Program Manager Change

Rick Terroe

Las Vegas, NV *****

**********@*****.*** 206-***-**** www.linkedin.com/in/rickterroe

Dynamic and results-oriented Change Manager with 10+ years of experience leading strategic change initiatives across complex programs, including global retail deployments and customer loyalty platforms. Proven ability to develop and execute communication strategies, training plans, and stakeholder engagement frameworks that drive user adoption and support organizational transformation. Adept at translating enterprise change strategies into actionable plans that align with business goals, improve team readiness, and elevate operational effectiveness.

Professional Employment History

Technical Program Manager V Consultant June 2023– May 2025 Microsoft Corporation (On Contract with Experis), Redmond, Washington

Drove Program Operations and Strategic Management for Microsoft’s FastTrack Engineering TPM Solution Area Team. Led the Microsoft Engineering Product development for a multi-region cloud-based SaaS platform serving enterprise clients, improving feature adoption by 35%.

Drove the deployment of a customer loyalty program resulting in a 23% uplift in repeat transactions in the first quarter.

Designed and delivered stakeholder impact assessments, readiness surveys, and engagement plans aligned with regional nuances.

Facilitated project kickoff meetings, developed detailed project plans, and coordinated resources effectively. Collaborated with global engineering, legal, and compliance teams across the globe to foster synergy and reduce delivery bottlenecks and to adhere to region compliance.

Drove the regular sprint reviews, retrospective, and PI planning session under SAFe Agile to align teams’ output with business goals.

Defined and prioritized backlog items in ADO, aligned sprint goals with strategic product milestones.

Owned and drove the content development, data analysis, and reporting of the team’s project status metrics and highlights/lowlights for monthly and quarterly business review meetings.

Drove and managed cross-group collaboration efforts in developing Microsoft’s FastTrack Engineering and Product solutions areas’ experience and journey roadmaps.

Drove the creation of technical business/product requirements and functional specifications for new and updated features and activities.

Acted as primary liaison for enterprise clients, gathering feedback and translating them into actionable product improvements.

Created and maintained stakeholders’ maps, persona-based communications, and job aid libraries.

Drove the team regular mentoring sessions and performance evaluation for the MS FastTrack Engineering, Finance, and Operations staffs.

Drove and manage the teams’ monthly and quarterly budget activities using MS Planner, MERCURY and Informa (i.e., CAPEX & OPEX, RMI, BIF fundings) for budget analysis, forecasting, accruals, amortization, and reporting.

Drove the collaborative efforts with Engineering Program Manager, Compliance and HR teams to craft training materials and virtual onboarding sessions, impacting over 1,000 field employees.

Drove and organized contents for Pods meetings weekly, LT meetings, and Business Reviews.

Program and Project Manager non-Tech 4 Consultant July 2021 – December 2022 Microsoft Corporation (On Contract with Artech Solutions, LLC), Redmond, Washington

Program Management Office consultant for the Chief of Staff Office of Microsoft’s Global Corporate Sales Team and Business Strategy and Programs teams. Responsibilities included:

Drove the Program Management Operations (PMO) activities; manage teams’ business portfolios using the ADO and BPI platforms for program/project/initiative/Epics/Features management and reporting.

Coordinated with offshore development teams to streamline agile rituals and foster ownership of deliverables.

Managed scopes and deadlines for concurrent initiatives, maintaining a 97% delivery rate.

Drove and managed the teams’ budget activities (i.e., CAPEX & OPEX, RMI, BIF fundings, forecasting, accruals, amortization, analysis, and reporting, including monthly and quarterly budget analysis and reporting) and Headcount management activities.

Supported delivery of cloud-native apps with a focus on user-centric features and scalable backend architecture.

Owned the teams’ Rhythm of the Business (ROB) creation and management.

Acted as primary liaison for enterprise clients, gathering feedback and translating them into actionable product improvements.

Maintained velocity tracking, defect reporting, and documentation of release notes using ADO. Facilitated project kickoff meetings, developed detailed project plans, and coordinated resources effectively.

Drove and manage the Business and Operations Portfolio planning and reporting activities, including establishing program initiatives, goals, objectives, and key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure success.

Drove and monitored the team’s training and development activities (i.e., worked with HR to assess training needs, set clear objectives, and developed a training plan to choose the proper training methods leveraging already existing HR tools, and send out a monthly reminder email to employees/managers to ensure the teams complied with their mandatory training throughout the fiscal year.

Drove and manage the teams’ Fiscal Year Business Planning activities, Employees’ Workforce planning/Strategic Planning and Implementation activities.

Conducted regular mentoring sessions and performance evaluations for junior project staff.

Drove the contents for Stakeholders weekly meetings, All hands meetings, Offsites, LT meetings and Business Reviews.

