Project Manager Management/Technical Writere

EDUCATION

University of Minnesota, Twin Cities – Career and Technical Education, B.S

University of Minnesota, Twin Cities – Learning Technology, M.Ed.

University of Minnesota, Twin Cities – Learning Technology Certificate in Online Learning (my final project/dissertation was creating a full class and placing one module online for review)

Benchmark Learning, St. Louis Park, MN – ITIL Foundation Certification

University of Minnesota, Twin Cities – Project Management Certificate

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

PC Concepts, Various Locations, MN October 2014 – Present

Technical Writer/Project Manager

Work with a variety of clients to write technical documentation and serve in project management roles. Clients include Olmstead County (13 Divisions in Rochester), The Fang Group (Medical Device Companies Twin Cities), The PACE Group (Training Materials), Geeks for Hire (WebSite Design), Split Pixel Design (Photography - Project Management for Weddings and other projects).

●Project Management on small business projects in Twin Cities.

●Write manuals and training material.

●Medical device compliance, risk management and change control process write ups.

●Write how-to technical documents.

●Update existing client documentation – primarily training documents.

●Migrate classroom based curriculum to internet based.

●Work with Olmstead County offices and the ITS PMO to rollout Exchange 2013, Office 365 and SharePoint.

oCoordinated with the business and technical staff on a phased rollout and training for each area.

oReviewed all online documentation to advise different levels of users on what is applicable to them.

oTroubleshoot problems and walk staff through implementation as needed.

oUpdated online training sites for all applications.

●Website Design.

●Work with various teams on RFI and RFP language.

Target and Macy’s P/T Seasonal August 2015 – October 2015

Cashier/Trainer and HR

Target: P/T Cashier in August and September, hours varied but around 4-12 hours per week

Macy’s: Training for New Hires, General Office and some HR functions - October 2015– 20-22 hours per week

Thomson Reuters, Eagan, MN April 2014 – September 2014

Sr. IT Project Manager

Budget: $ 1-1.5 Million Team Size: Mixed Matrix 12-25 depending on work stream – 5 work streams

●Manage 5 work streams in IT Security, with a deep understanding of legal security guidelines.

●Responsible for planning and managing projects, with competing priorities and deadlines, with large teams from multiple functional areas across the organization globally.

●Leverage internal and external teams to help the Project deliverables.

● Facilitate scope definition including functionality and technology to be included/excluded through change control processes.

●Apply established methodologies and enforce program standards including minimize exposure to risk, implement corrective and preventative actions, develop and manage program budget with the finance team including calculated Program metrics in order to stay on budget within the Program time and scope.

●Experience with NIST, SOC II and Experian audit practices and compliance. Experience with internal audit compliance and practices.

●Experience with Data Center technology, Windows and Linux machines and availability as we planned deployment to adopted better logging mechanisms. The method was building Jump windows servers to be the go between the Linux environments to give the correct credentials at login and then allowing to pass through with those credentials to a Linux machine. This gave transparency in logging with the who and the when in Linux.

University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, MN November 2012 – November 2013

IT Program Manager

Budget: $84 Million Team Size: 200+ Mixed Matrix – 14 work streams

Manage 14 work streams in an ERP uplift at the University of Minnesota including Student upgrades within PeopleSoft from Campus 8.9 solutions to 9.0. Finance upgrades from 8.9 to 9.2 and HRMS from 8.9 to 9.2.

●Responsible for planning and managing programs, with competing priorities and deadlines, with large teams from multiple functional areas across the University.

●Work within the Enterprise Software Upgrade Program to create efficiencies and deliver metrics to the Executive Committees and Integrated Steering Committees.

●Leverage internal and external teams to help the Program deliverables.

● Facilitate scope definition including functionality and technology to be included/excluded through change control processes.

●Apply established methodologies and enforce program standards including minimize exposure to risk, implement corrective and preventative actions, develop and manage program budget with the finance team including calculated program metrics in order to stay on budget and meet deliverables.

●Have a detailed understanding of 14 work steams including Integration, Infrastructure, Portal, Reporting, Governance, Change, Enterprise End to End Testing and Deployment within PeopleSoft to support the HR, Finance and Student verticals.

●Work with testing team to design the testing strategy including end user testing.

●Work with integration team and the collegiate and admin units to determine business dependencies and requirements.

●Work with internal audits on financial audit practices and compliance.

●Worked with Infrastructure work stream on the RFP to host the PeopleSoft databases. Exadata was the chosen equipment based on its front and back end capabilities including internal firewall and the method it striped data on the whole frame.

