SMITHA MANDA
Frisco,TX
Summary
Strong project management professional skilled in Requirements gathering, Analysis, Test Management, IT Service Management, Software Project Management in Agile methodology. 6 + years of experience as a Project Management| SAFe Sr Scrum Master facilitating Sprint Planning, Daily Sync, Sprint review/Sprint Demos, Sprint Retrospective, backlog refinement sessions. Experience in Leads and facilitates the ART processes and ceremonies, including Program Increment (PI) Planning, System Demos, Inspect and Adapt workshops, and RTE Sync. Experience in Collaboration with stakeholders to understand the requirements, prioritize product features, grooming User stories and reviewing with Agile teams, creating and executing the roadmap. Experience as a Data Analyst for preparing Data Mapping documentation for ETL development. Experienced in developing ETL workflows using Informatica Power Center. Having experience in Software Quality Assurance methodologies and strategies with strong technical skills in Testing, Defect Management and having hands-on experience in Unit, Integration, System, end to end system testing for Reporting, ETL and Big Data Hadoop workflows and applications with good interaction with developers, Product owners. Experienced in providing production support for data ingestion, data pipelines and data platforms. Strong decision making and problem-solving skills, having good communication, documentation, interpersonal skills, able to effectively communicate to both Senior Leadership and stakeholders.
Overview
23
23
years of professional experience
1
1
Certification
Work History
Project Manager
PepsiCo
Plano, Texas
09.2023 - Current
- Serving as a Release Train Engineer/Project Manager for Multiple teams includes Azure data lake Ingestion teams, Consumer Data Platform Program, FLNA Program.
- Facilitate Agile ceremonies include DPM Sync up, Sprint Planning, Daily stand-up meetings, Sprint Reviews, Sprint Retrospective, Product Backlog Refinement, SOS, PI planning, Inspect & Adopt
- Collaborates with Product Manager, Scrum Masters, and Agile teams to define, prioritize, and align with the common goals.
- Identifies and addresses impediments, dependencies, and risks that may impact the ART's ability to deliver value.
- Ensure sprint progress is visible and transparent through ADO boards, attending and updating team progress, blockers, dependencies in scrum of scrums meetings (SoS) and leadership meetings.
- Provides visibility into the ART's progress, metrics, and health to stakeholders at all levels of the organization.
- Fosters a collaborative culture within the ART, promoting effective communication, shared understanding, and alignment towards common goals.
- Coaches and mentors’ Agile teams, Scrum Masters, and Product Managers on SAFe principles, practices, and ceremonies.
- Closely tracking budget along with project status and deliverables and reporting to stakeholders.
- Agile Methodology: SAFe Agile | Scrum | Kanban
- Environment: Azure Blob Storage | ADLS | Databricks | Azure ADO | Salesforce Marketing Cloud | SF Data Cloud
Agile Delivery lead (Project Manager & Product Owner)
GEICO Insurance
Richardson, Texas
10.2020 - 08.2023
- Served as a Project Manager and Product Owner for multiple high priority teams including Data Ingestion, Data Migration, Platform Capability and DevOps teams.
- Understand the stakeholders needs, develop Product Roadmap, refine and communicate product backlog items, and prioritized the backlog items to maximize business value.
- Facilitate Scrum ceremonies include Sprint Planning, Daily stand-up meetings, Sprint Reviews, Sprint Retrospective, Product Backlog Refinement.
- Responsible for Scrum team performance and quality of the deliverables and promote continuous Improvement.
- Monitor Internal dependencies, coordinating with the stakeholder on risks, impediments, dependencies, negotiating the scope, timelines, eliminating the impediments and helping the team to achieve their goals successfully in a timely manner.
- Ensure sprint progress is visible and transparent through Scrum & Kanban boards, attending and updating team progress, blockers, dependencies in scrum of scrums meetings (SoS) and leadership meetings.
- Ensure that all standard Agile & Scrum practices are followed by the scrum team and improve the effectiveness of their practices by self-organizing and taking the decision as needed and ensuring the team to deliver value.
