Senior Program Leader - Agile Delivery & AI Transformation

John R. Garcia

· Senior Program Manager Agile Delivery Manager Release & Change Management Leader

· Little River, SC. USA 720-***-**** ***********@*************.***

· Linked In: www.LinkedIn.com/in/JohnRGarcia654

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Consultant to Director level Program, Agile, and Enterprise Release Delivery leader with 15+ years of experience leading large scale technology, platform, and product initiatives across telecommunications, healthcare, manufacturing, and federal environments. Certified PMP, PMI ACP, and SAFe 6 Agilist, with a proven record of building and maturing PMOs, standardizing delivery governance, and executing complex portfolios with predictability and control.

Brings deep expertise across Agile and SAFe delivery, Release and Change Management, DevOps and CI/CD enablement, and full SDLC governance, including leadership of Agile Release Trains, PI Planning, and enterprise release frameworks. Known for stabilizing delivery operations, reducing risk, improving flow, and aligning execution to strategic business goals.

Trusted partner to executive leadership for portfolio planning, financial forecasting, dependency management, vendor strategy, and organizational transformation. Recognized for developing high performing delivery organizations, coaching leaders and teams, and driving continuous improvement through Lean, Agile, and data driven practices—while ensuring transparency, compliance, and business readiness at enterprise. CORE MANAGEMENT & DELIVERY EXPERTISE

• Agile, SAFe 6, Scrum, Kanban, Lean UX, PMBOK, Waterfall, Hybrid

• Program & Portfolio Management (PMO, Governance, Roadmaps)

• Enterprise Release & Change Management

• PI and Project Planning, Financials, Forecasting, and Risk Management

• Release Train Engineer (RTE) & Agile Coaching

• Cross Functional & Vendor Leadership

• Infrastructure as Code, DevOps, AI & Automation Enablement PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

Senior Project Manager, Comcast Corporation Oct 2025 – Present

• Partners with business leadership streamlining intake and prioritization processes, reducing project initiation lead time from 25 to 18 days by 28%.

• Lead enterprise project delivery within the Delivery Solutions PMO, managing initiatives from intake, planning, design, execution and launch.

• Directs $13.5M+ portfolio initiative delivery across multiple cross functional teams (5 core teams, 15+ sub teams) spanning business, engineering, and operations improving schedule adherence from 72% to 93% within three release cycles.

• Develop and maintain integrated project plans including scope, schedules, dependencies, and resourcing.

• Facilitate governance reviews, status reporting, risk management, and executive stakeholder communications.

• Partner with business owners to manage change impacts and implement process improvements.

• Manage vendor relationships, contracts, and delivery performance to ensure cost and quality outcomes. Senior Program Manager, Penn Engineering Mar 2025 – Jul 2025

• Led strategic Global IS PMO transformation, aligning delivery governance to AI modernization objectives.

• Developed a forward looking PMO roadmap aligned to Next Gen AI initiatives and organizational goals.

• Defined program and project scope, goals, milestones, and KPIs to support integrated portfolio execution.

• Leveraged AI enabled automation to enhance reporting metrics, stakeholder visibility, and delivery insights.

• Reduced portfolio reporting inconsistencies by 60% by redesigning governance processes and standardizing reporting tools using Monday.com AI automations, decreasing monthly reporting errors from 50 to 20 across the global portfolio.

• Monitored delivery of health, milestones, and risks, applying mitigation strategies to ensure initiative success.

• Standardized project management processes, tools, and reporting to improve consistency and transparency. Agile Project Change Manager / Scrum Master, United States Department of Agriculture Jan 2024 – Dec 2024

• Delivered Agile project leadership across DevOps and infrastructure modernization initiatives within federal IT environment using IaC and SaaS strategies.

• Led Agile and SAFe ceremonies including PI Planning, Scrum of Scrums, iteration planning, reviews, and retrospectives.

