Sr Project Manager

Ganesh Rajagopal

Product Owner/Scrum Master/Sr Project Manager/Sr Business systems Analyst

A result-oriented professional with 15 years of experience in Project Planning and Management, Resource planning, Onsite-offshore, Coordination, Client-liaison, QA assistance, Identify and mitigate risks Information Technology. An adroit in executing various software Project Management activities for enhancing the effectiveness of the application, achieve continuous process improvement and client delight.

Summary:

15+ Years of Project, Product and Portfolio management experience with technical design and development teams as well as non-technical business partners, with the ability to support simultaneous projects.

Collecting and analyzing data for potential business expansion

Led project teams, internal and external, to achieve project defined milestones and deliverables.

Translated business user concepts and ideas into comprehensive business requirements and design documents.

Implementation and unifying usage of tools across Sony implementing only top used by most of the accounts saving the company a minimum of $15 million annually.

Implemented a customer service process and portal that included as divisional performance index and improved by 32% and direct labor costs by $2.5 million.

Completed in-depth analyses for business optimization projects boosting revenue by 11.8%

Created project plans in accordance with project management framework standards and procedures. Identified ongoing issues and gaps within project plans, to eliminate implementation issues.

Planned, facilitated and reported on quality assurance testing efforts. Testing business processes and recommending improvements. Identifying specific business opportunities

Leading projects and coordinating with other teams to produce better business outcomes

Interviewed business clients to analyze their business requirements and recommend and design technological improvements to their business processes and operational procedures.

Developed process mapping of current and future business processes.

Conducted stakeholder Joint Application Design (JAD) interviews and facilitated meetings with project teams. Prototyped new procedures and trained new users on software enhancements

Experience in Test Planning, Scripting, Scenario configuration, analysis, running automated tests and complete understanding of Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC)

Strong analytical skills, ability to identify problems, research issues, and provide solutions and can manage a team and participate in team project planning.

Innovative with proven ability to identify, analyze and prioritize features to increase customer satisfaction. Ability to look at the big picture as well as dive into the details, extending program management, quality assurance and operations expertise to drive projects through successful Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC).

Identify prime risks and limitations within project plan & evaluate and determine plan variance from project performance.

Conducting Data Centre Audits, Disaster Recovery Audits, Third Party Audits, PCI-DSS Audits, ISO 27001 Audits, Internal Audits, Process Audits, System Audit

Demonstrated ability to facilitate and lead teams comprised of people from across organizations achieving success on complex, high visibility projects. Managed projects, which adopt Scrum methodology.

Worked along with project team in show casing Agile model used in modernization project for client presentation. Drive business innovation through the adoption of best practices and technology

Process definitions aligned to process model or framework like CMMI v1.3 / ISO 9001 / ITIL V3 and building up the QMS or for customer-specific engagements.

Conduct Internal Quality Audits (IQA), Software Quality Assurance (SQA) activities and Causal Analysis and interacting with teams for facilitation in closing the audit findings.

Collect and Analyze project metrics and report them in Senior Management Review

Translate Functional, Technical, Conversion and Performance requirement specifications into high level test cases/plans.

Perform an end-to-end test in a production environment to validate new or updated business processes, customization and configuration, reports, and data migration

Identify and translate business needs into clearly defined requirements, and create documentation inclusive of business use cases, process flows, data flows etc.

Responsible for creating, prioritizing, and maintaining product backlog, prototyping, Process Design

Coordinate and communicate information security risks between the vendor, internal stakeholders, and sub vendors to ensure these risks are properly mitigated

Work closely with support teams to analyze threats, determine risk and remediate vulnerabilities.

Acted as point of Contact for SOC, PCI audits

Liaise and build relations between UHG vendors and internal stakeholders to allow for improved business operations and security amongst all parties

Proficient in using Java Scripts for doing UAT testing, fetching the reports, validating and sharing across the Senior Management.

Responsible for process improvements in engaging vendors for third party attestations and certificates

Provide direction to project team in executing Scrum methodology within onsite-offshore model.

Conducting meetings & presentations to share ideas and findings such as Steering committee, Portfolio review meeting Scrum of Scrum, JAR, BRD/FRD Walkthroughs.

Education Summary:

Masters in information system security - University of Cumberlands

Bachelor of Engineering in Electrical and Electronics - Anna University

Certifications

SCRUM Master Certified

ITIL V3 Foundation Certification

OCA Certified (PL/SQL & SQL)

CMMI Dev. V1.3

CMMI SERVICES 1.3

COBIT Certified Professional

Swift ALM training for the PM tool from Digite

Professional Experience:

June 2021 -Till Date at Transamerica New York as Business Analyst/Scrum Master/ Sr Project Manager

Responsibilities:

Identify and translate business needs into clearly defined requirements, and create documentation inclusive of business use cases, process flows, data flows etc.

