Project Manager Management

RAJESH VENKAT

Phone: 346-***-**** • Email: ************@*****.*** • LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/venkatrajesh786

PROFESSIONAL SUMMARY

Agile Delivery Project Manager with over 19+ years of experience leading cross-functional teams to deliver complex, high-impact projects across geographies. Proven expertise in end-to-end project delivery, Agile and hybrid methodologies, stakeholder engagement, and risk mitigation. Adept at managing multi-country programs, aligning project goals with business strategy, and driving execution excellence across distributed teams. Known for proactively resolving delivery bottlenecks, optimizing resources, and maintaining transparency across all levels of delivery. Passionate about building empowered teams, fostering collaboration and continuously improving delivery processes to achieve measurable outcomes in quality, time, and budget.

CERTIFICATIONS

Project Management Professional (PMP) • Certified Scrum Master (CSM) • OKR/KPI Certified (Leadership and Goal Setting) • Certified Change Management professional • Agile with Atlassian • JIRA Azure DevOps (IBM)

CORE COMPETENCIES

End-to-End Project Management • Program & Portfolio Delivery • Scope, Time, and Budget Management • Resource Planning & Allocation • Risk & Issue Management • Quality Assurance & Compliance • Multinational / Cross-Geo Delivery • Agile Delivery (Scrum, Kanban, SAFe) • Executive and C-Level Communication • Stakeholder Relationship Management • Cross-functional Team Collaboration • Business Requirement Translation • Conflict Resolution & Escalation Handling • Change Management & Transformation Leadership • Delivery Strategy & Roadmap Alignment • OKRs/KPIs & Performance Tracking • Business Continuity Planning • Budget Forecasting & Financial Oversight • Contract & Vendor Management • Process Optimization & Governance PMO Governance & Risk Management & Quality Assurance • Organizational Change Management (ADKAR, Tuckman, Coaching) • Contract Management (SOW, RFP, T&M, Fixed Bid)

WORK EXPERIENCE

Byte Link Systems Inc (Citibank, USA) (March 2024 – Present): Agile Program Delivery Manager

Oversee successful delivery of multi-country projects, ensuring alignment with defined scope, quality standards, timeline, and budget constraints.

Proactively identify, address, and resolve delivery impediments, escalating issues promptly to avoid delays and maintain delivery momentum.

Track and manage dependencies across squads/teams to ensure seamless integration and avoid delivery bottlenecks.

Maintain and monitor a transparent ledger of delivery commitments, ensuring accountability and alignment with stakeholder expectations.

Provide clear, consistent updates on delivery targets, progress, risks, and blockers to stakeholders and leadership across business and technical teams.

Streamline ceremonies and meetings, ensuring they are purpose-driven, time-efficient, and outcome-oriented.

Foster a culture of team autonomy, trust, and shared ownership through collaborative decision-making and regular team-building activities.

Coach teams on Agile best practices and delivery excellence when appropriate, supporting team leads in nurturing high-performing, self-organizing squads.

Anticipate project risks and manage resource allocation effectively to avoid delays, optimize throughput, and meet delivery expectations.

Serve as the primary point of contact between delivery teams and external/internal stakeholders, balancing priorities and expectations to drive satisfaction and outcomes.

Encourage a culture of retrospection and iterative improvement to enhance delivery speed, quality, and team engagement.

NucleusTeq Pvt Ltd (Petsmart), USA (Sep 2020 – Mar 2024): Agile Project Delivery Manager

Led the complete Project Management Lifecycle from initiation to closure, incorporating PMI Triangle principles to balance scope, cost, and schedule effectively.

Developed Business Case, Benefit Management Plan, and Cost-Benefit Analysis for programs improving operational efficiency.

Implemented Portfolio and Program Governance using PMO frameworks, managing governance boards and steering committees for strategic oversight.

Managed stakeholder communications via push-pull channels, creating Stakeholder Register, and Mapping influence and impact levels.

Defined and tracked OKRs to measure value delivery and ROI across initiatives; aligned delivery outcomes with roadmap and MVP/MBI scope strategy.