- Facilitate Open Forum, demo to other teams to share knowledge.
- Coach and mentor associates, newly joined team members, bringing them up to the speed and providing support as required.
- Work closely with Release Train Engineer (RTE) on Pre PI planning, execute PI planning, prioritize the team’s backlog, requirement gathering and feature/backlog grooming.
- Provide support on Production environments related to data pipelines and data platforms and resolving issues within SLA, effectively communicating to both Senior Leadership and stakeholders.
- Strong decision making and problem-solving skills.
- Agile Methodology: SAFe Agile | Scrum | Kanban
- Environment: Snowflake| Azure Blob Storage | ADLS Gen 2 | ADF | Databricks | Azure ADO | Spark | Kafka Confluent cloud | Data build Tool (DBT) | Confluence | HVR | Five Tran | Snowflake | Jira | ADO board
System Analyst
STATE FARM Insurance
Richardson, Texas
01.2019 - 10.2020
- Served as a System Analyst for Infrastructure enablement team (system team), provisioned test environments to the Agile teams, develop CI/CD Pipelines to deploy the code in Prod and maintain the Policy center, Hadoop environments.
- Eliminating the environment related impediments and helping the team to achieve their goals successfully in a timely manner.
- Create required artifacts and maintain them for future reference.
- Ensure progress is visible and transparent through Kanban.
- Supporting PO in Requirement gathering.
- Supported all environment, assigned and resolved the issues within SLA.
- Agile Methodology: SAFe Agile | Scrum | Kanban.
- Environment: GITLab | JIRA | Jenkins | Cloud Management Portal | Urban Code | BEST | HP Service Manager
Big Data QA
STATE FARM Insurance
Richardson, Texas
10.2016 - 01.2019
- Served as a Big data QA lead for the system team.
- Worked on creating Test Plan, review test cases and test scripts and coordinating QA tasks with the offshore.
- Worked on Hadoop components like HDFS, Kafka, Flume, Spark, HIVE, Oozie coordinator and defined Hive tables/views for data validations.
- Provisioned test environment for the Integration test and end to end system testing.
- Coordinated with other teams during Integration and system end to end testing, logged defects to the development team with evidence in VersionOne once defects are fixed, validate and close the defect and send execution status to the team.
- Create and share Test Summary Report.
- Working closely with Release Train Engineer (RTE) and the System team on Pre PI planning, PI planning execution, prioritize the team’s backlogs.
- Worked closely with the stakeholders on resolved dependencies, risks.
- Agile Approach: SAFe | Scrum.
- Environment: Hadoop | Kafka | Flume | Hive | Spark | Oozie | HPSM | Test link | GitLab | JIRA | SoapUI and PGAdmin.
Scrum Master for Enterprise server release Project (ESR)
STATE FARM Insurance
Bloomington, IL
03.2016 - 10.2016
- Served as a Scrum Master for Enterprise server release team.
- Facilitated daily stand-up meetings to understand the status and roadblocks, coordinated with different teams and resolved development and testing roadblocks like issues and defects within the SLA.
- Worked with the team on Test Plan and Implementation Plan creation, finalizing timelines for Development, Test, Release.
- Coordinated with different team Product owners during Pre-release Testing and System Testing.
- Worked with an offshore team and created change records in HP Service Manager Tool and provided instructions based on server types present in the scope.
- Prepared task sheet and schedule for implementation which includes dependencies tasks etc.
- Coordinate with various application and support teams to complete pre-tasks before TEST and Production.
- Coordinate during acceptance testing, Pre-prod testing and Production. Monitoring ESR updates on servers during scheduled time.
- Environment: HP Service Manager Tool | ECRM | Test Link | Jira.
Release/Implementation Coordinator
STATE FARM Insurance
Bloomington, IL
08.2014 - 03.2016
- Served as an Implementation coordinator for 5 complex projects which has Host, DB, Java, Informatica changes.
- Create and maintain Implementation Plan, Change Records in HP Service Manager Tool for Implementing Project and Service changes.
- Coordinated with various teams for planning Implementation.
