Phani Kumar, Project Manager in Hyderabad, Telangana, India
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Phani Kumar

Verified Expert  in Project Management

Project Manager

Location
Hyderabad, Telangana, India
Toptal Member Since
November 11, 2021

Phani is an achievement-driven professional with extensive experience in Agile and Scrum, product management, requirement definition, software development, and quality assurance of mobile and web applications across eCommerce, banking, finance, and retail industries. He led multiple cross-functional teams across various domains and has experience with both co-located and distributed teams.

Project Highlights

eCommerce Application for Billabong
Billabong has about 20+ different eCommerce applications, and I managed the enhancements and maintenance of all of these high-volume sites.
Safeway eCommerce Upgrade from Legacy to Java Platform
Successfully migrated the Safeway grocery eCommerce application from legacy systems to Java stack. This web application is a high transaction site with little to no downtime. Migration was perfectly planned and executed.
B2B and B2C eCommerce Application for Car Parts
Launched and managed the B2B and B2C portal development with 16 scrum developers. This included maintaining the application business as usual (BAU) tasks, using Kanban, and enhancements using the Scrum framework.

Expertise

Work Experience

Scrum Master

2024 - 2024
PepsiCo Global - DPS
  • Facilitated and led Scrum ceremonies, including sprint planning, daily stand-ups, sprint reviews, and retrospectives. Guided the team in estimating and forecasting deliverables.
  • Managed 14 team members distributed across the globe, organized PI planning sessions, and facilitated breakout rooms, fist of five, risks dependency planning, etc.
  • Integrated with Azure DevOps, Microsoft Teams, and other tools.

Senior Scrum Master

2021 - 2021
Yavica
  • Joined the team as a senior scrum master. Managed two scrum teams of 22 members and steered the development of the company's flagship product FlexProperty.
  • Set up processes and tools required for embracing Agile and Scrum in every development team company-wide.
  • Coached development teams in transitioning from Waterfall to Agile and successfully transitioned and built matured scrum teams.
  • Coached stakeholders in transitioning from Waterfall to Agile and successfully transitioned the stakeholders and higher management in adopting Scrum and Agile.
  • Ensured that the team focused on the goals of the current iteration by keeping them on track. Promoted and advocated a culture of continuous improvement. Driven cultural change by championing an Agile mindset.
  • Implemented simple, adaptable methodology rules to deliver business value rapidly and reliably. Led Agile workshops for both development and operations teams, as well as key stakeholders.
  • Analyzed current systems and processes while working with project teams. Defined, designed, and enabled the adoption of Agile best practices. Guided teams to help them stay on track with Agile techniques.
  • Facilitated learning and development through individual and team coaching. Coached senior management in Agile practices to facilitate adoption. Created Agile champions to effectively communicate Agile principles.
  • Undertaken daily follow-ups with individual team members to ensure projects are on track and goals are being met. Kept an objective perspective on issues and troubleshoots.
  • Facilitated stand-up meetings with cross-functional teams to review project status. Supported teams to maintain Agile practices and ensure smooth project delivery.

Senior Program Manager

2020 - 2021
Nisum Technologies
  • Planned and organized meetings, facilitating scrum ceremonies, story estimation, daily stand-ups, iteration and release planning, and reviews. Analyzed the current Scrum processes, identified areas of improvement, and executed improvements.
  • Adopted Agile, resulting in enhanced performance. Ensured adherence to Agile best practices like time-boxing, CI/CD, code and design reviews, product visioning, technical debt reduction, self-management, and empowerment during project execution.
  • Managed projects and worked with senior management to increase the effectiveness of Agile adoption in the organization's contingency planning.
  • Prepared technical architecture diagrams and provided technical solutions for business problems. Provided training to the team on the Scrum and Agile process, Directed and cross-liaised with product owners to groom the product backlog.
  • Led the delivery of projects from the stage of initiation to monitoring and control, including planning, estimation and scheduling, integrating change control, and planning risk responses.
  • Managed functional teams spread across geographies to deliver complex programs; defined, monitored, and improved critical-to-success metrics for the program's success.
  • Planned and managed multiple parallel projects; identified, assessed, tracked, and mitigated issues and risks.
  • Anticipated bottlenecks, provided escalation management, and balanced the business needs versus technical constraints. Steered effective teamwork, communication, collaboration, and commitment across multiple groups with competing priorities.
  • Applied best practices to the software development lifecycle for projects based on experiences with a number of blended approaches; interacted with project sponsors, project stakeholders, and multiple business and technical teams.
  • Collaborated very closely with various business stakeholders to drive the execution of multiple business plans and technologies.