Managed the teams’ SharePoint sites' landing pages.

Chief Operating Officer March 2015 – June 2021

Zensa LLC, Redmond, Washington

Zensa LLC is a mobile transformation company focusing on cloud and mobility, generating revenue of $6.5M with 364% growth in 3 years. It develops line-of-business applications that support an organization’s key business processes to enhance productivity, communication, customer engagement, revenue, and more across mobile platforms. Services include Digital Accessibility, Consulting, Engineering, and Staffing Services. Product and Mobile Applications Developments (i.e., Prospur and uReporter). Achievements include:

Successfully built and managed the company PMO team by Identifying opportunities to leverage cross-program collaboration using ADO, Microsoft’s SharePoint and Teams platforms. Managed the engineering, UI/UX, and the research teams' daily stand-up and triage activities. Created communication project status reports to the management team daily and weekly, resulting in excellent communication and project transparency between teams and the leadership team.

Successfully defined and prioritized backlog items in ADO, aligning sprint goals with strategic products’ milestones.

Successfully managed and supported the engineering teams in prioritizing work by analyzing costs, project schedules, customer benefits, and IT estimates (i.e., measuring product performance based on operational goals and key metrics) and reviewing product requirements and functional specifications features for the two products resulting in successful launching of the products on time and budget.

Successfully conducted regular sprint reviews, retrospectives, and PI planning sessions under SAFe Agile to align team output with business goals.

Successfully managed revenue expectations for the technical project delivery and outcomes achieved through sprint planning activities, strategic planning processes, and budgeting, and presented recommendations to the Companies’ Steering Committee, Segment Pricing Committees, Investment Decision Council, or other approving bodies, which resulted in high yielding of the ROI metrics for the company.

Successfully delivered the two major mobile applications within time and budget by creating a strategic technical project delivery roadmap, which includes the product’s functional requirements, technical specifications, design, and integration to develop implementation plans, testing and validation activities, and maintenance and support.

Successfully collaborated and cultivated existing relationships with funders to strengthen and expand recurring revenue streams yearly.

Sr. Strategy & Operations Management Consultant May 2017 – November 2020 Microsoft Corporation (On Contract to Zensa, LLC), Redmond, Washington

Program Operations and Strategic Management for Microsoft’s Consumer Marketing Engineering in supply chain management (i.e., managed the MCME team supply and inventory spreadsheets using MS Dynamics 365, ADO; analyzed, updated, and reported on programs and projects statuses, product orders, and inventory for the stores throughout the globe, which metrics were reviewed by the MCME team leaders as well as the Corporate Marketing and Engineering teams via the PBI reporting platform). Managed projects scopes and deadlines for concurrent initiatives to maintain a 97% on time delivery rate.

Drove the partnership with IT, merchandising, and operations to conduct impact assessments and change readiness analysis.

Drove the coordination with the offshore engineering development teams to streamline agile rituals and foster ownership of deliverables

Drove the change strategy for global rollout of inventory and demand planning platform across 200+ Microsoft Stores.

Drove the Microsoft’s Store deployment of a customer loyalty program resulting in over 15% uplift in repeat transactions year over year.

Drove the organizational mentorship programs for the Engineers, Coordinators and Ops personnel, improving team productivity and professional growth and drove and monitored the team’s training and development activities throughout the fiscal year.

Drove and managed the team’s budget Management and reporting (i.e., CAPEX & OPEX, RMI, BIF fundings), Discretionary Spend tracking, T&E Spend management, Forecasting, Accruals, Amortization, POs submission/tracking and invoices tracking, IO management, and monthly/quarterly budget planning, analysis, and reporting.

Owned and drove the content development, analysis, and reporting of the team’s project status for monthly and quarterly Business Review meetings and utilizing ADO to maintain velocity tracking, defect reporting, and documentation for release notes.

Drove and managed the team’s Business and Operations Portfolio Planning establishing performance review frameworks for project staff, aligning individual goals with company objectives.

Facilitated project kickoff meetings, developed detailed project plans, and coordinated resources effectively.

Drove the team’s vendor/supplier management activities (i.e., working with the project owner for vendor suppliers’ negotiation and SOWs creations, and PO submission into MyOrder tool, POs and invoices tracking, IO management).

Created and maintained stakeholders’ maps, persona-based communications, and job aid libraries.

Drove the contents for Stakeholders meetings, All hands meetings, Offsites, LT meetings and Business Reviews.

Managed the team’s SharePoint site.

Chief of Staff October 2002 – December 2014

Office of Microsoft’s IT CTO, Microsoft Corporation, Redmond, Washington

Directed multi-programs and projects, built the PMO office and Marketing and Communication (MARCOM) teams, and the Organization Rhythm of Business (ROB) for the office of Microsoft’s IT Chief Technology Officer consisting of over 150 employees and over 500 vendors with a combined budget of $600M.