University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, MN March 2012 – November 2012

Interim IT Manager

Budget: Tied to OIT budget Team Size: 15 Staff director reports, video, security, telephone, network and software groups (service providers).

●Ensure skills are available when needed and that training needs are addressed based on projected needs.

●Forecasting skills and developmental training plans to ensure skilled workforce.

●Maintain agile, flexible and scalable teams to do required work.

●Give performance evaluations, salary adjustments, approve leave and evaluate disciplinary action in conjunction with service owner’s feedback.

●Work with team to address issues and do analysis to be proactive in problem resolution.

●Ensure excellent customer and end user service as part of the security help desk function.

●Create an atmosphere of team in provisioning and request within the five blended units.

●Within the unit was the provisioning team who took orders for ether jack, wireless and telephony for all construction. The project management aspect was understanding and meeting with the construction group and planning the where and when of implementation and coordinated with our Network and Telecommunications team.

University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, MN August 2010 – March 2012

IT Program Manager

Budget: $ 8-10 Million Team Size: 20 full time staff and 50+ departmental staff (mixed matrix depending on project)

●Program Manage OIT Data Center Upgrade and Server Consolidation/Virtualization Program.

●Program included moving Ethernet and fiber from under the floor to overhead racking.

●In the program there were 11 projects and the hosting projects fell under subprojects. We did environmental optimization to improve the data center cooling, security and operations training to help make the data center a lights out facility.

●Participated in the RFP for a containerized data center, we wrote the RFP, toured a possible planned purchase to understand the technology, and did specs to see how much we could host in this as a secondary site, in particular with virtualization. The RFP was closed due to funding.

●Worked on data center consolidation to take 32 “data centers” and get them down to 3 main data centers. Many of the 32 were telecomm closets an extra office or other space, our goal was to get them in a true data center and virtualize where we could. The University was down to 16 at the time I moved on to my next assignment.

●Extensive knowledge of Virtualization, Database Hosting, Web Hosting on a variety of platforms.

●Identify program management best practices, specific to architecture and infrastructure with a goal to implement those throughout the enterprise and ensure alignment with the ITIL framework.

●Mentor and facilitate training for other project and program managers.

●Update online knowledgebase and materials to be relevant and usable by staff.

●Create training videos in Media Mill and other media. Facilitate across campuses.

●Update help desk teams on initiative changes and work to manage customer expectations.

●Manage a variety of related projects within a range of technologies and platforms.

●Partner with customers in delivering agreed upon deliverables.

●Work within the Enterprise Project Management Office (EPMO) to create process improvements for architecture/infrastructure program management and methodology.

●Leverage internal people, tools, and processes to effective manage program deliverables throughout all key program phases.

●Facilitate scope definition including functionality and technology to be included/excluded.

●Create and review program metrics.

●Establish and maintain effective customer relationships and facilitate knowledge transfer as we develop and rollout new infrastructure and software development projects.

●Develop training for help desk team leads and work as a liaison in mentoring and coaching help desk staff on new technologies.

●Work with Service Now team to have the right data and knowledge base information as we rolled out the infrastructure interface.

●Experience with HIPAA, FERPA and PCI compliance, worked with compliance officer specifically on HIPAA and PCI.

University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, MN April 2007 – August 2010

IT Manager – Storage and Backup Services

Budget: $ 2-5 Million depending on budget year Team Size: 6 full time staff – 50+ mixed matric collegiate and admin staff.

●Lead the University storage team in the design, development, installation, testing, documentation, implementation, and research for enterprise-wide Storage Area Network (SAN) and Backup systems. Specifically related to UNIX, Linux, Windows and VMWare as platforms.

●Lead other University initiatives across functional areas in relation to SAN deliverables.

●Manage budget related information and issues in the operation of the storage environment.

●Work with internal purchasing on all equipment including RFP’s, RFI’s, RFB’s.

●Project Management methodologies introduced to team in a more formalized format which I created specifically for infrastructure projects.

●Prepare presentations relating to storage including metrics and trend analysis across all administrative and collegiate units.

●Analyze requirements in order to recommend solutions comprised of hardware, software and automation across OIT systems and collegiate unit customers.

●Present storage capacity, capabilities, and disaster recover strategies for more effective data handling.

●Manage data storage team activities, professional development and staff mentoring opportunities.

●Coach team leads on the help desk function when items were escalated to the team for further analysis or troubleshooting.

