PROJECT MANAGER / SCRUM MASTER

An accomplished Project Manager having over 20 years of Software Project Management experience working with some of the world class organizations for the entire s/w development life cycle & System integration projects.

Excellent Project management skills with great Leadership qualities in delivering strategically important large, complex and business critical projects/programs on time, within budget using Quality processes.

Project Manager with effective and efficient verbal & written Communication skills.

Excellent Software Engineering Process skills as well as Soft skills to successfully deliver projects of diverse type for Insurance and Telecom customer Care & billing companies.

As a Project Manager, I have delivered number of large and complex legislative as well as business critical projects for Claims organization, Personal Lines and Life Insurance & Financial management group using Waterfall methodology.

As a Scrum Master, I have delivered multi year, multi million $ strategic initiatives as well as divisional projects & mandates for a large insurance companies using Agile-scrum methodology.

As a Scrum Master as well as Business and I/S Project manager, responsible for the Stakeholder management for effectively communicating project status, issues & risks, schedule and budget.

Successfully worked in a balanced as well as strong Matrix organization and responsible for building “One Team” concept for multiple vendors (on-shore/offshore) to deliver their best efforts resulting into value add for the organization.

Being an experienced Project Manager/Scrum master, I have been using my skills & experience to Coach and Mentor my team members and motivate them to adopt best project management practises as well as Agile values & principles.

Worked with various clients in managing multiple technology projects (Mainframe, Web based,.NET, Java, CRM-Siebel etc.) for more than 15 years as a Project Manager.

Project Manager with strong Quality/Process background. I have worked in collaboration with the teams in defining / refining various software Quality management processes to deliver value to the customer.

EDUCATION

Master of Science (M.S.) in Sys & Info. from Birla Institute of Technology & Science, Pilani, India.

Bachelor of Industrial Engineering, Indian Institution Of Industrial Engineering, Mumbai, India.

CERTIFICATIONS

Project Management Professional (PMP) from PMI (USA).

Certified Scrum Master (CSM) – from Scrum Alliance (USA).

Tick-IT Quality Auditor Training Certification from A-PEX International (U.K).

TECHNICAL & PROFESSIONAL SKILLS

Environment/Technology used: IBM Mainframe, Open Systems, Java and .NET.

Mainframe utilities: MVS/ESA 4.2, COBOL, CICS, JCL, DOCGENER, FILE-AID, ENDEVOR & IDMS, MIDDLEWARE, Xpediter – Debugging tool, File Aid and Abend Aid, Data Ager.

Tools/Software used: MS Project, Rally, TFS and Jira for Product/Sprint backlog, Confluence for requirements management, Clarity for budget management, Jira for defects mgmt., MS SharePoint, IBM DOORs (Requirements and Test), IBM- Lotus Notes, VSS–Configuration Management tool, IBM redaction tool, MS-Office suite.

Core Competencies: Project Management/Scrum Master for Application development and System Integration projects using Waterfall methodologies and Agile Scrum. Issues & Risks management and Triple constraint management. Excellent soft skills to manage teams & stakeholders effectively.

KEY ACCOMPLISHMENTS

Facilitate Agile scrum methodology transformation for AMFAM and IAT insurance teams and ensure that these high performing teams embrace agile values and principles by providing necessary coaching.

As a Scrum Master, managed large claims technical/business teams for implementing Duck Creek insurance software for their GL (General Liability) products.

Successfully delivered multiple strategically important and business critical projects of more than 15,000 hrs. each with a budget of $1.5-2 Million on time, within budget and with stakeholder satisfaction.

Delivered concurrently several divisional projects and mandates on time and within budget despite very aggressive timelines, with frequent scope changes and stringent budget requirements.

As an I/S project manager, successfully delivered projects of business criticality which resulted into improved premium payment frequency by moving project to new payment platform.

As a principal consultant, I was part of the program to plan and build a scalable master database that can accommodate entire billing data which can be used in addressing multiple business pain points.

As a claims Project manager, I successfully delivered multiple strategically important multiyear, multimillion $ projects within specified timeline and budget which resulted into productivity improvement and received outstanding customer experience service recognition for the team.

As a program manager, I was responsible for successfully transitioning 60+ mainframe and web based customer care & billing applications from one vendor to another in telecom industry. Maintaining them for business continuity and enhancing them for improved performance. This resulted into huge costs savings and improved productivity for the world class client.

RECOGNITIONS & AWARDS

Appreciation from IAT Insurance group management for successfully delivering claims MVP scope items for Phase 1 on time consisting of multiple integrations using Duck Creek Enterprise Software Solution.

Appreciation from American Family Insurance management for successfully delivering strategically important projects for Advance on time and within budget.

Accolade from State Farm Insurance director for delivering Confidential and Critical projects on time.

Appreciation email from Nawras Telecom & recognition from Microsoft Consulting Services for the timely delivery of an integration project with Customer Satisfaction.

Appreciation from Convergys Ltd for conducting successful User training to the client on end to end Customer Care & Billing System using SIEBEL 7.0.

Appreciation Award from MCI-Worldcom for development of software for key client on time & accurate.

Gold Medal for securing First rank in the Industrial Engineering graduate examination.

PROFESSIONAL WORK EXPERIENCE

1.Mar 2018 – Jan 2019 - Client – IAT Insurance Group (Speciality insurance), Naperville, IL, U.S.A.

As a Consultant Scrum Master, I was a part of an Agile coaching team to facilitate Agile implementation across claims & Process work streams. Also, as a member of the process improvement team, I was responsible for defining and refining various processes to adapt Agile scrum framework successfully. As a Scrum Master, my responsibilities were:

Facilitate Agile ceremonies for claims work stream, release planning, sprint iteration planning, backlog grooming, daily stand ups, Sprint demo & review and sprint retrospectives.

