Jose Tafla
Verified Expert in Project Management
Project Manager
Phoenix, AZ, United States
Toptal member since November 12, 2021
Jose has been a technical project management professional for 20+ years and started his career as a software engineer. He has managed programs and projects for American Express, BNY, Honeywell, PNC, and Wells Fargo. Jose leverages his unique ability to speak the language of business and technology to build alignment and deliver solutions that produce results through the innovative use of technology. He is also a PMI-certified PMP, Certified Scrum Master, and Certified Agile Leader.
Project Highlights
Expertise
Work Experience
Lead Agile Delivery Manager
Wells Fargo
- Collaborated with the chief architect and senior leaders to define the enterprise architecture transformation engagement model in the Chief Operating Office domain.
- Managed delivery by 10 teams of enterprise architects, ensuring alignment with strategic goals and operational efficiency.
- Oversaw the publication of 65 architectural specifications, ensuring consistent application of best practices.
- Pioneered in the use of generative AI models to validate draft specifications.
Lead Agile Delivery Manager
Genesis Financial Solutions
- Helped define the mobile and web product strategy in the digital self-service technology area and managed delivery by the engineering teams.
- Reorganized an unstructured and poor-performing team, coaching the members in agile principles and values, and in less than one year, more than doubled their throughput and almost reduced the number of defects in half.
- Took over a high-performing Kanban team and switched their framework to Scrum, improving their predictability and expanding their sense of teamwork.
- Assisted senior leadership in forming the corporate Agile center of practice, collaborating with other scrum masters to leverage everyone's individual best practices across the organization.
- Hired three highly skilled and proficient senior scrum masters.
- Collaborated with lead architect, technology leaders, and senior engineers to design optimal solutions to satisfy end user needs.
- Managed integration to other applications and legacy systems.
- Participated in CAB meetings to plan deployments and manage releases.
- Coordinated cloud implementations, as well as efforts with vendors and integration to their systems.
Technical Project Manager
American Express
- Managed delivery by engineering teams on the MerchantForce platform, overseeing enhancements to adapt to global and regional regulations, revamp user experience, improve business processes, and integrate with external systems.
- Collaborated with stakeholders, lead architect, and senior engineers to design optimal solutions.
- Assisted with enhancing the platform by adding new functionality, converting from Salesforce Classic to Lightning, and redesigning and improving business processes.
- Served as a governance committee member, evaluating all changes and assessing their impact on the platform.
- Drove product increment (PI) planning sessions, ensuring alignment with business goals, priorities, and strategic objectives.
- Coordinated deployments to Salesforce and other platforms, as well as vendor integration efforts.
- Identified and removed bottlenecks, improving velocity by 40% without compromising quality.
Senior Project Manager
Honeywell
- Led a global business agility project targeted at adjusting corporate applications for compliance with data privacy regulations.
- Sifted through thousands of applications, determined the regulations in scope for each, and laid out a master plan for implementing the necessary updates.
- Managed all the integration tracks of a Salesforce migration and consolidation project. Collaborated with the scrum master to define the product roadmap and enhance the product team's performance.
- Collaborated with scrum masters and product teams to define the product roadmap and enhance the collective performance. Directed delivery by vendors.
Senior Agile Delivery Manager
Scientific Technologies
- Spearheaded cloud migration initiatives for multiple high-profile customers in unison, providing periodic status reports.
- Managed continuous improvement and delivery by cross-functional teams by coordinating communication and effort among product owners, development teams, and DevOps.
- Led DevOps to expedite implementations and to keep customer environments functioning per SLA, resulting in a 25% productivity increase.
- Developed and maintained comprehensive artifacts, including project plans, quality metrics, and CAIR logs, to ensure implementation success.
- Engineered new tools for delivery management, reducing deviations by 40%.
Project Manager
PNC
- Served as a project management consultant in strategic projects, ranging from application development to business process improvement.
- Served as the scrum master for a 12-member product team.
- Managed several multimillion-dollar projects for the asset management group targeted at meeting new compliance regulations and optimizing existing business processes.
- Created and maintained detailed project plans and schedules and managed delivery in light of the baselines. Fast-tracked projects as needed and whenever feasible.
- Mentored other scrum masters and project managers.
Program and Application Manager
BNY Mellon
- Collaborated with geographically dispersed stakeholders and managed on-site and offshore resources, including vendor delivery.
- Managed teams totaling up to 100 members and budgets over USD 20 million, interfacing with C-level executives.
- Structured product teams to follow Agile methodologies and served as scrum master for four product teams.
- Served as the program manager to migrate the enterprise CRM system from Siebel to Salesforce, reducing costs and improving the user experience.
- Implemented multiple strategic functions to minimize revenue leakage.
- Automated new workflows and optimized business processes, reducing manual overhead by 75% and data duplication by 50%. I did this while serving as the development lead.