Facilitated scope and requirement planning, led workshops, conducted prototyping, created RTM, and translated requirements into deliverables.

Applied WBS and FBS structures for effort breakdown; implemented 3-point estimation for scheduling and budgeting accuracy.

Managed contracts (Fixed Bid & T&M), RFP evaluations, and collaborated with procurement/legal for compliant onboarding.

Maintained Risk Registers, determined Risk Thresholds, and built RBS hierarchies to proactively identify and manage delivery risks.

Supported Agile ceremonies while coaching teams on Tuckman’s Team Formation Model and Team Charters to boost collaboration and ownership.

Managed training, coaching, mentoring tracks; resolved conflicts using leadership and power skills to maintain team performance.

Handled project closure, transition planning, and Knowledge Transfer for seamless handover to client operations teams.

Optimum Solutions (SingHealth), Singapore (Jul 2017 – Aug 2020): Senior Technical Project Manager

Led end-to-end implementation of product analytics frameworks, defining and tracking key KPIs such as user engagement, feature adoption, time-to-market, and CLV to support data-driven product decisions and improve delivery success metrics.

Spearheaded Scaled Agile (SAFe) adoption by coordinating Scrum of Scrums and facilitating PI Planning sessions in support of Agile Release Trains (ART), enhancing cross-team collaboration and delivery predictability.

Aligned Agile delivery roadmaps with PMO governance, establishing cadence-based planning, improving stakeholder visibility, and enhancing program budget forecasting accuracy by 25%.

Managed integration of DevOps and technical practices into delivery workflows, including TDD, BDD, CI/CD pipelines, code quality reviews, and pair programming. Oversaw the implementation of IaC, automated testing, and monitoring strategies, reducing production incidents by 60% and improving deployment frequency by 80%.

Directed the implementation of enterprise security frameworks, including RBAC/ABAC, IP whitelisting, SSO/MFA, and encryption (at rest and in transit) using CMEK. Established data protection controls such as data masking, tokenization, and row-level security to ensure regulatory compliance with GDPR, HIPAA, PCI-DSS, SOX.

Oversaw cloud-based data architecture initiatives, collaborating with engineering and BI teams to design dimensional data models (Star Schema, Snowflake Modeling), and optimize data pipelines for both OLTP and OLAP systems across multi-cloud environments.

Overstock.com, USA (Sep 2013 – Jul 2017): Technical Project manager

Led end-to-end delivery of complex IT–AI projects, managing scope, budget, and timelines while collaborating with cross-functional teams to ensure alignment with organizational goals and client expectations.

Developed and maintained comprehensive project plans, including charters, work breakdown structures, timelines, resource allocations, and risk registers, ensuring successful execution across the full project lifecycle.

Acted as primary liaison between project sponsors, stakeholders, and technical teams, facilitating clear communication, managing expectations, and ensuring stakeholder engagement and satisfaction throughout delivery.

Proactively identified and mitigated risks and issues, maintained RAID logs, and escalated blockers to executive leadership and PMO governance forums to ensure timely resolution and project continuity.

Managed project financials, including forecasting, tracking actual vs. planned spend, approving labor costs, and ensuring budget adherence across multiple concurrent initiatives.

Optimum Solutions (SingLife), Singapore (Sep 2012 – Sep 2013): Associate Project Manager

Conducted Value Stream Mapping exercises identifying waste elimination opportunities and implementing Lean principles resulting in 45% reduction in cycle time. Established predictive analytics using Monte Carlo simulations, forecasting models, and statistical process control for capacity planning and delivery predictability.

Supported product delivery through SWOT analysis and feedback-driven backlog prioritization, ensuring 90% alignment with user needs and boosting ROI by 15%, conducting User Acceptance Testing (UAT) with 98% first-pass acceptance rate

Facilitated Scrum ceremonies (Sprint Planning, Daily Standups, Sprint Reviews, and Retrospectives), Program planning sessions, and Inspect & Adapt workshops and Design Thinking, problem-solving methodologies.

