Microsoft Office Suite
Open To Work
Daniel Walz
IT Project Manager
Montrose,MN
Summary
Dynamic IT Project Manager and Product Manager with 24 years of diverse experience driving impactful technology initiatives across global environments. With expertise in project management, metrics analysis, and ITIL processes, consistently enhancing operational efficiency and business continuity. Bridging technical expertise with business needs to ensure effective resource allocation and reliability. Ready to harness extensive knowledge and experience to ensure the business thrives with an ever-changing IT landscape.
Overview
25
25
years of professional experience
3
3
Certifications
Work History
Technical Product Manager - Optum/UHG (Contractor)
Tata Consultancy Services
11.2023 - 12.2025
- Tracking and ensuring 120 application teams and leadership are prepared for the new year enrollment verifying DR, load testing, security vulnerabilities, and internal tracking
- Focused on information security vulnerabilities and other tracking for level 4 management.
- Established standard tracking of 70 improvement areas and security risks identified through a previous project, ensuring accountability within the organization.
- Created and maintained daily, weekly, and monthly reporting presentations for multiple levels of leadership adding insights needed to prioritize efforts in resolving critical or long running security vulnerabilities.
Sr. Project Manager - Linde (Contractor)
Tata Consultancy Services
11.2022 - 10.2023
- Spearheading the consolidation and remediation of legacy operating systems between over 20 small and medium sized data centers hosting over 5,000 operating systems.
- Worked with multiple areas to establish a baseline of OS images whether hosted virtually or on physical assets located within one of the datacenters.
- Created a SharePoint site based on information of contacts and filtering to gather missing data across a global environment and support teams.
- Created and lead training sessions to ensure data inputs were accurate and consistent.
- Directed changes to project scope and cost and implemented appropriate change management processes to keep project on track.
Sr. Project Manager - Cargill Incorporated (Contractor)
Tata Consultancy Services
Bloomington, MN
08.2017 - 10.2022
- Leading a team of project managers for large scale projects requiring detailed organization across multiple areas of discipline.
- Creating automated reporting for team members to utilize and multiple levels of stakeholders to consume ensuring clear status of projects.
- Through self-learning, became the TCS-Cargill engagement expert on MS Power Suite Applications and sharing that knowledge through training I created.
- Managing a wide range of projects from simple application upgrades to multi-year over $2 million budgets.
- Projects vary across multiple areas of IT such as ITIL process, hardware lifecycle, Data Center consolidation, software lifecycle, and support on-boarding training and documentation.
- Coordinating with 3rd party companies and support to implement or remove software and hardware.
Global Problem Manager - Cargill Incorporated (Contractor)
Tata Consultancy Services
Bloomington, MN
09.2014 - 08.2017
- Working with technical, process, and business contacts to eliminate the occurrence of high impacting incidents as well as identifying reoccurring incidents to improve business continuity.
- Working with application, database, and infrastructure teams to implement and improve the processes of problem management and integration to the rest of the ITIL framework.
- Creating training documentation videos for internal education of the problem management processes with SaaS provider.
- Reducing incidents by 15% over the course of a year and shifted mindset from just solving issues to eliminating them.
Global Metrics Analyst
Cargill Incorporated
Minnetonka, MN
03.2012 - 09.2014
- Verification of all key metrics presented outside of the team were consistently measured and presented to ensure a single cohesive view of the department's performance.
- Working with management to ensure all goals had a corresponding measurement that could be produced on a regular basis.
- Created metrics that support business cases created by architecture and verified completion.
- Developed ad-hoc reports, both technical and ITIL process related including identification of reoccurring issues, as requested.
- Creating, publishing, and maintaining a department scorecard to all internal business unit leadership and upper management.
- Identified and eliminated an issue producing over 1500 monitoring events a month across multiple teams that was not able to be qualified by a single team. This resulted in an architectural change which saved 750 support hours per month.
- Creation of baseline metrics for Problem Management for new and existing problems at all stages to ensure ongoing measurement of future success and improvements.
- Continually developed and created reporting showing the value of virtualization resulting in a cost avoidance of over $1.2 million in 8 months.
Global Incident and Problem Process Manager and Metrics
Cargill Incorporated
Minnetonka, MN
07.2008 - 03.2012
- Incident and Problem processes manager for the department and back-up for other ITIL process managers.
- Expert in all tools related to ITIL process measurements.
- Problem Manager and mentor for problem specialists.
- Lead the implementation of Problem Management across 4 global teams resulting in a savings of 13,000 operational hours in 1 quarter.
- Personally, developed a database that led to process improvements and a reduction or elimination of Major Incident occurrences.
- Engaged at a consulting level for best practices, metrics reporting, and general experiences around Incident and Problem Management.
- Ensuring consistency across global teams and end user experiences.
- Facilitated Major Incidents and performed the post reviews, ensuring accountability on RCA efforts and action items for 16 Major Incidents.