- Facilitate engagement and readiness assessments of work efforts include Test, SLM, Configuration Management and Change.
- Assist Project Manager in coordinating Change Management activities throughout the Project lifecycle.
- Support the Project Manager in carrying out activities that have been delegated to the Implementation.
- Ensure all change tasks are being completed in a timely manner.
- Monitor external dependencies to the project and communicates any impacts to the project team.
- Ensure outstanding defects (known errors) are reported and managed.
- Coordinate IT service and business functional support throughout the project lifecycle until acceptance by Service.
- Worked with Release Communications to create appropriate communications to all stakeholders regarding a project implementation.
- Provide input to the final implementation sign-off process from the Change Advisory Board.
- Develop Executive Go/No-Go Decision Documentation.
- Environment: Host | Existing + | JRA | WAS 8.5 | WAS 6.1 | TP | Database and Message Broker changes. HP Service Manager Tool.
Content Developer
STATE FARM Insurance
Bloomington, IL
05.2014 - 07.2014
- Served as a content developer for State Farm learning materials for various courses.
- Apply instructional design principles and project standards to content and leverage standard tools, processes and methodology.
- Manage design and development of training materials for assigned segment.
- Conduct onsite interviews with the SMEs to understand the content and develop the course material accordingly.
- Update training content based on input received.
- Draft and manage corporate style guide and terminology conventions.
- Utilize Microsoft Word and PowerPoint to provide information in a well-organized, convenient form, while ensuring the overall quality and accuracy of content.
- Provide comprehensive editing services, including substantive editing, copyediting and proofreading.
ETL QA Analyst
TIAA CREF
Troy, MI
01.2014 - 05.2014
- Served as a QA Analyst for Data movement project and OBIEE reports migration.
- Gathered requirements from the project meetings, TDD’s, Requirement documents and created MTP.
- Attended daily stand up meetings to update the project status, work accomplishment and roadblocks to the lead.(Agile Methodology).
- Uploaded requirements into ALM (Application Lifecycle Management) tool, creating requirement traceability matrix in ALM.
- Created Test cases and uploaded test cases into ALM and created Test Lab.
- Executed test cases and validated based on mapping rule and requirement document and logged defect to development team with evidence in ALM.
- Once defects are fixed, validate and close the defect and send execution status to the team related to the project.
- Creating Test Summary Report.
- Environment: ETL tool Data stage | Databases: OracleDB2 | and SQL Server | Query tools: SQL developer | SQL Server Management Studio | OBIEE.
ETL Developer, ETL Test Analyst and Implementation Coordinator (Change Agent)
State Farm Insurance
Bloomington, IL
03.2013 - 12.2013
- Served as an ETL developer, QA analyst and Change coordinator for Host DB2 to Postgres DB2 data migration and Salesforce to DB2 data movement.
- Performed Environment setup for the team, involved in preparing mapping sheets.
- Developed ETL Mappings and Workflows for the source systems data extraction and data transformations.
- Extensively used transformations like expression, Lookup, Joiner, Sorter, Aggregator, Lookups, Filters, Stored Procedures, Update Strategy transformations.
- Identified the bottlenecks in the source, target, mapping, and loading process and successfully attended/resolved the performance issues across this project.
- Created parameter files, workflows using Workflow manager for different tasks like sending email notifications, timer that triggers when an event occurs, and sessions to run a mapping.
- For the high-volume data used DB scripts to load data from staging tables to atomic tables.
- Opened Change Records to deploy from Dev to Formal Environment, Formal environment to Production.
- Involved in implementation activities like Issuance preparation for UNIX and Informatica components and Autoflow chart preparation for Control-M (scheduling tool). Coordinated with various teams having successful implementation in PROD environments.
- Environment: Informatica Power Center 9.5.1 | DB2 | UNIX Scripting | HP Service Manager Data Studio Query Tool | Postgres Query Tool.
ETL Developer and QA Analyst
Employer: GSS Infotech
12.2002 - 04.2005
- Served as a ETL developer and QA for Data Mart and reporting projects, gathered requirements, business rules by working closely with the Business users, documented the business specs and transformed the same into technical and design Specs.
