Sr Project Manager

PRANAV PATEL

647-***-**** **********@*****.*** Pickering, ON

SR. PROJECT MANAGER

PROGRAM MANAGEMENT BUSINESS TRANSFORMATION APPLICATION MODERNIZATION NETWORK INFRASTRUCTURE UPGRADES

Professional Profile

Highly skilled and accomplished Project Manager with 15+ years of experience in the industry

A customer focused and innovative IT (Application or Infrastructure) and Business Project or Program Management professional with 15+ years of experience for major Industry leading enterprises

Thorough experience in managing programs or projects from requirement gathering, preparing project charter, defining scope, budgeting (CAPEX or OPEX), risk management, establishing project control processes, business stake holder engagement at all levels of organization, reporting, monitoring project consultants and effective vendors’ involvement

Highly organized, expert planner and strategist who can lead/mentor or work within various disciplinary teams to bring high quality outcomes for critical business initiatives

Diverse professional experience with some of the Industry leading Enterprises in Financial, Service, Retail, Vendor

Strong Project Management/Agile Coaching skills to deliver projects/iterations with high quality and precision

Sound technical background and skills to be able to quickly grasp technological needs to help manage complex technical projects more efficiently

Known for approachable influencing personality with good communication, analytical, research and relationship building skills to work collaboratively with multi functional teams

Works collaboratively with technical and functional teams as well as middle management and executive leadership including CIOs or VPs

Professional Qualifications

Government Clearance Certificate

Reliability Status

Secret Level - II

Project Management/Agile Certifications

PMP - Certified Project Management Professional

SAFe 6.0 - Certified Agilist

SAFe 6.0 - Certified Scrum Master

CSM - Certified Scrum Master/Agile Practitioner

CSPO - Certified Scrum Product Owner

Technology Certifications

CCIE x3 - Cisco Certified Internetwork Expert (RS, Voice, DC)

F5-PCL - F5 Certified Product Consultant

JNCIP - Juniper Network Certified Internet Professional (Security)

3RP - Alcatel-Lucent Certified Triple Play Routing Professional

MCSE - Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer

Core Competencies

Project Management Competences - Requirement gathering, Managing scope, Scheduling activities/milestones and their timely execution, Budgeting, Risk management, Establishing project control processes, Stake holder engagement, Reporting, Monitoring project consultants and vendors

Scrum Ceremonies/Methodologies - Sprint Planning, Daily Stand-ups, Sprint Iterations, Spring Review, Sprint Retrospective

Agile mindset like collaboration, support, simplicity, customer satisfaction, adjust and support

Advanced understanding and working knowledge of project/iteration managements tools; such as JIRA, ServiceNow, Clarity, KANBAN, Microsoft Project, Microsoft Office products such as Excel-WORD-Powerpoint

Detailed understanding and knowledge of different industries and technologies such as SaaS (Software as a service), IaaS

(Infrastructure as a service), PaaS (Product as a service) and traditional in-house infrastructure

Multiyear experience in Planning, Designing, Implementing of different industry leading technologies such as Cisco, Juniper, Checkpoint, F5, Microsoft, AWS, Azure

Proven track record of leveraging disciplined project management skills, approachable influencing nature by practicing get-it done mentality in bringing high quality outcomes for critical business initiatives Professional Experience

Sr Technology Project Manager

Bank of Montreal (BMO) June 2016 – Present

Toronto, Ontario

Followed advance agile/waterfall/hybrid agile project management methodologies to manage multiple branch technology initiatives such as Customer Connect application transformation to Win 10, EOL Cash Recycling Unit(CRU) refresh, IBM to ServiceNow migration

Worked closely with program executives, branch business teams, server/desktop engineering, development, tech leads, QA, performance, environment/release management, information security and operational readiness to achieve quality planning and execution

Planned rigorous monitoring to identify gaps by analyzing streams, risks, issues and action items so they are identified and addressed in early stage. Also Aligning goals with executives during planning, execution, monitoring and style of progress

Followed PDLC to identify project artifacts at different stages/gates, building detailed Microsoft Project plan, managing budget and tracking financials in Clarity, having bi-weekly/weekly review with leadership including CTO or CIO

Managed a major network infrastructure transformation/currency program to refresh/migrate end of support life data center network switches, routers, servers, firewalls and load balancers impacting multiple line of businesses. Also, successfully managed other initiatives to refresh BMO client facing desktops/laptops, Oracle DB version upgrades, OS upgrades, AWS Cloud application migration, Microsoft Windows 10 and Office 365 Refresh

Worked closely with stakeholders, sponsors, PMO office in preparing project plan, charters and end to end execution of project deliverables

Published weekly reports to steering committee and key stake holders through CLARITY which include project status/detailed schedule, tasks, milestones, cost, forecast, risks and issues

