Robert Low, PMP, ITIL, CSM

636-***-****

ad1ona@r.postjobfree.com

Senior Project Manager/Scrum Master – Application Development

Seasoned Project Management Professional with progressive experience managing concurrent infrastructure and development projects across several key business units. Exceptional Project Leader with significant expertise throughout the entire project life cycle; coordinate and direct complex development projects from initial requirements through design, development, testing, and implementation. Combine expertise in strategic planning and risk management with strong qualifications in team leadership and interpersonal communication. Quickly build rapport and forge relationships across IT and Business lines that facilitate timely and effective production support for applications development.

Core Competencies:

Full Life Cycle Project Management

Internal Systems & Controls

Production Support

Team Building & Leadership

Standardized Processes & Methodologies

Relationship Management

Cross-Team Application Development

Technical Training & Mentoring

I have had to take time off to deal with several family medical issues that were ongoing for about 15 months. All issues have been resolved and am looking forward to resuming my career.

Professional Experience

National Medical Billing Service St. Louis, MO (Employee)

Project Manager/Scrum Master (10/4/2021–2/14/2022

Environment: MS Project, MS Office, Visio, SharePoint, Agile/Scrum/Kanban

Leading software development projects to implement software for processing insurance billing and reporting for 120+ private surgery centers in the United States.

Key Achievements:

Scrum master for Sprint development projects. Team consisted of 11 resources performing data normalization, machine learning, data scientists, data warehouse reporting, and client adhoc reporting.

Conducting daily sprint and Kanban standups and weekly grooming sessions, Retrospectives, and Backlog Grooming sessions for projects to ensure projects are on track and to resolve issues and roadblocks.

Used JIRA to: Capture and track all stories, Business, Technical, and Testing requirements to be completed to determine Done status, Capture of time spent on research, development and testing, Defects captured during testing or production in JIRA were linked to track resolution, Capture of business sponsors required to approve the code for deployment, Created Kanban boards to allow business to update priority of tickets based on user need, Maintain development and testing and JIRA process flow documents.

Working with Business sponsors to define the business requirements for applications.

Worked with Security, Infrastructure, and Help Desk teams to ensure deployments were correctly configured,

Prepare weekly and ad-hoc status reporting to Chief Technology Officer and Directors.

USDA (Attainx), St. Louis, MO (Contractor)

Contractor Scrum Master (3/18/2019–12/31/2020) )

Environment: MS Project, MS Office, Visio, SharePoint, Agile/Scrum/Kanban

Leading projects to enhance the App/Dev Debt Write-Off and NATS applications. Leading the JBoss 7, Build Stack 2, and Operations and Maintenance application upgrades to USDA Farm Loan and NATS applications.

Key Achievements:

Scrum master for 2 projects. DWO team includes 9 team members and the NATS team includes 6 team members

Conducting daily standups and weekly grooming session, Retrospectives, and Backlog Grooming sessions for projects to ensure projects are on track and to resolve issues and roadblocks.

Used JIRA to: Capture and track all stories, Business, Technical, and Testing requirements to be completed to determine Done status, Capture of time spent on research, development and testing, Defects captured during testing or production in ALM were linked to JIRA stories to track resolution, Capture of business sponsors required to approve the code for deployment, Created Kanban boards to allow business to update priority of tickets based on user need, Maintain development and testing and JIRA process flow documents.

Working with Business sponsors to finalize the App/Dev business requirements for applications

Working with federal employees to ensure project SDLC documentation is being completed according to standards

Working with QA and TCO testing teams completing end-to-end testing of App/Dev ensuring sufficient testing is completed to ensure successful deployments

Prepare weekly and ad-hoc status reporting

Charter (Beacon Hill Staffing), St. Louis, MO (Contractor)

Consultant Project Manager (7/17/2017–7/31/2018)

Environment: MS Project, MS Office, Visio, SharePoint, Waterfall

Leading projects to standardize the billing operating companies processes across 3 software companies using biller packages providing a simplified presentation of data and processes to Charter Spectrum employees for the installation and maintenance to Charter’s Internet, Voice, and TV customers.

