James Smothers

IT Program Director

ad30df@r.postjobfree.com - 240-***-****

Qualifications Summary

IT Program Director with strengths to ingratiate ‘DevOps’ foundational practices, program management direction and project control, within an Enterprise Network Environment. Hands-on experience with Windows server configurations, VoIP methodologies, Cisco Unified Communications Manager (CUCM), network architecture, disaster recovery solutions and routing protocols (MPLS, OSPF IGRP, etc.). Strong in the areas of analytical projections, predictive modeling, organizational structuring and operational efficiency procedures.

Interface with clients to determine requirements in the development and implementation of solutions and architecture (Network Architecture, Google Platforms, Cost Benefit Analysis, Telematics, Storage solutions, Load Balancing), operational maintenance and support, and management requirements. I am also proficient in ALM’s major components. (Quality Center, Performance Center, and Unified Functional Testing - UFT) Experienced in project scope and approach documents, strategic capital planning, security requirements/controls, facilitating cost estimates, creating communication plans, process reengineering, data warehouse support, managing resource development, and managing project communications within a matrix environment, following an Agile management process (Scrum & SAFe). Strong manager in technology infrastructure(s), data modeling, data warehousing, web services, SLA/contract negotiation, POS management, risk management, information management and network management systems, with a solid background in problem management resolution through expeditious Program/Project Analysis, technical acumen and diligent follow-up. Planned and coordinated the implementation of cutting-edge Information Technology systems and Infrastructure design.

Work History

Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), Washington, DC – IT Program Director 5/2019 – Present

Provided value-added services to C-level management in producing project scope and approach documents, cyber security and strategic planning material(s), facilitating cost efficiencies’, creating communication plans within a matrix environment, enforce change management policies, manage resource development, and manage project communications between unit leaders and the vendor community (IBM, HP, Cisco, Microsoft, CommVault, Avaya, Verizon, etc.) .

Responsible for overseeing MS Teams, overall project budget, submitting monthly reports and invoices, and providing quality control of technical deliverables (LIBOR, NaaS & PaaS), production rollouts, managing staff, delegating internal work assignments, and coordinates financial, acquisition of new software, contractual understanding of SOW, technical and administrative issues, with the agencies Program Manager, Contracting Officer’s Representative (COR), and Contracting Officer (CO) as required.

I’ve initiated CPM (corporate performance management) strategies’, to track individual and project performance relative to goals and project compliance, in addition to coordinated and provided resolution of key decisions, including risk mitigation and issue resolution that mitigated risk to all projects assigned for me to facilitate.

Upgraded the Ethernet wired computer networking technologies commonly used in local area networks (LAN), metropolitan area networks (MAN) and wide area networks (WAN).

Provided the management direction on a new development project concept, infrastructure design, video teleconferencing, utilizing wireless and cutting-edge technologies.

Responsible for the oversight and installation of ‘Mandiant Threat Intelligence’ for web-based content and applications.

Demonstrates overall understanding of the privacy, group and security policies, of the financial industry.

Responsible for the oversight, monitoring and analysis reporting, of quality assurance, deliverables, and recommendations.

Responsible for Contractor team leadership and supervision, overall project definition, organizational rollout initiatives, and direction of short and long-range plans and milestones. This includes the responsibility for formulating, guiding, and directing the technical and policy approach; and definition and negotiation with activity and agency personnel for necessary resources, supporting programming and technical initiatives.

Provide direction and strategic oversight for large complex projects in multiple areas with broad enterprise impact. (ie: data warehouse operations, data center migration efforts, dataflow automation, blockchain technologies, stress testing methodologies, software development, security architecture and models, VMWare cloud-based upgrade, etc.)

Manage IT incidents, processes, and incidents in cloud-based solutions. Define CIs with Relationships.

Establishes and manages the structural project plan, critical path and dependency analysis, resource allocation, asset management, baseline management, status monitoring, and related project management activities, and controls project milestones, schedule management, budgets and costs.