Global Infrastructure Problem Specialist
Cargill Incorporated
Minnetonka, MN
03.2007 - 07.2008
- Identification of reoccurring incidents, their root causes, and create plans to eliminate incidents when possible.
- With the ability to move seamlessly from an individual contributor role to a subject matter expert, and to an architectural role as a Problem Manager and Specialist as the situation calls for each specific skill set.
- Worked to create "server not responding" event automatic responses which reduced the number of event tickets by +200 per month.
- Assisted in the definition of expectations and value problem management can bring to the company though time and cost savings.
- Predicted the elimination of 5% of incidents and events with minimal effort.
Global Infrastructure Citrix/WTS Engineer
Cargill Incorporated
Minnetonka, MN
05.2006 - 03.2007
- Third-level IT support of Windows Server operating systems and hardware within a Citrix managed environment.
- Lead multiple efforts to find and reduce problem areas in the current technology through problem management in an environment of over 2,500 physical servers globally.
- Created video training documentation to enable the global team to troubleshoot critical issues within the environment despite location, eliminating the need for each region to have a 24 hour on-call rotation.
Global Technical Operations Associate
Cargill Incorporated
Minnetonka, MN
04.2005 - 05.2006
- Second-level IT support of Windows Server operating systems and hardware.
- Assisted in the building and design of an Operational Excellence group to focus on incidents coming into the queue increasing the Service Level Agreements met from 80% to over 95%.
Senior Technical Support Specialist
Cargill Incorporated
Minnetonka, MN
05.2001 - 04.2005
- First-level IT support of enterprise-wide hardware and software for internal businesses and administration of user accounts across multiple platforms and regions.
- License classification of 13,000+ installed PC applications on PCs for business compliance within 5 months.
- Created application to enable simulated environment for troubleshooting terminal devices, eliminating the need to escalate to on-site client teams.
Education
Associate of Applied Science - Computer Technical Support Specialist
Alexandria Technical College
Alexandria, MNAlexandria, MN
Skills
- Project Management
- Product management
- Data analysis
- ITIL process management
- Cross-functional collaboration
- Stakeholder engagement
- Process improvement
- Effective communication
- Problem solving
- Attention to detail
- Reporting presentation
- Change management
- Continuous integration and deployment
- Project management tools
- Technical strategy development
- Cross-functional team leadership
- Performance metrics tracking
- Release management
- Sprint planning
- Data-driven decision making
- Information architecture
- Time management abilities
- Scrum Methodologies
- Lead teams
- Active listening
- Scrum methodology
- Documentation management
- Agile methodologies
- Professionalism
- Written communication
- Resource planning
- Stakeholder management
- Scope development
- Work Planning and Prioritization
- Professional demeanor
- Technical documentation
- Requirements gathering
- Computer programming
- Resource allocation
- Problem-solving
- Root-cause analysis
- IT infrastructure
- Cost analysis
- Project planning
- Excellent communication
- Metrics and Analysis
- ITIL Processes
- Technical Environments
Hobbies and Interests
- Learning new skills
- Wood working
- Automotive Repair
- Sound technician
- Weekend warrior (electrical, carpentry, drywall, plumbing, etc.)
Education And Certifications
- Lean/Six Sigma Green Belt program, Six Sigma
- Querying Microsoft SQL Server 2012, New Horizons
- Implementing Data Models and Reports with Microsoft SQL Server 2012, New Horizons
- Crystal Reports Level 2, New Horizons
Certification
ITIL Foundations - v2 & v3 (Certified)
ITIL (v3) Intermediate Operational Support and Analysis (Certified)
A+ CompTIA - Software and Hardware Technician (Certified)
Software
Microsoft Power Suite
ServiceNow
Azure DevOps
BMC Remedy
Work Availability
monday
tuesday
wednesday
thursday
friday
saturday
sunday
morning
afternoon
evening
swipe to browse
Quote
Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value.
Albert Einstein
Timeline
Technical Product Manager - Optum/UHG (Contractor)
Tata Consultancy Services
11.2023 - 12.2025
Sr. Project Manager - Linde (Contractor)
Tata Consultancy Services
11.2022 - 10.2023
Sr. Project Manager - Cargill Incorporated (Contractor)
Tata Consultancy Services
08.2017 - 10.2022
Global Problem Manager - Cargill Incorporated (Contractor)
Tata Consultancy Services
09.2014 - 08.2017
Global Metrics Analyst
Cargill Incorporated
03.2012 - 09.2014
Global Incident and Problem Process Manager and Metrics
Cargill Incorporated
07.2008 - 03.2012
Global Infrastructure Problem Specialist
Cargill Incorporated
03.2007 - 07.2008
Global Infrastructure Citrix/WTS Engineer
Cargill Incorporated
05.2006 - 03.2007
Global Technical Operations Associate
Cargill Incorporated
04.2005 - 05.2006
Senior Technical Support Specialist
Cargill Incorporated
05.2001 - 04.2005
Associate of Applied Science - Computer Technical Support Specialist
Alexandria Technical College