Pilot Rolling Out SAFe to a Couple of Teams at a Newspaper Company - [ June 2023 - September 2023 ]

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Industry	Digital Newspaper
Relevant Context	The project was a pilot to roll out SAFe (Scaled Agile Framework) to a couple of teams at a newspaper company with the largest number of subscribers in the US. The teams were responsible for delivering features for the newspaper's website. This pilot will help scale SAFe across the IT teams in the media company.
Challenges	The teams were not familiar with SAFe and were hesitant to adopt it. The company had a history of siloed teams and cultures, which made it challenging to implement a cross-functional framework like SAFe. The project was time-limited and had to be completed within a quarter. This meant that the project had to be carefully planned and executed in order to be successful. The project also had to demonstrate the benefits of implementing SAFe without disrupting the business outcomes.
Outcomes	Convinced management and executives to run the pilot and sponsor my RTE certification. Successfully passed the RTE certification exam and applied my knowledge to the pilot. The teams were successfully trained on SAFe and began using the framework to deliver features. Ran all the pre-planning activities and created the artifacts. Successfully ran the PI planning. Implemented all the PI ceremonies. The teams planned earlier, visualized dependencies, improved communication, tracked execution, and took prompt actions to align teams. They delivered objectives successfully, although some had to be postponed to the following quarter for the most important ones.
Tools and Techniques	SAFe framework PI planning ART sync System demos Jira - Project management tool Google Looker Studio for status and metrics reporting

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Article Pages Rendering Platform Re-architecture for Digital Newspaper Platform - [ January 2021 - March 2022 ]

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Industry	Digital Newspaper
Relevant Context	Created a new web rendering platform to render article pages for a digital newspaper. The platform standardized the data layer, simplified the rendering logic, and improved the resiliency of the platform. It also improved the newspaper members' experience.
Challenges	Highly technical project that required understanding all the discussions and concepts across the engineering teams. Multiple stakeholders with different interests, goals, and competing priorities. Played the product manager role, prioritizing and picking up requirements. Had to demonstrate the value of the project by delivering small POC increments to stakeholders.
Outcomes	The new Cloudfront infrastructure allowed turning off Google AMP articles, which helped to improve newspaper revenue from ads. The new platform helped to improve ad positioning and provided metrics visualization to the ad revenue team. Improved Core Web Vitals (LCP, FID, and CLS) over the legacy platform. Drastically reduced the number of 500 errors shown to users. The platform continued to serve pages to end users after catastrophic failure exercises. Dev team can deploy changes in approximately 30 seconds and rollback changes in less than 1 second.
Tools and Techniques	Project management framework/method: Kanban Method Capacity planning Metrics generation and tracking: Throughput, cycle time, lead time Burn up charts Roadmap Internal team’s working agreements Project executive status reports Jira - Project management tool Google Looker Studio for status and metrics reporting Technical decisions and discussions tracker

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Talk 2020 Machine Learning Project with AWS - [ April 2020 - December 2020 ]

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Industry	Digital Newspaper
Relevant Context	AWS sponsored a project to develop a machine learning tool that allowed newspaper readers to search transcripts of US presidential candidates' statements. The tool used Kendra, a natural language processing tool, to extract keywords from the transcripts and match them to the user's search terms. The project was completed in time for the first presidential debate in September 2020.
Challenges	Tight deadline Recruiting and forming a team from scratch The project was just a concept with a few sketches at the early stages Synchronizing the AWS and newspaper engineering teams, despite their different work styles and organizational cultures
Outcomes	Created a very efficient system to onboard new team members while the team continued building the solution in parallel Coached and helped organize the work and communications across the engineering teams, the product manager, and the stakeholders towards the end goal Delivered the product on time and as expected for the first presidential debate
Tools and Techniques	Project management framework/method: Kanban Method Capacity planning Metrics generation and tracking: Throughput, cycle time, lead time Burn up charts Roadmap Internal team’s working agreements Project executive status reports Jira - Project Management Tool Google Looker Studio for status and metrics reporting
References	Article: “Passing the Baton at the WSJ: How New Tools and Features Migrate Among Our Teams"

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Agile Coaching Activities to Improve Team Maturity - [ July 2021 - March 2022 ]

