
Bushra Zaheer
Verified Expert in Project Management
Project Manager
Bushra is a trustworthy project, program, and technology delivery manager with over 13 years of extensive experience driving complex projects across multiple industries ranging from medium-sized to multinational FMCGs such as Unilever. Skilled in leveraging multicultural cross-functional teams, Bushra has strong expertise in organization change, digital transformations, innovation roadmaps, and software development methodologies, including Agile, Waterfall, and hybrid approaches.
Project Highlights
Expertise
Work Experience
Quality Project Manager
TestCrew
- Undertook end-to-end project transition from Capgemini. Recruited, onboarded, and trained over 30 team members from Egypt, Jordan, India, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia.
- Led over 50 resources spread across on-site and off-site cross-functional teams and handled multiple projects in the financial and payments regulatory domain within Saudi Arabia.
- Developed and drove a successful project lifecycle through Agile project management approaches.
- Navigated critical large-scale projects from concept to completion while ensuring adequate project governance, stakeholder management, and planning and forecasting throughout the project lifecycle.
- Ensured project deliverables exceeded the client's expectations by gathering feedback and requirements. Communicated the needed changes to the concerned teams and oversaw seamless, high-quality rollouts on time and within budget.
- Conducted root cause analysis (RCA) for project-related incidents by working with the application support and incident management teams, ensuring resolution within the service-level agreement (SLA).
- Designed and formulated key project materials such as project management plan, project discovery phase plan, release management plan, product and sprint backlogs, change management plan, and risk management plans.
- Fostered strong team engagement and cultivated a transparent work culture resulting in high-productivity levels.
Consultant
Hul Hub
- Analyzed and recommended necessary process improvements using Agile methodologies.
- Articulated organizational goals, translated business needs into technical terms, and instilled shared accountability for achieving milestones.
- Established, hired, and trained software quality assurance (SQA) personnel by formulating end-to-end SQA processes, policies, key materials, and software testing lifecycle (STLC).
- Standardized the implementation of Jira and Confluence across the organization.
Deputy Senior Manager
Centegy Technologies
- Directed cross-functional teams comprising more than 25 onsite and offsite resources and oversaw multiple multimillion-dollar product deliveries per year through streamlined product management practices and effective project governance.
- Secured the Unilever Offline Program spanning 16 countries. Successfully delivered retail enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions for reputed fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) clientele such as PepsiCo, Reckitt, Engro Corporation, and FMN.
- Conceptualized and streamlined process re-engineering, organization change management, and governance leading to a consistent business process improvement and client satisfaction score, resulting in higher client retention and robust business growth.
- Reported directly to the executive leadership team and successfully delivered multiple digital transformation, artificial intelligence (AI), and new technologies (research and development) projects within the stipulated timeline and budget.
- Outlined innovative product vision, innovation, and transformation road maps with leadership and clients.
- Devised Agile, Waterfall, and hybrid approaches, write-ups, standard project documentation, and templates, articulating them across the organization through coaching, training, and workshop sessions.
- Received a 100% audit score from KPMG Pakistan for software development lifecycle (SDLC) processes, including test automation.
- Standardized IT infrastructure library (ITIL) and IT service management (ITSM) process by streamlining service desk, SLA, incident management, problem management, and change management.
- Designed and formulated project lifecycle, including project scoping, project planning, plotting milestones and tracking, risk management, and multiple successful client deliveries through proven project management skills.
- Headed the SQA program, implementation, and maintenance of the quality management system and SQA road map, improvising test strategies and supervising the internal audits to monitor the compliance of processes as per organizational guidelines.
Quality and Processes SME
Unilever
- Served as a liaison between Unilever global and Centegy Technologies for continuous improvement, process, and quality delivery improvisations.
- Managed company-wide SDLC process implementations, cleared the SDLC and STLC process audit by Unilever Global Team, and achieved a 100% audit score.
- Accomplished Level 2 DevOps maturity for Centegy Technologies by initiating continuous process improvements, resulting in client retention and process maturity upgrades.