Key Achievements:

Lead projects to standardize ICOMS and CSG processing codes to support the conversion to the Gateway platform

Worked with Business sponsors to finalize the requirements of standardization projects to meet business requirements

Worked with Business Billing Design, Billing Ops, and Security to ensuring the design of the standardized code met business requirements

Worked with QA and UAT testing teams completing end-to-end testing ensuring sufficient testing was completed to ensure successful deployments

Conducting weekly review sessions with Corporate Senior Management and Business Sponsors reviewing progress and discussing issues being encountered were resolved

Coordinated deployment teams consistent of Business staff, Billing Ops, Security and team staff to support deployments and warranty periods over all 3 operating companies

Ericsson (Technology Partners), St. Louis, MO (Contractor)

Consultant Project Manager (9/28/2015–2/6/2017)

Environment: MS Project, MS Office, Visio, SharePoint, Wiki, Waterfall, Agile

Responsible for management of Cloud telco datacenter standups to support ATT cloud offerings.

Key Achievements:

Worked with the ATT team to resolve installation/network issues for data center standups

Worked with ATT and Ericsson senior management to plan, prioritize and schedule cloud telco datacenters to be converted or built

Point of contact between the telco technical managers and datacenter support managers to ensure cloud data center had hardware installed and tested to meet Goldcode standard for cloud implementations

Interfaced with Technical Ops to resolve hardware issues during cloud software deployment for all data center stand-ups

Scheduled and managed the work plan for the deployment of cloud software. Resources were onsite, offsite and offshore. Provided coaching to the team to ensure all work was completed according to ATT standards.

Interfaced with the telco testing groups to resolve software loading issues to meet cloud datacenter timelines

Provided updates to ATT and Ericsson Senior management on daily and ad hoc status calls

Created, maintained, and distributed application contact lists to support the deployment and testing teams during cloud deployment issue resolutions

Worked with Agile Scrum teams to coordinate software on sprint timeline to coincide with code deployment

Used JIRA to: Capture and track all defect stories, Business and Testing requirements to be completed to determine Done status, Capture of time spent on research, development and testing, Defects captured during testing or production in ALM were linked to JIRA stories to track resolution, Created boards to allow ATT Management to track resolution of testing defects, Maintained repository of tickets to be downloaded to assist in resolving repeat ticket defects.

Reinsurance Group of America (Talentporte), St. Louis, MO (Contractor)

Senior Project Manager (4/6/2015–8/7/2015)

Environment: MS Project, MS Office, Visio, SharePoint, Agile

Responsible for coordination between business users and a Delivery Manager of Actuarial software releases. Management of project definition and scheduling of work to meet timelines as defined by Senior Management. Participated in leading Scrum sessions methodology sessions. Tracked Risk log for the releases and reported Risk status on project status reports. Facilitated tactical and strategic planning sessions to ensure all work supported Company goals

Key Achievements:

Worked with Senior Management on the definition of App/Dev quarterly projects

Was the point of contact between the business managers and users on the planning an completion of App/Dev releases

Facilitated business meetings to drive out tactical and strategic direction and planning to ensure compliance with corporate direction

Led Daily Scrum sessions, Retrospectives, Review meetings, and Showcase sessions and provided status updates to team and business management up to the VP..

Secured/organized team for projects and directed/coached team members through task definition, issues, and completion.

Wells Fargo Advisors (Apex Systems), St. Louis, MO (Contractor)

Project Manager/Release Manager (2/14/2014–4/3/2015)

Environment: MS Project, MS Office, Visio, Waterfall

Responsible for implementation of assigned Wells Fargo Advisors System projects. Projects include application development for the Regulatory Reform line of business. Management of projects included financial management, matrixes resource management, timeline management, and reporting to senior Systems management. Managed 1 very large project with 12 associated projects that were being designed, coded, tested, and implemented at the same time.