Acted as a strategic partner to Microsoft CTO, driving alignment across 14 Agile teams and 2 cloud product portfolios.

Owned and drove the Microsoft IT Mentorship program across the organization with over 3000 employees across the globe to improve team productivity, knowledge of technology advancement, as well as professional development.

Drove global collaborations efforts across engineering, compliance, and business units to accelerate delivery timelines by 30%.

Owned backlog prioritization in Azure DevOps and facilitated standups, sprint demos, and release planning under SAFe.

Defined and executed time-sensitive go-to-market strategies with emphasis on agile responsiveness and operational excellence.

Owned and drove the content development, data analysis, and reporting of the team’s project status metrics and highlights/lowlights for monthly and quarterly business review meetings.

Defined and prioritized backlog items in ADO, aligning sprint goals with strategic product milestones. Managed strategic pivots and escalations, ensuring proactive risk mitigation without compromising delivery velocity.

Spearheaded development of a cloud-native SaaS platform, collaborating with cross-border teams across the globe.

Led client-facing initiatives, translating customer insights into actionable priorities and refining the product roadmap accordingly.

Owned and managed the teams’ budget management activities (i.e., CAPEX & OPEX, RMI, BIF fundings), Discretionary Spend tracking, T&E Spend management, Forecasting, Accruals, Amortization, POs submission/tracking and invoices tracking, IO management, and monthly/quarterly budget planning, analysis, and reporting.

Strategic advisor to the IT CTO and senior management teams. Working with the MSIT Engineering teams to drive and manage the team’s Program and Project portfolio planning and project sprints activities: set clear spring goals, set/reviewed commitments, analyzed technical program and project portfolio metrics to identify risks for mitigation/recommendation to the senior leadership team and for the content development of the team’s metrics, highlights and lowlights reports creations for the monthly and quarterly review meetings.

Represented the CTO in meetings and organizational business and operations planning activities with internal and external stakeholders.

Owned and managed the Business and Operations Portfolio planning and reporting activities, including establishing program initiatives, goals, objectives, and key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure success.

Owned and managed the CTO and the organization's speaking engagements activities for internal and external customers. Acted as the correspondence to drafted emails, reports, and organizational announcements on behalf of the CTO.

Owned and managed executive presentation preparation from slide creation and dry-run deck activities with the CTO and key speakers for All Hands, Summit events, and other external/internal speaking engagements.

Owned and managed the team’s training and development activities (i.e., worked with HR partners to assess training needs, set clear objectives, and developed a training plan to choose the proper training methods leveraging already existing HR tools, and send out a monthly reminder email communications to employees/managers to ensure the teams complied with their mandatory training throughout the fiscal year.

Defined and executed time-sensitive go-to-market strategies with emphasis on agile responsiveness and operational excellence.

Owned and managed the team’s vendor/supplier management activities.

Owned and managed the organization's employees’ retention program activities and the Organization's hiring processes for senior roles.

MICROSOFT Selected Expertise and Accomplishments:

oSuccessfully established program/project/service portfolio performance for the service levels and the related service level measures and metrics for the business planning process by establishing and monitoring both Critical Service Levels and the Key Measurements (OKRs and KPIs), resulting in maximizing resource utilization based on the organization’s priorities, budget, and correct resource’s role alignment.

oSuccessfully established a large-scale Program Management Office (PMO), and its activities range from 125 employees to over 500 employees, as well as vendors with a budget range from $20M to over $500M.

oSuccessfully led and managed large-scale operational strategy, organization Transition, and Change Management plans through cross-functional initiatives ranging from $10M to $8B deal sizes (i.e., during Microsoft’s Acquisition of Nokia) by reviewing, summarizing, and recommending approval of the organization team transition plan (people, facilities, and services). Established documented existing operating procedures and related workflows that would be subjected to change and developed the future protocols, methods, and interfaces required to implement the outsourcing initiatives; identified current and future state gaps; and successfully created a plan to close those gaps.

oSuccessfully created and implemented the teams’ Operational Dashboard for Organizational Commitments, Mission, and Vision, achieving employees’ RACI alignment with the team’s priorities & commitments YoY. Enhanced coordination across teams and projects: minimized duplication of effort and communication gaps and fostered collaboration between teams.

oSuccessfully established and achieved continuous, detailed forecasting tracking systems from ADO and PBI systems reporting, ensuring seamless coordination across teams and projects. This resulted in data-driven insights, transparency, accountability, improved decision-making, and increased efficiency YoY.