Plan, facilitate, and conduct requirements gathering sessions, meetings, and presentations with client and onsite / offshore teams. Conducting daily scrum calls, Planning & Executing sprints, Backlog Grooming session, and retrospective meetings.

Expertise in using tools such as PPM, Confluence, JIRA, Service now, AZURE & AWS provisioning tools Ensuring User Stories reflect the needs of the project, prioritizing requirements/ User Stories based on dependencies, creating and maintaining the team backlog throughout the project's life cycle, working with scrum teams to prioritize their work, and serving as scrum master.

Conducting meetings & presentations to share ideas and findings such as Steering committee, Portfolio review meeting Scrum of Scrum, JAR, BRD/FRD Walkthroughs.

Working with key stakeholders in gathering requirements, translating them into user stories and work with Development team.

Experience in working with a fast-paced Agile Product Development team

Collaborate with Product Owner and perform Scrum Master role. Responsible for creating, prioritizing, and maintaining product backlog, prototyping, process design.

Worked in client facing role to perform some prime activities involving understanding of the business requirements to provide requirements specifications (including workflow diagrams), meeting with business users and internal stakeholders, facilitating technical discussions with client and project teams, assisting in QA activities, resolving project team queries.

Analysis of complex data & researching to translate business needs into technical requirements. Ganesh Rajagopal will assist to translate and simplify business requirements and detail out Acceptance Criteria for stories & create business workflow documents for features in Jira

Worked with business partners within one or more business organizations to align technology solutions with business strategies.

Conduct data gathering and analysis to understand business strategy requirements.

Leading team and provide direction for short- and long-term planning sessions to ensure understanding

of business goals and direction.

Provide input from a business and IT perspective. recommends options, risks, and cost vs. Benefits.

Leads development and communicates business requirements and functional specifications for the design and implementation of business solutions

Analysed client operations to understand their strengths and weaknesses to determine opportunities for improvements

Product owner for Reset, Transform and Sustain Initiatives, responsible for designing the business and functional requirements for client

Recruited and led the offshore Retirement SME Senior Business systems analyst team members

Consulting with client and onshore partners to ensure smooth flow of SDLC activities

Designed functional specifications for digital transformation initiative in collaboration with client, project leads, developers and QA

Domain expertise on Retirement services in US, Requirements elicitation, analysis and requirements management, creating functional and technical specifications for developers, stakeholder management and cross functional collaboration, Agile project management and project communication-Product owner for Reset, Transform and Sustain Initiatives, responsible for designing the business and functional requirements for client

Skills: Business Requirements · Analytical Skills · Requirements Analysis · IT Enabled Business Transformation · AppDynamics · Software as a Service (SaaS) · Agile Project Management · Agile Methodologies · Requirements Gathering · Software Project Management · Leadership · Consultations · Business Process Design · New Product Rollout · Digital Transformation

May 2020 to May 2021 at Toyota North America as Business Analyst/Scrum Master/Project Manager

Responsibilities:

Spearheading technology upgrades, DevOps, and application design projects to support product development and product launches while bringing in multi-million-dollar revenues and ensuring cost-efficiency.

My unique combination of technical, communication, and organizational skills helps me accurately assess the business needs of diverse stakeholders (internal and external) and turn them into working solutions. I am also the go-to expert in process improvement based on Agile, Scrum, and Kanban methodologies.

Some areas of my excellence include:

oTechnical project management lifecycle for enterprise-level upgrades, system automation, migration, and integration.

oManaging new product launches with multi-billion-dollar revenues.

oDeveloping hybrid cloud and digital solutions.

oPartnering cross-functionally and coordinating large onshore and offshore tech teams.

oStreamlining processes and training the teams on Agile/Scrum.

To leverage my extensive experience, I serve as an SME and Business knowledge enabler to strategize and develop implementation plans and provide direction to meet strategic goals

My team appreciates my strong analytical and problem-solving skills, along with the ability to communicate at all levels to reach a consensus.

Skills: Business Requirements · Analytical Skills · Requirements Analysis · IT Enabled Business Transformation · AppDynamics · Software as a Service (SaaS) · Agile Project Management · Agile Methodologies · Requirements Gathering · Software Project Management · Leadership · Consultations · Business Process Design · New Product Rollout · Digital Transformation

April 2018- May 2021 at Merck & CO, INC, NJ as Business Analyst/Scrum Master/Project Manager

Responsibilities:

Interfaced with the client as part of the Requirements Engineering team to finalize the project scope.