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Industry	Digital Newspaper
Relevant Context	The project involved running Agile maturity assessments on teams within the digital newspaper to identify strengths, opportunities for improvement, and gaps in their Agile practices. The assessments looked for the proper use of recommended practices, such as Scrum and Kanban, and suggested adjustments on how they were applied.
Challenges	The teams may have seen the assessments as a way to evaluate or compare them with other teams, rather than as an opportunity for continuous improvement. It was important to keep the assessments as objective as possible and to provide tangible results that the teams could use to improve their practices.
Outcomes	The teams' awareness of Agile and Lean principles and practices increased. The teams welcomed the assessments and used them to improve their way of working. The teams' morale, self-organization, and productivity improved overall. The teams improved their communication with the product management team, which led to better requirements definition and estimation. Most teams defined a software development and QA workflow, a definition of ready and done, and a working agreement. They also started measuring their capacity and generating metrics to track their performance and take corrective actions.
Tools and Techniques	Questionnaries Interviews Shadowing Brainstorming and retrospective exercises Agile/Lean maturity assessment reports

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Agile Coaching and Delivery of New Features and Compliance for Deposits Bank Mobile Application - [ May 2019 - April 2020 ]

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Industry	Banking
Relevant Context	The project involved implementing various new features for a Deposits Mobile Banking application and putting the application in compliance with security and accessibility standards. The project also involved coaching two new engineering teams on Agile and Lean principles and practices.
Challenges	The two engineering teams were very new and had little experience with the application or the technology. The project had to be completed on a tight deadline. The project required the team to work with multiple stakeholders, including Infosec and accessibility auditors.
Outcomes	The two engineering teams were successfully formed and ramped up on the application technologies and frameworks. The team was coached on Agile and Lean principles and practices and started delivering the demanded new features and put the application in compliance on time as expected at a sustainable pace. The team's performance was so good that the project manager was asked to perform Agile coaching activities on other teams who worked on similar banking applications.
Tools and Techniques	Project management framework/method: Scrum framework and Kanban method Scaled Agile - SAFE planning and execution Capacity planning Metrics generation and tracking: Throughput, cycle time, lead time Burn up and burn down charts Roadmap and release plannings Internal team’s working agreements Jira - Project Management Tool

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Program Management of Supply Chain ERP Migration to Public Cloud - [ Jun 2017 - May 2018 ]

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Industry	IT
Relevant Context	The project was part of a multi-year program to migrate the supply chain ERP from on-premises to a public cloud. This phase of the project involved coordinating multiple IT and software development teams to migrate the ERP system to the cloud.
Challenges	The project required coordinating multiple teams with different priorities and competing deadlines. The project involved complex technical discussions and ensuring that the migration was compliant with security and other requirements. The project manager had to understand the flow of data through the different ERP systems to determine the best order to migrate them to the cloud. The project manager had to organize and coordinate quarterly planning events in the US while keeping their regular program activities on track in Mexico.
Outcomes	The project manager determined the supply chain migration program governance, artifacts, and timeline. The project manager collaborated with IT to have all the cloud environments and data ready for integration testing, user acceptance testing, and move to production. The project manager coordinated various activities under this program, including tracking the development and integrations, coordinating user acceptance testing and load tests across different teams and departments, and the transition to production. The project manager successfully migrated the supply chain ERP from on-premises to the public cloud.
Tools and Techniques	Project management framework/method: Program management Program and cloud migration release plans Program risks and issues tracking Program communication (e.g., coordination with multiple project managers, engineering leads, and executives, including executive status reports) Internal bug tracker and Jira as a program management tool Program tasks completion reports Zephyr test management tool

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Program Budget Management for IT and Software Development - [ Jul 2013 - Jun 2017 ]

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Industry	IT
Relevant Context	The program was responsible for managing the yearly IT and software development (CAPEX) and maintenance (OPEX) budget of 120 applications portfolio globally distributed with a cost of approximately USD$100M.
Challenges	The program received multiple challenges from the corporation to reduce the budget, while mitigating the impacts. The program did not have a proprietary application to track the financials of such a big program. The program had to distribute the cost of these applications globally by department and by tracking the applications' usage. Each department and geography paying for their share of these applications continuously challenged the costs.
Outcomes	The program manager contributed with a USD$20M cost reduction and mitigated the impacts. The program manager documented and automated various processes to create the yearly budgets and obtain the month to month financial reports. The program manager generated comprehensive and customized reports to the executives and the departments and geographies paying their portion of the cost of these applications. The program manager continuously discussed and negotiated with the departments paying their share of the cost of this portfolio.
Tools and Techniques	Program budget planning and management framework/method Financial reports BI Cognos Reports and IBM Forms Experience Builder Advanced Excel Formulas and Macros Negotiation

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