Negotiated project deliverables/schedule for change windows with change management board, cross-functional departments and technical resources across the entire organization using ServiceNow and Remedy

Managed technical resources to successfully plan migrations resulting in minimal business impact and increased customer satisfaction

Built project timelines, tasks and milestones with engineers and deployment team using waterfall or agile methodologies enabling successful planning for infrastructure refreshes, software deployments, team management and finally identifying risks or issues

Consulted with management to review project proposals and determine goals, time frame, funding limitations procedures to accomplish project staffing requirements and allotment of resources Major Projects

Currency & Capacity Refresh – Scope of work is to refresh 400+ end of support life Cisco/Nortel switches, routers, tape data backup systems, Alteon load balancers flagged by regulatory and compliance team with a budget of $9.2M

- Successfully met the assured timelines to deliver project on-time by achieving high precision and quality

- Aligned multi-disciplinary resources from different teams to refresh the required equipment, budgeting and forecasting of the committed dollars and hardware procurement, identifying and managing the possible risks, presenting project status to steering committee and weekly reporting.

- Worked with different bank portfolios such as Channels, Capital Markets, Wealth Management and Finance.

Currency Firewall Refresh – High level scope is to refresh 70+ Juniper SRX/SSG Firewalls across world with the yearly budget of $3.5M

- Successfully aligned solution, engineering, service management teams to conduct different POCs to finalize solutions; prepared charter, engaged stakeholders and planned project timeline and manage challenges/risks/issues, steering committee meetings/PMO reporting

HUB Application and Database Upgrade – Project was targeted to upgrade oracle database from v11.x to 12c and modify existing HUB application for compatibility

- Incorporated some of the scrum agile methodologies to modify code and helped them to debug inside PyCharm, work in parallel with DBA in creating new schemas and databases to successfully migrated DB

Customer Connect Application Modernization is multiyear program to complete .Net 6 Migration, Upgrade 100+ Soap Web Service proxy changes, standardize data types, Remove DB dependency, User Interface (UI) Re-skinning

- Lead the project as a program manager where I worked closely with different applications Release Managers to manage all those streams E2E from development to QA (multiple cycles), regression, performance, UAT and finally plan the staggered rollout over multiple releases

- Lead 30+dev resources, 100+ QA, tech leads, project manager, PCO, performance, business, engineering and many other ad-hoc resources to achieve many successful releases

- Mentored junior project managers and team members, providing guidance and support to foster professional growth and development

Project Manager

Nokia (Formerly Alcatel-Lucent) Jan 2014 – May 2016 Toronto, Ontario

Managed projects from initiation, defined scope and planned deliverables, execute and monitor activities within the matrix organization and deliver quality using different PMI standards and techniques

Successfully managed core network changes for Verizon Design solutions for the Ethernet backhaul of various wireless technologies such as CDMA, EVDO and LTE

Performed risk analysis on major programs such as establishing super data centers and presented them inside steering committee which mainly involved business, product marketing, network operations, finance and engineering teams to understand overall progress as well as financial performance based on actual plan. Also identified mitigation strategies to deal with those risks and meet project deadlines within the provided timeframe

Handled multiyear projects budgeted from $1M to $10M along with the labor and HW forecast and vendor SOW

Utilized resource planning portal (RPP), CLARITY for project tracking and SharePoint to generate daily, weekly and ad hoc reporting

Provided monthly project metrics showing resource capacity versus project demand, and performance metrics

Worked closely with other project managers and stakeholders to assure compliance with best practice project disciplines, monitoring their effectiveness, mentoring and instituting quality systems

Worked on Process Improvement initiative to prepare a framework for the configuration policy templates in HPNA to remediate all known and identified compliance gaps based on the PCI – DSS standards Major Projects

Verizon Ethernet Backhaul Modernization - (Yearly Budget of $1M)

- Successfully aligned sales, solution engineering, Level-2 deployment teams to conduct different POCs in Verizon infrastructure to finalize solutions Verizon Design solutions for the Ethernet backhaul of various wireless technologies such as CDMA, EVDO and LTE

- prepared charter, engaged stakeholders and planned project timeline and manage challenges/risks/issues, steering committee meetings/PMO reporting

Security Vulnerability patch and refresh - (Budget of $1.4M)

- Gathered requirements, worked closely with Solution Designers to prepare a Project Plan; shared and approved with the stakeholders

- Successfully implemented patching by working with Level-2 Deployment Team within the timelines

IP Repository Monitoring Tool Upgrade – (Budget of $0.5M)

- Worked with the vendor management team to conduct POCs to finalize the solution with Solution Engineering

- Worked closely with the Engineering and Deploy Teams to help migrated old IP repository tool with new solution Sr. Network Architect