Coached scrum masters, product owners, and leadership teams on servant leadership principles, established Communities of Practice (CoPs) and implemented continuous improvement cycles resulting in 35% reduction in impediments and 50% increase in team engagement scores.

Qantas Airlines, Australia (Jan 2006 – Sep 2012): PMO Technical Analyst & Project Delivery Specialist

Supported end-to-end data warehouse & data mart project delivery within a Waterfall framework by utilizing tools such as MS Project, Excel to manage schedules, resources, and budgets.

Created project schedules using Gantt Charts and tracked Benefits using a Benefits Tracker, defined governance standards, resource utilization plans, and standard operating procedures (SOPs). Documented business processes and scope using BRD, FRD, Request for Proposal (RFP).

Performed complex data analysis, profiling, mapping activities from the Source systems, prepared documentation for all entities, attributes, data relationships, primary and foreign key structures, allowed values, codes, business rules, and glossary to evolve and change during the project and developed a Logical Model from the conceptual model using Erwin to build data warehouse (OLTP) architecture.

Managed enterprise Teradata warehouse for Aerospace domain, built and optimized ETL, BTEQ and SQL.

TECHNICAL SKILLS

AI/ML & Data Science: Gen AI, Agentic AI, Databricks ML Runtime, MLflow, Hugging Face, PyTorch, TensorFlow, NLP tools.

Project/Program Execution: Project Lifecycle Management (Initiation to Closure), Program Delivery, Milestone Tracking, PMO Governance, Portfolio Management

Methodologies: Agile (Scrum, Kanban, SAFe), Waterfall, Hybrid Delivery, Lean, ITIL, DevOps-aligned PM practices

Planning & Estimation: Work Breakdown Structure (WBS), Resource Allocation, Sprint Planning, Backlog Management, 3-point Estimation

Scope & Change Management: Scope Definition, Change Request Management, Requirements Gathering, SOW, RFP Handling

Budget & Financials: Budgeting, Forecasting, Cost-Benefit Analysis, Financial Tracking, CapEx/Opex Planning

Risk & Issue Management: Risk Identification, Risk Register, Mitigation Planning, RAID Logs, Escalation Handling

Stakeholder Engagement: Stakeholder Mapping, Executive Communication, Influence & Negotiation, Push/Pull Communication

Quality & Compliance: Quality Assurance (QMS), Legal/Ethical/Social/Environmental Compliance, COQ (Cost of Quality)

Leadership & Team Building: Conflict Management, Empowering Teams, Team Formation (Tuckman), Coaching & Mentoring

Reporting & Analytics: KPIs/OKRs, Dashboards, Status Reports, Retrospectives, Post-Implementation Reviews

Documentation: Project Charters, Risk Logs, Schedules, Communication Plans, Closure Documents

Project Management Tools: Jira, Confluence, MS Project, Monday.com, Smartsheet, Azure DevOps, Asana, Trello

Collaboration Tools: Microsoft Teams, Slack, SharePoint, Miro, Lucidchart

Data & Reporting Tools: Power BI, Tableau, Excel (Pivot Tables, VLOOKUP), SQL (basic querying)

Cloud & DevOps Awareness: AWS, Azure, GCP (concepts); CI/CD, Infrastructure as Code (IaC), Git, Jenkins

Security & Compliance: SSO, MFA, RBAC/ABAC, GDPR, HIPAA, PCI-DSS, SOX, Data Masking, Tokenization

Agile Frameworks: SAFe, LeSS, Nexus, Scrum of Scrums, Agile Release Trains (ARTs), PI Planning

Software Development: Understanding of SDLC, TDD/BDD concepts, APIs, REST, JSON, XML (high-level only)

Business Tools: MS Office Suite (Excel, Word, PowerPoint), Visio, Google Workspace

CRM/ERP Platforms: Salesforce, SAP, Workday (optional but good to have based on client domain)

EDUCATION

Bachelor of Engineering (Computer Science), Visvesvaraya Technological University, Bangalore, Apr 2001– May 2005

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