Summary
Overview
Work History
Education
Skills
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Certification
Personal Information
Professional Highlights
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MALLIKA KISANRAI GAONKAR

San Jose

Summary

Dynamic Technical Program Manager with a proven track record at Experian, excelling in agile methodologies and stakeholder management. Spearheaded complex projects, driving a 90% improvement in forecasting accuracy while leading high-performing teams. Adept in cloud computing solutions and passionate about fostering innovation and collaboration across cross-functional teams.

Overview

22
22
years of professional experience
1
1
Certification

Work History

Technical Program Manager

EXPERIAN
San Jose
11.2023 - Current
  • Played a key role in establishing the team’s strategy and roadmap, leading teams working on I-9 (Employment eligibility verification), Payroll API, and Unified Payroll Data Ingestion projects utilizing cloud technology (Azure).
  • Drove the integration and adoption of agile delivery practices across delivery teams. Facilitated program retrospectives to identify improvement opportunities. Expertise in agile product development. Hold regular sprint planning, scrum and retrospective meetings to plan incremental efforts within a regular sprint and release cadence.
  • Drove the creation, review, approval, and update of the Program Plan/Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) including resource allocation.
  • Prepared project plans, drove project from conception and planning to implementation.
  • Managed multiple programs (comprising multiple projects per program) of high complexity and significant business impact. Established and monitored key metrics to measure success. Lead, mentor, support, and develop a high performing team of program managers, scrum master’s and project managers.
  • Knowledge of product development life cycle, software release cycles, processes, metrics & tools. Managed delivery processes and drove process improvements, reviewed metrics to enhance efficiency & drove OKRs.
  • Partnered with Product Management and Engineering to define needs that support strategic planning and execution. Defined metrics, program requirements, and scope, setting the vision, strategy, and roadmap.
  • Led stakeholders to determine program objectives and execute on deliverables, monitoring progress against KPIs, managing risks and issues, resolving dependencies, and maintaining scope and timing. Worked with cross-functional groups across the business.
  • Led cross-functional teams through program and roadmap planning, execution, and releases. Guided planning, execution, and delivery of strategic, cross-functional programs alongside other Technical Program Managers (TPMs). Collaborated with Engineering and Product Leadership and functions such as Engineering, Product Management, Customer Support.
  • Lead and managed technical deep dives such as requirements definitions, UX design, and product overviews.
  • Created and maintained detailed product specifications in Confluence, collaborating with product managers and engineers to ensure clear communication and alignment, leading to 20+ successful deployments.
  • Tracked program-level status, risks, issues, milestones, action items, dependencies, and mitigation plans. Implemented lifecycle process changes and recommended process improvements. Reported and tracked metrics using Power BI, JIRA, and Confluence. Keep ROAM (Resolved, Owned, Accepted, Mitigated) board up to date.
  • Lead post-project retrospectives that maximize learning and ensure that appropriate improvements are incorporated into development processes.
  • Drove the definition and design of new processes, evaluated new technologies and tools, and mentored other TPMs.
  • Collaborated with cross-functional stakeholders to define and evolve simple yet effective Product and Engineering processes and practices (quarterly roadmap planning, feature lifecycle, release management (SaaS & On-Premises environments), ORK tracking, quarterly operational reviews).
  • Facilitated Steering groups and manage the operating rhythm.
  • Drive activities by the cross functional team to release products.
  • Experience/Knowledge of SQL, Python.

