LaVonda Wyatt
Henrico,VA
Summary
Senior Release Manager with over 24 years of experience as an IT Professional. Proficient in establishing processes effectively and managing Information Technology initiatives. Proven track record of accomplishment for initiating and managing large-scale, high visibility projects/releases in many challenging, dynamic environments. Possess strong personal achievement in Information Management, Release Management, Change Management, Incident Management, Project Management and Operational Process and planning improvement. Recognized for strong problem solving, use of sound judgment and generating new ideas and critical thinking. Confident, articulate, results-focused leader and demonstrates excellent time management and negotiation skills, with the ability to prioritize multiple tasks and meet critical deadlines on time. Well-versed in building positive relationships with customers and other stakeholders. Strong requirements gathering, scope development and inventory coordination abilities. Skilled at overseeing complex, high-value technical projects with excellent planning competencies. Detail-oriented Release Manager focused on providing defect-free products to clients. Working closely with development, QA and business teams to accomplish goals and exceed customer expectations.
Overview
17
17
years of professional experience
1
1
Certification
Work History
Lead Release Manager
Medallia
06.2021 - Current
- Coordinate releases and changes through change management process to ensure that change initiators are following release and change process.
- Manage release validation through development, testing and production phases.
- Manage deploying code from lower environments to production using Jenkins, Azure Dev-Ops, Apple Store, Google Play and AWS
- Organize forward-plan release windows while coordinating cross-functional work with teams across services and platforms maintaining release schedule for all core services and ensuring alignment across enterprise,
- Work directly with engineers to understand impacts of branches and code merges.
- Manage risks and resolve issues that affect release scope, schedule, and quality of work.
- Monitor progress to ensure application releases are delivered on time and according to goals and expectations.
- Conduct and define Release Readiness reviews, while communicating all key commitments, and scope/timeline changes with various stakeholders.
- Drive production incidents, continuous improvement process, ensuring code management, continuous integration, and tracking tooling as needed.
- Coordinate and monitor release verification process, cut release to ensure QE validation for patch/hotfixes as necessary.
- Complete merging duties to ensure code is correctly moving through environments utilizing GitHub as requested through Jira tickets.
- Oversee deployment of operating system patches, security improvements and hardware compatibility updates.
- Ensure that applications are adhering to corporate security, legal and regulatory rules such as (SOX etc..).
- Proven ability to learn quickly and adapt to new situations
- Passionate about learning and committed to continual improvement
Lead Infrastructure Engineer ~ Release Manager/Scrum Master
S&P Global Market Intelligence
11.2016 - 06.2021
- Supported products while working in highly agile environment as both mentor and Lead Release Manager/Scrum Master (CSM)
- Facilitated Integrated Release Planning, Release Scrums, Scrum of Scrums, and related ceremonies
- Collaborated with Product Owners, and other Scrum Masters, and change control function to continuously maintain and prioritize platform backlog
- Assisted director of release-engineering department by supporting overall team in day-to-day functions
- Tracked all projects/releases assigned to determine resources and bandwidth availability
- Coordinated with cross-functional teams to help with release schedules and timelines for enterprise-wide calendar
- Managed overall implementation plans on multiple platforms, including support to development teams that use automated infrastructure
- Participated with on-boarding process to identify custom processes/delivery requirements
- Executed and supported function of Release Management, Release Planning, Release Development, and Release Testing, and Release Deployment and CI/CD Processes
- Driving releases management governance discussion to ensure compliance
- Managed risks and resolve issues that influence scope, schedule, and quality
- Facilitate release readiness, milestone, and business go/no-go reviews
- Built relationships while coordinating work with offshore teams supporting releases and deployments
- Worked closely with product development teams to identify, prioritize, and ensure key issues captured for each release
- Managed configuration change process for integrated platforms day-to-day basis, including guiding and overseeing submission, assessment, prioritization, and elaboration of change request
- Reviewed all operational configuration changes and provide necessary feedback to ensure compliance with configuration management plan as well as testing and security requirements
- Monitoring all operational configuration changes to ensure performed per documented process and completed successfully
- Provided incident management support as needed by establishing tickets when issues arise in production environment etc
- Participate in daily incident calls to address issues and find resolutions.
Release Engineer
Configuration Management Inc, CMI, Capital One Financial Corporation
03.2016 - 11.2016
- Monitored code deployments using Jenkins, worked closely with the application teams to execute the implementation plan, and supported integrated platform releases per the release management process
- While actively, driving alignment of platform changes to pre-defined release schedules and identifying conflicts with other portfolio planned releases
- Partnered with the delivery teams to conduct and /or review release impact assessments
- Gathered all content using Version One to track epics, stories, and backlog for each release
- Coordinated test & development environments using Amazon Web Services
- Developed the integrated minute-by-minute plan for production release and facilitated walkthrough with teams
- Developed and provided process improvement recommendations based on customers and delivery teams interactions to help mature and align release management services and conducted a Cloud Production Readiness Review
- Assessed, planned, and assisted the product teams with the design of release packages prior to deployment into the AWS environments
- Facilitated discussion and conflicted resolution on builds and release issues supported an agile approach to development, testing, build and release.