Senior Agile Project Manager

2020 - 2021
WalkingTree Technologies
  • Ensured that the Agile principles and ceremonies were understood and adhered to by the team, such as sprint planning, standups, sprint demo, retrospective, and backlog refinement.
  • Supported and coached the team to commit to challenging but realistic and reliable sprint results. Removed the impediments and guided the team to remove impediments to achieve the sprint goals and deliverables.
  • Collaborated with the scrum team and product owners to break down business requirements into stories and tasks. I was versatile in measuring various sprint and Agile metrics and working toward improvement sprint over sprint.
  • Facilitated discussions, decision-making, and conflict resolutions. Demonstrated exceptional team building and team management skills, with proven experience managing virtual teams in an international environment.
  • Took care of reporting at all required levels. Took necessary steps to improve the velocity. Facilitated backlog grooming sessions and sprint planning sessions periodically.

Senior Program Manager

2020 - 2020
SPHERE Management
  • Managed large Agile at scaled and complex programs with multi-disciplined teams. Coached the team on how to use Agile practices and principles to deliver high-quality products. Ensured Scrum was understood, and the team adhered to Scrum.
  • Resolved team impediments with other scrum masters to increase the effectiveness of the application of Scrum. Acted as an Agile coach to help other scrum masters grow within the role. Contributed to the advancement and improvement of Agile practices.
  • Ensured that the team gets to a high-performing level by recognizing areas of strength and improvement and employing appropriate coaching and development techniques. Facilitated and supported all scrum events. Driven CI through metrics.
  • Demonstrated excellent presentation, analytical, and articulation skills. I was very hands-on in the management and coaching of Agile teams. Extensively used Jira and Confluence as the PM tool and multitasked on multiple project tracks.

Senior Agile Project Manager

2017 - 2020
Clicksco
  • Organized and conducted daily stand-up meetings. Managed sprint planning and execution, including the management of project progress and providing status and visibility. Participated in release planning.
  • Organized scheduling by providing empirical Scrum team statistics, identifying project dependencies, and creating velocity forecasts.
  • Ensured high throughput of dev teams by identifying potential issues and roadblocks and working on preventing or eliminating them.
  • Worked with product management, engineering, and quality assurance teams to plan ahead and ensure product backlog is prioritized, groomed, and has sufficient detail.
  • Facilitated issue resolution within the team. Guided the team and organization on how to use Agile and Scrum practices and values.

Senior Agile Project Manager | Head of CoE

2016 - 2016
Arup
  • Provided techno-functional leadership and managed a team of 15 developers. Juggled and prioritized multiple deliverables across multiple projects simultaneously.
  • Organized sprint planning, execution, and retrospectives with a focus on the delivery of features. Ensured delivery management discipline, BPM processes implementation, and status reporting.
  • Coordinated and collaborated with BA, quality, and business teams to deliver next-generation, high-quality products.
  • Ensured prompt identification and resolution of delivery issues and accountability for resolving escalated issues according to governance escalation procedures.
  • Managed people development, capacity planning, delivery management, and stakeholder communication.

Senior Project Manager

2006 - 2015
Etisbew
  • Handled delivery of enterprise solutions using Java, J2EE, LAMP, mobile, Microsoft, and cold fusion technologies.
  • Managed a team of 70+ members using different technologies.
  • Prioritized reducing and eliminating tech debt while moving from a monolithic technology stack to modern architecture.
  • Acted as a hard follower and promoted development best practices and continuous improvement.
  • Served as a hands-on technical leader of engineering project teams, influential in communication, with strong problem-solving, analytical, and presentation skills.

