Manager Program

Cell#: 309-***-****

Email: ********.********@*****.***

Summary

PMP with over 15 years of IT experience managing and coordinating large IT Projects and Enterprise releases for Insurance and Transportation industry.

Shyamala leads, manages large strategic development projects, data management, data migration, using various methodologies such as Scrum, DevOps and Waterfall. Experienced in maintaining metrics, information radiators that provide visibility into sprint health progress, manifesto/Principles/methodologies, scrum ceremonies, planning, self-organization, collaboration, iterative development, managing flow, being cross functional and coordination with other teams for continues integration, improvement, prioritization, resolution of software defects and delivery of quality products.

Certified PMP® and ScrumMaster®

7+ years of strong Release and Project Management experience managing enterprise level releases across different portfolios and projects

4+ years of strong Release and project implementation coordination experience implementing different types of projects and changes

4+ years of experience as Technical Lead/Onsite/Technical Coordinator performing activities like impact analysis, reviewing and authorizing deliverables, analyzing and gathering Business requirements and providing solutions

2+ years of development experience

Experienced in all project phases – Inception through monitoring and controlling

Experience in Fire and Auto lines of business in Insurance domain

Experienced in managing resources onsite and offshore

Experienced in projects implementing Agile and Waterfall models

Manage geographically and culturally diverse teams in the USA, Europe and India

Professional Experience

XPO Logistics

Chicago Downtown, IL

SCRUM MASTER, March 2019– Feb 2020

Lead, plan and manage Brokerage/Freight optimizer releases for XPO Logistics.

Successfully implemented several complex releases in XPO

Managing Multiple scrum teams at Brokerage Portfolio using various technologies

Dashboard (Scrum) creation using Confluence and JIRA for higher management.

Facilitates all relevant meetings for the release, including sprint planning, backlog grooming, release planning, retrospective, demo and daily stand ups/huddles. Facilitate PO/PM sync. Release information in JIRA.

Protects the team, facilitates the removal of issues/impediments, and helps the team resolve dependencies.

Participate in Scrum of Scrums forum

Coordinated environment setups, maintenance, code deployments and production releases in CI/CD DevOps environments.

Currently working with Brokerage Engineering Director, Program Manager and QA managers on strategy to reduce the release cycles to twice a month.

Improved the Release standards and shortened the Release/Implementation duration by several hours.

Achieved the XPO goal to reduce the release cycle from two months a release to once a month release.

Partners with Engineering, QA, DEVOPs, Program Management, and other release teams to understand the Release scope, dependencies, timelines, schedule, risks and come up with a Release plan.

Set up the Release Calendar and define the release stage gates

Coordinate release dependencies with all internal and external teams

Coordinate with network, infrastructure, DBA teams

Assist Development team in managing versions of release components

Work with DevOps/QA/Developers to understand impacts of branches and code merges

Create environment/branch/merge schedule with Development, QA and DevOps teams

Create and Close Fix Versions in JIRA

Create and update Tasks in JIRA for a particular Release

Perform activities on the release checklist in JIRA

Notify and engage 3rd party vendors of releases to confirm release dependencies

Anchor Data Fixes and Hot Fixes from a CR process & approval perspective

Conduct the Go/No-Go meetings

Setup release coordination meetings across teams / system teams & roles (QA, Product, Dev Leads, Solution) to align a release scope

Setup & anchor deployment meetings

Be a part of the approvers for release scope changes

Manage risks and resolves issues that affect release scope, schedule and quality

Manage support hand off with Production support teams

HTC Global Services

State Farm Insurance, Bloomington IL

RELEASE MANAGER/PROJECT MANAGER, January 2015 – January 2018

Own and lead the Release Management activities including planning, coordinating and managing IT releases across the enterprise involving multiple applications over multiple portfolios, collaborating with Project and Program Leadership, Change, Service, Test Management and other support teams.

Interact with Service, Development and Test Managers frequently to effectively understand the project release needs and set release expectations.

Plan and manage all release activities

Participate in PI planning meetings for Agile releases

Collaborate cross functional dependencies for various projects under a release.

Monitor and report Release readiness and Release progress to Senior IT Management in a timely manner.

Facilitate for smooth completion of all release activities avoiding bottlenecks with effective communication, monitoring and prioritization

Manage various types of releases like Application updates, Infrastructure changes, Hardware and Software upgrades, Security updates and Development projects.