Program Manager

PETCO
San Jose
11.2021 - 10.2023
  • Directed program strategy, budgets, resource allocation plans, and general program requirements. Collaborated with executive management and cross-functional teams to recommend and implement changes to products, processes, or business practices to drive continuous improvement and manage program costs.
  • Decomposed work at the program level across multiple delivery teams & defined program interdependence and release plans. Experienced with project planning tools such as JIRA, Gantt charts, MS Project, Confluence, Google Docs, and SharePoint. Collected requests for quarterly/biannual planning, both internal and external, to support strategic decisions during quarterly and bi-annual planning sessions. Expertise in Project-managing premium campaigns targeted at specific customer segments, involving meticulous planning, execution, and coordination to enhance customer satisfaction and loyalty.
  • Instituted the program roadmap while managing scope, schedule, resources, execution, and delivery. Ensured the alignment of delivery teams with program goals, objectives, and timelines. Collaborated with cross-functional teams to translate strategy into detailed requirements and prototypes with specific timelines. Championed operational excellence across Engineering teams and coordinated the execution of multi-quarter projects.
  • Expertise in budget planning, including preparing budgets and financial forecasting. Monitored and procurement activities, including procurement orders and drafting contracts. Managed CapEx planning activities and ensuring CapEx spending is within budget parameters through comprehensive, accurate, and timely accounting of CapEx spend on a monthly, quarterly, and yearly basis.
  • Established the team’s strategy and roadmap. Lead several teams, comprising of 15 Developers, 4 Leads, 2 Project Managers (PMs). Managed React pages and WebSphere Commerce platform to support Petco.com.
  • Worked on E-commerce, Mobile app, Vital Care (Membership and Loyalty Programs), and other products such as: Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL), Same Day Delivery (SDD), Fresh & Frozen products.
  • Drove the integration and adoption of agile delivery practices across delivery teams. Facilitated program retrospectives to identify improvement opportunities.
  • Managed program-level communications ensuring stakeholders are informed of roadmap changes, release plans, and delivery status. Lead program-level reviews with delivery teams, stakeholders, and executive management as required.
  • Partnered closely with product owners and product development teams. Executed and delivered programs aligning with product vision and program goals, objectives, and timelines.
  • Ensured measurable KPIs are defined and aligned with company goals and objectives. Drove resolution of program-level issues leveraging scrum-of-scrums as needed.
  • Facilitated executive-level escalations and program-level change management. Tracked program-level status, risks, issues, milestones, action items, dependencies, and mitigation plans.
  • Integrated management practices into Petco's overall project management methodology.
  • Experience with payment migration projects, such as the NCR to ACI payment gateway migration project. Experienced in Fraud System Migration.
  • Supported the implementation of a new CIAM solution to improve overall functionality through key authentication and authorization integrations using Okta’s managed Auth0 Cloud Identity for Private Cloud on AWS. Implemented the OneLogin solution and its essential features to create frictionless experiences and mitigate.

Technical Program Manager

CISCO SYSTEMS, INC.
San Jose
01.2019 - 11.2021
  • Led cross-functional teams comprising up to 20 developers, 7 QAs, and 2 product owners using an adapted Scrum framework. Collaborated with Engineering teams for configuration management, deployment tools, and continuous integration efforts for changes to the Subscription Billing Platform project.
  • Liaised with users, technical teams, and senior management for requirements gathering, software product features, technical designs, and product strategy. Partnered with operations, product, and policy teams to determine strategy and requirements.
  • Communicated and collaborated with internal and external clients on project deliverables. Managed expectations, implemented critical decisions, identified major risks, and drove key decisions across projects.
  • Demonstrated expertise in budget planning, financial forecasting, monitoring, and procurement activities, including preparing budgets, drafting contracts, and managing procurement orders.
  • Utilized extensive knowledge of financial systems to manage work, resources, and portfolios. Ensured continuous alignment to the business strategy, resulting in a 90% improvement in forecasting accuracy.
  • Implemented Agile projects and supervised multiple scrums. Tailored project management, development, and support processes to meet the needs of individual projects. Experienced in using Jira for agile project management and issue/bug tracking.
  • Experienced in using Confluence for team collaboration, document management, and workspace management.
  • Leveraged change management best practices to ensure the successful adoption of strategic initiatives.
  • Organized service introductions for support, customer success, and professional services aligned with new product introductions to meet business objectives. Experienced with Excel and PowerBI for reporting, including pivot tables and VLOOKUPS.