Assisted the PM in developing the project plans and managed changes to the scope of the project and take daily updates from the cross functional team during the Scrum call.

Conducted and gathered Requirements, analysed the Requirements and managed changes using Rational Suite.

Designed and developed project document templates based on SDLC methodology.

Documented and delivered Functional Requirement Document to the project team.

Participated in the design sessions, assisted and developed high- and low-level design documents.

Analysed and documented business requirement, functional specification with use cases and scenarios and reporting data specification documents and converted them into technical design and data mapping specification

Performed Data Modelling by creating logical and physical models of the database system.

Wrote the SQL queries on data staging tables and data warehouse tables to validate the data results.

Delivered Enterprise Data Governance, Data Quality, Metadata, and ETL Informatica solution

Conducted User Acceptance Testing UAT.

Employed Rational Clear Quest for effective Change Management Requirements Creep and bug tracking during the testing lifecycle.

Environment: Microsoft Windows, MS Office Suite, Rational Clear Quest, Rational Suite.

Apr’17 to Nov ‘17 at Incadea (Bangalore) as Senior Technical Analyst:

Responsibilities:

Responsible for creating, prioritizing, and maintaining product backlog, prototyping, process

design and testing with the goal of enabling better outcomes.

Involved in designing processes, lead project implementations and diagnose improvement

opportunities.

Implementation of Metrics for S&M projects and rolling out a pilot implementation to EU region.

As a Technical Analyst, collaborated with a cross-functional team of designers, developers, testers,

and others to develop and execute against Product Roadmaps and Release Plan

Collecting and analyzing data for potential business expansion

Led project teams, internal and external, to achieve project defined milestones and deliverables.

Translated business user concepts and ideas into comprehensive business requirements and design documents.

Led an Agile project team defining user requirements, user journey, creating current state and

competitive audits, designing, and developing the templates, conducting user testing, and measuring KPIs.

Broke down existing epic-level user stories into specific user stories and working with the team

to define and document acceptance criteria.

Developed product analytics infrastructure for several product lines to analyze user behavior

and improve customer success programs.

Collaborated with product marketing, operations, and data integration teams to help build and

improve applications and business processes for digital analytics, campaign management and

reporting and dashboards.

Conducted root cause analysis for identified information security issues and risk observations.

Strong analytical skills, ability to identify problems, research issues, and provide solutions and can manage a team and participate in team project planning.

Conducted detailed GAP analysis of existing models in EU region with the visibility of simulating same model across US and APAC (Asia pacific) region.

Collaborating with SME’s, Architects and other Analyst to define a solution for the problem, organizing the requirements for the solution so that the development team can leverage them to build the solution and making sure the team has a clear understanding of the requirements.

May’12 – Feb’17 Sony India Software Centre Pvt. Ltd as Lead Consultant:

Project : GADC SONY

Tools used: VSS, Minitab, Excel, MPP, PM Online

Quality Models/Standards: CMMI for Dev, Agile

As a Lead consultant, my work includes setting up of project goals based on past performance,

Suggestions to the project managers on process improvements, metrics and milestone analysis, setting

Up of process capability baselines, gating deliverables, trend Analysis for all accounts within the unit,

Trainings on processes and various quality models, project audits and assessments

Responsibilities:

As a Lead Consultant leading the UAT team for the implementation of EPTP tool across Sony.

Responsible for continuing to improve current applications, works closely with product owners,

& staff to develop next generation systems and applications. Research technology trends

and evaluate applicability towards current and next generations systems within the Payment

Integrity division.

Ensuring User Stories reflect the needs of the project, prioritizing requirements/ User Stories based on dependencies, creating and maintaining the team backlog throughout the project's life cycle, working with scrum teams to prioritize their work, and serving as scrum master for Curam Business Analysts (designers) to prioritize their work

Responsibilities include the design and development of new products and features, ongoing

support of existing applications, and support for audit operations.

Responsible for creating, prioritizing, and maintaining product backlog, prototyping, process

design, and testing with the goal of enabling Ecolab to increase market share.

Provided actionable insights to automate the improvement of pool operation through improved

sensing, controls, alerts, and reporting.

Involved in designing processes, lead project implementations and diagnose improvement

opportunities.

Led an Agile project team defining user requirements, user journey, creating current state and

competitive audits, designing, and developing the templates, conducting user testing, and measuring KPIs.

Broke down existing epic-level user stories into specific user stories and working with the team

to define and document acceptance criteria.

Define and maintain the strategic product plan; track industry movement to ensure solution

stayed current with evolving trends.

