Project Manager

Nikhil Somkuwar

Scrum Master/Iteration Manager

PMP, CSM.

*********@*****.*** 626-***-****

Summary

Nikhil has 11 years of experience in IT with last 5 years in the role of Scrum Master. Nikhil has a proven track record of managing large enterprise software development projects that meet demanding time restraints. He has the ability to effectively manage client expectations with accomplished communication and problem resolution skills. Promoted to positions of increasing authority and responsibility because of strong leadership skills, team work and overall performance. His result oriented approach with good team handling capabilities has been recognized with Exceptional Performance Award for 2 years in a row at Huntington National Bank.

Profile Highlights

Expertise in operational functions of different sectors like Banking, Insurance, HealthCare, Utilities, CRM (Oracle Cloud), E-commerce and Public sectors (State of CA Water Dept. and Ohio DAS)

Extensive experience in Waterfall and Agile scrum methodologies

Proficient in organizing and facilitating Daily Scrum, Sprint Planning, Sprint Reviews, Retrospectives and Release planning

Created Scrum artifacts and Big Visible Information Radiator (BVIR) of Sprint and overall Release Burn up and Burn Down charts

Identifying, resolving and removing impediments

Worked closely with product owners on creating and managing the product backlog

Worked with product owner and program manager on release and schedule planning

Expertly promoted continuous improvement and helped teams increase productivity and foster innovation

Areas of Expertise

Schedule/Methodology

MS Excel, MS Project, HP PPM

Tasks, Resource Allocation

Capacity Planning

Estimation/Resource Planning

Agile: Scrum Methodologies

Iterative

Waterfall

Budget/Teams

Project Budgets – $5M

Program Budgets - $20M

Gather/Refine Estimates

Create/Manage Project Budget

Formal Communication

Project/Iteration Status

Executive Presentations

Communication Plans

Facilitate Project Meetings

Process Documentation

Technical Skills

Project Management

Dev. Methodologies

Incident Management

Test Automation Tools

Test Management Tools

Version Control Tools

Web Technologies

Databases

HP PPM, MS Project, JIRA

Agile(scrum), Waterfall

ServiceNow

QTP, Selenium, Provar

IBM Rational Team Concert/QM v2.0, Quality Center ALM 11.5, JIRA TFS 2013 and MTM 2013

Rational Clear Case 7.1, Visual Source Safe (VSS) 8.0

Java, JavaScript, ASP, HTML, XML, SOAP UI

ORACLE 10/11g, SQL Server 2005/2003, MS-Access, DB2

Professional Experience.

American Electric Power (AEP) Jul’18 – Current

Iteration Manager (Utilities)

Project Description: Purpose of the project is to replace the multiple legacy systems with

state-of-the-art Oracle CRM Cloud solution. The capabilities that AEP is implementing are Oracle CRM Communication (Campaign, Lead & Prospect Mgmt), Service (Billing, Outages, and Order Mgmt), Engagement (Account & Contact Mgmt, Sales) and Knowledge (Knowledge base across all channels)

Responsibilities:

Facilitated the taxonomy workshops with Scrum team and Key Business SMEs to align on overall principles of taxonomy and key definitions

Assisted Product Owner in facilitating story mapping workshops and developing product vision

Created mapping document for articles/documents/content types using SIPOC methodology

Facilitated Scrum cadence events such as Daily Scrum, Sprint Planning, Sprint Review, and Sprint Retrospective

Facilitated weekly user story refinement meetings with Scrum team

Set up weekly touch bases with product owner to ensure healthy and prioritized product backlog

Ensured implementation of Continuous Improvement ideas/topics emerging out of Retrospective meetings

Responsible for reporting project status, risks, issues and impediments to internal and external stakeholders

Responsible for creating dashboards, burn up and burn down charts(release/sprint) and displaying them in the scrum space for leadership core visits

Helped product owner and scrum team in defining sprint goal, definition of ready (DoR) and definition of done (DoD)

Assisted Change Management team in building project level training plan for Internal users

Created JIRA “How To” document to outline instructions on Scrum project, prioritization, sprint board/wall creation and backlog management

Led the Scrum team in Scrum adoption practices across AEP’s organization and related Community of Practices

State of Ohio (Dept. of Administrative Services) Feb’16 – Jun’18

Scrum Master (Public Sector)

Project Description: Purpose of the project is to implement centralized e-licensing solution to meet the needs of 27 State of Ohio boards. State of Ohio in partnership with Deloitte LLC implemented a Cloud Based Enterprise Licensing application which was built on Salesforce Platform.