• Drove Lean Agile adoption within PMO, increasing Agile maturity score from “Emerging” to “Managed” within one year resulting in a 35% improvement in project delivery predictability and stakeholder satisfaction.

• Led Agile execution as Scrum Master across multiple teams, removing impediments, ensuring accountability, increasing sprint predictability from 68% to 91% within 1 year.

• Managed IT change processes in ServiceNow and Remedy, tracking metrics and resolving conflicts.

• Reduced IT Change Management collision incidents by 29% through improved CAB governance and release coordination using ServiceNow and Remedy.

• Briefed senior leadership on roadmaps, priorities, delivery of progress, risks, and resource constraints. Senior Change, Release & Deployment Manager, Centene Corporation Jun 2023 – Dec 2023

• Architected, designed, and implemented enterprise-wide Release Management framework across regulated healthcare technology ecosystem standardizing delivery across the SDLC.

• Transitioned teams from Agile to SAFe through process design, coaching, and governance alignment.

• Built end to end release processes covering code merge, deployment coordination, and production readiness.

• Managed release planning and execution using Jira, Jira Align, Advanced Roadmaps, and Confluence improving deployment frequency by 41% while reducing change failure rate by 29% through CI/CD pipeline automation.

• Automated release pipelines across on prem and cloud environments, improving reliability and risk mitigation.

• Led formal Change Management and release communications through ServiceNow and Salesforce CMS. Senior Release Manager / Scrum Master, Ameren Jun 2022 – Jun 2023

• Orchestrated 40+ major releases and hotfix deployments with 98% on-time delivery rate.

• Supported release execution by removing risks and impediments while providing leadership visibility.

• Coordinated QA, development, and product teams to ensure readiness, documentation, and release notes.

• Facilitated retrospectives to drive SDLC improvements and continuous delivery maturity. Senior Release Manager / Scrum Master, The Lash Group – AmerisourceBergen Jun 2020 – Jun 2022

• Led Agile release governance and planning across regulated healthcare and specialty service platforms.

• Directed multi-value stream releases for $10M+ healthcare systems across on/offshore teams.

• Supported SAFe delivery as an RTE, ensuring CI/CD pipeline integrity and governance compliance, the team increased PI objective completion from 74% to 90%, an absolute improvement of 16 percentage points or a 21.6% relative improvement, demonstrating enhanced alignment and execution across Agile Release Trains.

• Created enterprise end to end release processes and contributed to Product Governance playbooks.

• Managed multiple value streams and vendor relationships to meet business and regulatory objectives. Earlier Roles Oct 2000 – Jun 2020

Aflac (Release Manager) Charter Communications (Agile Project Manager, IT Manager, Project & Deployment Manager)

Comcast Corporation (Senior Business Analyst / Project Manager)

• Progressively advanced through enterprise IT leadership roles overseeing large-scale deployments, product launches, release governance, and operational readiness initiatives, and operational modernization.

• Delivered enterprise reporting, roadmap execution, SDLC leadership, and cross functional coordination. TECHNICAL & TOOLSET EXPERTISE

Delivery Tools:

Jira, Jira Align, Confluence, ServiceNow, Remedy, Smartsheet, Monday, Microsoft Office 365, SharePoint Platforms & Applications:

Salesforce, AWS Amazon Connect, Git, Jenkins, Bitbucket, Databricks, HubSpot, Tableau, Zephyr, ALM, TestRail Automation & AI:

Infrastructure as Code, DevOps, GenAI Prompt Engineering, AI Chatbots/Agents, LLM Enablement EDUCATION & CERTIFICATIONS

Bachelor of Arts – Sports Industry Operations / Business Management Minor Metropolitan State University of Denver

Certifications:

• PMP – Project Management Professional

• PMI ACP – Agile Certified Practitioner

• SAFe 6 Agilist – Leading SAFe

• Implementing FinOps – FinOps Foundation

• Jira Align & Advanced Roadmaps – Atlassian

• AWS Cloud Essentials – Amazon Connect

• Generative AI Fundamentals – Databricks

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