Key Achievements:

Followed the Wells Fargo Advisors PMO methodology for App/Dev project development

Implemented Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC) from the project conceptualization to product delivery and validation.

Secured/organized team for projects and directed/coached team members through task definition, issues and completion of App/Dev projects.

Provided coaching to the team to ensure all work was completed according to Wells and Regulatory compliance standards. Mentored PM on the use of the Wells PMO standards and provided PMs with project and process training on issues and risks that could affect their projects and completion of PMO deliverables.

Created and maintained the project plans/schedule as well as program schedule for all projects. This included the creating of the fully loaded MS Project workplans representing the programs/projects for the work being completed. The task were set up using predecessors/successors to allow what if scenarios and to easily incorporate the results of any accepted Change Requests.

Managed Reg Reform projects consisting that had approximately 30 matrixed resources including both onshore and offshore. Created and maintained the project schedule for all project. Was point of contact for all App/Dev projects

Implemented Software Development Lifecycle from the project conceptualization to product delivery and validation for all of the programs activities

Managed a package upgrade to track Financial Advisor electronic communications with customers. This project had both hardware and software requirements to be met. Project consisted of 25 technical and business staff. Project had a hard Regulatory date that was met.

Managed a large complex project to implement regulatory requirements and SOA modules to the New Account Opening and Account Maintenance processes for the Banking and Brokerage applications. During this project discovered 12 other projects were dependent on my project and all had to be deployed at the same time. All projects were implemented on the due date.

Coordinated the deployment of code from 8 project teams into a single release that was successfully released to Wells Fargo Wealth Advisors and Wells Fargo Bank.

Provided daily and recurring status to all team/management/stakeholders voice, email, meetings and distributed reporting

Developed MS Project plans and assisted with documented project estimations. This workplan was fully loaded and scheduled to allow project changed and what-if scenarios to be reviewed to decrease the time required by the project.

Managed the project budgeting for all resources charging time to the projects. Performed analysis of estimated budget to actuals reported and took steps to keep project at projected costs. Budget was discussed and weekly PMO status sessions.

State Farm (TEKSystems), Bloomington, IL (Contractor)

Scrum Master/Project Manager (11/20/2011-1/20/2014)

Environment: MS Project, MS Office, Visio, SharePoint, Waterfall, Agile

Responsible for implementation of assigned State Farm Systems App/Dev projects. Projects include application development, infrastructure, Enterprise Compliance and Ethics federal and state mandated projects, SAP configuration, Corporate Tax, and PCI Compliance projects. Management of projects included financial management, resource management, timeline management, and reporting to senior Systems management. Concurrently managed between 4 – 7 projects. Projects conducted using Waterfall or Agile/SCRUM techniques.

Key Achievements:

Scrum Master for 2.5 years on a large Agile/Scrum project (40 on-shore, off-shore and off site staff) to automate the federal tax processing for the corporation. This was an in-house developed project scheduled to run for 8 years. Staff included BAs, UI, JAVA, and COBOL developers, testers, Scrum Master, DBA/DAs, and business resources. Project included the segregation of required financial data from all State Farm companies to a new database allowing access by IRS officials.

Led Daily Standups, Sprint Reviews, Retrospectives, Demos and Sprint and Release Planning sessions.

Created and managed financial resources for App/Dev projects. Managing approximately $8 million of combined projects both years. Tracked actual to forecasted expenditures and took steps to bring projects in under budget.

Developed MS Project plans and assisted with documented project estimations. These workplans were fully loaded and scheduled to allow project changed and what-if scenarios to be reviewed to decrease the time required by the project.

Secured/organized team for projects and directed/coached team members through task definition, issues and completion. This workplan was fully loaded and scheduled to allow project changed and what-if scenarios to be reviewed to decrease the time required by the project.