Managed the CMDB process, of keeping track of IT assets and configurations.

Managed digital product and technology initiatives across agile engineering teams, successful leading transformation of challenging business initiatives into sustainable, yet innovative technology solutions.

Utilized AR/VR to obtain information and content, which assisted with processing activities.

Manage data center migration and digital transformation, working with technical operations and engineering teams to migrate applications to data center(s) across the US-banking infrastructure (physical-to-virtual).

Managed the project life-cycle, utilizing Workday professional services automation, to bring planning in a single-system for insight and a greater functionality.

Managed scope and program customization (template management, predictive analytics and workflow coding)

Implement new processes/functions on routers and switches (Arista), including but not limited to QoS, multicasting, NTP, VLAN configurations, content networking, and global load balancing.

Monitored the basic rate of interest used in lending, between banks on the London interbank market.

Managed the implementation of ‘MS365’, ‘Google Cloud Platform’ (GCP) & ‘ServiceNow’ as an ITSM tool (GRC/CSM), which was utilized in providing governance and business continuity within a multi-tenant environment.

Tableau was used to govern data, in a secure self-service environment.

Responsible for assisting with production of and providing quality control for all IT related deliverables.

Envision and design end to end programme service delivery road map for complex transformational engagements. Enabling implementation of capabilities to deliver solutions and business cases.

Lead cross-functional (operations, transition, process transformation, telematics, business process management, and solution development) Micro-Soft and Operational teams in identifying and effectively capturing new service opportunities.

Conduct regular project reviews and implement corrective actions. Managing point of contact within OCC-ITS for project related issues.

Ensure projects are monitored and reported against customer expectations, timelines, financial and quality targets.

Monitor pre-implementation phase and take appropriate actions to meet the timeline and business case expectations, in addition to the provision of ‘Salesforce’ as a CRM tool

OCC-ITS respondent and customer champion for organizational change management during the lifecycle of project(s).

Proficient to effectively lead integrated complex financial programmes & transformation projects.

Experienced in developing and managing performance measurement tools such as balanced scorecards, Service Level Agreement (SLA) reports and operational performance dashboard.

Provided the Merger & Acquisition Strategy to achieve specific goals to attain rapid growth in a competitive market, market value of corporate stock, the financial health of the institutions, and new opportunities that can arise along with market conditions.

Responsible in providing governance and enable effective escalation management.

Actively create domain-led process framework and define best in class operational parameters and engage with operations teams to implement the framework.

US Geological Survey (USGS), Reston, VA - Program Manager 4/2016 – 3/2019

Manage day-to-day operational aspects of six (6) ‘Task Order Groups’ (Systems Administration, Telecommunications, Applications Development, Systems Engineering, Oracle Support, .Net-SharePoint Development) groups, assignments and overall scope, for data-center warehousing and operational support, of the USGS-OEI division, supporting over 52,000 global user community.

Managed ‘SAP ERP’ deliverables by project analytics, contractual understanding of SOW and enforce project/problem management standards, before passing on to USGS SLT members, stakeholders and critical partners.

Managed the implementation of Google Cloud Platform to include G Suite, in conjunction with USGS Operations Management team.

I have provided strategic foresight, conceptual designs, service-oriented architecture, portfolio management, business process mapping and data-modeling templates, to support object-oriented business models, with a focus on Network Architecture, Cloud Automation (vSphere 6.0/6.5) and the Public Cloud (AWS/Azure).

Provided asset management direction on development projects, infrastructure projects to include: development and management of work plans, define application-programming interface (API) project deliverables, manage the expectation of stakeholders and critical partners, organize and address project requirements, manage relationships, ingratiated ITILv4 policies & principles, the provision of ‘Salesforce’ as a CRM tool, specifically with ‘Salesforce DX, Salesforce AppExchange and Salesforce Knowledge Sidebar’, utilized in providing governance and business continuity within a multi-tenant environment.