Responsibilities:

Served as a servant leader to a team of 10 to implement eLicensing project for State of Ohio

Contributed to product roadmap planning, project scheduling and release management

Responsible for leading the budget, resource estimation and sizing effort

Facilitated scrum cadence events such as Daily Scrum Meetings, Sprint Planning, Sprint Review, and Sprint Retrospective

Hold regular sprint reviews to demonstrate finished work to stakeholders and celebrate team achievements

Identified and removed impediments by actively monitoring risks

Collaborated closely with Product owner on backlog grooming to keep product backlog relevant, prioritized and ready for sizing

Collected and analyzed project metrics data and worked with Product Owner and team to identify and incorporate corrective actions when needed

Responsible for creating dashboard and metrics (Burn up and burn down charts) to report and manage health as well as providing routine communication to senior leadership

Huntington National Bank Jun,’11 – Dec, ’15

Scrum Master (Banking)

Project Description: Huntington Bank initiated a Project called Commercial Credit card that involved 2 vendors namely Total Systems (TSYS) and Master Card and multiple different impacted Internal Huntington applications.

Responsibilities: Scrum Master

Coordinated and facilitated all Scrum cadence ceremonies – Sprint Planning Meeting, Daily Scrum, Show & Tell, and Retrospective

Assisted the product owner to create a comprehensive set of nonfunctional and functional requirements, prioritize requirements for all Sprint Meetings

Protected Scrum team from outside distractions, impediments and team conflicts

Assisted the team in creating prioritized product backlogs with plan estimates and acceptance criteria as well as task identification and estimation for each iteration

Effectively tracked burn-up/down metrics, sprint velocity, task break-down and release forecasting

Provide regular updates to the Leadership Team (Business Management) on the agile and scrum processes being followed

Educated and reinforced scrum methodology and agile framework to team members and key stakeholders

Responsibilities: QA lead

Involved in Automating highly transactional payment center web application (Wires and ACH payments) by writing Selenium Webdriver automation scripts in JAVA.

Performed data driven testing using Selenium Webdriver and enhanced the overall functionality of the application

Led different phases of testing: Integration, System, UAT and Mobile testing

Oversee a team of performance testers monitoring Load & Stress testing based on SLAs.

Knowledge of HP Fortify tool for Security testing (performed an App scan)

Performed extensive Web services and API testing of both online and offline credit reports using SOAP UI

Conducted Daily Defect Status meetings with the project team and external vendors for issue escalation and resolution

Hewlett Packard Jan,’10 – Jul, ‘10

QA Lead (Supply Chain)

Project Description: Purpose of the iGSO project was to implement SAP ERP system. Scope of the testing was to validate various data sources for migrating from existing legacy system to SAP ERP system.

Responsibilities:

Involved in hands on testing of reports by extracting the SQL generated by SAP BW and executed them in backend and validated them in QA and Pre-Prod environments

Analyzed Source to Stage and Stage to Target Mapping documents indicating the source tables, columns, data types, transformations required, business rules to be applied and target tables

Validated the ETL rules defined in the Mapping Specification documents by running the ETL workflows in SAP BW and performing manual verification of the data populated in Target database using SQL queries

Atlantic City Electric Mar,’08 – Mar, ‘09

Sr. QA Analyst (Utilities)

Project Description: The objective of the SAP Upgrade Project is to deliver +a single SAP BW v7.0 system with Oracle database that combines HR, benefits, and payroll data.

Responsibilities:

Responsible for documenting a test strategy for Backend Testing for the new version of the system and ensuring the authentic retrieval of the data from the database

Managed test requirements, test plans, test executions, and defect tracking in Quality Center

Conducted Regression Testing on various builds of the application and reported the defects to the developers using QC for the bug fixing and tracking

Cephalon Inc., Frazer, PA June,’07- Feb, ‘08

QA Analyst (Pharmaceuticals, Health Care)

Project Description: Web based application testing for customer service system.

Responsibilities:

Performed back-end testing on Webapps tables (Oracle database) with the help of SQL Queries to validate the different products, customer, features, promotions and Orders etc

Validated Products, States, Category and Options within MAINFRAME to ensure data integrity

State of California (Dept. Water Resources) July ’06 - Jun‘07

QA Analyst (State Govt. Utilities)

Project Description: Business Machine system gateway is an Internet Portal that provides online access to public sector agencies for various services.

Responsibilities:

Active participation in design sessions with business analysts and users

Involved in Test designing, Test execution and Defect tracking

Performed Database Testing, using TOAD 4.6 with SQL Server schema

Involved in System Testing, Integration Testing, Smoke/Sanity Testing

Accomplishments

Built excellent relationships with IT Staffing vendors to procure the best resources at a competitive rate

Initiated and helped manage automated testing efforts for eLicense (Salesforce) UI using PROVAR automation tool.

Suggested and Implemented process improvement at Huntington Bank project

oDue to high volume of Production defects and to achieve effective validation, implemented a process to have an Issue Analysis document associated with every production ticket

Education

Master of Business Administration – Delaware State University (2011)

oConcentration in Project Management Methodology.

Master in Computer Science -Towson University (2006)

Bachelor of Computer Engineering – Mumbai University (2004)

Certification

Project Management Professional (PMP) through Project Management Institute (PMI)

Certified Scrum Master (Scrum Alliance)

Awards and Recognition

Received Huntington Bank’s REP (Recognizing Exceptional Performance) Award –2013 and 2014

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