Managing projects consisting of 8 to 35 resources. Created and maintained the project plans/schedule as well as project estimated for all projects. Main management point of contact with projects was with the Business and Systems analysts. Several projects required the management of all project resources.

Created and distributed status reporting to management to senior management. Reporting included weekly reporting and monthly status meeting as well as team and IT/Business manager meeting.

Managed vendor resource activity to ensure compliance with State Farm time lines. Weekly status meetings conducted with vendor management.

Implement Software Development Lifecycle from the project conceptualization to App/Dev product delivery and validation.

Managed projects utilizing off site and offshore development and testing organizations. Monitored their work and performance thru weekly status phone calls and status reporting.

Performed Release Manager Responsibilities for the rollout of code to the US and Canada. These App/Dev projects involved Developers, Testers, DBAs, Operations, and business teams.

Performed Earned Value Analysis on large scale, multi-year projects ensuring projects executed according to the financial plan

Managed an SAP project from requirements gathering thru application configuration for implementation. Managed both the internal Systems team as well as the vendor contracted to perform the implementation. Project included standing up 3 hardware configurations and the SAP modules required to meet requirements. Also included the customization of in-house applications to provide source data. Tracked the budget for internal staff as well as for vendor staff.

Simultaneously managed the implementation and Release of 2 regulatory projects:

oOne was a SAAS project to capture all email and chat communications of Financial Advisor staff. This required to setup of a complex, dual redundant network between 3 large data centers to the vendor location and a new application to capture identification data for company staff.

oA new application with required hardware to verify payments were not going to people on any Homeland Security listings for the US and Canada. Required scaling the hardware in a virtual environment to meet the processing window demands of State Farm.

oBoth projects were implemented before the required due date and under budget..

Managed an 8 month project that captured and created documentation to verify that State Farm’s hardware and infrastructure was PCI compliant. The project core tea worked with a Third Party Administrator to create and publish the final document. Managed the Infrastructure budget along with the PCI vendor forecast.

Maintained projects utilizing State Farm’s WIT and SPP development tools.

Covidien (KellyMitchell), St. Louis, Mo (Contractor)

Project Manager (2/14/2011-7/18/2011)

Environment: MS Project, MS Office, Visio, Waterfall

Responsible for the rollout of Oracle’s Primavera project management tool to the R&D organization of a pharmaceutical company. Managed the infrastructure, Oracle consultant engagement, project finances, project communications, and 4 corporate resources assigned to this $1m project.

Key Achievements:

Managed the implementation of the Primavera time capture application. This involved the hardware and Oracle database required as well the standing up the software and customizations to existing data feeds.

Managed the infrastructure, consultant, and corporate resources required to configure the infrastructure and development/production environments and oversaw the software installation and configuration.

Worked with Oracle managers to obtain resources to perform configuration and knowledge transfer sessions to corporate resources.

Managed the documentation of project requirements and produced project deliverables.

Implemented Software Development Lifecycle from the project conceptualization to product delivery and validation.

Led the planning of and execution of project training and rollout.

Secured/organized team for projects and directed/coached team members through task definition, issues and completion.

Developed and managed the master project schedule using MS Project and vendor contracts for budget and deliverables.

Created and distributed status reporting to IT management and to senior Business management. Reporting included weekly reporting and monthly status meeting as well as team and IT/Business manager meeting.

Utilized Access to capture and maintain vendor expense data to compare against vendor invoices.

IBM (Performance Resources), Bloomington, MN (Contractor)

Testing Manager (8/2010-11/2010)

Environment: MS Project, MS Office, Waterfall

Responsible for the management and planning for System testing for a large Medicare rollout for a large pharmaceutical customer. Managed 10 onshore and 12 offshore resources as well as pharmaceutical testing resources. Responsible for: the creation of test cases and test data; setup of the test environment; execution and tracing of system testing progress.

