Andrew Janaitis, Project Manager in Baltimore, MD, United States
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Andrew Janaitis

Verified Expert  in Project Management

Project Manager

Location
Baltimore, MD, United States
Toptal Member Since
May 23, 2019

Andrew is an experienced engineering manager with a background in web development, and a passion for process improvement. He has worked for several consultancies and agencies, solving some of the toughest client challenges in project delivery, process definition and improvement, and team management.

Project Highlights

Multi-utility Customer-facing Mobile Application
Led the client team to successfully deliver services to support customer-facing apps for three regional utilities.
QA and Process Audit for Shared Services Company
Carried out a process audit for a shared services company in the publishing space.
Data Analytics Visualization Platform Development
Served as the Scrum master for a team developing a platform for deploying configurable data visualization dashboards.

Expertise

Work Experience

Director of Team Augmentation and Senior Scrum Master

2017 - PRESENT
Mindgrub Technologies
  • Served as a Scrum master and technical project manager across multiple projects simultaneously.
  • Led the creation of a new line of business (Team Augmentation projects).
  • Oversaw processes and procedures for the full lifecycle of Team Augmentation projects, including marketing, contracting, training consultants, and project delivery. I led the creation of a new line of business (Team Augmentation projects).
  • Developed a process framework built on standard Agile Scrum with the flexibility to be applied to a wide variety of client project needs.
  • Managed five direct reports.

Project Management Leadership, Scrum Master

2016 - 2017
Elder Research, Inc.
  • Taught Agile Scrum processes to internal project managers of various client-facing data science, and software projects.
  • Coached a client team building a new data warehousing and business intelligence system in Agile.
  • Adapted various project management best practices to create lightweight processes aimed at adding more project management rigor with minimal additional overhead.
  • Trained internal project managers in these processes.
  • Served as scrum master for two separate development teams, each engaging in both product development, as well as matrixed support to client delivery teams.
  • Managed diverse teams made up of both full, and part-time members spread across four separate offices.
  • Interfaced with multiple clients and senior management to create, and prioritize client requests and new product initiatives into a central feature backlog.
  • Planned, and documented development and release procedures for synchronized ETL and data analysis processes across disparate tool stacks, feeding a single data, and analysis visualization application.

Freelance Software Engineer

2015 - 2016
Travel Agency Client
  • Supported an existing web application (PHP Laravel back end, Angular.js front end) with new features, and bug fixes.
  • Developed processes for managing client requirements, testing, and delivering finished features.
  • Managed invoicing and reporting processes to keep the client up to date on feature progress.
  • Coordinated with the lead developer to push changes to over 20 travel agency customers (stand-alone server implementations of the tool) with minimal downtime.

Senior Consultant (Software Engineer)

2011 - 2014
Booz Allen Hamilton
  • Led the development effort on a web-delivered network analysis tool (Smart GWT AJAX front end, Java and MySQL back end).
  • Responsible for the technical perspective in ticket creation, and sprint planning.
  • Mentored junior developers.
  • Worked with the development team to plan, design, and implement a malware propagation modeling tool that integrated Python and OPNET into a custom malware infection discrete event simulator.
  • Proposed, developed, and implemented Python scripts to streamline analysis workflows.

Multi-utility Customer-facing Mobile Application

Led the client team to successfully deliver services to support customer-facing apps for three regional utilities.

Led the client team of Node.js developers working within the Oracle Mobile Cloud Service (MCS) platform to deliver a suite of Microservices to support customer-facing functionality.

These services integrated and exposed a number of legacy systems and as such, required intensive communication and collaboration across a number of teams within disparate management chains. I utilized modified Scrum and Kanban approaches within individually managed teams, and also collaborated on a SAFe implementation as more teams and products came onboard to use the same service platform.

QA and Process Audit for Shared Services Company

Carried out a process audit for a shared services company in the publishing space.

I worked with a firm that provided shared IT solutions to a number of affiliate companies in the publishing space. These services included things like allowing affiliate companies to sign up subscribers, securely accept payments from around the world, manage marketing outreach emails, and other functions. My client operated several interconnected subsystems to host these services, each run by separate teams. They were having trouble scaling as the addition of new products and services was leading to a growing number of conflicts between internal teams as they developed and released their individual subsystems.

I conducted stakeholder interviews, shadowed individual teams, and delivered a comprehensive report assessing their current processes. I outlined recommendations around testing, development, and inter-team release coordination based loosely on the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe). I then helped my client to achieve executive and team buy-in before implementing these changes in an iterative manner. In the end, my client’s numerous teams found a sustainable cadence in which they were able to consistently deliver high-quality features and products efficiently with much less friction between internal teams.

Data Analytics Visualization Platform Development

Served as the Scrum master for a team developing a platform for deploying configurable data visualization dashboards.

I led a team of four developers in creating a web-based platform that allowed for the creation of configurable data visualization dashboards for our clients. This role required a combination of Scrum master, product owner, and technical architect. Through conversations with customers, I elicited business requirements, translated these into valid user stories, and prioritized a backlog. I then helped guide technical architecture discussions around these stories and led the team to deliver features to customers through Agile Scrum methodologies.

Agile Scrum Coaching

Coached a new data analytics team in the adoption of Agile Scrum processes.

I worked with a client to guide the implementation of Agile Scrum processes for a new data analytics team that they were forming. I helped talk the project manager (who would become the team's Scrum master) through Agile principles, and how to determine which specific tools and processes would work best for the needs of their team. I then created and ran training for the team around these initial tools and processes, and how the team could grow and evolve through regular retrospectives. In the end, we were able to meet the client's desire for a more Agile approach to delivering data analytics without adding excessive process overhead.
2012 - 2016

Master's Degree in Engineering Management

University of Maryland Baltimore County - Catonsville, MD

2007 - 2011

Bachelor's Degree in History

University of Pittsburgh - Pittsburgh, PA

2007 - 2011

Bachelor's Degree in Industrial Engineering

University of Pittsburgh - Pittsburgh, PA

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