Summary
Overview
Work History
Education
Skills
Timeline
Generic

Angela Bastian

Oregon,Wisconsin

Summary

  • Over 25 years of experience in all phases of IT solution delivery
  • Specialize in management of large portfolio strategic programs and projects
  • Experience in multiple delivery methodologies, such as agile, SAFe, lean, and waterfall
  • Excel at developing and implementing software development processes
  • Foster change and innovation
  • Extensive experience collaborating with multiple IT and Business teams in multiple locations

Client-focused Delivery Manager with 26 years of experience in Insurance deliveries. Committed to efficient and excellent work with knowledge of [Software] use and team supervision. Adept at budgeting without sacrificing quality and scheduling.

Overview

18
18
years of professional experience

Work History

Information Technology Solution Delivery Manager

American Family Insurance
Madison, WI
08.2015 - 11.2023
  • Managed team of technologists to deliver critical solutions across multiple Divisions and operating companies – Divisions were Enterprise-wide People Services, Talent Development, Legal, Protective Services, Building Workforce Services, Enterprise Risk Management, Corporate Compliance, and Corporate Communications
  • In addition to the solution delivery manager role, I was product owner to help manage the demand coming to the team backlog managing relationships between business customers and dependent teams
  • Led team through agile delivery adoption which helped team to be a more cohesive team and deliver key business solutions to accelerate the enterprise operating model
  • Accomplishments include migration of legacy applications to AWS, consolidated contingent Workforce management into one enterprise tool, Simplify where all operating company’s use same tool to bring efficiencies and cost savings
  • Also, successfully completed Enterprise Compensation Alignment integration development and testing
  • Operational accomplishments include reduced IT annualized operational spend by roughly $1.5M through cost reduction strategies
  • Other Foundational work included Legal Files Systems upgrade using waterfall methodology and MS Project, Protective Services C-Cure Upgrade, and security vulnerabilities for Corp Sys Java and Python applications
  • Improved system reliability by improving disaster recovery plans within a new enterprise risk management tool.

Digital Platforms

American Family Insurance
Madison, WI
04.2021 - 08.2022
  • Managed team of 20+ technology developers, quality assurance testers, business analysts and scrum masters for the customer facing Amfam.com and Agent Websites, as well as the Enterprise-wide Compass internal site using Agile SAFe for major projects, enhancements, as well as support and maintenance
  • Major accomplishments include migration of agent websites from external vendor to onsite Sitecore resulting in $1M savings, more opportunity to improve site speed and to deliver more frequent refreshment and optimizations of the websites
  • Released the Amfam.com homepage redesign, created a roadmap addressing security vulnerabilities and accessibility findings
  • Also, managed vendor contracts and relationships across the three solutions
  • Led department of 6 managers with total of 60+ staff to develop a succession planning program to develop and provide opportunities for growth to potential future leaders
  • Also led team through a LEAN kaizen event to improve project delivery time of the customer facing homepage which resulted in reducing the time by a month.

Personal Lines

American Family Insurance
08.2019 - 03.2021
  • Managed team of about 15 employees, onsite and offshore contractors for Personal Lines Property, Auto and Umbrella delivering enhancements, support, and maintenance efforts
  • Team consisted of developers, Quality Assurance Key IT leader for COVID-19 pandemic relief efforts for our customers leading a remote team in making changes to the Personal Lines book of business resulting in first to provide approximately $200M to customers and high customer satisfaction rating
  • Collaborated closely across multiple IT areas, as well as business teams from inception to implementation
  • This included IT Billing, Enterprise Correspondence, Advance and Classic teams, and Print and Mail
  • Supported legacy system team of 10 staff through AWS cloud certifications on their first attempt.