Key Achievements:

Identified the resource requirements to complete testing artifacts and test case design and documentation.

Worked with IBM onshore/offshore test coordination managers to obtain resources to complete the test case development, test data creation, and test case execution.

Oversaw the capture of system testing execution results and communication to all parties.

Led the planning of application regression testing.

Managed the schedule to ensure the testing was executed successfully.

Participated in the planning of client QA/UAT testing.

Walmart, St. Louis, Missouri

Customer Service Manager (12/2007-08/2010)

Responsible for providing customer service to company customers and resolving issue relating to purchased products and services.

Key Achievements:

Oversaw the training of new resources on the IT applications that were used to capture customer data, manage inventory, order products, and dispose of deleted items.

Oversaw IT technology usage and worked with IT infrastructure staff to resolve issues with the technologies and hardware.

Trained new customer service staff on company policies and proper techniques in the provision of customer service.

As a note, it was during this time that I prepared for and successfully passed the PMI-PMP certification exam.

Enterprise Rent-A-Car, St. Louis, Missouri

Established outstanding reputation for providing sound leadership and innovative solutions while advancing through positions of increased responsibility and authority.

Senior Manager, Application Development (3/16/1996-11/19/2007)

Environment: MS Project, MS Office, Visio, SharePoint, Wiki, Waterfall, Iterative

Served as Subject Management Expert (SME); managed legacy development/enhancement projects within the Risk Management Business area. Communicated with IS Management to identify and implement technical direction in alignment with business applications; actively participated in development and implementation of enhancements. Led change management life cycle; identified project scope and managed stakeholder expectations. Monitored project status; produced reports detailing project metrics, milestones, and timelines. Delivered comprehensive training sessions for both internal and external staff members on business functions and processes. Supervised technical team of 6; matrix managed 13-15 other technical resources.

Key Achievements:

Led new JAVA based development projects as part of major rewrite of legacy applications that spanned a 4-year period with an estimated $4M cost; instrumental in preparing documentation for conversion of legacy applications to newer technology (Unix/J2EE/Oracle).

Performed role of Portfolio Manager for all of the Risk Management applications areas for both US and European offices. All internal and external requests for application modifications were funneled thru my group to determine staffing, scope, and timing from inception thru project implementation.

Performed Release Manager Responsibilities for the rollout of code to the US, Britain, Ireland, and Germany. These projects involved Developers, Testers, DBAs, Operations, and business teams.

Headed departmental effort to document information privacy laws as part of PCI and PII Compliance regulations; oversaw documentation of highly secure data in all applications, files, and reporting; instituted application modifications to mask critical data during this 4-month, $200K project.

Devised and implemented process that successfully traced all production problems to root cause and corrected issues.

Utilized MS Project for all task level work to 4/40 Granularity

Implement Software Development Lifecycle from the project conceptualization to product delivery and validation.

Instituted several key initiatives and production processes that reduced production support activities form a high of 1-1.5 weeks per month to less than 4-hours per month.

Created disaster recovery documentation that ultimately became the standard template utilized by all development teams.

Performed post-implementation audits of projects identifying where activities went well and define improvements needed to be made

Utilized Access to track Issues/Change requests and prepare reports to the team/management.

Proactively monitored project progress and work collaboratively with team and customers in various forums (email, voice-mail, status meetings, one-on-ones, team meetings, steering committees) ensuring solution being developed solves the business problem, and keeping within scope, budget, and time line constraints.

Performed Earned Value Analysis on large scale, multi-year projects ensuring projects executed according to the financial plan

Interpreted, expanded and facilitated solutions for all work requests through customer, departmental, and external findings as identified in the PMO methodology

Though not responsible for financial budget I was responsible for completing all projects with the labor hours available to the department.

Created and distributed status reporting to IT management and to senior Business management. Reporting included weekly reporting and monthly status meeting as well as team and IT/Business manager meeting.

