Jocelyn Kitu, MBA, PMP, CSM, DevOps-RM

Email: ad115o@r.postjobfree.com Phone: +1-469-***-**** Location: Melissa, TX

IT RELEASE MANAGER/Agile Project Manager

Summary

IT professional with over 10 years of experience in Release Management and Project Management knowledge areas as defined by the Project Management Institute. Experience includes leading teams, collaborating with multiple departments both on/offshore, working with and reporting to Executive Committees. A proven leader, who is a dedicated, self-directed individual with strong communication and organizational skills.

Highlights

Project, Release, & Change management

ITIL Change Management

SaFe Agile and Waterfall methodologies.

DevOps and Automation

Process improvement and adherence

Quality Management

Risk Mitigation and Issue resolution skills

Cutover planning and deployment leadership skills

Test Environment Management.

Accomplishments

Developed a quality dashboard and defined a release Key Performance Indicators (KPI) that helped improved efficiency by 15 % and productivity by 10 %.

Established release management function from the ground up through collaborative efforts with Directors, Program Managers, development managers, quality assurance and change management teams.

Empowered the Dev Ops culture across different teams and implemented the release process in conjunction with release teams in a pilot mode to showcase the benefits of release management.

Established, implemented, and managed a freeze process and an exception approval process for a major project.

Developed release processes and tools for the program team, release communication process, release calendar, production, and test environment tracking tools.

Designed and implemented a process for managing Remedy change requests for SAP TMS off Cycle Releases.

Developed a Capacity/Resource allocation tool for Delivery teams.

Developed and coached 2 scrum teams from scratch: successfully creating a shift in mindset from a traditional approach.

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

IT Change Manager, HCL Tech,07/2023 – Present

Evolves client change management process.

Responsible for implementing and managing ITIL processes.

Champions and fosters process improvement processes, configures UI policies in ServiceNow, and performs testing.

Record, review and categorize Requests for Change (RFC)

Prioritize change requests according to business objectives.

Manage the transition of changes from the development team to operations.

Convene the change advisory board (CAB) meetings.

Coordinate the building, testing, and implementation of changes.

Mediate conflicts related to the change where necessary.

Create and circulate the change schedule.

Conduct Post Implementation Reviews (PIRs) after the implementation of changes.

Maintain all change documentation (policies, procedures, templates, etc.).

Produce and communicate management reports.

Responsible for ensuring adherence to enterprise change management policies and procedures.

Currently building a Release Management process for the Client from scratch, documenting the process and reviewing with Client, building templates, interviewing, and hiring release talents.

IT Release Manager, F&T Medical Services, Inc. 04/2022 – 05/2023

Release planning, quality, and risk management, pre and post implementation support for digital app implementations, MuleSoft healthcare accelerator project and COVID 19 testing/vaccination support feature.

Managing Releases for a MuleSoft Accelerator for submission of lab reports, Appointment scheduling process and other API Releases.

Designed and implemented a new defect management and escalation process for the COVID 19 program team.

Leading Vendor maintenance releases for operations cockpit software for tracking delivery, availability, testing and distribution.

Helped developed a branching strategy, automation process and release process for the Business/Technology team.

Forward plan releases, create and maintain implementation plans, create change records and manage them through the change management system.

Lead releases and post implantation activities.

Change management activities; convene and chair the change advisory board (CAB) and emergency change (eCAB), ensuring the information presented to teams is complete and provides them with the information they need to make informed decisions about the changes, prioritizing and approving them, or rejecting them

IT Release Mgr., CASPEX Consultant @ Salesforce 06/2020 – 04/2022

Create and update Release Calendar and Release View periodically working collaboratively with business, Scrum teams, Environment, Infrastructure, QA, and PMO for planning, deployment and rollout.

Release Management activities for multiple platforms: release meetings, release schedule/calendar, impact assessments, knowledge transfer sessions, command center activities, runlists, deployment plans and closure activities.

Leading scrum of scrums and PI planning for 2 platforms.

Change Management activities: Change request creation and management, CAB representative, enterprise freeze management, ensures adherence to enterprise change management processes and procedures.

Deployment Activities; Release documentation (runlists, cutover scripts, communication plans and release notes) and deployment lead.

Control Checkpoints: Responsible for Controls prior to UAT and Production deployments.

Post Implementation activities: RCA and retrospective meetings, environment backfills, knowledge transfer sessions.

Environment Management: readiness, backfills and vetting requests prior to admittance to prevent conflicts.

Lead weekly governance calls for release readiness and Go/No Go decision for each phase.

Lead Scrum of Scrums sessions for 10+ scrum teams across 2 major platforms.

Scheduling and leading retrospection and RCA sessions for scrum teams.

Facilitate in implementing Continuous integration and continuous delivery in DevOps.

Submit Change proposal and participate in CAB meetings and get approval for changes for each release.

Prepares weekly release status reports, overall release metrics to all the stakeholders.

Program Release Mgr., American Airlines 07/2017 – 02/2020

Program Release Manager for TESS program: managing and coordinating release activities for 200+ applications, while ensuring adherence to change management processes and procedures.

Develop, maintained and communicated cutover plans.

Test environment planning and coordination with particular emphasis on readiness, admittance, risk mitigation and conflict avoidance.

