Benjamin Dains Email & Phone Number

Kansas, United States

Many of my duties as a contractor with Evergy became my full-time position tasks along with additional needs like being the point of contact for QA software, working with vendors to bring their software into our environments like Test Complete & WebLoad from SmartBear.We also went through the challenge of COVID like everyone else in the world which required a major in person work change to being basically fully remote besides a couple of in person days during the year for IT all hands or team building days, so I currently have roughly 4 years of fully remote work experience.I also inherited our Box setup from the former admin during a time of no documentation and no insight into how it was being ran previously, I had to do a lot of research (both internal and external) to understand what apps were integrated with our environment, additionally I was brought in about a week before a giant project went live with zero background in the project and was able to deploy our part without a delay and on schedule, along with documenting process & procedures that were never documented in the past 7 years.Given my experience with Box was minimal, I went from no experience to self teaching myself their API pathways, creating custom integrated apps, setup and installed new data governance software, locked down security for Box, creating and presenting training for end users, working with the business to make their processes more efficient, and recommending new ways of working like prompt engineering with generative AI.

Kansas, United States

After coaching many IT teams for Walmart and travelling to Bentonville, AR twice a week for a year, I decided it was time to come back home to Kansas. Evergy wanted my Agile experience to help with their company merger, so I decided to help out! I worked with the web teams (most on-site but another team remote) to help them better understand Agile and how to use it as their developmental framework. We worked together through many planning sessions which included Big Room Planning (BRP) once a quarter to bring the rest of the organization into the fold and better plan developmental features that were coming down the pipe. After a couple years with Evergy they decided to switch to a new work management tool that most technologists know of called Jira. They needed extra help with the implementation to work towards keeping the tool aligned with the agile methodologies and the administration, which is something I already had experience with.So I joined the Jira team and helped as an application admin doing many things like onboarding teams, Jira Automation, script runner, and much more. Eventually the need for the work management data presented itself and they needed help with PowerBI reporting which was new to me but I picked it up quite quickly and learned the trades of the other data analysts in the company as well as many online training sessions to continue my education. I did the analysis, the ETL, design of reports, training users on the reports, and administration of the datasets involved. The reports covered many things from project work, governance, testing analysis, and much more.I continued working with PowerBI for two years before being moved to ITQA to take on the challenge of test automation, Box + SharePoint administration, and more.

All online training courses listed under this section were completed voluntarily to learn more about: Agile, IT, Scrum, Content Training, Leadership, Design, Development, Jira, Team Foundation Server, and so much more! I've completed over 150+ Pluralsight courses! Along with Pluralsight I also have a personal subscription to Udemy for a few years now where I have taken many additional courses in the areas stated above, however I have also branched into even more areas like: TypeScript, SWIFT, Executive Leadership, Management, Coaching, PowerBI, Groovy for Jira Automations & Script Runner, Data Analysis, Generative AI like ChatGPT & Copilot (previously known as Bing chat) which includes things like prompt engineering, large language models, pre-trained text transformers, etc.I am always committed to pushing the needle as far as I can with personal development to either become a subject matter expert, become more efficient, learn to lead better, develop my managerial style, and more.

Bentonville, Arkansas, United States

I got the privilege to work with some great people at Walmart in Bentonville, AR as an Enterprise Agile Coach. Each day I would work with many Scrum Masters and their teams to help them discover what Agile truly was (and wasn't), we would uncover places for efficiency to be made, but also setup a true Agile culture that Walmart is still using to this day.We gave training presentations, but also we would meet teams where they were and determine their current state, where they wanted to be, and then we would work with them to create a plan to help them get there. After planning we would get to work by showing and explaining the different Agile steps, how they work in theory, and then show them how to use them practically. Sometimes the plan called for hands on coaching with a team member, the manager, the product owner, the entire team, or a group of teams.We also branched off of just regular Agile delivery methodologies and moved into DevOps which is basically the end goal of all Agile organizations where your pipeline is running everyday and we're testing with automation each time. For some this was a much different way of working, however, after a few months with the team they understood the importance and often wondered why they didn't go down this route in the first place.I very much enjoyed my time at Walmart, there were so many great people there, but I often get asked, "why did you leave?" and the answer is pretty simple. I was driving out of state twice a week for a year while I had a 3 year old at home and it was simply time to go home.

Topeka, Kansas Area

• Leading a 45+ member team and teaching them how to use Scrum, Team Foundation Server, and JIRA.• Leading sprint planning, daily scrums, backlog refinement meetings, sprint reviews, and sprint retrospectives with the team. This includes maximizing velocity with the team.• Managed client relationship with in-house stakeholders, facilitating weekly scoping meetings, defining requests and requirements, managing timelines and acceptance deliverables.• Agile / Scrum practice, working with teams and stakeholders to define product backlogs, sprint backlogs and scrum artifacts utilizing Scrum 2.0 template for Team Foundation Server / Visual Studio.

Topeka, Kansas Area

I am currently working in a business analyst position for Security End To End (Se2 & Security Benefit, partners with Guggenheim). The respected clients for Se2 are many, well known, life insurance & annuity companies. Working on an agile / scrum team at Se2 has furthered my knowledge in project management, quality assurance, and business analysis in a rapidly changing technological environment. • Managed client relationship with in-house stakeholders, facilitating weekly scoping meetings, defining requests and requirements, managing timelines and acceptance deliverables.• Contributed to standard definition requirements template for our web offerings, delivering user stories, researching data systems by utilizing SQL, business and functional level requirements and a comprehensive client catalog for client usage.• Quality analysis and control of deliverables, working closely with other business analysts, quality assurance partners and project development staff to deliver a high quality product.• Agile / Scrum practice, working with teams and stakeholders to define product backlogs, sprint backlogs and scrum artifacts utilizing Scrum 2.0 template for Team Foundation Server / Visual Studio.

Emporia, Kansas

• Managed a 30 – 40 men for more than 16 weeks at basic training and graduated with top honors in my class.• Started my military career as a Engineer, and this required me to learn many math formulas and it forced to me to adapt to hectic, fast paced environments as well as become a leader.• I have been specially promoted twice in my career for going above and beyond the required standards that all Army personnel must uphold.• I now hold two jobs in the Army National Guard because my new unit requested transfers from other units due to the lack of experience in their unit. My new MOS (job) was maintaining, shooting, and operating a M1A2 SEP V2 Abrams Tank.

Technology Administration

Management Information Systems And Services

Activities and Societies: Track & FieldI studied Computer and Information systems.