Senior Program/Project Manager,Scrum Master, Agile Coach

Thedora M. Duncan, PMP, CSM

312-***-**** **************@*****.***

Job Objective

Senior Program/Project Manager / Scrum Master / Agile Transformation

Summary

•16 years’ program/project management/leadership and consulting experience in myriad functional areas: technical, organizational transformation, and operations.

•Consistently identified as Driver who achieves Results and Out of the Box Thinker.

•Excellent written, verbal, and public speaking communication skills.

•Ability to guides teams through conflict resolution; stakeholders though negotiation and buy-in.

•Expert proficiency in Project Management platforms and tools: Project/Project Server, SharePoint, Clarity/Open Work Bench, Jira

Certifications

•Scrum Master Certified (SMC #561012) from VMedu, Inc.

•Project Management Professional (PMP #205092) and Agile Certified Professional (PMI-ACP #1674103) from Project Management Institute.

•Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist: Microsoft Project 2010, Managing Projects (MCTS #E382-8811) from Microsoft, Inc.

Career History & Accomplishments

2001 – 2017 Business Owner:

Agency Owner: Duncan Farmers Insurance Agency

Business Coach / Scrum Master: Only One Business Coach, LLC

Consulting Experience:

Manager, Delivery Management / Scrum Master: Avanade, Inc.

Program Manager: Allstate Insurance Company

Senior Project Manager – Web / Scrum Master: Abbott Labs

Organizational Development Consultant: State Farm Insurance Company

Requirements Manager: SBC, Inc.

Validation and Testing Strategist: Abbott Lab

Executive Business Analysis Consultant: VW Credit, Inc.

Technical Communication Consultant: Motorola, Inc.

Corporate Experience:

Project Manager II / Scrum Master: Blue Cross & Blue Shield Association (BCBSA)

Business Process Consultant: Allstate Insurance Company

Program/Project/Vendor Management

•Turned around a stalled program at Avanade to strengthen recruiting/screening for new sales and service delivery staff.

oEngaged leadership stakeholders both domestically and internationally to ensure their interests were met by the project.

oUsing Agile/Scrum methodolgies, developed new project plans, creating a rigorous multi-step process and standards for interviewing, standing up the recruitment environment on SharePoint, including data migration and security, and rolled out communications, online training, and post-implementation support.

oResult: Created an easily repeatable template for vetting potential hires.

•Provided project leadership to gather requirements for the licensing organization and cross-functional areas, and drive design, test, implementation, and deployment. Result: Delivered capability to enable out-of-area providers to obtain pre-service authorizations/pre-certifications for insured members via regional provider web portals.

•Provided IT Project Management Office Support at Abbott. Trained project managers (PMs) and team members (TMs) on use of Microsoft Office Project 2010 and Microsoft Office Project Server 2010 using SharePoint 2010 to manage projects, report project health, and submit project task status.

•Managed IT Clinical Project using Agile methods with both onshore and offshore resources at Abbott that support the healthcare clinical development practice in the Global Pharmaceutical Research and Development division. Provided leadership to develop and drive scope, staffing model, resource assignments, and project delivery. Managed project financials, vendor and business relationships, and project issues, risks, and requests, while conducting meetings as needed with both onshore and offshore resources, managing failover/high availability hardware implementation at offshore locations.

•Developed program management reporting platform. Recruited by Ameritech to build a program management status reporting system. Developed an HTML-based online application. Played a key role in presenting and selling the new solution to divisional management. Received a Letter of Recognition from the Solutions Manager for spearheading the development of the new platform.

•Working with corporate voice engineering and client leadership, managed outside vendor projects, requirements gathering and technical writing deliverables including analysis and design, data models, and publication of one white paper and six VoIP systems manuals, including two planning guides, one optimization manual, one data transfer session processing manual, one subsystem troubleshooting manual, and one power system manual for the iDen VoIP system.

