Gowri Sudhir
San Jose,CA
Summary
Results-driven Program Manager, Scaled Agile Scrum Master, Technical Project Manager, and QA Lead with 10+ years of experience. Thrives on creating order out of chaos and energized by challenges. Experienced in running end-to-end SDLC, from requirements to release. Proven track record of delivering complex and high-impact programs with multi-functional and geographically dispersed teams, ensuring parity for customers and stakeholders. Skilled in keeping teams on track, identifying blind spots, and finding elegant solutions to unforeseen problems. Process-centered and customer-focused with a continual improvement mindset and fact-based decision-making. Demonstrated history of being a self-starter, resourceful, and able to prioritize in a fast-paced environment with changing objectives.
Overview
17
17
years of professional experience
1
1
Certification
Work History
Program Manager
Navis / Kaleris LLC
06.2021 - 05.2023
- As a Program Manager, I engage with an experienced, global, and cross-functional staff and take responsibility for protecting and enhancing the processes, facilitating product, and engineering teams, communicating with the wider business, and bringing continuous improvement
- I direct and manage the development lifecycle from beginning to end in a technical and agile environment
- Plan, execute and facilitate PI planning workshops for the entire organization for the release
- Coordinate Release Planning and track, monitor the delivery of commitments for the release and ensure that release guidelines and GA criteria are met successfully and on time
- Act as Scaled Scrum Master for multiple scrum teams with a focus on guiding the teams towards improving the way they work
- Facilitate and optimize sprint ceremonies and ensure cross-team coordination (locally and globally)
- Maintain relevant metrics that help the teams and coordinate release effort
- Work with product owners to develop, prioritize and refine the backlog
- Backlog tracking, burndown, and burnup metrics, velocity, and task definition and experience with tools to draw metrics from data
- Partner with Product Managers, program managers and Engineering Leads to develop project plans, estimate work efforts, identify dependencies, and resource plans to successfully develop the capability
- Constantly balance new features, special customer requirements and other customer escalations
- Act as a bridge between PS and Engineering team to help customers close issues, provide timelines for resolution and manage escalations
- Remove any impediments that would prevent the team from achieving its sprint goals and help achieve shippable product
- Build a trusting and safe environment where problems can be raised without fear
- Drive new initiatives, process improvements toward consistent delivery of the working product
- Use innovative techniques to team retrospectives with focus on team building, ownership, and accountability
- Track identified Risks, prepare and manage risk response strategies for these risks with team/tech lead/architects, also communicates Risk details and mitigation plans with all stakeholders and leadership
Associate Project Coordinator
Novigo LLC
09.2016 - 03.2017
- Facilitated Design Thinking sessions with Maersk and Apple to enable deeper understanding of the overall scope and the creation of the backlogs and user stories for SMART Track App and Tendring Award App
- Responsible for the coordination, implementation, execution and completion of backlog/user stories
- Facilitate daily standups, sprint planning sessions, retrospectives and sprint demos
- Influenced key stakeholders to get buy-in and commitment for dependent topics
- Ensure all program artifacts (BRDs, Design Docs, Test Plans, etc.) are completed and approved in a timely manner
- Prepare and deliver effective communications regarding progress and status to higher management
- Coached to positively reinforce an Agile mindset, practices, and skills to teams and individuals
- Organize demos with customers and prepare the system for customer demos by setting up master data and technical scenario configurations
- Engage with SAP development team in relaying feedback got from customers
Technical Project Lead
SAP Labs India
01.2010 - 02.2014
- Formulated SMART Goals, project milestones and roadmap, product priorities, critical success metrics and key performance indicators to ensure on time software delivery
- Managed cross functional / organizational dependency, risks, and changes effectively by optimizing scope, schedule and resources accordingly
- Developed communication plan to communicate program status, issues, and risks effectively and proactively to stakeholders
- Ensured close cooperation across roles and functions to create an Agile-Safe environment
