Veronica Martinovici
Verified Expert in Project Management
Project Manager
Wellington, New Zealand
Toptal member since February 28, 2022
Veronica has a strong technical background as a software engineer and over ten years of experience working as a project lead, agile project manager, and scrum master with multinational software development teams, managing complex customer relations and reporting to senior managers. A passionate supporter and advocate of Agile values and practices since 2010, she enjoys helping her teams achieve excellent results yielded by a culture of collaboration and continuous improvement.
Project Highlights
Education Highlights
Certification Highlights
Expertise
- Agile
- Agile Leadership
- Certified Scrum Professional
- IT Project Management
- Project Management
- Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe)
- Scrum
- Scrum Master
Work Experience
Scrum Master (Contract)
Ministry for Children New Zealand
- Joined a team of data developers as a scrum master and helped them throughout a size scaling process (team size increased from 6 to 11 developers).
- Set up a team dashboard in Jira to highlight current sprint progress, progress toward the next production release, and backlog-related metrics.
- Facilitated quarterly planning meetings and monthly leadership retrospectives for the wider program.
Scrum Master (Contract)
Ministry of Health of New Zealand
- Served as the scrum master for a scrum team (the COVID-19 immunization consumer support development team), responsible for application development in the data and digital space under the COVID-19 Vaccination and Immunization Program.
- Facilitated team collaboration and agreement on the definition of ready and the definition of done (DoD).
- Created Agile metrics dashboards in Jira to be used by the team and other stakeholders for analysis, analytics, monitoring, and reporting.
- Worked closely with the delivery team and release managers to coordinate releases and related documentation.
Senior Project Manager | Scrum Master
Datacom Group
- Joined as senior project manager to support the Bank of New Zealand as a Datacom client with a major migration project. Set up the required collaboration tools for a scalable Scrum implementation at BNZ, integrating Datacom and external vendor teams.
- Managed a series of waterfall projects for the Department of Internal Affairs (DIA), ranging from hardware upgrades to building integration APIs. Oversaw monthly budget forecasts and monthly billing, reporting for the Datacom team.
- Joined as a SAFe scrum master of the Te Ara Manaaki digital transformation program at DIA from August 2018 to October 2021. Acted as a scrum master, servant leader, and coach for two teams.
- Established boards and metrics, helping teams continuously improve results and working methods. Fostered a collaborative environment with other teams in the Agile release train. Supported the DIA product owner with reporting and backlog refinement.
- Worked as a SAFe scrum master with two Scrum teams on a major New Zealand Defense Force program. Contributed to the scrum master's community of practice. Coached teams to evangelize the Agile mindset within the organization.
Project Manager
Fronde Systems Group
- Acted as a scrum master and agile project manager on the Bank of the Philippine Islands mobile banking project and managed projects for various other clients, like New Zealand Transport Authority, Education Payroll Ltd, and Vodafone Fiji.
- Managed a range of IT projects with budgets of up to 1.5 million, working with several teams. Project goals ranged from developing mobile banking platforms and web applications to infrastructure virtualization and PCI DSS security assessments.
- Contributed to Agile workshops for clients to evangelize the Agile practices and clarify expectations. Organized requirements discovery workshops with the clients to create product backlogs.
- Established visual dashboards and metrics in Jira and Trello, making progress visible to various stakeholders.
Scrum Master | Project Leader
Oce Software (Canon Group)
- Joined the team as a scrum master and agile coach to support the introduction of Agile practices in Océ Software Romania. Became a project leader of the Océ Repro Desk project in 2012 on top of my scrum master responsibilities.
- Established workflow processes and held workshops to encourage Agile and Scrum adoption throughout the company. Acted as an agile coach for two development teams new to Scrum.
- Created an environment of trust, collaboration, and continuous improvement within the scrum and extended project teams working on the Océ Repro Desk project. Two development teams were based in Romania and one in the USA.
- Integrated a Microsoft Team Foundation Server set of tools for software integration, workflow management, and issue handling throughout the department, creating release management visibility across multiple teams.
- Introduced Agile metrics to assess scrum teams' maturity and improve estimating and planning for their software releases.
- Fostered communication and productive relationships with product owners, team members, and other stakeholders based in the USA, The Netherlands, France, and Romania.
Software Development Manager
Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise
- Managed developers in the wireless network design tool group. Liaised with the HR department to discuss hiring strategies, annual performance reviews, professional development plans, and salary raise proposals.
- Prepared the scope of activity (SOA) documents mandatory for hiring subcontractors. Managed the group budget related to training, salaries, and investments.
- Managed three application projects developed by three development teams. Oversaw release plans, risk assessment, and reporting to various stakeholders.
- Implemented an Agile introduction pilot in the group. Worked together with an external agile coach for six months to help my teams become scrum-proficient and deliver high-quality software products.
- Helped with introducing and adopting Agile values, principles, methods, and practices in the company. Used Agile metrics to assess the Scrum teams' progress in productivity and their ability to produce higher quality products.