Nokia (Formerly Alcatel-Lucent) Oct 2012 – Dec 2013 Toronto, Ontario

Produced network solutions, designs, recommendations and market integration planning packages (MIPPs) as a part Verizon Professional Services team

Developed and produce high level design (HLD) and/or low level design (LLD) for planning and engineering of capacity, migration, currency within the Verizon’s managed datacenters

Managed Verizon Design solutions for the Ethernet backhaul of various wireless technologies such as CDMA, EVDO and LTE

Provided method of procedures (MOPs) for end-to-end Quality of Service (QoS) to provision LTE on top of existing core network infrastructure

One of the well versed technical professional rated as a most valued for Verizon production issues, including retails stores’ deployments, Layer-2 service deployments, data center, wireless Ethernet backhaul, PoC Accomplishments

Designed and provided solution for the 7750 SR Offload Routers MPLS/RSVP-TE Layer-2 Steering project with accuracy within budget and deadline; authored and designed Verizon’s end-to-end QoS solution and provided strategic recommendations; that initiative helped reduced delay and improved KPIs

Awarded as a best mentor for the junior level design engineers and a key person within the team for any network related issues

Network Design Engineer

Rogers Communications Inc. June 2011 - Sep 2012

Brampton, Ontario, Canada

Responsible to design and maintain network of multiple data centers that span in multiple cities of Canada

Involved in network design project that involved multiple datacenters network re-design to comply with PCI- DSS

(Payment Card Industry - Data Security Standard) and SOX (Sarbanes Oxley) and internal Rogers standards

Designed and implemented datacenters at two different cities in Canada with Cisco DC solution with Nexus 7k, 5k, 2k switches

Developed and authored MOPs to successfully upgrade softwares of various network devices like cisco Nexus 1K, 5K, juniper routers/switches/firewalls, F5, Cisco CSM, GSS, Cisco ACE load balancers.

Provided migration procedures for the migration of applications from the old load balancing environment such as Radware to the new F5 platforms

Developed scalable network designs, solutions, policies, and recommendations based on company specifications and vendor recommendations

Provided design, planning and implementation of the network to ensure the stable operation of the Rogers WAN/LAN infrastructure

Developed configuration standards for various network elements to ensure that the standards address all known security vulnerabilities and are consistent with industry accepted system hardening standards

Created implementation framework for the configuration policy templates in HPNA to remediate all known and identified compliance gaps based on the PCI – DSS standards

Accomplishments

Designed, planned and provided MOPs for the Rogers Network Evolution Initiative in the different datacenters spanning to be compliant to PCI/DSS in meeting tight project deadline by stretching work to off work hours

Honored as one of the best network professional to find the gap in the project on hand and effectively worked with network data collection team and engineering team to find a procedural solution to quicken the work flow

Rewarded within the team to be someone who can quickly identify root cause of any network issue and develop a procedure to provide a proactive solution by taking leadership Sr. Data Network Specialist

Bell Mobility Feb 2008 – June 2011

Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Developed solution for the improvement of the current network protocol standards and implementation strategies such as BGP, OSPF, STP, VTP and MPLS

Lead, plan, design, evaluate and select network technologies, vendors, tools and services

Lead VTP implementation project throughout Bell Mobility network span in different cities in Canada

Produced solution for the Multi Spanning Tree Protocol (MSTP) throughout Bell Mobility network ntonwide

Authored LLD for provisioning, troubleshooting, upgrade, backup, and roll back guidelines to be performed in the Bell Mobility production network

Appointed as a mentor to provide professional training and level 3 support to the Operation teams on service deployment and verification activities performed on the production networks

Acted as a focal point between vendors and operation to diagnose and resolve highly complex network issues, such as hardware failures, software bugs, network congestion problems, and vendor incompatibilities Accomplishments

Awarded for one of the best solutions and project delivery in Bell Mobility network for MSTP project

Worked on IOS standardization project to upgrade 100+ network elements such as Cisco Routers, switches, Load Balancers, Firewalls) in remarkable less time

Provided effective recommendations to the stake holders to improve the network vulnerability from security breach Network Engineer

VSNL (Videsh Sanchar Nigam Limited) Jan ’05 – Nov ’06 Gujarat, India

Worked on network initiative to prepare recommendation MOPs for EIGRP to OSPF Routing protocol migration project

Provided technical support to the Level-2 network operation team to diagnose and resolve

Authored many MOPs for various upgrades/migration involving routing protocols, network elements, routers/switches Education

Bachelor of Engneering in Electronics & Telecommunication 2001 - 2004 University of North Gujarat, Gujarat, India

Diploma of Engneering in Electronics & Telecommunication 1999 - 2001 Gandhinagar Polytechnic, Gujarat, India

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