- Boosted team productivity by ~30% by making sure Scrum processes are followed in day-to-day work by restructuring the team, removing impediments, optimizing sprint meetings, reducing technical debts, improving transparency etc
- Facilitated continuous improvement both in the delivery effort and implementation of agile practices in the organization
- Worked with the Agile Transformation team to advocate and help in the successful adoption and transformation of Agile across the organization
- Actively shared and implemented best practices with/from other teams to ensure the maturity levels grow at the same pace across the enterprise
- Managed customer expectations and escalations
- Coordinated customer interactions to understand the requirements and worked in close cooperation with the product owner to help in translating the requirements into backlogs
- Bridge between customers and development team in dealing with customer tickets by providing constant updates to customers about the progress in resolution of tickets
- Go-Live support for customers Example - DHL
- Played a pivotal role in SAP Deal winning BASF PoC Project - showcase of SAP TM9.1's new feature - Strategic Freight Procurement capabilities to BASF
- Drive Customer Usability tests with Panalpina for TM 9.0 and Nestle for TM9.1 and tracked usability issues and topics gathered through the end-user validations
- Expert in Customer Usability Moderation and Formative Usability testing
Quality Program Lead
SAP Labs India
07.2007 - 01.2010
- Built and lead the quality program to ensure consistency and continuous improvement across the team and processes focusing on relevance, coverage, and content performance
- Managed the development and execution of test plans, monitoring and reporting test execution and quality metrics
- Developed and analyzed statistical data and product specifications to determine standards and to establish quality and reliability expectancy
- Ensured close cooperation with the software development team to ensure successful completion of the proposed product feature and that testing covers all aspects of intended functionality
- Performed Defect Density analysis, code coverage analysis, Customer message analysis and improve the scope of testing thereby reducing the defect rate by 20%
- Decreased time to set up new system by 40% by rolling out tools and processes for automated configuration builder
- Delivered feedback on quality to the development team to spur changes in the software development process
- Trained new joiners/partners and customers regarding product functionality and processes
- Formulated the business case and convinced top management to release budget to automate top 60 business scenarios
- Formed a team, set priorities and processes, managed communication and risks effectively
- Reduced manual testing effort for 4 scrum teams by spearheading automation of the most used transactions
- Partnered with other business org to achieve the goal and negotiated script maintenance responsibility after project completion
Quality Specialist
SAP Labs India
06.2006 - 07.2007
- Developed and maintained test configuration and scripts
- Participate in Module Integration testing, Acceptance testing, Regression Tests, product standard tests like Accessibility, Usability testing
- Testing end-to-end Customer scenarios
- Creation and execution of ECATT scripts
- Regression testing by executing ECATT scripts for specified scenarios
- Provide master data for testers during MIT/AT
Education
Bachelor of Engineering - Computer Science
VTU
06.2006
Skills
- Agile Project Management
- Software Release Coordination
- Program Increment Planning
- Project Execution Management
- Continuous Process Refinement
- Data-Driven Analysis
- Analytical Problem Solving
- Backlog Management
- Sprint planning and execution
- Effective communication
- Customer Expectation Management
- Issue Escalation Management
- Multi-Departmental Liaison
- Strategic Negotiation Skills
Certification
- CAPM, 04/24
- Certified SAFe 5 Advanced Scrum Master, 11/20
- CSM Certified, 1274101, 09/20
- Scrum Master Accredited Certification, 06/20
- Test Management: Foundation level ISTQB certified, 01/09
Timeline
Program Manager
Navis / Kaleris LLC
06.2021 - 05.2023
Associate Project Coordinator
Novigo LLC
09.2016 - 03.2017
Technical Project Lead
SAP Labs India
01.2010 - 02.2014
Quality Program Lead
SAP Labs India
07.2007 - 01.2010
Quality Specialist
SAP Labs India
06.2006 - 07.2007
- CAPM, 04/24
- Certified SAFe 5 Advanced Scrum Master, 11/20
- CSM Certified, 1274101, 09/20
- Scrum Master Accredited Certification, 06/20
- Test Management: Foundation level ISTQB certified, 01/09
Bachelor of Engineering - Computer Science
VTU
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