oSuccessfully drove and managed the team’s budget Management and reporting (i.e., CAPEX & OPEX, BIF fundings, Discretionary Spend tracking, T&E Spend management, Forecasting, Accruals, Amortization, POs submission/tracking and invoices tracking, IO management, and monthly/quarterly budget planning, analysis, and reporting to various stakeholders).

oSuccessfully negotiated vendor cost model with Microsoft Procurement team, IT Vendor Compliance team, and each vendor’s companies, enabling retention of positions during the budget crunch. This resulted in the ability to successfully support several significant releases during the year without delays or interruptions and achieved organization budget savings of more than 30% vendor cost savings for the fiscal year budget.

oTransformed team operations management and Rhythm of the Business (ROB) by successfully automating the Team’s Operations and Rhythm of the Business Dashboards, resulting in accuracy and real-time data refresh.

oSuccessfully created integrated Microsoft communication tools to manage the Marketing and Communication for the teams and produced quarterly rhythm newsletters and monthly rhythm newsflash using integrated systems that create an easy and friendly User Experience interface, thereby increasing the site communication NSAT to 82%; team communication updates and the site utilizations from 23% to 97%.

Summary of Qualifications

oClient Relationship Management

oStrategic Change Management & Transformation

oStakeholder Engagement & Readiness Assessment

oRetail Technology Implementation & Loyalty Programs

oSales Strategy & Forecasting

oBudgeting & Cost Control

oProject Lifecycle Management

oSAFe Agile Framework

oAzure DevOps (ADO)

oDevelopment

oGlobal Team Leadership

oClient Engagement & Communication

oKPI Definition & Delivery tracking

oConflict Resolution & Stakeholder Engagement

oTime & Resource Prioritization

oAgile Ceremonies Facilitation

oCritical Thinking & Proactive

oTeam Building, Collaboration & Mentoring

oPortfolio Management

oField Labor Planning & Oversight

oBPO Services

oWorkforce Management

oJoin Contract, Purchase Negotiation, and Sales

oMultiple levels of Strategic Partnerships

oData Warehousing

oBalanced Scorecards

oCustomer Insight

oRoadmap Design, Data Virtualizations

oBusiness Leadership Acumen

oChange Impact Analysis & Risk Mitigation

oUAT Coordination & Defect Closure Metrics

oBusiness Process Automation & IoT Integration

oPerformance Metrics & Reporting

oCustomer Engagement

oCloud Product

oCommunication & Training Strategy Development

oAgile Ceremonies Facilitation

oCritical Thinking & Proactive

oOperations & Product Management

oServices Costs Allocation Management

oContract Management: RFI Response, RFP Submission, SOW Creation

oIT Licensing

oIT Corporate Standards of Excellence

oWorking across multiple functions

oContent Development

oNegotiation

oProcess Documentation

oERP: Dynamic 365

oPrioritization Frameworks: RACI, Risk Scoring, Weighted Matrices.

oBusiness Process Automation & IoT Integration

oBusiness Planning

oStrategic Vision and Tactical Executions

oRegulatory Compliance

oFinancial Analysis

oBI Tools: Power BI, Tableau

Skills:

MSOffice365 (i.e., Excel, PowerPoint, Project, Visio, OneNote, and Publisher), MS Dynamics 365 (ERP Solutions), MS Teams, SharePoint, MS Loop, Contoso, Kusto, SQL Scripts for pulling data, ADO, Power BI (PBI), Microsoft’s Finance Dynamics AX, DFM, Calypso, Informa, Work Breakdown Structure (WBS), Programme Evaluation Techniques (PERT), Critical Path Analysis (CPA), Earned Value Analysis (EVA), Mercury, Microsoft Vivas (Goals, Engage, Learning), MyOrder, MS Invoice, Employee Central/HR Web, MS Forms, Workfront, MS Space, HeadTrax, iCIMS. SAS, EpiInfo, MINITAB, Freelance Graphics, Lucid Chart, Tableau, Smartsheet, Enterprise OKR Leadership (Ally.io).

Education & Awards

M.B.A Business Management Harvard Business School, Cambridge, MA

M.P.H Master of Public Health Harvard John F. Kennedy School of Government, Cambridge, MA B.A General Sciences and Business Administration, Minor in Accounting. Seattle University, Seattle, WA

Microsoft’s Awards and Certifications:

IT Excellence Individual Award Recipient: “Connect the Company”- 2009, 2010, and 2012.

IT Pro Awards Recipient- 2009, 2010, and 2011.

IT Gold Star Awards Recipient- 2008 and 2010.

PMP Certification (Expires June-2022)

Languages:

Fluent in English, Bahasa, Hebrew, French, German, and Arabic. Conversational: Chinese (Mandarin and Cantonese).

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