Enterprise Correspondence

American Family Insurance
08.2015 - 07.2019
  • Effectively managed an onsite and offshore team of developers, quality assurance testers, business analysts and scrum masters to deliver customer documents to print and mail for multiple large portfolios of strategic divisional product line initiatives
  • This included documents for the Guidewire Claims System, Life, Personal Lines, Commercial Lines, Agency, and Billing
  • While doing so, managed business partners and IT relationships across these lines of business
  • Led team through the company’s cultural transformation to the Agile and Lean methodology
  • Developed daily problem-solving capability across the team and department
  • As a lean kaizen champion of a cross functional team, applied lean leadership principles and re-organized the process for document creation
  • The results were a reduction of cost and increased quality in the development of creating single multi-page variable document from 40 hours down to 10
  • Also, lead Enterprise Correspondence Claims team using SAFe during change from the Dialogue to SmartComm document system
  • Partnered with the Enterprise Correspondence Manager of Managers to bring consistency across the department as it relates to budget, resourcing, and communication
  • Oversaw 2 team’s capacity and demand within department until manager could be hired
  • Used data to optimize people, balancing capacity and demand across the department
  • Guided managers and their teams through a process to learn how to create strong business cases to work on technical debt items to improve the health of our system which allowed immediate funding approval
  • Collaborated with IT managers to provide staff development opportunities making for high employee engagement and building EC development team strength which allowed 3 people to move to different roles expanding their experience
  • Moved Enterprise Correspondence Claims daytime and nighttime production support to a vendor to manage offshore saving the company money
  • This increased employee engagement across the department as it saved them from being paged and allowed the team to focus on other work
  • This also resulted in the decision to move more department production support to a vendor in a similar fashion
  • Managed multiple strategic vendor relationships to lead various initiatives which created a healthy sense of competition between strategic vendors and led to favorable pricing and higher quality.

IT Software Test Manager

09.2011 - 07.2015
  • Built an extensive and strong network of quality relationships across the IT division to align plans and secure appropriate staff levels needed to implement strategic initiatives across multiple products and teams
  • Effectively managed over 60 team members over 6 solution delivery teams
  • Established strong vendor partnerships which helped drive testing quality and efficiencies
  • Key leader in partnering with Test Leads and Managers in establishing an overall testing strategy improving the process to align with the corporate strategies which became part of the corporate structure and process changes
  • The process improvement included enhanced test automation, integrated test plans that supported CI/CD pipelines, business involvement in IT testing and eliminating redundancies
  • Successfully managed critical delivery of Guidewire PolicyCenter Property application testing spanning multiple releases
  • This included establishing and managing a strategic onsite and offshore vendor staffing model partnership
  • Led multiple test teams in estimating, planning and executing testing activities
  • Established and managed business partner involvement in the testing activities resolving past relationship issues between clients and the IT division
  • Managed Business Analytics application testing for multiple Guidewire implementations
  • Led the creation of the testing structure, strategies, and processes
  • Managed an offshore test team that completed 80% of the analytical testing
  • As part of this effort acquired, assigned, and managed testing resources workload
  • Also, coordinated testing activities by partnering with test managers from 7 different application areas.

Project Management Specialist

04.2006 - 09.2011
  • Led Change and Transition Team for corporate restructuring driving results for both Business and IT
  • Program and Project Manager across the IT division for large strategic corporate initiatives
  • Accountabilities included feasibility planning, coordinating team dependencies, issues management, risk management, change management, creating status reports and project budget management
  • This was done by building strong relationships and working closely with multiple delivery teams and business partners while leading teams through an agile methodology change
  • Led the Guidewire BillingCenter team through the initial Proof of Concept which consisted of both IT and business members using the agile methodology
  • Primary responsibilities included planning, managing impediments, and coordinating team dependencies
  • Served as program process manager on the State Expansion corporate initiative
  • Collaborated with delivery managers, program manager and 25 IT project leads on establishing program processes and procedures related to project plans, testing strategies, and implementation efforts.

Education

Executive Education, School of Business - Masters Certificate in Project Management

University of Wisconsin – Madison
01.2004

Associates in Science Degree - Computer Programming

Madison Area Technical College
01.1997

Associates in Art’s Degree - Accounting

Madison Business College
01.1990

Skills

  • Team Collaboration
  • Team Development
  • Risk Mitigation Planning
  • Change Management
  • Technical Troubleshooting
  • Documentation and Reporting
  • Quality Assurance
  • Budget Control
  • Software Licenses and Patches
  • Requirements Analysis
  • Security Improvements
  • Staff Hiring
  • Agile Work Processes
  • Project Coordination
  • Product Development
  • Operational Reporting
  • Business Development Support
  • Scope Definition
  • Project Planning
  • Project Leadership
  • Expense Analysis
  • Budget Administration
  • Department Management
  • Security Planning

Timeline

Digital Platforms

American Family Insurance
04.2021 - 08.2022

Personal Lines

American Family Insurance
08.2019 - 03.2021

Information Technology Solution Delivery Manager

American Family Insurance
08.2015 - 11.2023

Enterprise Correspondence

American Family Insurance
08.2015 - 07.2019

IT Software Test Manager

09.2011 - 07.2015

Project Management Specialist

04.2006 - 09.2011

Executive Education, School of Business - Masters Certificate in Project Management

University of Wisconsin – Madison

Associates in Science Degree - Computer Programming

Madison Area Technical College

Associates in Art’s Degree - Accounting

Madison Business College

Similar Profiles

CREATE PROFILE
Angela Bastian