017
Drone Labs, LLC
  • Defined project scope and schedule while creating a product that leveraged both software and hardware.
  • Led the team in requirement analysis, designing, coding, testing, and evolution phases for our software development lifecycle.
  • Promoted empowerment of the team and encouraged a solid pace with high-quality levels.
  • Created the Drone Detector product MVP for a nascent market to quickly compete in the drone detection space.

Senior Technology Solutions Professional | Scrum Master

2007 - 2015
Microsoft
  • Facilitated in-house and customer projects as a scrum master, including working on the IntelliTrace feature for Visual Studio.
  • Evangelized Scrum at all our customer sites to help accelerate adoption of Agile processes resulting in an average 31% increase year-over-year across our customer base of Agile processes and, in most cases, scrum.
  • Conducted over 80 projects as scrum master and over 20 coaching sessions to train new scrum masters.

Chief Technology Officer | Scrum Master

2003 - 2007
RealSolutions
  • Led the Scrum consulting practice with responsibility for assigning the proper resources for our clients to be successful.
  • Worked on JCPenny's Scrum transition to move them from a primarily Waterfall approach to being Agile. This resulted in a 34% increase in project success rates over time.
  • Co-led the transition from Waterfall to Scrum at Mary Kay Cosmetics. Acted primarily as the scrum coach to enable new scrum masters to transform the company.
  • Managed a variety of small projects to completion as the scrum master, including one project at CompUSA that resulted in a 27% decrease in defects.

IntelliTrace

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/visualstudio/debugger/intellitrace?view=vs-2019

Worked as one of the scrum masters on IntelliTrace at Microsoft.

As an evangelist working with the broader Visual Studio team, we launched several features for IntelliTrace, including an updated "dashboard" view and extended metrics. As part of Microsoft's flagship development environment, Visual Studio, we enhanced the product significantly.

Cheetah Transportation Management System (CTMS)

Acted as a scrum master for ongoing iterations of this application that the entire company uses for day-to-day operations.

I saved this proprietary project that was two years into planning with nothing to show. When I joined the team, we went from waterfall to scrum in a matter of two weeks. We landed the project on time and under budget due to a great development team and top-down support from the CEO.

Drone Detector

Created and launched an integrated hardware and software solution that had never existed before.

I envisioned and created the Drone Detector product using scrum. I developed an MVP in record time to be one of the first three entrants into the Drone Detection space. Also, I built new hardware sensor arrays to integrate with the detection software. The hardware included audio, video, forward looking infrared (FLIR), and radar sensors.
1988 - 1991

Bachelor's Degree in Psychology

Texas State University - San Marcos, TX

SEPTEMBER 2021 - PRESENT

Professional Scrum Product Owner I (PSPO I)

Scrum.org

SEPTEMBER 2021 - PRESENT

Professional Scrum Master Level II (PSM II)

Scrum.org

JULY 2021 - PRESENT

Salesforce Certified Administrator

Salesforce.com

APRIL 2011 - PRESENT

Professional Scrum Master Level I (PSM I)

Scrum.org

Tools

Visual Studio, Zoom, Atlassian Suite, Microsoft Team Foundation Server, Slack, Jira, Salesforce, TFS, TargetProcess

Paradigms

Agile Software Development, Agile, Agile Project Management, Azure DevOps, Scrum, Kanban, Behavior-driven Development (BDD), Test-driven Development (TDD), Continuous Delivery (CD), Continuous Integration (CI)

Other

Project Management, Scrum Master, IT Projects, Distributed Team Management, Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC), Agile Coaching, Scrum Coaching, Product Owner, Hardware Development, Hardware Integration, Sensors & Actuators, Salesforce Sales Cloud, Business Psychology, Experimental Research, Statistics, Training, IT Consulting, ServiceNow

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