Project Manager in Casablanca, Grand Casablanca, Morocco

Functional scope of the program: Ticket sales in train stations and online/mobile, onboard inspection, BI, customer relationship management (CRM), and yield/revenue management.

Responsibilities included program oversight, functional architecture overview, project plan management, recruiting, coordination of vendors and sub-contractors, risk mitigation, contract and scope management, budget/cost control, quality control, metrics/KPIs reporting. Transitioned the program from Waterfall to Agile using scrum, stand-up meetings, Jira and Trello Kanbans.
Development tools: Microsoft .NET, T-SQL, SSRS, SSIS, Azure Cloud, AWS.
The program also included many end-user functional and technical training, a change management project, and the creation of extensive technical and functional documentation.

The current version is built with React, uses WordPress as a headless CMS, and integrates with the core sales system through SOAP web services. The project included performance testing (with GTmetrix) and optimization, responsive testing (with BrowserStack), and security testing.

The integration projects were executed in collaboration with partners in Japan, the USA, and Europe. I successfully integrated these multicultural teams and managed the interaction between the local customer and these foreign suppliers. The projects included AI for automatically determining the postal code on envelope pictures, which was particularly challenging in a context in which postal codes aren't widely used, and addresses are loosely structured. Extensive learning was necessary and resulted in a very high recognition rate. We also included UX-optimized video coding software allowing technicians to quickly determine the postal code on envelope pictures, plus the associated user training.

I managed the project life-cycle from functional specifications to acceptance testing and acted as the business analyst for the registration module, using the UML methodology and Microsoft Visio for wireframes. The module developed based on these specifications and is currently used in production. The portal was created in French and Arabic. The system uses EDI data transfer with partners. I also created a web-based communication package for the portal end-users with a specialized web design firm.

The first release of the system included the central taxpayer database and the extensive and complex data migration from the previous system (mainframe) to the new one. The project was executed with a 20-person team and a 2,500 man-days budget. I managed the third-party maintenance phase for the complete system with a 12-person team and the progressive country-wide deployment of the system.
Technologies used were Java Enterprise and Oracle.

This project covered the implementation of the tariff system for Moroccan Customs and its deployment into production, integrating a specialized software product. I handled the business analysis of the customs’ tax system and regulations, the software's technical implementation, software customization with the editor in China, customer training, customer support, and management of the data migration sub-project. The core calculation engine was entirely reprogrammed in C by the vendor to meet the systems load and speed constraints.

With a team of ten developers and technical experts, the project consisted of creating a new version of the Ministry of Finance's information portal. The portal uses Microsoft SharePoint as its CMS and supports several languages, including Arabic.

For the United Nations' Office of Legal Affairs, this system stores all international treaties and produces SGML/XML-based publications made available on the UN website. I designed the Documentum/Oracle document management system and developed in Visual Basic the customization of the document management system to automatically OCR and integrate scanned documents, and to automatically generate XML files loaded into Adobe FrameMaker.

This 8-hour online course was meant for software testers preparing for the ISTQB Foundation certification. Created with Powerpoint and Adobe Captivate and integrated into Moodle, it was published on a WordPress/WooCommerce site and publicized using Google Adwords. The course was composed of slides with voice-over, quizzes and test exams. In addition to the online content, a physical card deck was produced as an educational game add-on.