●Experience with storage refresh from EMC to Hitachi for SAN and NetApp for NAS.

●Experience with Cisco switch refresh upgrading the 3 cores and some of the edge nodes on the SAN.

●Experience with internal audits to maintain internal audit controls. Data encryption, logging and redundant test equipment and adhere to HIPAA and FERPA compliance key areas.

University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, MN October 2004 – April 2007

IT Project Manager

Budget: $ 2 Million Team Size: 20+ mixed matrix specifically for PCAS and GradPlanner (3 year projects)

●Manage a variety of initiatives and projects within a wide range of environments, including web, client/server, and mainframe specifically related to PeopleSoft and supporting integration application development such as Grad Planner and PCAS for students.

●Accept high-level business and technical requirements, partner with technical and business units at the University to establish priorities, manage and implementation of technical solutions.

●Assist in project management process improvements within organization.

●Lead multiple medium to large IT projects simultaneously; strong business analysis and technical system skills; ability to communicate with business and IT professionals at all levels; lead teams of 50+ people from multiple functional areas; understand project life cycle, proficient the project planning tools and develop process and methodology.

●Public engagement to facilitate presentations, including project rollouts, product overview sessions and formal training engagements campus wide.

●Gather and document requirements and create the documentation for development teams and ongoing support after “go live”.

●Develop process flows to understand how the application should function based on the requirements.

●Develop test plans, work with team to execute them.

●Work with Usability test lab to understand where either education or a change is necessary for application to be of value.

University of Minnesota October 1997-October 2004

IT Systems Administrator

●Planned, designed, installed and maintained Windows and Novell server systems campus-wide.

●Managed master Novell tree and master Active Directory servers for all campuses.

●Managed multiple Exchange, GroupWise and Meeting Maker servers for mail and calendaring.

●Coordinated rollout and continued implementation of PeopleSoft campus-wide.

●Authored technical documents for both training and information purposes.

●Conducted training and product overview sessions campus-wide.

●Project manager for multiple enterprise system implementations and application rollouts.

●Extensive knowledge, Novell, Windows, UNIX, Linux and Citrix platforms.

●Experience with networking a Ethernet technologies. When a server came online we made sure there were ports available, got the port assignments and ran the cable for our servers.

University of Minnesota 1994-1997

Administrative Assistant/LAN Coordinator

●Performed Help Desk functions for audit group.

●Created and managed user accounts, security, training and user support with the Café Team.

●Administered payroll, human resource function and budget prep for audit group.

●Other administrative duties as assigned.

PC Concepts, Various Locations 1994 – 2016

Technical Writer/Project Manager

(There were a few years of breaks here and there when working at the University but at quiet times did some in between work for specific customers mostly updates of existing material)

●Work with a variety of clients to write technical documentation.

●How-to technical documents

●Update existing client documentation – primarily training documents

●Migrate Classroom Based Curriculum to Internet Based

●Project Management on small business projects

Denhaardt and Associates 1992-1994

Premier Risk Tech/Miller and Schroeder

Consultant

●Acted as a liaison with bond brokers, clients and support staff.

●Filed for NASD and SEC compliance. Extensive knowledge of securities and insurance.

AFP Group 1991-1992

Financial Planning Assistant

●Extensive knowledge of securities and insurance (series 6 and 7 licensing).

●Filed for NASD and SEC compliance.

●Created and conducted seminars. Conducted software training classes.

Sanctuary Housing Association, UK 1987-1991

Administrative Officer

●Human Resources and Training Coordination.

TECHNICAL SKILLS

Expert in Storage, Backup and Switch technologies (EMC, HDS, Cisco, NetApp, Pillar, Sun, Exadata). Working knowledge of server OS technologies including UNIX, Linux, Windows and VMWare. Knowledge of Service Know. Knowledge of Oracle as a platform within PeopleSoft. PeopleSoft support tools. SharePoint, Microsoft Office Suite, Visio, Clarity and other industry standard software tools. Google docs and cloud based technologies. Working knowledge of Photoshop. Some experience with Adobe Creative Suite. Expert in MS Project Server and ITG industry standard Project Management Tools. Educational tools including Audacity, Camtasia Relay, LMS, CSS, HTML Tools (Moodle, Ning and WebCT).

Project Management and Security Methodologies: Agile, Waterfall, PMI Standards, and Propel

Risk Management, Compliance, PCI, HIPAA, FERPA data management

Published author – A+ Fundamentals

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