Encourage collaboration and proactively seeking opportunities to improve collaboration between distributed teams like Claims, Billing, Policy and Process.

Manage release plans iteration, Facilitate backlog grooming sessions, plan budget forecasting and status reporting for the designated projects.

Lead risk and issue identification and discuss mitigation strategies with the project team.

Lead agile projects from the initial project backlog creation and planning activities through demonstration and release deployment activities with responsibility for all aspects of the team’s productivity for all phases of the project.

Embrace a servant leader role across scrum teams and support them by proactively identifying and removing impediments and dependencies.

Facilitate frequent retrospectives sharing metrics to identify and implement improvements.

Proactively plan and collaborate with key stakeholders to ensure successful implementation of MVP work for the designated products and projects.

2.Sept. 2014 – Jan.2018 - Client – American Family Insurance Company, Madison, WI, U.S.A.

Worked in Enterprise Correspondence and Claims area as a Scrum Master for Strategic initiative program to implement a new products using newer technology. Also, responsible for delivering number of divisional projects and mandates. My responsibilities include but not limited to:

Understand business requirements and participate in a Sprint/Release planning session. Work with the high performing agile teams to facilitate estimation process and work on resolving impediments with multiple cross functional areas. Initiate the discussion with product owner on prioritizing and scheduling the backlog items for the sprints/release based on team’s sprint velocity.

Prepare project schedule in MS project and monitor the project progress at milestone & task level.

Participate in daily stand up meeting to facilitate scrum meetings to track and monitor project progress. Discuss dependencies, defects & impediments with Policy Centre & other cross functional teams to resolve issues.

Manage sprints using Rally and TFS software and provide updates to the management.

Organize & facilitate Scrum reviews & retrospect sessions for product owner and stakeholders.

Assign the resources to clarity and manage their allocations. Work with the teams to resolve defects.

Monitor project budget and manage Change requests thru Change Management process.

Send weekly status report (Scorecard/Dashboard) to I/S project services and update the Integrated Master Plan. Participate in IS-Business management planning meetings to provide inputs on projects.

Participate in Scrum of Scrum meetings to provide updates to business partners and IS management.

Work as a “One PM” (Business & IS) and coordinate with business SMEs to deliver mandates and Fast track projects on time and within budget.

Coordinate with SQA team to gather SIT & User Acceptance Testing status.

3.Feb. 2014 – June 2014 - Client – National Life Group, Montpelier, Vermont, U.S.A.

As a Principal Consultant from NTT data, worked on business-critical program for Life insurance & financial management group and was responsible for managing 4 projects to align with the new payment platform functionality. The purpose of the program was to implement projects to take advantage of the Automated Clearing House functionality to expedite premium payments using on-line system. Also, successfully delivered policies from old to new format to load a bank master. Responsible for facilitating Billing Master repository projects. My responsibilities were as below:

As a Sr. PM, responsible for managing entire program consisting of 4 related projects of more than $2.5 M budget and multi year duration with an average team size of more than 10.

Worked as a Business as well as IT Project manager responsible for the success of the program.

Being an IT project manager, responsible for providing estimates and schedule for the project.

Get the final approval from the business on the project deliverables to close the project successfully.

As a business PM, worked with business sponsors and financial director to document a charter and to prepare detailed business requirements document. While as an IT Project Manager, based on the requirements, negotiated the resources with the resource manager to build the right project team.

Present the solution, Estimates and Schedule to upper management for IT approval and to Business Sponsors/ Financial director for business and budget approval respectively.

Based on the approval, kick off the project, track and monitor the project status, identify project risks analyze and prioritize them, provide mitigation strategy and monitor them to closure.

Monitor Project progress in terms of (Triple constraints), cost, time and Scope and communicate the progress weekly to the key stakeholders.

Co-ordinate with IT, business and Test team and guide them to ensure that project milestones are met as planned.

Ensure that the project deliverables are deployed as per release planning and the technical and functional checkouts are successful.

4.Dec. 2010 – Dec. 2013 - Client - State Farm Insurance company, Bloomington, IL, U.S.A.

As a Principal consultant from NTT Data, worked on Claims Strategic initiative program and successfully delivered two legislative and one business critical multi year, multi million $ projects for the Claims organization. These projects enhanced overall claims handling experience resulted into productivity gains and provided remarkable customer service. As a project manager for Property & Casualty division, my responsibilities included but not limited to:

Understand business and technical requirements, gather estimates and create a project schedule to deliver High Level Solution Design and Work Packaging.

Presenting solution to business partners to get approval prior to kicking off the project.

Perform project management tasks for multiple projects (Planning thru implementation).

Stakeholder management through effective and efficient communication (verbal and written).

Efficiently & effectively manage Issues, generate visibility into potential Risks and provide mitigation, Manage Changes and Dependencies to deliver projects on time, within budget and with customer satisfaction.

Demonstrate leadership by delivering large, complex and critical projects with stakeholder satisfaction. Delivering business outcome for remarkable customer experience.

Worked in a balanced and Strong Matrix organization to create “One team” concept to deliver the project.

Being at leadership role, demonstrated maturity in conflict resolution, mentoring the team, providing motivation to the project team and taking effective decisions in the interest of project and organization.

Comply with the organizational processes and suggest improvements to refine the processes.

Meeting overall program objectives to accomplish organizational goals and commitments for the customers.

May 2001 – Nov.2010 – Worked with various clients as a Sr. Project Manager on various projects. (More details can be provided on request).

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