Provided the direction and oversight to assure operational efficiency, data warehousing operations, IV&V, security solutions, management tools and application development [TFS, IPDS, APEX, RMAN, Workday, SharePoint, .Net, FX Trading, Polarion, Active Manager, WorkForce, WorkShop, WEB services, OneSource, ServiceNow, SCCM, JAVA, MaaS360/POS, SQL Domain Administration, Apache NoSQL, IEM/BigFix, PaaS, OBIS, AWS, VMware 6.5, VDP, eAD, ESXi, Confluence, JIRA, etc.]

Introduced Cisco Unified Communications as a portal to support an interactive medium with streaming video capabilities and PTP communications.

Managed operational productivity and priority, utilizing ‘stack rank’ principles.

Introduced a new structure in predictive modeling (predictive data-analytics), in reporting key performance (KPI) status on tasks, assignments and projects. As a required deliverable, the proposed ‘DashBoard’ [customizing JIRA and Confluence], offered high visibility, simplified this deliverable, and offered concise information in tracking tasks, assignments, and projects dynamically (real-time) to USGS SLT members, stakeholders and critical partners.

Oversee the analysis, design, execution, and support of all assigned projects, including resource planning, team selection, performance appraisals, and budgets.

Managed the implementation of ‘ServiceNow’ as an ITSM tool (GRC/CSM), which was utilized in providing governance and business continuity within a multi-tenant environment.

Implemented Planview Portfolio (Planview Enterprise One) to promote strategic execution by integrating business and technology planning, and delivering services and customer experiences to achieve business performance.

Prepared engagement reviews and quality assurance procedures. Applied Agile Scrum and SAFe methodologies, as a principle of managing software development projects and applied Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) policies and procedures, which minimized exposure of risk on all ‘Task Order’ projects.

Upgraded the Ethernet wired computer networking technologies commonly used in local area networks (LAN), metropolitan area networks (MAN) and wide area networks (WAN).

Ensure project documents are complete, current, and stored appropriately (knowledge base).

Provided the management direction for COTS Applications, Alteryx/Tableau analytics for the Personalization and customization of USGS workforce, for the improvement of customer satisfaction, departmental analysis, RDBMS visualization, storage and website metrics.

Used Tableau as an intuitive drag and drop interface, to make business decisions faster.

Enforce organizational change management/rollout/group policies, manage resource development, acquisition of new software, and manage project communication between unit leaders and the vendor community (IBM, HP, Cisco, Microsoft, VMWare, CommVault, Avaya, Verizon, etc.).

Defined, plan, and implement goals and milestones associated with OEI’s network architecture, disaster recovery solutions, MS-365, Oracle & .Net application development and operational solutions.

Managed the CMDB process, of keeping track of IT assets and configurations.

Managed IT incidents, processes, and incidents in cloud-based solutions.

Provided risk management assessments within the DevOps environment (as a process of identifying potential hazards and analyzing methods of response), and provisioned Radio Frequency ID & Cybersecurity management practices, as the foundation to identify key security concepts, controls, and definitions.

Managed the application teams, in the development of Oracle & CMS web-based projects (APEX / Workday / IPDS / Telematics) for USGS financial & science divisions.

Applied SOX auditing and financial regulation principles, in support of USGS Finance division.

Enforce the usage of standardized project/problem management methodologies, to guide all projects and assignments in a consistent, organized, and reliable manner.

Initiated CPM (corporate performance management) strategies’, to track individual and project performance relative to goals and project compliance.

Monitored the (Azure) Network-Traffic-Rules element service definition(s), for restrictions to specified internal endpoints.

Provided the direction and use of the Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocol v1.2, to protect data when traveling between Azure Cloud Services and client base. Which provided authentication, message privacy, and integrity (enabling detection of message tampering, interception, and forgery), interoperability, algorithm flexibility, and ease of deployment and use.

Provide direction and strategic oversight for large complex projects in multiple areas with broad enterprise impact. (ie: data warehouse operations, data center migration efforts, dataflow automation, software development, security architecture and models, VMWare cloud-based upgrade, etc.)