- Recognized with a Certificate of Appreciation from Unilever Global in 2017 for outstanding contribution to the business.
Manager
Centegy Technologies
- Spearheaded a team of over 15 resources and oversaw single source-based application programming interface (API), mobile, web, and desktop releases and deliveries for large-scale retail sales and distribution products with a 50+ customer base.
- Developed, monitored, and tracked multiple project plans and managed changes to the project scope, schedule, and costs using appropriate verification techniques and efficient stakeholder management.
- Performed risk management to minimize potential risks and mitigate risks.
- Guided the SQA program, ensuring continuous process improvement in compliance with standard operating procedures and optimizing QA practices.
- Expanded product test automation by over 2000 business cases to reduce regression costs and time by 20%.
- Executed several technical transformations such as configuration management through Concurrent Versions System (CVS), Azure DevOps Server and Microsoft Test Manager, test automation framework, IT service desk tool, and product release versioning.
Senior Consultant
Centegy Technologies
- Identified gaps and formulated process improvement plans by working collaboratively with the leadership team, resulting in improved product quality and timely project delivery.
- Teamed up with current clients to understand needs for improved functionality, and communicated with Product Managers to develop product enhancements that boosted client satisfaction by 27%.
- Managed the SQA Program, Team management & QA activities including Test Strategies, Test Planning, Test Designs, Test executions, Defects reporting and tracking, Status Reporting.
- Regulated and supervised the internal audit functions to monitor the compliance of processes as per organizational guidelines.
- Stabilized Test Automation through introducing Framework approach for long term management & maintenance approach.
Assistant Manager
Centegy Technologies
- Deployed and integrated software engineered by the team and updated integration and deployment scripts to improve continuous integration practices.
- Liaised with the product managers to identify minimum viable product (MVP) requirements and clearly defined feature sets into well-scoped user stories for individual team members.
- Collaborated with senior-level management and development community to define software and application architecture.
- Led the SQA activities, including test strategies, test planning, test designs, test executions, defects reporting and tracking, and status reporting.
- Worked with defect tracking, source code control, and software release systems, ensuring high-quality software releases over time.
- Introduced test automation from scratch, designing and developing automation solutions.
SQA Engineer | Team Lead
Daedalus Software
- Steered the SQA team to support a bioinformatics product and supervised quality assurance efforts, leading to high-quality project deliverables and minimizing non-conformance issues regulated by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
- Performed test management activities, including test strategies, test planning, test designs, test executions, defects reporting and tracking, and status reporting.
- Designed, developed, and reviewed business test scenarios and test cases.
- Chaired SQA status meetings with onsite and global offshore teams.
- Engaged in test automation using Selenium and tracked project risks and resources throughout the product lifecycle.
Test Engineer
Avanza Solutions
- Collaborated with key stakeholders to help define testing strategies per client requirements while achieving scalability, reliability, performance, and resource costs.
- Executed end-to-end testing lifecycle from test planning to test execution and post-implementation support.
- Participated in the analysis, test case creation, execution, and resolution of defects detected during project test phases, suggesting appropriate workarounds.
Project History
Agile Transformations
Devised organizational Agile transformation using Agile methodologies and successful implementation of Jira and Confluence across the organization.
Working as an Agile coach with multiple teams, I achieved a smooth, agile adoption and built up self-organized and self-managed cross-functional teams, standardizing the implementation of Jira and Confluence across the organization.
On this project, I headed SQA professionals and organized, hired, and trained SQA personnel by formulating end-to-end SQA processes, policies, key materials and STLC for agile projects.
Test Automation Framework
Delivered a keyword and data-driven test automation framework of over 4,000 automated complex business cases.
Process Improvement and SOP Implementation
Initiated, analyzed, and developed standard operating procedures (SOPs) through process improvements and ensured company-wide implementations and adoptions with 100% success.
Saudi Payments
Managed and successfully delivered a multi-million SAR project of Saudi Payment Regulatory with 100% SLA, directing the project from initiation to execution with over 30 resources spread across onsite and offsite cross-functional teams.