Managing, maintaining, and enforcing change control policies across the enterprise

Reviewing change requests and approving or rejecting based on adherence to documented change management policies.

Responsible for communication of enterprise-wide changes with program team while highlighting areas of concerns.

Creating and Maintaining program release calendar and tracking release timeline of various projects.

In collaboration with delivery teams, creating, maintaining, and reviewing implementation plans

Leading deployments, managing, and maintaining release artifacts (release calendar, communication plans, runlists, deployment plans etc.)

Developing and maintaining program release strategies, processes and procedures and freezes.

Created release/change management process to track, safeguard and deliver end to end releases from inception phase through actual release deployment to production, playing role of planner, coordinator, communicator and gatekeeper.

Release Manager/Scrum Master: Southwest Airlines 04/2016 – 06/2017

Scrum Activities:

Led 10+ Scrum teams dedicated to developing digital and technology roadmap.

Managed core agile ceremonies in team environments; sprint planning, daily stand-ups, sprint review and sprint retrospectives.

Managed 100% of the scrum process from initiation to delivery.

Coordinated and collaborated with 3 other product teams related to project dependencies and relationships.

Supported and provided guidance to Product Owners within my team in product backlog grooming and maintenance.

Was responsible for status reporting of tasks and activities of my scrum teams.

Identified and maintained a log for blockers, risks and issues while ensuring that they were properly resolved and communicated.

Release Management Activities

Working closely with deployment engineers and enterprise change management in planning releases.

Developing cut over scripts and leading deployment activities during implementations.

Monitoring and scrutinizing changes prior to deployment to test and production environments.

Conducting impact assessments on changes prior to implementation to prevent conflicts.

Coordinating knowledge transfer sessions between delivery and production support teams prior to project deployment.

Planning and coordination of command center for major implementations.

Agile Project Manager: Fannie Mae 07/2014 – 12/2015

Supported and guided the Business Technology Product Managers with backlog refinement for 6 Scrum teams.

Acted as a servant leader and coach for scrum teams, ensuring the effective use and practice of the Agile framework.

Led Sprint planning, Sprint Reviews, Daily Stand-up and retrospective sessions for 6 scrum teams.

Doubled team velocity, throughput, burndown, and cumulative flow of 4 cross-functional teams.

Leading matrix teams of project managers, developers, analyst, and testers in designing, developing, testing and implementing an in-house data storage project.

Managing vendor application releases from initiation through implementation.

Liaison between business and technology, business and vendor and vendor and technology.

Building and maintaining successful relationships with business partners, vendors, technical and test teams

POC for Enterprise project governance and PMO offices by managing enterprise governance activities for Credit BTO projects.

Developing, managing, and reviewing project plans, communication plans and mitigation plans.

Developing project roles and responsibilities and review with project team members

Responsible for project budget management; completing monthly reconciliation and variance analysis.

Product Manager/Senior Business Analyst: Southwest Airlines 08/2011 – 07/2014

Release planning, tracking, and managing enterprise work requests, SAAS Changes and fixes from initiation through implementation.

Status reporting and project communications to management, vendors, and various stakeholders.

Leading Design Reviews, Hangar Load reviews, and test coordination meetings between the vendor and application teams.

Leading and facilitating product backlog grooming sessions to ensure a smooth prioritization of items.

Coordinating testing and user signoffs for SAAS changes and changes and fixes.

Worked closely with change management to ensure proper adherence to change management processes and procedures.

Worked with Test Environment team to ensure proper preparation of test environments prior to code deployment

Risk/Issue tracking, documentation, and mitigation planning.

Business Process Consultant /Project Manager: Allstate Insurance Company- 03/2004 – 08/2011.

Documented and reported status updates to leadership in a weekly meeting.

Coordinated with vendor and internal teams for training sessions and testing.

Maintained and oversaw Enterprise baseline budgets.

Responsible for running and publishing reports to provide Sr. Leaders with a clear visibility to project budget.

Managed and maintained work authorizations, rates, and invoices associated with vendors.

Proactively plan and manage project activities, priorities, changes, costs, risk, impact and timing on multiple projects, while enforcing effective project management.

Proactively identified and prioritized risk issues impacting projects and implement cost effective mitigation solutions.

Represented the presort unit in the National Postal forum and the Major Mailers Association meetings.

Partnered with presort vendors (Pitney Bowes and NPI) for continuous process improvement and re-engineering using improved hardware and software.

Works very closely with presort vendors to create sort schemes for the support of process optimization.

Led a shift of 10 Employees: hiring, time keeping, performance management and Employee training and development.

Education/Certifications

MBA- Keller Graduate School of Management of DeVry University (2006)

BSC. Public Administration-University of Calabar Nigeria (1998)

PMP(2008), CSM(2021), DevOps-RM.(2021)

Tools & Applications

Microsoft Office Suite, MS Project, Visio, CircleCI, Jenkins, GitHub.JIRA, Quick Base, Clear Quest, Confluence, SharePoint, Mail.dat, Postal Wizard, SAP, Oracle, PeopleSoft, Control-M, SQL, SDLC, Agile and Waterfall methodologies, EPPM(Hyperion), Service Now, GitHub, Cherwell, Support force, Salesforce,

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