Lead discovery projects, project initiation meetings, cooperative project/capacity planning and deployment.

Responsible for driving complex, high priority, and phases [sprints] of larger initiatives – Data Warehouse support [ETL Tools – ie; Share Gate, CMS initiatives and SQL Integration] and support API interaction.

Conduct Program Manager Review (PMR) sessions, with senior leadership management.

Estimate project costs, develop management, schedule management and identify project resources.

Managed the migration effort on Windows 8 -to- Windows 10 (PCMover Enterprise).

Manage data center migration and digital transformation, working with technical operations and engineering teams to migrate USGS applications to data center(s) across the USA (physical-to-virtual).

AT&T, Oakton, VA - Sr. Program Manager 12/2014 – 4/2016

Managing Consultant on the Freddie Mac ‘UCaaS’ (VoIP) transformation rollout initiative, as a representative of the AT&T consulting support team.

Define appropriate artifacts for project in accordance with project governance, pre-sales analysis and SDLC standards.

Define and track delivery milestones for over 18,000 FM user components, utilizing Scrum principles for the installation team to work as a unit while developing, maintaining, and reporting on integrated infrastructure components of 18 cities across the USA, supporting a 32,000-user community.

Initiated Primavera 6 (PPM) & CPM strategies in prioritizing, capital planning, managing, and executing project performance relative to goals and strategies.

Represent the internal and external delivery teams in various project governance and inter-department forums; briefing key stakeholders on program status, risks and issues, transformation progress (servers, storage, user activity/acceptance) and network compliance.

Propose recommendations and adjustments to project schedule, scope and approach throughout the life of the program.

Coordinate and drive resolution of key decisions, including risk mitigation and issue resolution.

Coordinate and oversee the OCM process, to include software compliance and approvals of FM business units.

Ensure consistency of processes across all work-streams within the program.

Facilitate design sessions and other meetings required to keep the project on pace and within budget.

Track / Follow through on issues – Manage work effort and project progress, utilizing ‘Kanban’ on assigned projects to completion (12 UCM technical engineers).

Manage AT&T UCaaS technical/engineering resources and stakeholder expectations, during project phases. (MPP, WBS, UAT)

Wells Fargo Bank, Charlotte, NC (Remote) - Infrastructure Architect / Program Manager 10/2012 - 12/2014

Implement Quality Gates and Quality Checkpoints as part of the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC), ITILv3 best practices for IT Service Management and Security Architecture and SaaS models (Citrix/Cisco), in addition to recommending SAP-ERP solutions designed to provide business support functionality with peak efficiency, for Wells Fargo global infrastructures trading divisions.

Performed the oversight and ALM administration (troubleshooting server operations, and maintenance configuration)

Performed scope and pre-sales customization (template management, predictive analytics and workflow coding)

Responsibilities included overall project planning, IV&V, governance, vendor feasibility studies, asset management and network architecture of SIP trunking methodologies, for Wells Fargo trading floor divisions (Forex, FX Trading, Commodities, LIBOR, Municipal, Bond) throughout the US and Western Europe, and supported trade floor business units and service desk/operational divisions. LIBOR was used as a reference rate for many financial instruments, in both financial markets and commercial fields.

Provided the SCTS group with the implementation, group policies, execution, management, and administration of Remedy ITSM, CRM, Google Cloud, Oracle, Service-Now, Polarion, SaaS, Quality Assurance and Agile (SAFe) best practices.

Provided the technical direction to facilitate Well Fargo’s HA (High Availability) / FT (Fault Tolerant) Infrastructure(s), in support of the Dodd Frank mandates’.

Managed the CMDB process, of keeping track of IT assets and configurations.

Managed IT incidents, processes, and incidents in cloud-based solutions, for the national environment.

Reviewed current policies, standards, plans, processes, capital/capacity planning, rollout procedures, and templates; making modifications were warranted and managing the sustainment of processes, procedures, templates, etc.

Implemented Clarity PPM features and control methodologies, in Wells Fargo SDLC projects and operational environments.

