Project Manager

Diane Saulsberry

Bloomington, Illinois, *****

******************@*******.*** 309-***-****

Qualifications Profile

Change-oriented Scrum Master with talent for creating operational infrastructure in a complex, energized environment. Comfortable making key decisions and setting standards for multimillion-dollar projects. Proven success as an IT resource and project leader throughout an 18-year career by learning, adapting, and innovating. Excellent teacher and mentor, able to empower teams to reach shared goals.

Expert guidance for project leaders, business and technical teams, and cross-functional departments to achieve synchronization and drive projects forward. Focus on commercial awareness, practicality, and value delivery.

Harness change and unexpected challenges as opportunities to better serve the customer's competitive advantage. Stress the importance of building a simple process that maximizes work not done.

Vibrant communicator, able to articulate a way forward and unite differing opinions to address project issues and create holistic enterprise solutions.

Acknowledge that team decisions may not work, and teach that mistakes are part of learning and growing on the way to success. Patient and flexible.

Versatile expertise and deep knowledge of Client Engagement, Agile Methodologies, Executive Communication, People Management, Process Improvement, Delivery Manager, Project Management, Risk Management, Positive Environment, Consensus Building, and Conflict Resolution.

Career Profile

State Farm Insurance, Bloomington, Illinois, 2000 to Present

Scrum Master, 2017 to Present

Guiding voice for administrative alignment and development of processes that give project team the ability to self-organize, adapt quickly to change, and resolve internal conflicts. Help team reach consensus on priority actions, and emphasize removing impediments to progress. Project: Click to Chat. To allow agents to connect with representatives through innovative chat technology. Budget $88k.

Coordinated initial meetings with project manager and business sponsor to identify product owner, and create user stories that provide tech team a customer's perspective to better meet client requirements.

Review progress, reassess goals, and identify obstacles that need immediate attention. Stress creative thinking, and always encourage new ways to approach difficulties.

Facilitate Sprint planning workshops. Partner with core team to create kick-off presentation.

Successful connection of Chat functionality between agency and representatives on schedule.

Scrum Master / Lead Technical Infrastructure Analyst, 2016 to Present

Lead by example, and stress the team's assets and values. Create a collaborative culture that promotes honest debate that produces thoughtful action. Project: Upgrade of enterprise exchange service. Budget $369k. Completed 11% under.

Primarily engaged in coordinating efforts of multiple teams and reaching agreement on project requirements and specific responsibilities of each team leader and members, including development of user stories and product backlog, with value points.

Stressed two-way communication in daily stand-ups, ensured transparency and inspiring team to decide which tasks would be finished for each Sprint from the backlog.

Successfully migrated all data to the new infrastructure in both the test and production environment on schedule.

Scrum Master, 2010 to 2017

Built consensus, and pushed to have key decisions made and individual responsibilities understood at the end of every meeting. Used conflicts as teaching moments. Project: Migration and upgrade of SharePoint system. Budget $217k. Completed $22k under.

Guided performance of 15 analysts, with a focus on value delivery, and instructed on implementation of Agile Framework. Encouraged communication across 10 service departments, and for each team to concentrate on its priorities. Increased team velocity by 63% within six months of Agile adoption.

Removed impediments to give the team a better avenue to meet benchmarks and on time delivery, coordinated development of product backlogs with the product, business and engineering teams, creation of user stories, and identification of point values.

Scrum Master / Lead Technical Infrastructure Analyst, 2013 to 2016

Showed patience and assisted decision making, but let the team take action. Listened to opinions and concerns and helped them find the next step. Project: Deploy and migrate to new auto claims model state-by-state. Budget $438k. Completed 17% under.

Initiated Day 1 meetings to develop project plan, coordinate team efforts, and to agree going forward on requirements, provisioning, design, testing, business and technical checkouts, and to schedule employee transition and training.

Utilized meticulous troubleshooting to find root cause of disruption and prevent further occurrences.

Successfully completed telephony deployment for eighteen (18) Auto Claims segments from current state to future state a head of schedule.

Lead Technical Infrastructure Analyst, 2012 to 2016

Strengthened team's attitude toward failure, broadening awareness that group decisions may not always lead to the expected outcome, and led them to accept that mistakes are part of learning. Projects: Upgraded unified communications platform to combine voice, data, and video onto a single network; migrated and centralized telephony systems with 300,000 endpoints; and installed new enterprise network infrastructure. Budget $746k. Complete on target.

Led technical team in deployment of multiple technologies that allowed resource sharing in 36 offices, across three time zones, and with 6,800 endpoints.

Partnered with project team to make final decisions regarding testing and validating of 1,000 call flow designs, and ensured that requirements for continuity and disaster recovery were met.

Exchanged knowledge with business and system stakeholders to define requirements, identify needed resources, prioritize objectives, and set standards for success. Created backlogs, and user stories.

Utilized Scrum methodologies to facilitate Sprint planning, daily stand-ups, retrospective meetings, and to remove roadblocks to keep project moving forward.

Directed design meetings, controlled technical scope, and resolved issues as projects progressed.

Technical Certification

VersionOne Foundational Orientation - Basic navigation and use of V1 Team Room, 2017

Scrum Master – SAFE 4.0 / Lean Software Framework / ITIL V3 Foundation / Waterfall

Pursuing certification as a Chartered Property Casualty Underwriter, and as a Project Management Professional

Academic Background

Illinois State University, Normal, Illinois

Bachelor of Science in Education

Midstate College, Peoria, Illinois

Associate Degree in Computer Programming

Diploma in Data Processing

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