- Served as project/portfolio manager, overseeing all strategic projects for a technology business unit, focusing on goal and benefits definition, resource mix determination, constraint management, and capital and expense budgeting.
- Built and maintained project plans, created baselines, defined and negotiated the budget for each project, and managed assumptions, issues, and risks.
- Led the initiative to implement Lean and Agile practices for finance technology while serving as the agile coach.
Professional Services
Compuware Corporation
- Served as a developer and as a program and project manager in strategic projects for multiple clients, from application development to business process improvement.
- Managed a strategic communications infrastructure and business applications migration project for BBK and Cadence Innovation that enabled a standalone environment separated from other branches and the parent company.
- Led a strategic program at Red Hat targeted at redesigning the product, pricing, quoting, and entitlement models.
- Worked as a scrum master at Red Hat for a geographically dispersed product team.
- Defined the strategy and migrated a complex HR legacy system to a new platform at Chrysler.
- Redesigned the financial reporting subsystem of supplemental tracking for Chrysler, reducing execution time by 99%.
- Reengineered business processes and optimized workflows for Chrysler, which reduced manual overhead, enhanced the user experience, and increased the value delivered to the business.
Project History
Reach
Managed multiple product enhancements and reduced manual overhead by 75% and data duplication by 50%.
• Collaborated with geographically dispersed stakeholders and managed on-site and offshore resources, including delivery by the vendors.
• Structured the product team to follow Agile methodologies while serving as their scrum master.
• Implemented multiple strategic functions to minimize revenue leakage.
• Automated new workflows and optimized business processes.
MerchantForce
Identified and removed bottlenecks, thus improving velocity by 40% without compromising on quality.
Supplemental Tracking
Redesigned a financial reporting application, reducing execution time by 99%. Reengineered business processes and optimized workflows, reducing manual overhead, enhancing the user experience, and increasing the value delivered to the business.
Engage
Led a large, multidisciplinary team to migrate the corporate CRM platform from Siebel to Salesforce.
Digital Self-service
Established a recurring biweekly deployment process.
Education
Bachelor's Degree in Electrical Engineering
Mackenzie Presbyterian University - São Paulo, Brazil
Certifications
Data Landscape of GenAI for Project Managers
Project Management Institute (PMI)
Generative AI Overview for Project Managers
Project Management Institute (PMI)
Certified Agile Leader (CAL)
Scrum Alliance
Certified Scrum Master
Scrum Alliance
Project Management Professional (PMP)
Project Management Institute (PMI)
Skills
Tools
Slack, Zoom, Jira, Office 365, Google Docs, GitHub, Trello, Rally, Confluence, HP Project and Portfolio Management (PPM), Salesforce, Microsoft Project, SQL
Paradigms
Agile, Scrum, Agile Delivery, Agile Software Development, Agile Project Management, Agile Leadership, Requirements Analysis, Implementation Project Management, Change Management, Azure DevOps, Test-driven Development (TDD), Kanban, Waterfall Delivery, Database Design, Continuous Delivery (CD), Continuous Integration (CI)
Platforms
SharePoint, Azure, Xamarin
Industry Expertise
Professional Services, Automotive, Healthcare
Other
Software Design, IT Projects, Technical Project Management, Project Management, Product Roadmaps, Business Process Improvement (BPI), Program Management, Workflow, Agile Coaching, Certified ScrumMaster (CSM), Agile Program Management, Risk Management, Minimum Viable Product (MVP), Project Timelines, Project Planning, Technology Strategy & Architecture, PMP Project Management, Backlog Grooming, Leadership, Planning, Roadmaps, Reporting, Tracking, Progress Reporting, Databases, User Stories, Feature Backlog Prioritization, Web Applications, Web & Mobile Applications, Open Source, Product Vision, SaaS, Proof of Concept (POC), Large-scale Projects, Intranets, Scope Management, Scrum Coaching, Data Migration, Web Development, Agile Sprints, Smartsheet, Project Discovery, Prototyping, Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC), Backlog Management, Software Development, Jira Administration, Process Improvement, Billing Systems, Software as a Service (SaaS), Cloud Migration, Scrum Master, Team Management, Remote Team Leadership, Budget Management, eCommerce, Startups, New Product Development, Relational Databases, Product Ownership, Fintech, Stakeholder Management, Team Leadership, Google Apps, Customer Experience, Consulting, Discovery, Stakeholder Engagement, Business Transformation, Process Improvement Project Management, Salesforce CPQ, ServiceNow, Clarity PPM, Java, HTML, CSS, Dojo, NoSQL, BPM, Salesforce Sales Cloud, Salesforce Lightning, Data Privacy, Continuous Improvement, CRM Systems, Budgeting, Global Team Management, IT Program Management, IT Project Management, Project Budget Management, Interviewing, Resume Screening, Scrumban, Cloud, Web, Mobile, React Native, C#, Azure SQL, Cosmos, Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe), Migration, Automation, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Workshops, Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI)
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