Summary
Overview
Work History
Education
Skills
Certification
Timeline
Hi, I’m

Safaru Abubakar

Project/Program Manager
Safaru Abubakar

Summary

Certified Project manager, Scrum Master and Product manager. With extensive years of experience leading projects and business analysis and initiatives in various enterprise-wide solutions. Expert at implementing product-management strategies and developing transformative solutions using Agile and Lean Development methodologies. Experience gathering stakeholder requirements and converting them into functional system specifications adhering to the SDLC. Strong ability to collaborate with, inspire and motivate others toward accomplishing goals within various groups. Proven leadership/influencing skills, collaboration, highly motivated. and able to influence-highest levels of organization. Strong organizational and planning skills. Strong written and verbal communication skills, interpersonal skills, problem-solving and analytical skills. Excellent analytical skills, including the ability to collect, synthesize, and summarize relevant data, perform root cause analysis, analyze workforce and competency data, and provide recommendations and solutions.

Overview

10
years of professional experience
1
Certification

Work History

SOLIEL LLC

PROJECT MANAGER/PROGRAM SUPPORT
07.2022 - Current

Job overview

  • Company Overview: Defense Information System for Security
  • Serve as Information Technology (IT) Project Manager for the overall management, control, coordination and execution of specified projects for the Directorate, Division, or Branch
  • Identified complex project issues, risks, or problems in assigned projects, and made recommendations for, and coordinates, resolutions and improvements
  • Provided technical support, expert staff assistance, and was responsible for determining the number of personnel required to successfully accomplish project requirements
  • Maintained program and administrative references, files, and background documentation
  • Meets with managers and executives within the Service to define the overall goals and objectives of the project
  • Prepared action plans and schedules for various phases of project accomplishment, both short and long-range ensured that plans were consistent with Service goals, schedules, and policies
  • Built a trusting and safe environment where problems can be raised without fear of blame, retribution, or being judged, with an emphasis on healing and problem-solving
  • Provide updates to stakeholders, visual dashboards on project status and Resource utilization and development
  • Use of technical SDLC requirements using screen mockups and dashboards
  • Supports Product Owners, especially concerning refinement (aka grooming) and managing the product backlog; collaborated with the Product Owner to ensure product backlog is visible and prioritized towards business value
  • Mentors team members on agile software development principles and practices, including implementing process improvement ideas learned from retrospectives
  • Prepare and recommends resource requirements to accomplish the project; negotiated with managers of various components of the Service to obtain needed resources and support
  • Established a system to review, control, and report on project status
  • Performs Gap Analysis to identify the deficiencies of the current application and to identify the requirements for the proposed system
  • Created Process Workflows, Functional Specifications, and responsible for preparing Software Requirement Specifications (SRS)
  • Plan, coordinates and establish operating methods and procedures for accomplishment of project mission as needed, directed the development and accomplishment of employee training relating to the project
  • Monitor project status and adjust work plans for project accomplishment
  • Served as Jira Administration by setting up workflows, configuring fields screen permission schemes etc
  • Documented and helped establish company SDLC and other processes in confluence
  • Produced training material and led training sessions for Jira Tempo and confluence
  • Created reports and dashboards in JIRA to track hours and project status to report to finance team
  • Acted as project manager and a scrum master for 3 different teams
  • Defense Information System for Security

Strategic Results Consulting

PROJECT MANAGER/PROGRAM MANAGER
11.2018 - 07.2022

Job overview

  • Company Overview: Defense Media Activity
  • Supporting the efforts in establishing and standardization of Enterprise Program Management Office throughout the organization to improve communications between Engineering, Product Management, and Business; to provide more transparency across the 7 departments; and to obtain great business value with short turnarounds
  • Planned and managed work activities of at least two software development/test teams (Web Portal, Dealer Onboarding) working
  • Provided Resource saving methods
  • This saved the company $400,000 over a period of 1.5 years on a Contract
  • Developed and followed agile project management plan (Agile Ceremonies)
  • Facilitated build requirements log (product backlog) with cost estimates and priority
  • Conducted Scrum Daily standup, Product backlog, Sprint Planning, Sprint Review & Sprint Retrospective meetings
  • Determined the team capacity (velocity) from historical data
  • Created Work Breakdown structure (user stories) and corresponding activities (tasks)
  • Monitored the project progress and radiated the information to stakeholders
  • Identified and mitigated team risks and impediments (Blocking Issues, Critical Defects) on a daily basis
  • Worked with Senior Management, Business & Release Management to understand the vision of the product, prioritize and develop software release planning
  • Participated in developing test plans and test procedure templates and guidelines to be used by the project team with detailed screen layouts regarding various types of corporate actions
  • Communicated the progress to senior management thru 'Burndown Charts'
  • Monitored the Quality thru metrics and mentored team thru the project management processes
  • Identified product and functional requirements which helped build the product plan and project scope
  • Developed innovative features (node graphs and timelines) based on current and future data elements to allow for a more gamification feel to the application
  • Monitored the development progress throughout each sprint to ensure the project was within scope and budget
  • Conducted user interviews to help identify and understand different processes for each user while simultaneously identifying their pain points
  • Worked with Agile Release Train Director to incorporate UX best practices / design to ensure a more comprehensive and innovative approach
  • Identified potential project risks and helped develop a mitigation plan to resolve potential issues
  • Managed the insight and opinions of multiple stakeholders and helped to ensure all stakeholders agreed with the current scope
  • Supervised the assessing of data warehouse and its associated business intelligence capabilities
  • Developed analytical methods and tools to evaluate and integrate data from various sources to assess and recommend solutions to assigned problems
  • Assists in monitoring deployed programs, coordination with technical service providers on new client requirements, and identifying new policy risks that impact ongoing support
  • Defense Media Activity

