Zachary A. Gould, PMP, PMI-ACP, CSP

*** *. **** **. ****, CT. 06001

H: 860-***-**** C: 860-***-****

acyxli@r.postjobfree.com

SUMMARY

Certified Scrum Professional (CSP CSPO & CSM), PMP & Agile PMI-ACP Process-oriented Project Manager with proven success managing complex, highly visible aggressive financial services and technology goals. Key strengths include, detail oriented analysis, project and demand management, performance improvement and problem resolution. Self-starter that is able to dynamically create solutions across the business continuum and fosters relationships at all levels of management, specifically using proven Agile knowledge and techniques to drive results. Expertise includes:

Certified Project Manager (PMP, PMI-ACP)

Certified Scrum Professional (CSP/CSM/CSPO

Mentoring/Coaching

Continuous Performance/Process Improvement

Change Management

User Stories & Epics Writing & Estimation

Dynamic, Servant Leader

Facilitation & Negotiation Tactics

Automation/Technology

Insurance & Claims Products

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

Phoenix Life Insurance, Hartford CT March 2015 – Current

Director – Agile Requirements Manager

Piloted the first Scrum Projects and was able to reduce the time and cost of a 2,000,000 dollar project to 200,000 dollars and delivered incremental, end user, value based software 2 months ahead of schedule

Created and acted the Scrum Product Owner role by creating a lite version of the business requirements document that focused on reducing the amount of paperwork and utilizing wireframes, product backlogs and user stories which saved the company development time and technical debt.

Facilitated in a Scrum Master type role through coaching workshops for new project managers, business analysts, quality analysts and developers as to the Scrum ceremonies, framework, artifacts and team building in order to adopt the practices as of Scrum across the product teams.

Coached the Agile Project Methodology to new business areas, including C-level senior leaders as to the fundamental tenants of the Agile Manifesto in conjunction with Scrum/Kanban roles. Secured buy-in to pilot certain projects that produced an increase in return of investment while reducing project costs by 50%

TEKSystems, Farmington, CT October 2014 – February 2015

Senior Business Analyst/Project Manager Lincoln Financial - Oct 2014 – Feb 2015

Created and implemented an internal audit “process improvement” plan focusing on the Life & Annuity Underwriting profile administration system supporting the Business Transformation Office

Designed Internal/external compliance auditing processes for Underwriter Enterprise Security and helped develop and single sign-on solution.

Claims reporting build and integration with Front-End and loss notification systems for performance and inventory reporting

Helped improve the work intake process for Product Owner change requests, by centralizing new work through program-level governance for multi-state revisions.

Corporate Systems of America, Hartford, CT January 2014 – October 2014

Senior Business Analyst/Project Manager The Hartford - January 2014 – October 2014

Contracted for CSA assigned as one a Project Manager focusing on Change Management process improvement for The Hartford on the Business PMO team. Responsibilities included managing the change on an 89 million dollar project that provides a new pricing model, which allows The Hartford Personal Lines to offer new technology and competitive pricing in the insurance marketplace.

Created new change management processes that focused on the implementation of the new products and rates across the Consumer Markets marketing, operations and technology project teams that utilized ADKAR and DMAIC principles in a process oriented manner that reduced rework and streamlined end-to-end processing throughout the organization

Created a Consumer Markets PMO dependency tracker that followed projects dependencies and compared milestones in relation to shared resources, deployment dates and costs, which allowed project managers to understand potential risks, issues and project impact points within the Consumer Markets and Enterprise portfolios.

Senior Business Analyst/Project Manager Travelers – August 2013 – December 2013

Previously one of two lead analysts on a 1.1 billion dollar merger and acquisition for Travelers International Canada with the primary goal of integrating the two companies into a single international business.

Created project management processes such as project, communication, risk and assumption plans for an international team building exercise between European and Canadian relations as well as executing and managing the plan through international partners and tight timetables with broad reaching employee relations impact and with exposure to high level senior leaders.

Sole analyst focused on integration and analysis of international business integration strategies including underwriting, financial and change management work streams requirements, which include responsibilities such as analysis of business intelligence, relationship and operations of both companies, detailing day one requirements, creating analytical documentation with suggested findings, quickly establishing relationship across all areas of internal and external business operations and detailing where critical action items needed immediate focus versus rolling wave planning on actionable future items.

