Project Manager It

Nicole Heffington

IT Project Manager *****************@*****.*** 916-***-**** www.linkedin.com/in/nheffington PROFESSIONAL SUMMARY

Senior level IT Project Manager who has successfully led and managed IT teams and projects for the State of Arizona for over 25 years.

• Inspiring leader who brings forth innovative solutions, charismatic leadership, effective communication, a positive outlook, and the ability to get things done.

• PMP Certified and Certified Scrum Master.

• Proficient in problem solving, influencing stakeholders, and acting as a liaison between business, technical, and leadership teams.

• Expert in law interpretation, including State and Federal Rules, Regulations, and Statutes specific to environmental compliance and special education.

• Strengths include database design and business process improvement. QUALIFICATIONS

Highly skilled in the key tasks involved with database schema implementations, web application deployments, technological advances, database design improvements, “off the shelf” installations, continued application maintenance, enterprise reports, version control, project life cycles, and everything else in between.

• Expert in all facets and phases of project management specific to software development life cycle and off-the-shelf projects.

• Experienced in managing multiple, complex, medium to large, agency-wide, IT Projects in Agile/Waterfall/hybrid.

• Knowledgeable of Azure, DevOps, SaaS, and Data Warehouse projects.

• Effective in the continuous improvement of project management processes, procedures, templates, and operational standards.

• Effective in leading cross-functional teams that span across multiple project, program, and agency domains.

• Successful in implementing enterprise level initiatives from conception to deployment.

• Skilled in determining and managing project scope, cost, effort, budget and time estimations, resources, and data storage allocations.

• Experience in managing issues specific to vendor management including the coordination of resource acquisitions, forecasts and schedules.

• Familiar with ADOA ASET Reporting requirements, such as Project Investment Justifications.

• Practical working knowledge of roles within the define, design, development, and deployment cycles of a project.

• Practical experience as an Application Developer, QA Analyst, Business Analyst, Technical Writer, Subject Matter Expert, and End User Trainer.

• Skilled in analyzing software applications and business strategy efforts, with a strong background in database design.

• Skilled in conducting interviews for potential project manager, business analyst, and quality assurance analyst job candidates.

• Responsible for mentoring and guiding project managers, business and quality assurance analysts through continuous feedback, and coaching.

• Strong analytical, interpersonal, problem-solving, prioritization, conflict resolution, and decision-making skills.

• Expert in personal relations, communication (verbal and written), creation and management of multiple schedules, itineraries, and day-to-day meetings and conferences.

• Master in multi-tasking; familiar with fast-paced work environments and understands restrictive time constraints and deadlines.

• Very skilled in technical and creative writing. Very interested in creating graphic art, visual marketing material, banners, icons, and documentation for internal, commercial, and promotional use.

• Familiar with development practices within Microsoft.net technology stack using C# and jquery along with asp.net, mvc, .net core, and bootstrap.

• Familiar with SQL Server and SQL queries.

• Expert in QA testing, including writing and running test case scenarios and performing regression testing.

• Expert in Business Analysis tasks such as gathering requirements, creating business process improvement plans, writing user stories, managing Sprints involving Epics, Features, Product Backlog Items, Tasks, and Bugs. DOCUMENTATION

Working as a Project Manager over so many years has allowed me to write/finalize/utilize several artifacts and documents. The list below includes some of the more ‘well-known’ articles.

• Project Investment Justifications, Proposals, Charters, Plans, Schedules, Presentations, Memorandum of Agreements, Roadmaps, Status Updates, Meeting Minutes, and Executive Summaries.

• Risk Assessments, Risk Logs, Issue Tracking Logs, Change Management, Mitigation Plans, Return on Investments, Solution-based Improvements, Action and Work Plans, Communication Plans, Statements of Work, Resource Allocation Plans, and Budget Summaries.

• Functional Requirement Specifications, System Requirement Documents, Proof of Concepts, and Design Analysis Overviews.

• Business User Requirements, Business Process Flow Diagrams, Design Documents, Technical Specifications, and Work Breakdown Structures.

• Role Matrices, Test Plans, Test Case Scenarios, Error Logs, Defect Status Logs, User Stories, User Epics, Use Cases, and User Acceptance Criteria, Sprint Backlogs, Burn Down Charts, and Product Backlog Demos.

• Deployment Plans, Project Close-out Documentation, Sprint Retrospectives, and Lessons Learned Documents.

• User Personas, Development Standards, and Usability Design Standards. User Help Manuals, System Help Guides, Online Tutorials, Video Overviews and System Guidance.