Production Support Manager (7/1998-3/2006)

Directed all aspects of departmental legacy applications including web enabled, packaged client/server, and custom/packaged AS/400. Provided production support and project management expertise during intra/inter- departmental projects for the Risk Management business area and met with departments and shared service areas to identify effects of change management in relation to technical infrastructure. Developed project plans, conducted business impact assessments, defined technical/functional requirements, and facilitated risk management activities. Established and maintained collaborative relationships with third party vendors; actively participated in vendor analysis and selection. Supervised 2-8 team members responsible for technology upgrades, system monitoring, and on-call support.

Key Achievements:

Spearheaded change management life cycle including capture, analysis, resolution, and implementation of change requests for legacy/COTS applications, ensuring optimal functionality and performance.

Performed the role of Program/Project Manager for all of the Risk Management applications areas. All internal and external requests for application modifications were funneled thru my group to determine staffing, scope, and timing from inception thru project implementation.

Led planning sessions focused on defining scope, developing workflow, determining project deliverables, and conducting risk analysis; efforts facilitated ability to consistently achieve all project milestones.

Managed Proof of Concept (POC) projects to select technologies and development approaches.

Partnered with the user community to understand SLAs and business criticality to ensure that all outages are resolved in a expedient manner thru the appropriate use of Systems resources. Set and managed to response goals.

Championed development and update of FTP processes in legacy applications, which successfully standardized production operations.

Championed process to drive all production outages to root cause to prevent further occurrences.

Managed numerous large-scale engagements including enhancement and software rollouts for legacy and COTS applications, and legacy to n-tier application conversions utilizing Oracle and J2EE.

Partnered with Crystal Consultants in order to implement recommended enhancements that substantially improved performance of Crystal application.

Managed the deployment and upgrades for a package capturing and maintaining data needed to process and resolve claims and legal actions for the company. This package had to be deployed on specific hardware/software versions required for it to run. Had migrate package and interfaces to 3 hardware platforms during the time it was in use.

Managed the quarterly release of new functionality and bug fix releases into production on both the AS/400 and Unix/Java/Oracle environments.

Managed all levels of support to application customers on a 24x7 basis.

I was responsible for 1099 reporting at Enterprise. My team was responsible for the capture, consolidation, and creation of 1099s/IRS file uploaded to the IRS website. We created about 4500 1099s for Enterprise and 50 1099s for the Crawford group, the owner of Enterprise.

Utilized Access for the consolidation and data manipulation of 1099 data from 3 applications. The data was then exported to a 3rd part 1099 reporting program.

Project Management Manager (3/1996-7/1998)

Provided project management expertise, technical training, and support 9-month pilot projects during project and methodology rollouts; oversaw all aspects of Navigator Software Development Life cycle (SDLC) methodology. Devised plans for Project Management Office (PMO) to effectively train teams on new methodology. Collaborated with diverse resources in order to influence/change the IS and Business mindset regarding the use of technology. Facilitated project manager risk and issue mitigation meetings. Recruited and trained project managers to be distributed throughout organization; presented project management courses to new and existing project managers.

Key Achievements:

Streamlined project management operations by developing and implementing standardized project management best practices and procedures.

Created standard templates for project management, which optimized rollouts; templates included Full Life cycle of Projects, Project Planning, Issue Management, Change Management, Resource Allocation, Stakeholder Signoff, and Communication Guidelines.

Led development of workflow structures, identification of project deliverables/milestones, and performance of risk analysis.

Education and Credentials

Bachelor of Arts in Liberal Arts – Eastern Illinois University, Charleston, IL

Associate in Applied Sciences, Information Systems – Lake Land College, Mattoon, IL

Professional Development

Microsoft Project ~ Rational Unified Process ~ Project Management

Navigator Development Methodology ~ Organization Change Management

Developing Effective Business Requirements ~ Developing Requirements with Use Cases

Rational Unified Process ~ Managing Iterative

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