Manage multiple work streams of IT technical project delivery through close coordination/cooperation with Business Leads and IT Technical Leads

Facilitate for effective and efficient escalation process during releases

Facilitate and lead scope gathering sessions for multiple projects.

Introduced and facilitated different release strategies like Scoped Releases for larger projects and efforts, Monthly Releases for smaller changes and updates to existing applications and releases for projects implementing Agile methodologies

Monitor and support the adherence to the implementation test strategy across projects and programs

Measure and monitor progress to ensure releases are delivered on time

Formulated defection resolution process for implementation testing

Oversee documentation and publishing of Release metrics and other key pointers

Facilitate and conduct production Early Life Support for projects and programs.

Formulate, plan Release Road Maps and evaluate compliance with Organization’s technology standards.

Conduct meetings with Scrum Masters to understand the Sprint backlog items that will be ready to be released

Successfully implemented projects involving ETL, WAS, Verint, DB2, IBUS technologies

Review the creation, management and maintenance of the Release schedules and Release Calendars

Manage risks that affect release scope, schedule and help mitigate the risks.

Conduct Release and Milestone readiness reviews and business Go/No-Go meetings

Identify possible changes and improvements to Release Management process

Partner with other support teams like Change, Configuration, IT Security and Infrastructure teams

Set goals and expectations for the Release team

Facilitate entry/exit criteria for all planned releases to Production environment

Review Release notes for all Production and non-Production releases

Handle budgeting and resource allocation for the Release team

Experienced in implementing projects using Continuous integration and continuous delivery.

State Farm Insurance, Bloomington IL

SCRUM MASTER (January 2014 - January 2015)

Managed WAS upgrade project to successfully upgrade customer, agency and Marketing applications from Web sphere Application Server version 6.1 to version 8.5

•Actively participated in sprint planning activities, daily stand ups, sprint reviews and sprint retrospectives

•Actively participated scrum of scrum meetings with program manager

•Updated technical documentation in Confluence and created dashboards in JIRA to help the scrum team view progress, ensured well written acceptance criteria is maintained for user stories.

•Focused on developing more trusted and collaborative team environment where problems can be raised without fear of blame or being judged with a complete focus on problem resolution

•Facilitated discussions, decision making, and conflict resolution meetings

Partnered with the Product Owner, especially with respect to grooming and maintaining the product backlog

Partnered with Release and Change teams to effectively release the product, features and enhancements

State Farm Insurance, Bloomington IL

PROJECT MANAGER (January 2012 - January 2014)

Managed Policy migration project for Customer, Agency and Marketing Applications from US to CANADA.

Successfully upgraded over 100 applications of varying size and complexity.

Lead a project team of architects, developers, application testers, analysts, administrators and coordinators.

Define roles, objectives and responsibilities for the team members and ensure the objectives are met

Facilitated technical and functional issue resolutions, managed performance and set expectations for team focus

Maintained the project plan, managed scope.

Monitored project activities and managed resource allocation for smooth completion of the project.

Monitored and mitigated risks arising from factors internal and external to the project.

Reported project status to higher management and business stakeholders promptly and efficiently.

Preparation and management of project budget

Controlling quality and compliance of the deliverables.

Identified potential project risks and helped develop a mitigation plan to resolve potential issues.

Coordinated with stakeholders to report project status and maintaining a project dashboard

Managing issues and defects and tracking them through to resolution

•

HTC Global Services.

State Farm Insurance, Bloomington IL

RELEASE COORDINATOR, March 2011 – January 2012

Planned and coordinated all phases and activities involved in the Production Release process

Acted as the central knowledge and communication point for all integrations within releases

Set expectations for projects in releases

Created and published release calendars and schedules

Reviewed project implementation documents to identify risks and dependencies

Reviewed change records to look for missing tasks, back out plans, planned outages, gaps in deployment plans

Coordinated production verification and back out plan creations

Planned and coordinated continuous delivery releases

Coordinated with other releases for smooth and efficient enterprise release efforts

Maintained implementation trackers

Handled all release communications including review of pre-implementation memos

Tracked implementation defects and incidents through to resolutions

Coordinated Release implementations and Release Implementation Testing.

Facilitated emergency/expedited changes

Identified and mitigated risks to the release by means of Risk Mitigation plans.

