I was initially contracted to Platform One's Iron Bank Value Stream as a Scrum Master to support 2 teams (13 members and 2 members respectively) composed of engineers and designers. These teams were working on the internal and public-facing interfaces for the hardened container repository. Despite having a previous Scrum Master, the teams had an excess of inefficient meetings and no clear schedule to track, plan, and work the development. I started by establishing and running meetings and Agile ceremonies with the Scrum and Kanban methodologies adapted to best fit each team, and got them into a routine of bi-weekly iterations on the live project. I also streamlined operations by creating clear meeting objectives, keeping meetings focused and running on schedule, minimizing the attendees to a key group and relaying decisions to non-attendees, and setting clear expectations for each team member. These changes reduced the average time my developers spent in weekly meetings by 3 hours. With a development routine in place, I shifted my focus to organizing the backlog. I linked over 120 tasks to 25 larger features to better track development progress, expanded task descriptions to ensure more accurate story point estimations, and prioritized all the work with input from leadership and the anchor engineers. With the backlog organized, I continued to provide support and help remove blockers by finding the right resources for my developers. I also attended regular meetings with Iron Bank leadership to advocate for the developers for realistic deadlines and milestones with the team’s input.

Within 4 months, my efforts were recognized when my developers recommended me for a promotion to Project Manager for the same 2 teams. I continued my Scrum Master responsibilities, including my work with the backlog. As I worked through the backlog, I identified upcoming development risks and created action plans to mitigate them, including identifying dependencies and development unknowns, gathering resources, and consulting with internal personnel on other teams with relevant expertise. With each iteration, I ensured the team maintained a shared vision of the project and understood its impact on the defense software industry so they could see the value in their work. When needed, I renewed required project certifications and software licenses to ensure the team had the proper tools to develop the project and maintain CI/CD pipelines without delays. I also continued to regularly communicate the team's progress with leadership and stakeholders to maintain trust and transparency, who then selected me to attend 3 Platform One Cohorts to discuss and contribute to the overall direction of the organization.

In another 4 months, I was again recommended for a promotion, this time to Senior Scrum Master for the entire Iron Bank value stream. As Senior Scrum Master, I supported and managed 6 teams totaling 60 people, including engineers, cybersecurity experts, designers, project managers, and scrum masters. In this role, my first goal was to improve the collaboration between the 6 teams and the other value streams. I focused on establishing strong communication channels on chat platforms through key announcements and cross-over chats, connecting with leads weekly to review the roadmap and discuss potential blockers, and creating a technical forum for members from all teams to discuss feature development and potential issues. I took extensive meeting notes and posted summaries in the new chats to ensure that everyone was on the same page. I also maintained consistent and transparent communication with the team by offering daily office hours and holding monthly 1-on-1s with team members to get a deeper insight into the project and give them a Q&A opportunity to learn more about the direction. With these improvements, I reduced the time developers were blocked by cross-team dependencies to under 1 day on average, even with members spread across multiple time zones.

In addition to improving communication, I focused on conflict management and developer happiness. I mediated conflicts between team members when they felt that someone was not pulling their weight, general personality clashes, and frustrations with the contracting system. I also developed team health check surveys for all of Platform One, first finding the baseline and then creating an action plan to improve job satisfaction and team synergy through training plans and team-building events. I ensured that all team members were in a role that challenged them and provided them with growth opportunities, and I planned engaging virtual happy hours to help the developers connect with each other. With numerous contractors starting, I developed onboarding and off-boarding procedures to smoothly integrate new team members over 2 weeks and provide them with resources to support them in their new roles. Using these new procedures, I trained and supported 3 scrum masters. By the next survey 3 months later, the results improved by 40%.

Through my work, I gained a strong connection with the team and a comprehensive view of the Iron Bank project. At the request of Platform One leadership, I led the creation of Objective Key Results (OKRs) for the Value Stream with an average completion rate of 75% over 4 quarters. I also regularly created presentations and materials to report development progress and project plans to the organization's leadership and military stakeholders. At the end of my contract period at Platform One, I ensured a smooth transition to new leadership by creating detailed documentation on key information and decisions and creating checklists and summaries for any work in progress.