James Harper Email & Phone Number

Centennial, Colorado, United States

Leading great project managers who manage implementations of large, complex GIS systems of Esri and SSP software products.

Centennial, Co

Program Director, Data Center Estate Optimization. Directed a 3-year, $10m infrastructure optimization program that reduced Technology Operations costs $8.8m year-over-year by reducing data centers from 75 to 14, completing application workload migrations to more cost effective data centers and to cloud. Created business case with financial and technical detail to gain program funding and charter approval with executive architecture and finance review boards. Reorganized project teams into structured program with defined reporting lines, scope and budgets. Returned accountability and decision making to project managers. Coached project managers through project startup phases, including scope definition, budget setup, standard schedule definition and resource forecasting. Instituted program resource sharing with operations teams to decrease time and eliminate issues in project to operations handoff.

Broomfield, Co And Toronto, On, Canada

Planned and managed the migration and virtualization of hundreds of servers that serve applications in dozens of client hosting sites to Virtual Private Cloud offering in HPE Managed Computing Center for Aimia, a global consumer loyalty and analytics company. Improved client satisfaction from “does not meet” to “meets expectations” in high visibility customer-facing position by instituting a “no blame” open meeting atmosphere.Completed detailed schedule and financial plans, involving several migration teams made of cross-functional on- and offshore resources. Completed detailed bottoms-up cost estimate for all HP resources required to complete migration, effectively resetting executive leadership budget expectations, as North America Applications Migration Lead. Planned and conducted outside the box application migration planning workshop with client, accomplishing in three days what was anticipated to take over two weeks. Mentored and coached project managers new to project and new to applications migration work.

My 20-plus year career with industry-leading IT provider HP - and formerly EDS - has provided a broad and deep experience, ranging from technical development to technical leadership to project and program management. Most of my projects have been complex applications development or applications and server migration between large data centers.Currently, I'm managing application migration planning, education and execution in US and Canada for Aimia, a global data-driven marketing and loyalty analytics company.See my other projects and experience below.

Broomfield, Co; Westwood, Ca; Folsom, Ca; Redwood City, Ca

Clients (Industries): Universal Music Group (Entertainment), British Gas (Utilities), Mercedes Benz Financial Services (Automotive Finance), CalWIN (State Government)Reduced project duration and cost by implementing efficient and standard processes, documentation and reporting for relocation and consolidation of over 300 client servers in 4 client data centers to 1 HP data center, utilizing a combination of virtualization and physical hardware upgrades for UMG, a large US Entertainment company. Increased delivery quality of server relocations by creating and instituting consistent planning templates, including detailed timelines, communication plans and resource scheduling for UMG (Entertainment) and MBFS (Automotive Finance). Reduced production defects by 33% by producing and instigating a tailored Change Management process involving client and HP, using a shared calendar for all enterprise changes, a cross-company Change Control Board and consistent review criteria for MBFS (Automotive Finance). Resolved significant project schedule overruns by employing standard communications processes and automating issue management for British Gas, a large UK Utility company, working with US- and UK-based resources of HP, client, and third-party companies.

Irvine, Ca

Warranty Services (formerly Advanced Computing)Increased Warranty Services revenue fourteen fold, based on client’s confidence in ability to successfully manage multiple projects simultaneously and team culture of on-time project delivery. Reduced post-production defect average from 10 per release to less than 1. Improved client dashboard rating from “meets expectations” to “referable”, the highest rating. Unblemished record of on-time, within-budget delivery of application development projects, ranging from a few weeks to several months in duration, from simple modification of existing functionality to creation of new web application for new Warranty Services client. Created and implemented tailored project processes and application release standards to streamline release management and improve client communications across five geographies. Recommended and lead efforts to standardize requirements capture and management with client, resulting in improved ability to track requirements changes and associate requirements to application code changes and testing results. Reviewed infrastructure and network designs against application requirements for relocating application hosting from isolated data center to shared environment. Developed function assurance testing process and recommended automated testing tools to repeatedly test application in web farm environment. Recommended and championed use of .NET environment for existing ASP applications. Lead development of ASP-to-.NET transition strategies and standards, later used by other Warranty Services projects. Lead transition to use of offshore technical resources. Prepared schedules, managed preparation of materials and monitored progress. Developed new resources through gradual but constant increase in responsibilities. Managed use of developed technical resources to deliver technical training, increasing knowledge and experience of existing employees while introducing new offshore resources to application.

Irvine, Ca

Positioned as Team Technical Lead soon after joining EDS Warranty Services account. Developed application coding technical review standards that were adopted by all Warranty Services projects. Tailored systems development life cycle, created standard development work product templates. Standardized code for reuse within application and across multiple projects. Implemented standard code for new Warranty Services client to reduce time to production and simplify ongoing maintenance. Developed application performance measurement report and procedures to systematically assess application web logs to determine response times across all functions and summarize for client executive review. Researched and recommended applications and infrastructure monitoring and alerting.

Infrastructure Manager, EDS: Women’s World Cup 1999, San Jose, CAPlanned for and supported all information technology needs for San Jose venue. Provided Windows desktop and System Administration services. Created game-day operations, communications and support plans.Project Manager, Developer, EDS: Various Technologies, IndustriesBusiness Analyst and Developer, EDS Human Resources applications. Developer and Technical Lead, US Department of Defense, Travel and Logistics. Project Manager, State of MS, Title XIX, Y2K Remediation; interviewed, hired and managed staff of 35; completed project ahead of schedule and under budget, resulting in significant project bonuses.

Provide phone and electronic support for IBM Systems Engineers and Field Engineers.

Bachelor Of Arts (B.A.), Computer Science

Activities and Societies: I was actively involved in intramural, high school junior varsity and high school varsity sports.

Education record