Candidates About

 

Sandra Armstrong

 

Senior Project Manager

 

Leads Transformational Projects * Software Solutions Delivery * ITSM and ITIL Best Practices

 

Extensive experience leading a variety of internal departments and external customers delivering software solutions. Proven ability to manage multiple projects simultaneously. Skilled in interacting with technical staff and following through with the needs of the customer. Consistently demonstrated success directing complex projects from ideation to completion and fully operational status. Deep understanding of how to translate a business requirement into high and low level-design to easily communicate in technical terms with diverse teams. Strong management and leadership skills with ability to motivate professionals and maximize productivity to achieve goals. Excellent ability to build strong client relationships, organized, highly motivated, and detail-oriented problem solver.

 

 

Relevant Experience:

ü  Successfully implemented ITIL best practices by identifying gaps or lack of processes through data analysis

ü  Worked with ServiceNow platform to deliver services to multiple industries using ITSM/ITIL best practices

ü  Successfully managed vendor client relationship leading migrations from inception to product roll out

ü  Acted as liaison for teams either internal or external as required in an effort to support governance, and monitor status of program deliverables including process models

ü  Managed large and complex programs with multiple projects in parallel across multiple environments and a wide range of user base across the US.

ü  Managed projects that handle Disaster recovery processes to ensure availability is a priority

ü  Managed simultaneously internal resources and outside vendors on critical projects, utilizing extensive knowledge of systems, resulting in integrating new systems within internal Engineering and Operations Departments with zero impact

ü  Managed customer expectations on project plans timelines with constant communication across diverse groups decreasing SLA gradually by 5%.

ü  Used Waterfall and Agile to meet customer deadlines and expectations

ü  Managed intake process by collecting requirements for different areas of the business: financial, network operating systems, and maintenance related needs.

ü  Managed metrics to show effectiveness on new systems through direct impact to customers resulting in a 20% increase during first set deliverable.

 

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

 

 

 

AT&T  – Middletown, NJ

Senior Project Manager - August 2016 – Current

Senior Project/Release manager of D2 ECOMP Network services, leading scrum masters team to deliver network services across multiple platforms

·         Manage day to day scrum masters team along with processes and information management

·         Lead change management requests impacting current release schedule

·         Lead upper management communication strategy on current commitments

·         Lead internal sessions to support internal process and current requests with the goal to close any gaps and ensure internal teams are in line with the current schedule

·         Manage resources using level of effort and capacity models to monitor financial shortage and excess

 

 

Princeton University – Princeton, NJ

Senior IT Consultant –April 2016 – July 2016

Lead Quality Assurance effort for the deployment of ServiceNow Incident, Catalog, and Knowledge Base. Also helped manage data configuration, provided training session to fulfillers and helped with preparation process for full implementation

·         Manage detail scope on the Quality Assurance process and delivery

·         Lead UAT sessions and manage outcome results

·         Helped QA environments to ensure data accuracy and issue tracking

·         Lead internal sessions with impacted users to support internal process and system introduction with the goal to close any gaps and ensure internal teams are operational on day one

 

 

 

 

 

Pathways Consulting Group, Freehold, NJ  

Engagement Manager / Senior Business System Analyst

May 2015 – September 2015

Provide project management and industry best practice consulting expertise to IT infrastructure transformation engagements around ITIL best practices.

·         Provide ITSM process and governance guidance to customers in the Healthcare industry.

·         Managed selling of products and services initiative using the ServiceNow Store

·         Guide and shape requirements to support solutions on pressing business challenges along with full implementation

·         Manage scope, schedule  and budget for each engagement to ensure statement of work commitments are followed

·         Created collateral documentation to manage sales, and leads to improve customer engagements

·         Successfully deployed ServiceNow modules to with customers, internally and with partners

·         Propose, design and implement new intake request process, and new security platform to manage sensitive data

·         Led stakeholders and internal/external teams, from technical perspective, in planning, organizing and directing work efficiently, resulting improvements on day-to-day HR requests.

·         Facilitated internal team with training on the new process and better understanding of ServiceNow HR module

 

Alcatel Lucent, Murray Hill, NJ

Project Manager, Sprint (4G/LTE) Americas  September 2013 – May 2015

Responsible for project management of LTE technology deployment in NYC, North and Central New Jersey markets. This effort lead the Sprint program to meet company set goals by planning and deployment of ready-sites in support of a better 4G LTE system-wide upgrade.

·         Day to day activities include daily data management to show progress and status report with peers and upper management.

·         Weekly forecasting for planning purposes to be as proactive as possible on upcoming work.

·         Management of vendors and contractors to ensure proper work is completed on time, and manage multiple data sources used on a daily basis by creating automated daily reports to be used for daily updates

·         Managed telecom technologies like GSM, CDMA, UMTS, and LTE.

 

T-MOBILE, Parsippany, NJ                                                                                                                                                                     

Principal Engineer, Strategic Solutions

2010 – June 2013

Manage long and short-term solutions; deliver improvements to processes at business level, supported by iterative development via agile software cycles.  Provide training on new systems or upgrades on-site and virtually.