Senior Release Manager
Technology Ventures Mclean, Fannie Mae
11.2013 - 03.2016
- Executed and supported the function of release management, release planning, development, and testing and release deployment to ensure the successful implementation of projects in all pre-production and production environments resulting in 100% on time delivery
- Collaborated with change management to ensure project planning, monitoring and successful execution during production rollout using Remedy and ServiceNow
- Managed the coordination and delivery of high-quality releases for front end and back-end software for customer-facing solutions
- Documented changes to scope or functionalities with change ticket, project plan, or other format, collaborating with key business stakeholders to identify and manage project risks
- Negotiated release issues and schedules with internal customers and report status to executive management
- Facilitated communication, coordination, and correspondence between staff and executive level stakeholders across the DevOps Engineering, Configuration Management, Test, Product, and Operations organizations while driving a recently implemented agile release management methodology
- Reviewed and maintain standard operating procedures for operational changes for the business program including incident management plan, configuration management plan, account provisioning process, patch management plan and audit management plan
- Managed the minute-by-minute implementation plan and coordinated all activities/task for all functional teams involved in the release
- Planned all code deployments for a successful implementation through each environment test, user acceptance, performance, and production
- Created all Release tickets and Change tickets using ServiceNow with extensive knowledge on Content Management
- Ensuring roles ID's and database changes were setup on time within ServiceNow to support any Oracle, SQL and Unix upgrades as needed
- Collaborated with configuration management, change management, and infrastructure teams to ensure the successful execution of release migrations.
Senior Release Manager/Team Lead
Configuration Management Inc, CMI, Capital One Financial Corporation
07.2008 - 11.2013
- Managed 7 to 12 release manager, provided mentorship, training, and coaching to support Information Technology Office infrastructure platform
- Managed multiple high visibility applications in US Card and ITO/Infrastructure line of business adhering to Engagement and Release Management processes
- Developed detailed release plans using toolkit to capture delivery expectations with key stakeholders
- Worked directly with Quality Service Test team, developers, legal/compliance, customers, and others to ensure requirements communicated
- Reduced production risk and service lapse by creating intellectual property to capture scope of work and application management processes
- Coordinated with IT managers, operations, lines of business and outside suppliers to get projects prioritized and questions issues resolved to adhere to service level agreements
- Created regular customer sponsor updates, including metrics reports using business objects and crystal to provide issues logs, project updates, and other communications as needed
- Facilitated meetings to start up new businesses, by developing and implementing release strategy cadence to help mitigate risk of hard/software collision in production environment.
- Monitored team performance and provided constructive feedback to increase productivity and maintain quality standards.
- Trained new team members by relaying information on company procedures and safety requirements.
Project Manager
Collabera, Capital One Financial Corporation
06.2006 - 03.2008
- Coordinated with Program Manager in merger between North Fork Bank, Bank South, and Capital One to establish program management, which included Scope Management, Staffing Management, Risk Management, Change Management and Communication Management
- Tracked, monitored milestones and key deliverables based on established timelines and project plans
- Updated overall project schedules in Microsoft project merging each project manager plans together to ensure consistency and accuracy
- Generated issue log for weekly review, delivered metrics and analyzed weekly time reporting to senior management to establish visibility
- Collaborate with application owners and developer to capture business requirements
- Performed comprehensive risks analysis to ensure data credibility and compliance
- Maintained project status, confirming with developers, and other key stakeholders
- Assessed compliance of development processes with accepted methodology and communicated to responsible management/key stakeholders.
- Analyzed project performance data to identify areas of improvement
Education
Some College (No Degree) - Information Technology Project Management
ESI International/ George Washington University
Arlington, VATechnical Diploma - Network Administration office technology, Computer Systems Applications
ECPI University
1997
Skills
- Microsoft Office Suite, MS Projects, MS Teams, Skype, Zoom, SharePoint, Smartsheet
- Remedy, HP Service Desk, HP Service Manager, Service Now, Configuration Management Database (CMDB) COTS
- GitHub, Git Lab, Jenkins, Curiosity, Amazon Web Service (AWS), Jira, Visual Studio TFS, Azure DEVOPS, Confluence, Quality Assurance Testing (Dev, Test, UAT, Performance and Prod) , JIVE, Zendesk, IBM Rational ClearQuest, Icart, Lotus Notes,
- iOS and Android mobile app release process
Highly experienced in managing software application releases
- Automation Knowledge
- Team Mentoring
- Special Projects
- Web and Mobile Application QA
Certification
- EssentialTech Foundations - 2021
- Certified Scrum Master, Scrum Alliance - 2019
- ICAgile Certified Professional - Foundations of DevOps - 2017
- ITIL V4 Foundations - 2014
Timeline
Lead Release Manager
Medallia
06.2021 - Current
Lead Infrastructure Engineer ~ Release Manager/Scrum Master
S&P Global Market Intelligence
11.2016 - 06.2021
Release Engineer
Configuration Management Inc, CMI, Capital One Financial Corporation
03.2016 - 11.2016
Senior Release Manager
Technology Ventures Mclean, Fannie Mae
11.2013 - 03.2016
Senior Release Manager/Team Lead
Configuration Management Inc, CMI, Capital One Financial Corporation
07.2008 - 11.2013
Project Manager
Collabera, Capital One Financial Corporation
06.2006 - 03.2008
Some College (No Degree) - Information Technology Project Management
ESI International/ George Washington University
Technical Diploma - Network Administration office technology, Computer Systems Applications
ECPI University
- EssentialTech Foundations - 2021
- Certified Scrum Master, Scrum Alliance - 2019
- ICAgile Certified Professional - Foundations of DevOps - 2017
- ITIL V4 Foundations - 2014
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