I undertook an end-to-end project transition from Capgemini by recruiting, onboarding, and training over 30 team members from Egypt,
India, Pakistan, and KSA.
The project landed successfully in the business as usual (BAU) phase with 100% SLA and client satisfaction.
Web Development in Various Domains
Delivered multi-lingual websites and web-based solutions to many customers, including those from the UAE.
I successfully managed the end-to-end delivery of solutions from initiation to roll-out and post-project support.
BTM-Research
Launched and maintained a product-based bioinformatics solution named BTM-Research for the University of California for cancer-related research.
AI Chatbot
Designed and delivered a knowledge-based chatbot for retail distributors.
I was directly involved in the research and development of the complete project and successfully integrated it with retail ERP. It helped retail distribution to get basic results through build-operate-transfer (BOT) delivery, including sales and stock-keeping units (SKU).
Reinforce | Digital Transformation for Farming Business
Delivered a digital solution to the agriculture industry, easing the life of farmers while managing a team of over 15 cross-functional resources.
The project involved a team of around 15 cross-functional resources and was later set as a benchmark.
Quick Sync
Managed and delivered a back-end solution to merge data from multi-distributed environments to central databases.
Data reconciliation was used to track missing records daily and merge any pending or missed records for any reason, such as low internet or connectivity issues, and reports were created to track the sync statuses.
S&D Pro | Transformation to Online and Hybrid Features
Led and launched the online and hybrid version of S&D Pro, a retail ERP, as part of the technical and digital transformation roadmap, involving over 100 resources to transform this critical milestone successfully.
Customers can use the web portal online/offline or hybrid, integrating the data from mobile apps on run time and through transfers, BI reports, and chatbots. The key factor is maintaining the data integrity, maintenance, and reconciliations without any loss.
AppDate | Automatic Deployment Tool
Launched an effective solution to perform the release deployments automatically.
Level 2 DevOps
Accomplished Level 2 DevOps maturity for Centegy Technologies by initiating continuous process improvements, resulting in client retention and process-wide maturity upgrades.
Mobiz
Delivered a smart solution for call centers and businesses, supporting SMS, email, and chat features.
Kayako Service Desk Support Implementation Using ITSM
Implemented an automated service desk support using Kayako.
SOPs Design and Implementation for Insurance Division
Analyzed, designed, and delivered standard operating procedures (SOPs) as part of process improvisation for the insurance division.
S&D Pro Retail ERP
Managed and delivered the S&D Pro product to multiple clients.
I implemented many XP techniques for source code management, including configuration management, modularization, continuous integration, test automation, Scrum for release management, and Kanban boards for status updates.
Backlog refinement and management was a tricky part of ensuring that the most wanted items from multiple clients and increments were added to support client deliveries.
Unilever Global LeverEdge Offline Program
Delivered the S&D Pro ERP to more than 16 countries through this incredible journey.
It was necessary to employ strong project management skills to accomplish this incredible journey with over 200 resources. I also worked as SME for quality and processes for Unilever Global for three years.
It was a complex ERP program, which consisted of multiple applications from different vendors, with web apps, mobile apps, data synchronizations, APIs, middleware, and BI reporting.
AWS Cloud Migration
Successfully migrated around 60 boxes of prod and non-prod from the private cloud to a public cloud for one Fortune 500 company,
Around 60 boxes were migrated without a single day slip, including Windows, SQL, integrations, and foundation services like firewalls, load balancers, and active directories.
The migration was accomplished without any P1 and P2 incidents.
Education
Diploma in Project Management
Pakistan Institute of Management - Karachi, Pakistan
Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science
University of Karachi - Karachi, Pakistan
Certifications
Agile Team Facilitation Certification (ICP-ATF)
International Consortium for Agile
ICAgile-Agile Certified Coach (ICP-ACC)
International consortium for Agile
Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO)
Scrum Alliance
Certified Scrum Master (CSM)
Scrum Alliance
Scrum Foundation Professional Certificate (SFPC)
CertiProf
Project Management Professional (PMP)
Project Management Institute (PMI)
ITIL Foundation Certification
Axelos