Akhilesh Sattenapalli
Verified Expert in Project Management
Project Manager
Vancouver, BC, Canada
Toptal member since March 17, 2021
With over 10 years of experience in program, project, and IT management, Akhilesh is deeply passionate about helping organizations deliver high-quality software products that drive exceptional business value. As a certified expert in Agile methodologies, Scrum, and SAFe, he specializes in optimizing processes, coaching teams, and driving continuous improvement to ensure efficiency and excellence in software delivery.
Project Highlights
Expertise
- Agile Coaching
- Agile Project Management
- Jira
- Release Management
- Requirements Analysis
- Scrum Master
- Software Release Management
- Stakeholder Management
Work Experience
Project Manager
WorkSafe BC
- Developed a new customer portal for insurance claims management, automating 80% of the manual tasks.
- Managed a $5 million annual budget and a project of 20 team members and 15 key executive stakeholders.
- Facilitated monthly project steering committee meetings. Forecasted and tracked project schedule and cost.
Program Manager
Cognizant
- Led new microservices development in the renowned retail industry.
- Managed, as a project manager, timelines and budget, communicated project status to stakeholders regularly, managed dependencies, and allocated resources.
- Managed multiple projects under my portfolio as a program manager.
- Acted as a scrum master, managing all dependencies with external teams, organizing Jira boards, and facilitating scrum ceremonies.
Program Manager
OneSpan
- Planned and led the product rollout right from code cut-off (developer) through multiple environments (QA, pre-Sandbox, Sandbox) to production.
- Facilitated phase gate meetings to obtain stakeholder consensus on Sandbox and production go/no-go.
- Conducted cross-functional meetings to bring together developers, quality analysts, and DevOps (deployment team) to tackle impediments to ensure a smooth rollout of product release.
- Ensured products were released as per the corporate roadmap.
- Developed communication management plan and communicated the project status to stakeholders.
Software Project Manager
Videri
- Trained multiple teams on Agile methodology (Scrum and Kanban framework). Transformed teams from Waterfall to Hybrid and then to Agile.
- Led software development projects (development and integration of back end and front end). Led mobile application projects (iOS, Android) and released to respective app stores.
- Led end-to-end new product development from discovery phase to requirements gathering, design, development, testing, maintenance, and support.
- Facilitated all sprint ceremonies (grooming, sprint planning, daily stand-up meetings, mid-sprint checkpoints, sprint reviews, sprint retrospectives, release planning and product demonstrations).
- Developed comprehensive project documentation such as detailed project plan, schedules, estimates, Gantt charts, and timely status reports.
- Set up change management processes. Managed scope change requests with proper impact analysis.
- Tracked project performance and compared against KPI (CPI, SPI, sprint velocities) and also against project success criteria.
- Managed and responded to client requests.
- Developed a communication management plan. Facilitated timely project status meetings to communicate to stakeholders.
Project Manager
Purolator
- Implemented enterprise-wide digitalization solutions such as SAP Ariba, electronic signature solutions, digital invoice management systems, and document management systems.
- Secured savings of $500,000 annually by digitalization (reducing paper usage and storage space).
- Conducted requirements elicitation sessions with business stakeholders. Translated business requirements into functional/non functional, system security service-level architectural support requirements.
- Led complicated RFP's. Evaluated RFP responses. Organized vendor presentations, led contract negotiations, awarded contract to vendor. Managed vendor and monitored vendor performance.
- Drafted project documentation such as project charter, SOW, communication management plan, executive presentations, contracts, RAID logs, Gantt charts, WBS and project schedule, business case, project proposal, and release and transition plans.
- Managed product development and led user acceptance testing. Prepared training manuals and facilitated training sessions.
Associate Project Manager
Syncup Technologies
- Managed software upgrades and migration projects for banking institutions. This project included migration of OS, browser, and software versions on various hardware devices.
- Drafted standard operating procedures and trained new team members to efficiently carry out migration activities.
- Developed project dashboards for both executives and managers in MS Excel to monitor project performance.
- Allocated and managed resources to successfully complete projects on time and within projects.
- Created detailed project documents including work plans, schedules, stakeholder management plan, communication plan, change logs, risk log, and escalation processes.