Software Development Team Leader
Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise
- Managed a newly formed team of eight developers, supporting the network design tool manager with HR-related activities, such as hiring interviews and performance reviews.
- Conceived the initial design and architecture of a new software application based on the constraints explained by the business analyst based abroad.
- Built an in-house network design software application from scratch with my team. It was mentioned in Bell Laboratories' white papers.
- Got identified as a local high potential employee ranking in the top 3% of all the employees and enrolled in the stretch and boost business and administration internal Alcatel-Lucent leadership program.
Project History
Te Ara Manaaki Digital Citizenship Application Service | New Zealand Department of Internal Affairs
https://dia.services.govt.nz/Contributed to several production releases as a scrum master of two teams working in a Te Ara Manaaki value stream over three years.
Te Ara Manaaki is a transformational program meant to reimagine the ways New Zealanders access government services. The digital citizenship application service delivered by the program was nominated as one of the three finalists of the Excellence in IT Awards for Govtech in 2021. I acted as a scrum master for two SAFe scrum teams, delivering value to a Te Ara Manaaki value stream development. One group consisted of 11 people working on Dynamics 365 while the other five-people team worked on data migration.
New Zealand Transport Agency OPermit
Managed several production releases enhancing OPermit application functionality.
This online application is used by New Zealand Transport Agency permit issue officers to generate permits for heavy vehicles. I managed a team of five developers and testers and facilitated design workshops and demos for the client.
Bank of the Philippine Island Express Online Electronic Wallet
https://www.bpi.com.ph/mobileManaged several releases of an electronic wallet application integrated with the existing BPI mobile banking app.
BPI Express Online was an online mobile banking platform used by BPI customers. The mobile clients were developed and maintained by Fronde. The electronic wallet application was integrated within the existing BPI mobile banking platform. I managed a team of three to eight developers, DevOps, and testers. Also, I facilitated story mapping workshops with the client in Manila to create the product backlog.
Océ Repro Desk
Managed several product releases and represented the R&D group in front of the business unit during the monthly project committee board meetings held in the Netherlands.
This complex CAD/GIS production printing management software solution is built to offer the highest quality printing to customers using Océ and Canon printers. The product has been known to the wide-format printing market in the USA, Europe, and Asia for more than ten years. I managed a team of 12 developers and testers, supporting the team as a scrum master. I fostered communication and productive relationships with product owners, team members, and other stakeholders based in the USA, the Netherlands, France, and Romania.
Océ Publisher Select
Supported knowledge transfer from Océ France and formed a new development team in Océ Romania.
This print workflow software targets large-format Océ printers. The software helped clients create, do a pre-flight check, and print sets of technical documents using a large format printer quickly and easily, thus significantly increasing their overall print productivity. As a scrum master for a development team of five to seven people in Romania, I managed multiple production releases and client engagement workshops.
Alcatel-Lucent Spider
Launched and managed several releases of Spider, an in-house network design application.
Spider application was implemented from scratch by a dedicated development team that I headed as a team leader. Spider’s initial goal was to serve as an internal modeling tool for the network architecture group to effectively instrument their network studies in a pre-sales phase. Alcatel-Lucent customers appreciated this application as a reference tool for network optimization case studies. The highest recognition of the tool came from Bell Laboratories. They published a white paper for multi-layer network optimization based on a case study simulated with Spider.
Education
Master's Degree in Computer Engineering
Polytechnic University of Timisoara - Timisoara, Romania
Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science
Polytechnic University of Timisoara - Timisoara, Romania
Certifications
Certified SAFe 6.0 Scrum Master
Scaled Agile Inc.
Certified Scrum Professional (CSP-SM)
Scrum Alliance
Certified SAFe 5 Scrum Master
Scaled Agile
Certified SAFe 4 Agilist
Scaled Agile
PMI Agile Certified Practitioner (PMI-ACP)
Project Management Institute (PMI)
Project Management Professional (PMP)
Project Management Institute (PMI)
Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO)
Scrum Alliance
Certified Scrum Master (CSM)
Scrum Alliance
Skills
Tools
Jira, Trello, IntelliJ IDEA, Microsoft Project, Eclipse IDE, Zoom, Slack, Miro, Microsoft Visual Studio, MURAL
Paradigms
Scrum, Azure DevOps, Agile Software Development, Agile Leadership, Agile, Implementation Project Management, Agile Project Management, Object-oriented Programming (OOP), Kanban, Lean
Platforms
Java EE (Jakarta EE)
Other
IT Project Management, Scrum Master, Project Management, Teamwork, Certified Scrum Professional, Certified ScrumMaster (CSM), Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC), Java, Budgeting, People Development, People Management, Agile Coaching, Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe), Estimation & Planning, Project Planning, Project Estimation, Stakeholder Management, Project Budget Management, Scrum Coaching, Microsoft Teams, C++, Stakeholder Analysis, Stakeholder Engagement, XML Parsing, Business Cases, Release Management, Scrum Product Owner, Backlog Management, Feature Backlog Prioritization, Feature Planning, Agile DevOps
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