The Hartford Insurance Group, Hartford, CT 2000 – 2006, 2007 – 2013

Project Manager / Scrum Master February 2010 – June 2013

Acted as a Scrum Master with a group of four other project managers to facilitate, design, implement and manage a transfer of specialty claim data in a divestiture from The Hartford, which gained the company a gross total of $278 million.

Managed automated transfer of data on over 7,000 clients while maintaining existing contractual obligations resulting in zero account scheduling or technical errors specific to the data transfer and a performance bonus due to meeting all key project milestones.

Created a resource staffing profile for 100 employees globally and managed all resource estimated to actual project allocations within a 3% variance of the projects budget.

Acted as the conduit of third party vendor, buyer and internal stakeholders for all issues and questions in order to fully focus the team on Scrum development related items. Worked closely with the Product Owner to ensure that all User Stories were explained, demos were productive and retrospectives showed improvements.

Created and implemented account scheduling profiles and eliminated all redundant planning sessions in relation to account transfer schedule, which resulted in management using a single source of account client health and planning reports.

Created the first change management employee exercise blending ADKAR and RAPID disciplines into team building exercises resulting in a 20% decrease in meeting times and increasing individual and team accountability measures. This exercise was then modified for use across multiple organizational cultural changes and performance improvement by management.

IT Account Manager / Product Owner February 2007 – January 2010

Prioritized 14 third party Fortune 500 insurance client’s business and technology requirements in compliance with each individual client scorecard.

Acted as a Product Owner by partnering with external client’s to create User Stories, Product Backlogs and Risk-to-Value assessments for month end product releases.

Implemented an error correction frequently asked question answer program that significantly reduced error ratios and handling times by 80%.

Empowered team members to manage the Product Backlog into the Sprint Backlog by developing solutions that contained built in quality which reduced the development time by 30% on normal Waterfall projects.

Created and implemented an edit process that increased client approval and invoice acceptance of 20%.

Collaborated with the billing and audit areas to create a quarterly review process with the client to resolve all historical issues resulting in the acquiring of over $5 million dollars.

Prior Experience

AIX - Business Analyst August 2006 – February 2007

Created the requirements for the NY State Commercial Auto taxicab medallion program

Created the requirements for the NY regulatory and compliance statistical coding reports

Created, implemented and managed the BA Teams workload and capacity management delivery metrics to Project Managers and Senior Leadership.

Insurity - Business Analyst March 2006 – August 2006

Created requirements for the UM/UIM rate product enhancement program

Created test plans for the new home vantage product suite

The Hartford Insurance Group 2001 – 2006

Customer Service Representative, Personal Lines 2001 – 2002

Handled all PL lines for The Hartford’s Affinity Business Group including, Home, Auto, Umbrella and Watercraft

Selected to mentor new hires out of training and acclimate them to call center operations

Served as back up supervisor to the call center team lead

Quality Analyst – Claims Automation – 2002 - 2006

Handled all incident management issues for end-to-end claims first notice, adjudicating and financial systems

Created Use Cases, End user requirements and test plans for User Acceptance Training as part of the Business Analyst Training Program

Served as back up supervisor to the Incident Management team

EDUCATION

Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration

(Concentration: Project Management & Human Resources) graduated summa cum laude with 3.99 GPA

Colorado Technical University, Colorado Springs, CO.

CERTIFICATIONS

Certified Project Manager Professional, (www.PMI.org)

PMP – License Number: 1844408

PMI-ACP - License Number: 1942770

Scrum Alliance Certifications (www.scrumalliance.org)

Certified Scrum Practitioner – License Number: 000577567

Certified Scrum Product Owner – License Number: 000577567

Certified Scrum Master – License Number: 000577567

IIBA

Associates Degree in Business Analysis

TECHNICAL SKILLS

Microsoft Visio – Used for various value-stream mapping of current/future process flows

Microsoft Project – Certified in V2 of MPP creation for project schedules, work efforts and resources

Microsoft Sharepoint/Lotus Quickr – Used for various types of data storage/file storage and documentation of requirements in a collaborative, single source repository.

Quality Center – Used for the creation and loading of test plans/scenarios/cases, the tracking of expected to actual results and the issue/defect logs that would prioritize resolution and enhance decision making

Balsamiq – Used for creating wireframe/storyboard/prototyping of products and requirement documentation

XML/UML/HTML/SQL – Can read and assist developers with translation of business requirements to expected output, solve problems with queries and adapt specified, prescribed code libraries to be shared across common base requirements/projects when needed to help speed up like minded software requirements.

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