Delivery Manager

2005 - 2006
Smruti Compubits
  • Collaborated with product management, engineering, and quality assurance teams to plan and ensure product backlog is prioritized, groomed, and has sufficient detail to make it ready and avoid any downtime.
  • Orchestrated collaboration with a project manager, development consultant, business consultant, architect, developers, and implementation teams to propose solutions using new technologies.
  • Spearheaded product lifecycle from concept to post-implementation support covering ideation, architectural design, development, testing, and deployment.
  • Showed excellence in gathering and understanding clients' and other stakeholders' requirements, followed by a translation into functional specifications as well as provisioning of suitable software solutions.

eCommerce Application for Billabong

https://www.billabong.com/

Billabong has about 20+ different eCommerce applications, and I managed the enhancements and maintenance of all of these high-volume sites.

Managed about three scrum teams for the maintenance and enhancements for all these websites. This included managing and maintaining the applications, especially during Christmas, Black Friday, and Cyber Monday, which was an achievement by itself.

Intranet Application for Kohler Company

Kohler has around eight intranet applications used by its internal clients for their day-to-day business; the project involved maintenance and building new features. We accomplished the successful implementation of new features and BAU tasks.

With three developers and me as a project manager, this project managed their entire development from offshore. The intranet sites were used by different departments of Kohler company which included logistics teams and maintenance of their in-house build ERP systems. This project lasted for four years and also covered maintenance and enhancements.

Multiple Projects for Emirates NBD Bank

https://emiratesnbd.com/en/

This project included migrating the bank's servers from the UK to Dubai, as well as migrating their 14+ servers and all its internet and intranet sites from a lower CMS version to a higher CMS version.

Migrated their 14+ servers to Dubai, upgraded their client-facing website and intranet sites (36 sites) to a higher version of Mura CMS. Managed teams in a hybrid model with six onsite team members and five offshore developers and managed their entire services as a project coordinator and project manager.

Safeway eCommerce Upgrade from Legacy to Java Platform

http://safeway.com

Successfully migrated the Safeway grocery eCommerce application from legacy systems to Java stack. This web application is a high transaction site with little to no downtime. Migration was perfectly planned and executed.

Managed about four scrum teams with 42+ developers, designers, testers, and network teams. The project included a migration from a legacy application to a Java-based eCommerce application. This entire development and migration happened during the first COVID-19 time, at which point the sales were very high, so managing the migration with no downtime was an achievement.

RasGas Qatar | Intranet Application Maintenance and Development

RasGas, the biggest oil company in the Middle East, engaged us in managing the development and enhancements of their intranet applications. The scrum teams were distributed.

Managed 20+ developers with a combination of onshore and offshore teams. I implemented Agile, coached stakeholders and development teams, and maintained its intranet sites, including enhancements and BAU tasks.

Multiple Projects for IMC2 Agency

https://www.emiratesnbd.com/en/

Served as a senior project manager for IMC2, a renowned digital agency. I managed their end clients' projects and was involved in ideation, discovery, scoping, budgeting, and project scheduling. Implemented Scrum for each of these projects

I gained experience as a senior Agile project manager, delivery manager, scrum master, and product owner for different projects during my 22 years of IT experience. Handled team sizes ranging from five engineering teams to 70 on the Emirates NBD project, where migration of their infrastructure and upgrade of their 34+ intranet and internet sites were all single-handedly managed by me as a project manager.

Revamp of the INSEAD Website

http://insead.edu

Delivered the application, which included the discovery phase of three weeks to refine the requirements and come up with user stories. Developed on Drupal 9 with 12 scrum developers over a 16-sprint duration, including sprint planning and ceremonies.

This project involved redesigning the existing INSEAD web application and knowledge center portals with a scrum team of 12 developers.