Provided expertise and guidance on deployment tools, release and implementation processes

Created and maintained Release notes for Production and non-Production releases

HTC Global Services.

State Farm Insurance, Bloomington IL

IMPLEMENTATION COORDINATOR February 2009 – March 2011

Coordinated successful production implementations for various projects and efforts following required processes and procedures for on-time delivery of new and updated functionality

Coordinated production implementations for different types of projects like Development, Integration, Maintenance, Migration and Infrastructure changes.

Coordinated implementations for projects executed on various platforms and technologies like legacy mainframe systems, LINUX and Windows (.NET) applications, Java/J2EE and Informatica applications.

Gathered implementation requirements like the list of deliverables, components and applications and verify the configuration items against the implementation plan.

Coordinated acquisition of any new hardware / infrastructure that may be necessary for the implementation

Coordinated the planning and execution of implementation test.

Worked with business partners regarding the implementation schedule, communication and any necessary training

Created various deliverables to plan and execute the implementation:

oChange records

oImplementation schedule

oInstall plan

oBack out plan

oTechnical and Functional verification plans/schedules

oImplementation test plan

oImplementation test schedule

Worked with Project and Release teams to take steps to mitigate risks to the implementation schedules due to collisions with other efforts

Coordinate the implementation effort:

oHandle logistics for the Release weekend effort

oPost outage communication

oVerify all components are accounted for

oAssign / Request IT Service personnel for component installation and verification

oVerify security requirements for the implementation effort

oCommunicate status updates to appropriate management levels, project and release teams

Successfully handled simultaneous implementations for multiple projects

Took steps to understand application topologies, design and dependencies to plan and execute the implementation tasks more efficiently and on time

Coordinated communication at different stages of implementation

Satyam Computer Services Ltd.

State Farm Insurance, Bloomington IL

TECHNICAL LEAD & ONSITE COORDINATOR July 2005 – March 2009

Designed and developed software applications to automate and streamline communication and reporting transactions and day to day activities

Designed and developed .NET applications to interact with mainframe online screens

Designed and developed JavaScript modules for screen interactions and automated screen inputs

Converted existing VBA applications to .NET applications interacting with Microsoft Access

Designed and developed enhancements to existing .NET and JavaScript applications

Worked on defect and incident resolution

Performed impact analysis for incidents

Performed code and design reviews

Reviewed, monitored and reported project status

Coordinated with the offshore team for effective hand off of work and deliverables to and from offshore

Assigned and monitored work to the team members onsite and offshore

Monitored monthly projections, looking at the weekly billing status both at Offshore and at Onsite

Communicated with Business teams

Prepared POCs for other conversion efforts

Traced IT requirements through design and development phases

Assisted the Project Manager with Project Charters and schedules

Production support activities

Handled work breakdown and allocation for the team

Coordinated system and acceptance testing activities

Reviewed and maintained audit checklists and testing documents (test cases and test results)

Satyam Computer Services Ltd.

State Farm Insurance, Bloomington IL

SYSTEM ANALYST October 2003 – July 2005

Designed and developed software components for Insurance Product Modeling

Designed and developed user interface components using ASP, JavaScript, HTML, DTHML and XML

Developed distributed application components using COM and DCOM

Prepared and maintained low level design documents

Performed unit testing, Integration testing and system testing on the components developed

Prepared and maintained unit and system test documents

Developed PL/SQL scripts for data retrieval and manipulation

Technical Proficiency

Operating Systems

:

Windows NT, Windows XP

Platforms

:

Mainframe, Web, Client-Server

Languages & Packages

:

.NET 3.5, Visual Basic 6.0, VBA, HTML, DHTML, Java Script, VB Script, ASP, XML

Tools & Utilities

:

Cloud Management Portal, HP Service Management, SNOW, LDMS, JIRA, Primavera, MS Projects, SharePoint, Lotus Notes, RMS, NET OP Remote Control, Microsoft Visio, Microsoft Visual Studio 2010, Jenkins

Business Domain Knowledge

:

Insurance (Fire and Auto lines of business), Transportation (Brokerage)

Certifications

Project Management Professional (PMP-PMI)

Certified Scrum Master(CSM)

Education

Master of Computer Applications, Osmania University, Hyderabad, INDIA (June 2003)

Bachelor of Science – Mathematics, Statistics and Computer Science, Osmania University, Hyderabad, INDIA (March 1999)

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