Responsible for driving complex, high priority projects and component phases of larger initiatives – Data Warehouse support [ETL Tools – ie; Data Integrator, MS Exchange, Sybase, CMS initiatives, SQL Integration, CMDB, DB2, and Integration Studio] and support API interaction.

Manage and coordinate cross-functional performance teams and responsible for high profile projects from initiation to delivery.

Manage project budget, which includes understanding and validating estimates, cost variance tracking, and project resources, effectively.

Provide clear and concise communication both written and verbal to stakeholders, business units and assigned technical resources, in support of infrastructure architecture upgrades, disaster recovery solutions.

Dept. of Information Technology & Telecommunications (DoITT) New York, NY – Sr. Program Manager 5/2012 – 9/2012

Responsibilities where to execute technical discovery, design, deployment, and coordinate activities supporting 64 ‘NYC Agency’ technology groups, to implement critical projects mandated by NYC Mayor’s Office and DoITT initiatives.

Knowledge and experience with PC Administration (troubleshooting performance/stress tests, hardware resources management etc.)

Managed the documentation of technical requirements and architecture designs, data warehousing support, provide deployment and problem resolution, and participate in all technical aspects of architectural designs, infrastructure builds, testing methods, deployment and operational transition (storage solutions & load balancing recommendations) to several NYC agencies.

Effectively communicated project governance, security, asset management practices and SDLC processes to assigned NYC agencies infrastructure teams, whereby providing infrastructure planning material, Visio documentation, and architecture optimization guidelines.

Provided technical guidance concerning Cisco Nexus 1000v (virtual switch’s), to solve network fiber management and visibility issues within the DoITT virtual/cloud environments.

Provided the management structure for Google Cloud and Oracle support updates, to the Department of Finance.

Interfaced and assisted assigned agencies, with network re-engineering processes.

Interfaced with other DoITT teams to ensure governance of network changes, ingratiated Clarity as an incident/resource management tool.

Implement new processes/functions on routers and switches as required, including but not limited to QoS, multicasting, NTP, VLAN configurations, content networking, and global load balancing.

Reviewed and evaluated current and future IP design issues (IPv4, IPv6 and MPLS) to maintain network integrity, business intelligence, scalability and operational efficiencies. Instrumental in ensuring client needs are met and exceeded, using industry-recognized “best practices”.

Met with vendors and directly involved in evaluating and recommending vendor selections, and rollout procedures.

Provided the direction and implementation of SaaS & UCaaS (Cisco Unified Communication) products, Call Manager 8.6, Unity and Unity connection, as well as managed Unified Communication production on Cisco UCS server platform in VMware environment(s).

Coordinated multiple teams on cabling, routing & switching, load-balancing, virtualization and SAN for data center design configuration/troubleshooting, and Riverbed WAN optimization product design, configuration and troubleshooting.

Reviewed all configuration templates and complex ‘Method of Procedure’ documents (MoP) prior to implementation, to minimize risk of potential impacts to the network environment and related services (MS Project Server).

Research the availability of new tools and technologies and their integration, to support the DoITT environment utilizing ITILv3 and Agile (Scrum) principles, to streamline operations and ensure timely deployment of network changes, with the goal of reducing man hours and minimizing human error.

Provided networking expertise to internal technical groups, including input and recommendations for the integration of current and future technologies (Remedy 9 ITSM).

Documented network elements and devices that are part of the enterprise infrastructure and develop operational run books, managed project plan/schedule via MS Project Server, and provided detailed network diagrams on SharePoint.

Participated in program activities within an established project methodology, including status reporting and strategic planning.

Provided technical expertise and performed tasks for all related infrastructure projects, including data-center migration, call-center migration (311-611-911), Helpdesk governance, business continuity and disaster recovery, in addition to implementing CMS & CRM solutions in a multi-tenant environment.

