Managing an initiative to introduce an enterprise IT incident notification solution that will reduce the time to restore IT service through faster engagement of support staff. The initiative, which involves implementing a 3rd party IT notification service (xMatters), has an approved business case investment exceeding five million dollars and a team size of fifteen people. Key deliverables include (1) Selection of the 3rd party software-as-a-service; (2) A business case; (3) Pilot releases; (4) Full implementation releases consisting of expanded roll outs to onboard additional stakeholders; and (5) Knowledge transfer for day two support.Leading planning and business case development of an initiative to upgrade the capacity, currency and fault tolerance of the HP BSA tools used for automated server provisioning, patching and software deployment.Managed a project to provide IT capacity management personnel with the capability to model IT capacity, reclaim under-utilized computing resources and avoid unnecessary hardware purchases. Key deliverables included defining a new server capacity management process and implementing a new release of CiRBA for AIX server capacity decision support. The project had a budget of slightly less than two million dollars and a combined Bank and vendor team size of seventeen.Led a team through the process of scoping and obtaining business case approval to expand the enterprise application scheduling service to include a distributed scheduler and a critical batch monitoring capability. Project accountabilities included scope, time, cost, people management, quality, stakeholder communications, vendor management and risk management.Other responsibilities included improving project delivery management capabilities for the Infrastructure Technology Solutions business area, and providing input on project manager hiring decisions.

Managed changes to multiple systems as part of a project undertaken by the Bank to expand its indirect lending business into the area of subvention (“captive”) financing. The Bank’s customer, multiple vendors and internal RBC groups were engaged to build, test and deploy the necessary application and infrastructure changes over a very short timeframe.Managed credit system enhancements to comply with anti-money laundering and terrorist financing regulations. The project, with an internal IT resource budget of over $875,000 and a team size of ten, engaged multiple vendors and other internal RBC groups to complete the system enhancements. Implemented an interface between a credit system and an enterprise data warehouse to support credit portfolio management. The project engaged internal RBC IT groups and a vendor to develop, test and implement batch processes operating in Unix and MVS environments.

Architected and managed the development of a bank-wide testing methodology to enable time-to-market, cost and quality improvements on IT projects. A cross-organizational team of business and technology staff was engaged in a facilitative process to define and build the methodology in an accelerated and cost-efficient manner.Architected and managed the development of a testing career path to raise the profile of testing as a professional discipline within the Bank. The career path, consisting of job models and learning maps, was developed in workshops by a core team and refined based on stakeholder feedback.

Managed a project to implement a new strategy for small business banking credit products. The project, with a budget of three million dollars and a team size of twenty two, delivered a number of system changes to streamline the credit application process, reduce service costs, and support auto-application decisioning.Managed four data conversion projects for a retail bank acquisition. The projects had a total budget exceeding one million dollars, a team size of fifteen, and dealt with the orderly and seamless transition of customer data into key banking systems. Managed the deployment phase of a thirty seven million dollar project to simplify and accelerate the process of introducing new credit card features into the market place. The project involved converting data from three platforms to a single outsourced technology processor, and migrating various internal and external system interfaces to create a new VISA card process flow.

Managed a program of fourteen integration projects as part of a financial services company acquisition. The program had a twelve million dollar budget, and was comprised of projects that included system conversions and enhancements, a decision support system implementation, and a systems infrastructure upgrade.Reported status to governing bodies and stakeholders. Instituted comprehensive cost management and resource demand/supply practices to ensure maximum business value would be delivered within available funding and staffing constraints. Ensured plans were in place to manage risks. Provided oversight to ensure projects were being managed in accordance with established practices.Worked with management to allocate staff across projects and hire contract staff to augment teams. Managed a team of project managers. Provided guidance and assistance to staff at multiple locations. Resolved escalated issues, and intervened where necessary to turn around troubled projects.

Planned the merging of two project delivery organizations. The planning effort included a statement of work and a project schedule to transition people, processes and work into the new organization.Developed a governance model for the new project delivery organization. The model outlined service expectations, and accountabilities and general responsibilities for each business process.Led the effort to establish a set of project management processes. Activities included mapping existing process inventories against an industry standard model (PMBOK), conducting a process assessment, selecting a base set of processes for the new organization, completing targeted improvements to meet specific requirements, and planning process training and rollout. Assisted the organization in establishing project delivery service measures. Completed a sensitivity analysis on possible service level thresholds to determine the exposure to penalties.

Developed a process for managing the organization’s portfolio of projects by exception. The process included assessing a project’s status against best practice indicators using an automated tool, a turnaround procedure for troubled projects, and management reviews.Provided guidance and advice to project managers. Conducted project management interventions to turn around troubled projects. Served as a project manager in special situations.Implemented a quality review service to ensure proposals and project plans contained appropriate scope, quality, cost and schedule commitments. Implementation of the quality review service included stakeholder communications, quality review procedures, guidelines and templates, quality reviewer training, and work queue management.Documented the proposal and project planning process as part of a service improvement effort.