The Jacobs Group

SCRUM MASTER/ AGILE COACH/Requirements Analyst
05.2015 - 07.2018

Job overview

  • Company Overview: DEEA
  • Served as Agile 'Scrum Master' with the ability to guide a self-organized team of software developers towards completion of the business (product owner) objectives
  • Provided leadership guidance with the ability to earn trust while still challenging the team to improve and operate outside its comfort zone in an agile environment
  • Captured business requirements and needs from stakeholders
  • Utilized agile methodologies to ensure the overall success of the organization
  • Supported the PMO in adopting Agile Scrum, coached and mentored two development teams, Scrum Master and business managers new to agile best practices and Scrum behavior
  • Developed a business transformation roadmap to Scrum using the SAFe framework
  • This led to a cost saving of $1.5million from wasteful spending on a High Visibility project
  • Collaborated with teams and Scrum Master to coordinate work, manage dependencies, and improve the environment for Agile development
  • Accountable for entering teamwork items into Jira, monitoring progress against goals in Jira, and producing reports for management review
  • Created requirements document for new versions of IS&R 7.0 and 7.1 applications enlisting all functional and non-functional requirements, assumptions and constraints
  • Established a work plan for each phase of the project and set goals, negotiated project commitments, and developed project plans
  • Coordinated development and gain the approval of the business and technical requirements documents and project scope definition
  • Coordinated the formulation and definition of technical scope and objectives in collaboration with technical subject matter experts
  • Managed the development of project plans, operating plans, and supporting budgets: determining the scope, methods, and resource requirements and schedules for projects
  • Determines the impact of current/existing technologies on the project
  • Leads and defends technical and programmatic decisions
  • Develops, manages, and defends cost and schedule
  • Conducts acquisition planning and source selection
  • Managed IT staffing, including recruitment, supervision, scheduling, development, evaluation, and disciplinary actions
  • Implements diversity & inclusion initiatives that help the organization achieve a well-rounded, diverse workforce
  • Managed and influenced a team of analysts, software engineers, and subject matter experts to deliver the task on time, assisted the team with making appropriate commitments through story selection and task definition
  • Assured all roles and responsibilities are documented and assigned to specific project teams with definitive dates assigned to critical tasks and milestones
  • Established and supported communities of practices to promote organizational understanding of Agile roles and help individuals develop into them
  • Planned and tested cases for User Acceptance Testing (UAT)
  • Developed the formal project management plan in conjunction with Information Security and the company Project Management Office
  • Ensured that all stakeholders associated with the project have the same understanding of the project, the tasks to be accomplished, and its desired outcomes before and during the project
  • Proactively identifying project risks and issues and appropriately addressing these items to prevent project problems from occurring
  • Documents results of remediation activities and gap closure with the presentation of results to appropriate management for acceptance
  • DEEA

Education

BACHELOR OF ARTS

Skills

  • Agile
  • SAFe
  • DevOps
  • Scrum
  • Kanban
  • Scrum Master
  • JIRA
  • HP Rational Tool Suite
  • VersionOne
  • Java
  • Angular
  • Selenium
  • Web apps
  • Mainframe
  • SQL
  • Technical Writing
  • Integration Protocols (APIs, Rest, SOAP)
  • MS Project
  • Visio
  • Access
  • Word
  • Excel
  • SharePoint
  • Requisite Pro
  • Jenkins Continuous Integration and Continuous Development (CI/CD)
  • Load Balance Configuration
  • Active Directory Management

Certification

  • PMP Certified
  • MCTS Microsoft Project
  • SAFe Agile Scrum Master
  • Certified Scrum Master
  • SAFe Agile Product Manager

Timeline

PROJECT MANAGER/PROGRAM SUPPORT

SOLIEL LLC
07.2022 - Current

PROJECT MANAGER/PROGRAM MANAGER

Strategic Results Consulting
11.2018 - 07.2022

SCRUM MASTER/ AGILE COACH/Requirements Analyst

The Jacobs Group
05.2015 - 07.2018

BACHELOR OF ARTS
Safaru AbubakarProject/Program Manager