Freddie Mac, McLean, VA - Sr. Technical Program Manager 5/2011 – 4/2012

Managed SDLC projects through effective communication, change management, budget control, and overall business understanding of project needs utilizing Agile / Scrum methodologies.

Support the management and planning of efforts associated with infrastructure projects to include: development and management of work plans, define and complete project deliverables, manage the expectations of business units, stakeholders and critical partners, organize and address project requirements, managed relationships, integration and data migration efforts, managed OCM processes in a matrix environment, managed several TS resource teams in delivery of commitments, and communicated tasks and activities to the TS-PMO integration team, utilizing MS Project Server.

Actively support PMO team efforts, to include project plans, scope management, budget/resource management, incident management, asset management, time management (activities, scheduling and task planning), CRM tools, Planview 10.2, Clarity v13.2 functionalities, QoS principles, Remedy ITSM, ITILv3 methodologies, risk mitigation, procurement, stress testing methods, user training, program / project delivery, transition, maintenance and support management.

Reported project progress (MS Project Server), issues, risks, through weekly status reporting to the business aligned PMO and stakeholders.

Lend support to various business and technology teams during project implementation, to ensure solid, scalable, and robust solutions.

Experience in the use of modeling techniques - scenario modeling, predictive modeling, prototyping, benchmarking, and performance modeling to describe problematic space.

Extensive experience in architecting large scale systems implementation and understanding the key technical aspects of software development and deployment process.

Communicate effectively in both verbal (i.e., day-to-day discussions, team meetings) and written form (status reports, change requests), as well as being clear and concise in all communications.

Accurately assess the risks/issues associated with each project and systematically manage and report on project risks/issues.

Conduct reviews of deliverables and attest on validity of SOX documentation.

Ensure solutions meet all infrastructure requirements such as security, performance, support and scalability.

MPLS used via multiple platforms, within the FM environment.

Ensure that sound practices are taking place. Manage the replacement of old processes with current SDLC / AMCP / VMware methodologies where feasible, and articulated cost saving efficiencies.

Effectively manage multiple priorities within the Technical Services matrix environment, to implement complex solutions to Freddie Mac business environments.

Food and Drug Administration Rockville, MD - Technical Project Manager 1/2010 – 5/2011

Project Manager of an enterprise multi-tiered network/ change management system, for the F.D.A. - OIM Division.

Manage and implement solution(s) to track IT Asset(s) throughout its life cycle from Procurement to Retirement.

Manage the complete software development lifecycle-requirements/analysis, development, implementation, data migration, testing and documentation, as part of the COTS Applications Management team.

Manage the design and implementation of applications and modules including Inventory, Configuration Management, Change Management, Service Catalog, Business Process Documentation and Incident Management Modules.

Manage the maintenance, customizations, enhancements and testing of the operational environments (MS Project Server).

Chair Change Control Board (CCB) meetings, driving the operation and maintenance of critical components’.

Manage the operational environment consisting of HP Service Center Inventory and Configuration Module (ICM), Change Management, Service Catalog, Business Process Mapping, Work Breakdown Structure and Incident Management Modules.

Managed Oracle 10g database administration, in preparation for data migration to new data center.

Managed Oracle database server provisioning, for IT Call Center migration support.

Manage the documentation of operational procedures and maintenance activities associated with HP Service Center/Manager customizations and updated MS Project Server dashboard(s).

Manage design documentation to reflect changes needed to the operational environment to meet requirements.

Defining architectural frameworks large System Integrators as well as SaaS and COTS solutions, particularly in the CRM, PLM, ERP, Financials and Supply Chain.

Continually review existing software environment and provide recommendations for minor or major application software upgrades that may be needed to satisfy agency and/or customer requirements.

Manage necessary software patches or fixes and reviewed data migration plans (to include backout strategy), prior to software application changes and reimplementation to a higher software version.

Manage and review User Acceptance Test (UAT) procedures for changes to operating environments.

MPLS utilized as a management configuration tool, for the provisioning of our associated agency subscribers and critical partners.

Meet with administrators responsible for the operation and maintenance of discovery and

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