·         Propose, design and implement company-wide standards and practices, supporting client / server environment leading to more effective and standardized development processes.

·         Ensure goals are supported and established by setting roadmaps of solutions from 12 to 18 month time frames, focusing on delivering solutions and processes along with iterative development and trials.

·         Collect, track, analyze and trend data utilizing system’s data sources available and user’s day-to-day transactions, proactively mitigating impacting issues before users notice issues.

·         Participate in full-deployments by providing full solutions including post-roll out follow through, measuring effectiveness, improving user effectiveness and allowing for more flexible maintenance, resulting in shorter development cycle per release and simplified integration of other systems.

·         Identify gaps or lack of processes through data analysis and developed metrics, resulting in improved and more effective systems and processes, increased productivity by 50% based on reduction of manual steps taken for specific end-to-end process which positively and directly impacted customers.

·         Manage projects to leverage vendor integrations. Worked hand in hand with vendors to deploy new systems, integrate with internal systems and take ownership of managing the application. This included identification, tracking, and monitoring with the integration of Incident/Change management tools. Plus integration of alarming tools to monitor for issues/errors

Engineering Manager, Program Management

2007 – 2010

Managed large and complex programs with multiple projects in parallel, such as Data Center redundancy, software rollout to approximately 5,000 users across the United States, each at varying stages in project development lifecycle and supported end-users.  Directed, trained and evaluated staff and teams across multiple groups for career improvement and development

·         Managed parallel projects that handle Disaster Recovery as the user base increased to cover the west coast with a new Data Center and additional redundancy (backup and security)

·         Consulted with technical team, management, users and vendors to assess their needs and technical requirements

·         Led project managers and teams, from technical perspective, in planning, organizing and directing work efficiently, resulting in delivering high-value solutions, such as improvements on trouble ticket system which managed network service impacting issues and work order system which manage maintenance work listings of available systems for primary customers, such as The Network Operation Center (NOC).

·         Identified release risks and managed tasks necessary, mitigating each risk and facilitating issue resolutions, resulting in meeting project timelines.

·         Managed multiple system rollouts including system integration, migration, and ongoing support by establishing processes to actively respond to real time users; monitoring system loads, performance, processing and active validation on each integration, ensuring system and data integrity.

 

 

ADDITIONAL EXPERIENCE

 

T-MOBILE, Parsippany, NJ

Senior Project Manager

2003 – 2006

Provided customer support on integration of new customized systems built internally and packaged systems by outside vendors.  Key player in re-write of system that managed T-Mobile’s Network, effectively providing support across multiple areas, including requirements gathering for development with outside vendor support for product maintenance and customer requests.  Facilitated cross-functional communication meetings with executives from system engineers, development, testing, finance, program management and other key organizations; provided on-site and virtual training on new systems as well as ongoing support.

·         Ensured flawless product field delivery through effective internal communications and executive communications, making project highly visible priority, improving deployment process.

·         Managed intake process, collecting requirements for different areas of business, maintaining related needs and closing gaps, resulting in zero production interruptions during project.

·         Worked simultaneously with internal resources and outside vendors on critical projects, utilizing extensive knowledge of systems, resulting in integrating new systems within internal Engineering and Operations Departments with zero impact.

·         Reviewed and analyzed projects, determining scope, deliverables, timelines, resources and risks, ensuring relevant information captured and documented as project progressed.

·         Oversaw projects by holding walkthroughs and weekly reviews, actively making adjustments and proactively taking necessary steps, resulting in no impact on results and projects progressing within inflexible timelines and meeting expectations.

·         Managed production rollouts by preparing sponsors and impacted customers on system deployment and user’s day-to-day activities requiring clear, consistent and constant communication, resulting in improved user experience and minimal user interruption on day-to-day activities.

·         Ensured key system integration points were identified, documented, monitored and kept highly visible and prioritized, minimizing down time of other systems and risk of full outage.

·         Executed risks analysis on projects, decreasing outages of department’s service level, resulting in agreements not being impacted.

 

VOICESTREAM, Parsippany, NJ

Business Analyst / Application Support

 

OMNIPOINT, INC., Cedar Knolls, NJ

Application Support – Consultant

 

EDUCATION

 

BS, Computer Information Systems, Brooklyn College, Brooklyn, NY

 

TECHNICAL SKILLS

 

·         ServiceNow	·         MS Office Tools (Excel, Power Point, Access)
·         Remedy	·         MS Project
·         Business Objects (BI)	·         Clarity (Light)
·         System Integrations	·         MS Visio
·         Portfolio Management	·         MSSQL/Razor
·         Testing / QA / UAT	·         Oracle
·         Netxpert	·         TPIM
·         Resolve / OVO	·         Alarmpoint
·         SharePoint	·         Performance management

 

 

CERTIFICATIONS

 

Certified ITIL Service Foundation Management

Certificate of Achievement in Lean Six Sigma, Villanova University

Certificate of Achievement in Six Sigma Green Belt, Villanova University

Various Certificates, American Management Association Certification Program