Project History
New Platform (SaaS Solution, Mobile Application) for Small, Medium-scale Enterprises
Launched several releases of this new product, which gained a large a customer base and secured ten times the estimated ROI.
Identified user personas and worked with designers to create efficient user journeys. Managed 20 developers and testers. Led the front end, back end, and mobile application development simultaneously.
Carried out user acceptance testing and deployed the product in multiple phases. Worked with sales to develop client-requested features and collaborated with LiveOps to assist with production issues supported by clients.
Spearheaded development activities while also collaborating with the hardware team.
Enterprise-wide Implementation of SAP Ariba
Launched organization-wide SAP Ariba. Trained over 100 users and digitalized contract management and RFP processes.
Spearheaded IT RFP to Identify Qualified Vendor to Develop Web Application
Awarded contract to the vendor. Secured savings of $500,000. Acted as a primary liaison between the vendor and business team, managed all dependencies, identified risks, and avoided scope creep proactively.
Worked with legal to prepare and consolidate RFP documentation (terms and conditions, timelines) and draft contract.
Categorized requirements into mandatory, rated requirements and proposed an evaluation strategy to business teams
Led end-to-end RFP, answered all vendor questions, organized oral demonstrations with vendors, evaluated proposals, negotiated and awarded the contract to vendor.
Acted as the primary contact between business and vendor during project execution and monitored vendor performance against contractually agreed SLA's.
Education
Master's Degree in Industrial Engineering
Concordia University - Montreal, Canada
Bachelor's Degree in Mechanical Engineering
SRM University - Chennai, India
Certifications
Management Essentials
Harvard Business School Online
SAFe Scrum Master
Scaled Agile
Certified Scrum Master
Scrum Alliance
Project Management Professional (PMP)
Project Management Institute (PMI)
Black Belt (Six Sigma Lean)
Management and Strategy Institute
Skills
Tools
Jira, Confluence, Slack, Office 365, Artifactory, Visio, Excel 2016, Word 2016, Microsoft PowerPoint, Asana
Paradigms
Six Sigma, Lean, Continuous Integration (CI), Requirements Analysis, Agile Project Management, User Acceptance Testing (UAT), Change Management, Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM), Team Development, Kanban, Scrum
Platforms
Monday.com, SAP Ariba, SharePoint, Azure
Industry Expertise
High-tech Startups, Supply Chain Management (SCM)
Other
Smartsheet, Lucidchart, Project Management, Process Improvement, IT Program Management, Scrum Master, Product Roadmaps, Release Management, Backlog Management, Design Sprints, User Stories, Project Timelines, Requirements, Requirements & Specifications, Technical Requirements, Requirement Traceability Matrices, Business Requirements, Functional Requirements, Project Discovery, Sprint Planning, Process Analysis, Budget Management, Project Budget Management, Startups, Operations Research, Industrial Engineering, Digital Project Management, Data Integration, DocuSign, IT Business Analysis, C++, HTML5, CSS3, Mechanical Engineering, Industrial Design, Project Management Professional (PMP), Software Release Management, IT Project Management, Jira Administrator, Story Mapping, User Journeys, User Personas, User Flows, Feature Backlog Prioritization, Sprint Ceremonies, Project Planning, Project Tracking, Project Closure, Project Support, Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), Gantt Chart, Scope Management, Communication, Workflow, Mobile/Web Project Management, Procurement, RFQ, Request for Information (RFI), Vendor Management, IT Contracts, Contract Management, Contract Negotiation, Evaluation, Contract Drafting, Contract Review, Stakeholder Management, System Requirements, Service-level Agreements (SLAs), Data Analysis, SAP, Pareto Diagrams, Resource Allocation, SOP Development, System Migration, Data Migration, Risk Management, Resource Management, Enterprise SaaS, SaaS Product Management, Software as a Service (SaaS), Mobile Apps, QA Testing, IT Deployments, IT Support, Relational Data Mapping, Business Proposals, Stakeholder Analysis, Stakeholder Interviews, Documentation, Planview, Agile Coaching, IT Projects, Request for Proposal (RFP), Software Development, Production Support, Product Management, Process Management, Team Management, Technical Project Management, Performance Management
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