Review vendor supplied policies & procedures, agreements, internal/external assessment reports, to check for quality, compliance and to provide feedback

Travel to vendor locations to perform onsite risk assessments to determine the effectiveness of the vendor’s network devices, policies, and procedures

Audit various controls in the vendor environment to assess risks

Coordinate and communicate information security risks between the vendor, internal stakeholders, and sub vendors to ensure these risks are properly mitigated

Work closely with support teams to analyze threats, determine risk and remediate vulnerabilities.

Acted as point of Contact for SOC, PCI audits.

Liaise and build relations between UHG vendors and internal stakeholders to allow for improved business operations and security amongst all parties

Proficient in using Java Scripts for doing UAT testing, fetching the reports, validating and sharing across the Senior Management.

Responsible for process improvements in engaging vendors for third party attestations and certificates

Scrum Master for Quote to Cash Data source discovery:

Define and implement agile process for the project

Define roles and responsibilities, identify and track risks, issues and dependencies

Conduct workshops with team to identify user stories, tasks, deliverables and effort

Provide direction to project team in executing Scrum methodology within onsite-offshore model.

Manage sprint planning and sprint execution. Conduct daily stand-up calls with both Onsite and Offshore team. Track sprint activities/tasks and advice sprint team on managing impediments

Member Process due Diligence and Definition on Agile Methodology for Product Development Company:

Study current AS-IS SDLC process and perform Gap analysis report.

Provide recommendation for process improvement and new process definition

Recommend Agile Framework that’s most suitable for client project management

Recommend agile metrics and reporting guideline for product development

Document Agile Way of Working based upon Scrum methodology

Document estimation guideline and estimation template for client agile WOW

Member Process Definition based on ITIL V3 Framework for SONY Global Insurance Company:

Study current, AS-IS Service operation process and performed gap analysis against ITIL V3 framework. Provide recommendation in Service Operation process area – Incident, Problem, Request

Based on workshop recommendations created process playbooks and training materials for Incident, Problem and Service Request management process

Study and recommend Metrics and Reporting framework for Incident, Change and Problem management process

Studied and created an integrated playbook with Service Now workflow for modules – Incident, Problem, Request and Knowledge management

Created Support establishment process playbook and checklist.

Process Steward for Global Quality and Improvement Team (SEPG):

Process Engineering: Services to assist process owners to engineer, integrate, publish and measure processes using common process, development methodology, architecture and standards.

Management of Organizational Process Framework changes and release.

Manage process documents in SharePoint for Business units and delivery center

Involve in Process tailoring of Organization defined processes for Regional and Client centric development center

Involved with L&D in planning Virtual Instructor Led Training on Organizational Process Framework Overview.

Agile Project Management for Insurance Major:

Establish distributed Scrum approach for modernization project.

Provide direction to project team in executing Scrum methodology within onsite-offshore model.

Manage Project Schedule and Work Plan of the project with HP Project and Portfolio Management Center. Periodic monitoring and tracking of Project Risk and Issues in HP Project and Portfolio Management Center.

Define and Monitor Agile project metrics and report them to the project team to make necessary improvements. Define Use case and Defect guidelines and job aids for the project account team.

Management of project defects in Application Lifecycle Management.

Configuration management of project documents in StarTeam configuration tool.

Interacted with Client Manager in defining Service Management Processes using IT Service Management best practices.

FEB 2008 to May 2012 – Associate Consultant with Oracle Financial software Services.

Mission Quality (From Metrics Council to Project SQA)

Project: Mission Project Mgmt.& Process Quality

Tools used: SVN, Minitab, Excel,

Quality Models/Standards: CMMI, ISO 20000, Six Sigma, Lean

As a process consultant, my work includes setting up of project goals based on past performance,

Suggestions to the project managers on process improvements, metrics and milestone analysis, setting

Up of process capability baselines, gating deliverables, trend Analysis for all accounts within the unit,

Trainings on processes and various quality models, project audits and assessments

Responsibilities:

Project SQA

Conducting audits and assessments, milestone and metrics analysis

Reviewing project plans, status of deliverables, risks etc.,

Participating in project initiation, execution and closure activities

Facilitate process definition, tailoring and improvements at project level

Undertaking Feedback and Survey Analysis

Conduct RCA, FMEA and Meet customers at-least twice a year to understand their concerns and take up necessary actions

Collection and tracking of metrics data from the projects

Analysis of metrics data for QIC

Involved in data consolidation and analysis for MRM

Statistical analysis of data using Minitab (Pareto chart Analysis, Regression Analysis, Control Charts)

Collect and analyze the process/product metrics as defined in the project quality plan and provide necessary suggestions for continuous improvement.

Perform Analysis for the closed project & Schedule and conduct process audits to verify implementation and compliance & Track and close Non-Conformances raised in projects due to process audits

Coordinate and participate in the external audits/assessments

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