Transformation/Operations

•As a program manager on the task force leading the initiative to establish BCBSA’s enterprise project management office (EPMO), developed Best Practices, processes, methodologies, templates, reports, tracking and other project management tools. Managed implementation, customization, administration, security, integration, migration, and upgrade of the MS Project Server 2007-2010 environments.

oSuccessfully implemented the EPMO and the MS Project Server ERP platform enterprise-wide.

oEnsured active leadership of all aspects of projects from start to finish, including project team resource identification, stakeholder interface, project planning, requirements gathering, technical & functional documentation, issue tracking & resolution, lifecycle testing, and full project execution – milestone tracking & reporting, deployment & commercialization, and formalized project closure.

oResult: Improved project planning, execution, monitoring and delivery, allowing real time analysis of status and performance.

•Allstate insurance agency partners were slow to embrace new IT/IS platforms, hampering potential efficiency/cost saving improvements.

oRevamped the adoption process, leveraging relationship management to extol the benefits and ease of new tools using CMMI processes.

oResult: Captured a record number of adherents with the first new national launch and increased technology solution adoption rates 63%.

•Innovated a one-stop technical manual solution for Motorola. Systems engineers needed an efficient library for managing documentation for the new push-to-talk system. Developed a flexible/expandable online knowledge base, containing all key planning, optimization, troubleshooting and other manuals. Received special recognition from senior management for expediting and improving the product release and support.

Process Engineering/Improvement

•Developed BCBSA’s Earned Value Management process to understand and monitor project financial health and performance.

•Leading a cross-functional team, developed a Root Cause Analysis process for BCBSA’s EPMO.

oDeveloped and delivered training to 80+ resources across the enterprise.

oConvinced senior management to adopt the new methodology.

oResult: Created new efficiencies, generating $100K in cost reductions almost immediately and ongoing year-over-year savings.

•Automated third party payer processing for State Farm.

oEnhanced the premium payment modules in the claims portal to allow third party payers to submit premium payments as if they were the policyholders.

oResult: Improved the accuracy and timeliness of premiums paid by third party payer firms by 43% in the first year of implementation.

•Created user acceptance testing (UAT) strategy for document management system in a regulatory environment and supervised testers and technical writers using Test Director for Abbott Labs.

oMade recommendations and developed processes/procedures to support 21 CFR Part 11 electronic record and signature regulatory requirements.

oManaged projects from requirements gathering and definition of project plan and approach through development, training, and deployment.

oResult: Analyzed existing standard operating procedures (SOPs) and made recommendations that improved process effective at the division-wide level.

Communication and Negotiation

•As an independent Business Coach, focused on advising small to medium business owners on how to systematize their businesses, improve their marketing, increase the cash flow, recruit and retain the right staff, duplicate their businesses to franchise or open other outlets, define their market position, and other business areas.

•Turned around a struggling intranet project. Hired as consultant by CNA, tasked with rescuing a stalled development project for managing state mandated insurance data updates. Designed a new solution and architecture. Won a new contract to develop the system. Result: Saved CNA $160K and four months in development costs and time.

•Optimized State Farm program management communications. Division executives lacked tools to measure effectiveness of communications. Directed a communication, change management, and business continuity reengineering program.

oManaged budgets to $20M and staff to 10, optimizing program management communications.

oDeveloped and won support for implementing a strategy directly linked to risk mitigation strategy.

oTied value/ROI metrics of communications directly to the time and financial expenditures.

oResult: Provided senior management with powerful, accurate program management tools and measures of key performance indicators.

•Developed and delivered presentations to communicate project direction and discuss detailed technical concepts. Delivered packet data technical system overviews to various NOC and voice engineering teams.

Education

BA degree in English with specialization in Technical & Professional Communication (with a minor in Chemistry) from the Illinois Institute of Technology.

Recipient of N.A.C.M.E. Scholarship

Dean’s List, student government representative, resident adviser, elected leader of several student organizations

Outstanding Achievement Award Clinton B. Stryker Outstanding Service Award

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