- Worked closely with data modelers/DBA for data mapping.
- Gathered data from various sources like MAINFRAME (Host and UDB DB2), UNIX files and Delimited (CSV) files by FTP process and transformed the file layout to a common layout of the warehouse tables (DB2).
- Designed and developed Informatica ETL mappings/workflows using various transformations like Aggregator, Sorter, Joiner, Lookup (connected and Unconnected) for the source systems data extraction and data transformations for loading Stage layer and DAL Layer.
- Wrote Unix Shell Scripts to automate the vendor file receiving process.
- Identified the bottlenecks in the source, target, mapping and target loading process and successfully attended/resolved the performance issues across this project.
- Designed and executed unit test cases, Load test cases, Integration test cases, System test cases.
- Environment: Informatica Power Center | DB2 | Oracle | Mainframe Flat Files | UNIX Scripting | Optim.
Education
Master of Computer Applications -
Skills
- Scaled Agile Framework
- Scrum
- Kanban
- Project Management
- Requirement Gathering & analysis
- Testing design & Test execution
- Strategic Planning
- Client Relationship Management
- Communication
- Presentation
- ETL
- Hadoop
- Azure DevOps
Accomplishments
• SAFe 6 Scrum Master
• Certified Scrum Master (CSM)
• Azure Fundamentals (AZ-900)
• Azure AI Fundamentals (AZ-900)
• Certified AWS Cloud Practitioner
• Certified Service Management ITIL-V3 professional
• RTE Essentials
Certification
- SAFe 6 Scrum Master
- Certified Scrum Master (CSM)
- Azure Fundamentals (AZ-900)
- Certified AWS Cloud Practitioner
- Certified Service Management ITIL-V3 professional
- RTE Essentials
Technical Experience
Azure Blob Storage, ADLS Ge 2, ADF, Databricks, Azure ADO, Snowflake, Spark, Fivetran, HVR, Kafka Confluent cloud, DBT(Data build tool), Confluence, Salesforce Marketing Cloud, Salesforce Data Cloud, GITLab, JIRA, Jenkins, Urban Code, Splunk, Rosie, Vscode, Admin 7, HDFS, Kafka, Flume, HIVE, Oozie, Spark, Scoop, Informatica PowerCenter 9.x/ 8.x/7.x, ALM (Application Lifecycle Management), VersionOne, Test Link, Trac Service Manager HP Service Manager 7.11, Remedy, Oracle, SQL Server, DB2, Postgres, C, C++, SQL, Python(basics), Data Studio, Postgres, PGAdmin, Oracle, MS SQL Server, Microsoft Windows NT/98/XP, Linux, SAFe Agile (Scrum and Kanban), VersionOne, Jira, Azure DevOps, GitHub, Power BI, OBIEE, Control-M, Oozie Coordinator
Personal Information
Title: Project Manager | Release Train Engineer | SAFe Sr Scrum Master | Product Owner
Awards
- GEICO-Certification of Appreciation, 2021-04-01
- GEICO-Spot Award, 2021-06-01
- GEICO-Spot Award, 2022-02-01
Timeline
Project Manager
PepsiCo
09.2023 - Current
Agile Delivery lead (Project Manager & Product Owner)
GEICO Insurance
10.2020 - 08.2023
System Analyst
STATE FARM Insurance
01.2019 - 10.2020
Big Data QA
STATE FARM Insurance
10.2016 - 01.2019
Scrum Master for Enterprise server release Project (ESR)
STATE FARM Insurance
03.2016 - 10.2016
Release/Implementation Coordinator
STATE FARM Insurance
08.2014 - 03.2016
Content Developer
STATE FARM Insurance
05.2014 - 07.2014
ETL QA Analyst
TIAA CREF
01.2014 - 05.2014
ETL Developer, ETL Test Analyst and Implementation Coordinator (Change Agent)
State Farm Insurance
03.2013 - 12.2013
ETL Developer and QA Analyst
Employer: GSS Infotech
12.2002 - 04.2005