Senior Program Manager

CHEVRON
San Ramon
06.2018 - 01.2019
  • Oversaw various project and product deliverables, including kick-off presentations, project plans, status reports, and deployment plans. Led a team working on visualizations, BI development, and analytics solutions. Performed advanced data analysis using PowerBI.
  • Led the development and delivery of products and services for the downstream team, managing a team of Technical Program Managers and Release Managers. Identified opportunities across Engineering Systems and Azure DevOps ecosystem.
  • Partnered with business partners and cross-functional analysts to examine impacts and devise solutions. Coordinated end-to-end test cycles to validate changes and reduce risk. Monitored new analytics requests and managed the analytics queue.
  • Experienced in using Jira for agile project management and defect tracking.
  • Utilized Confluence for team collaboration and document management.

Senior Program Manager at Veritas

CAPGEMINI
Mountain View
01.2018 - 05.2018
  • Developed project plan, budget, structure, schedule, and staffing requirements for the delivery organization. Ensured project completion within the stipulated schedule, scope, and budget with high-quality standards.
  • Enabled orders and customized order settings using Salesforce. Managed orders using Salesforce, ensuring efficient and accurate order processing.
  • Identified risks and maintained application security by working with trust and safety teams. Facilitated project meetings and represented the project team in key senior management meetings.
  • Served as a Subject Matter Expert (SME) for the project management team. Ensured launch readiness and managed post-launch monitoring. Consistently identified ways to optimize and strengthen project management practices.

Senior Program Manager

PayPal, Inc.
Unknown
11.2017 - 01.2018
  • Aligned company goals/objectives with measurable KPIs, led program-level decomposition across several delivery teams, determined program interdependencies/release plans, and ensured delivery teams’ adherence with program goals and timelines.
  • Adopted Agile delivery practices across delivery teams, substituted for key management roles to ensure program delivery success, and worked with Business, Technology, and PMO leadership to align resources to program delivery requirements.
  • Partnered with Domain POCs and Initiative leads to optimize the projection execution in each sprint while conducting data analysis on data gathered quarterly and overseeing dashboard development efforts.

Project Manager at California Secretary of State

THE IFISH GROUP (IFG)
Sacramento
08.2017 - 10.2017
  • Led a team of business analysts, developers, and test engineers working on the CAL-ACCESS replacement system and developed Future State High-Level Model diagrams for the system in collaboration with the team.
  • Established roles and responsibilities, determined requirements, scope, schedules, and process road maps, created the project plan, procedures, and standards, implemented the project plan, and monitored the project status against project schedule/milestones.
  • Experienced working with the Project Approval Lifecycle (PAL) framework. aligned the project with organizational standards and ensured that all necessary approvals were obtained in a timely manner.
  • Facilitated daily Scrum meetings, delivered a structured process for resolving a business problem by leveraging in-depth.
  • Expertise in Six Sigma implementation (DMAIC) and created project status reports for the perusal of senior management.

Technical Project Manager

Department of Justice
Unknown
02.2017 - 07.2017
  • Organized project meetings, project kick-offs, and initiations, and delivered robust solutions and recommendations by proactively identifying business needs.
  • Supervised a team of business analysts, data architects, and test engineers working on Oracle DB while coordinating work activity, tasks, release timelines, impact assessment, resource/environment dependencies, issues, and constraints.
  • Ensured all projects receive the necessary approvals before initiation. Good understanding of project governance and the importance of adhering to established protocols to ensure project success.
  • Mentored Scrum teams and the broader organization on how to use Agile/Scrum practices and values.

Project Manager (Digital Ecommerce)

DIRECTV
El Segundo
08.2016 - 01.2017
  • Served as a core member of the DIRECTV web app launch project.
  • Directed a team working on data querying and data visualization of real-time data utilizing New Relic Insights (NRQL) to design Marketing Dashboards.
  • Advanced cross-functional team management, ensuring on-time, on-schedule, and within-budget project completion while examining and presenting project results during periodic meetings.
  • Experience in live streaming/broadcast space (international, multilingual content).