We organized a three-week discovery phase that helped us come up with requirements and user stories developed on Drupal 9 and PHP tech stack.

Provided transparency by sharing Agile metrics as reports to stakeholders regularly. Motivated teams with continuous and regular coaching and mentor as a Scrum Agile coach, while conflict resolution and team management were of prime focus. Helped team adhere and embrace Scrum and Agile mindset and principles by coaching and mentoring.

Developed MVP based on the initial discovery phase by helping the client to go to the market early.

Development and Maintenance of No More Bottles

http://www.nomorebottles.ae

Delivered the project on time and within the budget and implemented Scrum as a PM framework. Developed in PHP and WooCommerce and handled the project as a project manager right from design to implementation and maintenance.

This is an eCommerce application that deals with freshwater supply to individuals and corporates.

Managed the entire application development as an Agile project manager, assuring that sprint planning, sprint retro, sprint review, backlog grooming were judiciously facilitated.

Led a discovery phase to nail down the requirements and build user stories with a large team of five different dev teams.

Senior Agile Project Manager for Effective Logistics Planning

https://spheremi.com/

Managed a team of 14 scrum developers, ensuring the requirements were gathered from the stakeholders, translated into user stories, and shared with the teams to have a common understanding of the DoD. Delivered the application on time and budget.

As a senior Agile project manager, my role included but was not limited to managing the project in Agile (Scrum), facilitating scrum ceremonies, timely reporting to the stakeholders on the sprint and velocity, as we all quality reports such as defect escape ratio.

I contributed to the discovery phase, planning phase (sprint planning), sprint execution, stakeholder management, and team management.

B2B and B2C eCommerce Application for Car Parts

https://allianceconnect.com/

Launched and managed the B2B and B2C portal development with 16 scrum developers. This included maintaining the application business as usual (BAU) tasks, using Kanban, and enhancements using the Scrum framework.

This application, a B2B and B2C platform, enables the vendors to purchase car spares in bulk and sell the items to their retail customers. Similarly, a customer can buy directly from the portal, and the items are delivered to the customer's doorstep. This application is a marketplace for car spare parts. Managed the entire project from start to finish using Kanban and Scrum frameworks.

Mediacorp Singapore | Maintenance and Enhancements

http://mediacorp.sg

Managed and led scrum teams and launched several releases for Mediacorp and its associated media channels. Implemented Scrum and successfully transformed the teams and enterprise in embracing Agile and Scrum.

Managed 18 scrum dev teams in delivering the project and implemented Scrum, which included training, mentoring, teaching, and guiding the teams and helped them be self-organized. As such, the teams' velocity was sustained at a constant pace.

Booking Engine for EventsNow

Contributed to designing and building the ticket booking engine for the EventsNow platform from discovery, design, and prototyping to development and delivery.

Managed the entire project from ideation, discovery, design, development, and delivery of the booking engine for EventsNow. Managed a scrum team of 12 developers, facilitating scrum events, sharing the project metrics to all the stakeholders on time, and looking for ways to improve the team's performance to make them self-organized.

I had similar experiences while working with an event management company called Cvent and DB Schenker.
1996 - 1998

Master of Business Administration (MBA) Degree in Finance and Marketing

Institute of Technology and Management - Warangal, Telangana, India

1993 - 1996

Bachelor of Science Degree in Mathematics, Physics, and Electronics

Osmania University - Hyderabad, Telangana, India

NOVEMBER 2020 - PRESENT

Becoming an Agile Coach

Linkedin Learning

NOVEMBER 2020 - PRESENT

Agile at Work: Building Your Agile Team

Linkedin Learning

NOVEMBER 2020 - PRESENT

ICAgile Certified Professional

ICAgile

SEPTEMBER 2015 - PRESENT

Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO)

Scrum Alliance

JUNE 2015 - PRESENT

Certified Scrum Master

ScrumAlliance.org

APRIL 2008 - PRESENT

Certified Macromedia ColdFusion Expert

Adobe

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