• Technical and Creative/Marketing Documentation, Advertising, and Event Announcements. CERTIFICATION

PMP Certified Project Manager Certified SCRUM Master Process Litigation Public and Confidential Records TECHNICAL SKILLS

Expert in both Microsoft and Macintosh platforms. Extremely familiar with Microsoft Office (Teams, Outlook, Power Point, Excel, Word, Project, etc.) and Adobe Suite programs such as AdobeSign SharePoint, Visio, Balsamic, Photoshop, Snagit, Movie Maker, Visual Studio SQL Developer, MySQL Oracle, Oracle Designer, Oracle forms builder, Oracle reports builder, Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio Angular, Bootstrap, .Net, JBoss, Java, ASP, WS02, GPS/GIS, UI/UX Object Oriented Design, Enterprise Solutions, Service Oriented Architecture, Quality Assurance, E-Commerce, Graphic Design SDLC, Agile Development, Waterfall Methodology, SCRUM, Team Foundation Services, Azure DevOps EDUCATION

Arizona State University

Bachelor of Science (B.S.), College of Engineering Arizona State University, Psychology

Bachelor of Science (B.S.), College of Liberal Arts PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

Milestone Technologies 2016 – August 2024

Contracted with Arizona Department of Education

IT Project Manager

• Led Agile ceremonies, such as Sprint Planning, Daily Stand-ups, Backlog Grooming and Sprint Retrospectives.

• Involved with requirements gathering, design, navigation, testing, deployment, and presentation of data visualization dashboards to other education agencies.

• Contributed to the creation of the agile work-flow process that has been adopted by the IT Division

• Initiated the design and business process flow for various ESS applications to improve end user engagement.

• Designed a reusable template that tracked project status updates, risks and resolution, and meeting schedules that was adopted by all the project teams in the agency to send weekly status reports to the business stakeholders and executive leadership.

• Established Fiscal Year Roadmaps, re-prioritized items based on feedback from stakeholders and ensured continuity of the roadmap.

• Worked with cross-functional teams and other State agencies like the Department of Economic Security to coordinate and implement IDEA Part B and Part C Data Sharing efforts.

• Represented the project teams in the weekly Change Advisory Board meetings to communicate and seek approval for application changes prior to production deployment.

• Managed the Special Education IT Portfolio consisting of 20+ web applications that assist with federal data collecting and reporting, student assessment testing, special education rule and regulation monitoring, Individuals with Disabilities Act Indicator calculations, voucher and claims payments, administrative applications, public comments, and data visualization dashboards. Some examples of these internally built applications include the following:

o Dispute Resolution Application – A system that allows parents to file complaints against educational facilities through a website page. This page brings in the complaint data and stores it in a database that allows ADE staff to manage the information through a set of UIs. o Surrogate Parent Application – A system that allows parents to volunteer as surrogate parents. It involves a website page that allows parents to enter information to be considered by ADE. The data is then stored in a database and the management and processing of this data is done by ADE staff through UI and reports. o Special Education Data Dashboard – This application took data from a larger, internal educational database, processed the data through the use of business rules and then displayed the data for Public Education Agencies to review and approve. This was done for several different types of data including exit data, preschool transition data, and discipline data. o Data Survey Application – This application was a tool built to allow the creation of data collection surveys for the ADE Special Education program. Surveys varied from Parent Involvement to Teacher Attrition. Several unique features were implemented into the application over time, making the system very complex and customized to the Special Education Program. o Risk Analysis Application – This system used metrics from different data sources to come up with a final risk analysis number, which was used to determine the type of monitoring that a Public Education Agency would have to engage in. This application automated the numeric calculations of individual special education indicators and presented them using data visualization. o Vouchers Payment Application – This system allowed ADE Administrators to make monthly payments to Public Education Agencies who provided educational voucher payments to special education students. The application connected several payment systems with administrative codes to define the payment rates for disabilities. o Monitoring Application – This system allowed ADE Administrators to monitor and track the compliance status of all Public Education Agencies that are required to adhere to ADE’s Special Education rule and regulations. The application provided a place to take note of progress towards compliance, capture additional work done to come into compliance, and track the overall compliance status of Public Education Agencies.

o October 1 Data Collection Application – This application captured a list of students who were enrolled at Public Education Agencies on or after October 1st of each fiscal year. Several business rules were implemented into this application to ensure the population of students captured was in-line with the Federal Government’s rules and regulations. o Public Comments Application – This system involved a website page that allowed the public to enter comments about anything related to Special Education rules and regulations. This data was then stored in a database and made available to the Administrators through UI and reports. Business rules related to data retention were heavily implemented into this application. KV Consultants Inc. 2014 - 2016

IT Project Manager/Business Analyst/SCRUM Master

• Managed the project and teams involved with the creation and deployment of a patented environmental software. This included overseeing the executive and administrative needs of the company by scheduling meetings, coordinating events and activities with staff and with management, and making sure the day-to-day business activity was running smoothly throughout the week.

• Worked with the business owners to assess priorities, researched marketing trends, provided pre-sale demos, created graphics and logos, and designed and created marketing material for upcoming events and sales.

• Elicited requirements from end users and statutory rules and regulations. Arizona Department of Revenue (DOR) 2009-2013

IT Project Manager

• Managed top-level revenue projects that had a direct impact on Arizona taxpayers. All assigned projects were completed on time, within scope, and within budget.

• My most accomplished project included the year end forms change. o Each year when tax forms are updated due to legislation changes, all the IT systems must be changed as well. These systems range from point-of-sale machines to software services, to Oracle database applications, to .net web forms, to 3rd party software (such as Taxslayer), and many others.

o Successfully managed each division team responsible for each system, the multi-level teams within the IT Division itself, external partners from private companies, the legislative time frame constraints, the system development life cycle, and the actual tax changes all in perfect orchestration of one another, within six months, before the new tax season started.

Contact this candidate