Project Manager

HEWLETT PACKARD (HP)
Palo Alto
02.2016 - 07.2016
  • Resolved program-level issues by leveraging Scrum-of-Scrums, participated in change control review board meetings to approve/disapprove change requests, and facilitated executive-level escalations and program-level change management efforts.
  • Responsible for executing the M&A integration process for productivity tools and systems that span multiple functional areas.
  • Ensured successful program execution by addressing program-level roadblocks, proactively resolved delivery team impediments, and monitored program-level status, risks, issues, and dependencies.
  • Obtained sign/offs/approvals for Business requirement documents (BRD) from stakeholders, utilized Confluence for employee onboarding and IT help desk-related activities, and used Microsoft Project to request resources from the resource manager.
  • Experienced using Azure DevOps.
  • Worked on consumer website redesign changes for HP’s ecommerce site (store.hp.com).

Project Manager | Lead | Business Analyst | Data Engineer

HEWLETT PACKARD (HP)
Palo Alto
07.2011 - 01.2016
  • Presented findings from data analysis in a clear, concise manner that was easily understood by stakeholders at all levels of the organization.
  • Created project status presentations for delivery to customers or project personnel.

Project Lead | Business Analyst | Data Engineer

HEWLETT PACKARD (HP)
Bangalore
09.2003 - 06.2011
  • Tracked and communicated project status to stakeholders and investors through weekly reports.

Education

Bachelor of Engineering (BE) - Electronics and Communications Engineering

Karnatak University
Dharwad, Karnataka, India

Skills

  • Technical leadership
  • Program and project management
  • Agile methodologies
  • Scrum and Kanban
  • Big data technologies
  • Data engineering and visualization
  • Business analysis and strategy
  • Enterprise change management
  • Product development and management
  • Cloud computing solutions
  • Stakeholder and vendor management
  • C-suite and executive relations
  • ITIL and ITSM practices
  • Software development life cycle (SDLC)
  • Project life cycle management
  • SWOT and ROI analysis
  • Release and continuous integration management
  • People and team leadership

Certification

Scrum Master Certified (SMC), 2018

Personal Information

Title: Senior Technical Program Management Leader

Professional Highlights

  • Drove a 40% improvement in team productivity across cross-functional teams at Petco while collaborating with Product Owners, Dev, QA, Architects, and project stakeholders to build and lead a high-performing and self-organizing team.
  • Eliminated $2.1M+ in manual operational costs and licensing fees annually at Cisco Systems by identifying and implementing changes to the existing subscription billing platform.
  • Automated invoicing and billing generation without manual touch at Cisco Systems, in addition to increasing overall customer satisfaction and reducing invoice dispute cases.
  • Led, mentored, and coached Product Owners, Scrum Masters, and Delivery teams to advance the successful adoption of Agile practices at Cisco Systems.
  • Directed a team of 50 members working on various technologies such as Vertica, Java, Informatica, and Hadoop at HP while overseeing program delivery efforts spanning multiple internal and external delivery teams.

Timeline

Technical Program Manager

EXPERIAN
11.2023 - Current

Program Manager

PETCO
11.2021 - 10.2023

Technical Program Manager

CISCO SYSTEMS, INC.
01.2019 - 11.2021

Senior Program Manager

CHEVRON
06.2018 - 01.2019

Senior Program Manager at Veritas

CAPGEMINI
01.2018 - 05.2018

Senior Program Manager

PayPal, Inc.
11.2017 - 01.2018

Project Manager at California Secretary of State

THE IFISH GROUP (IFG)
08.2017 - 10.2017

Technical Project Manager

Department of Justice
02.2017 - 07.2017

Project Manager (Digital Ecommerce)

DIRECTV
08.2016 - 01.2017

Project Manager

HEWLETT PACKARD (HP)
02.2016 - 07.2016

Project Manager | Lead | Business Analyst | Data Engineer

HEWLETT PACKARD (HP)
07.2011 - 01.2016

Project Lead | Business Analyst | Data Engineer

HEWLETT PACKARD (HP)
09.2003 - 06.2011

Bachelor of Engineering (BE) - Electronics and Communications Engineering

Karnatak University

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