Vlad George Calota
Verified Expert in Project Management
Project Manager
Bucharest, Romania
Toptal member since October 16, 2019
Vlad is a certified project and program manager with over 18 years of experience deploying new technologies effectively across the IT, telecommunications, travel, and public health industries. Proficient in both Agile and Waterfall, he has delivered change in both startup and corporate environments, both private and public sectors, efficiently managing deliveries from on-site and remote teams. Vlad is a proficient communicator with strong follow-through capabilities.
Project Highlights
Expertise
- ITIL V3 Foundation Certified
- Jira
- Microsoft Project Server
- PRINCE2
- Program Management
- Scrum
- Waterfall Delivery
- Waterfall Methodology
Work Experience
Project Manager
Trasys International
- Delivered on time and on budget more than 6 implementation projects.
- Provided input for improving project management processes.
- Managed expectations of C-level executives in the public sector.
Program Coordinator
eu-LISA
- Managed several streams in the program and coordinated activities across 3 projects.
- Negotiated and managed deliveries from top executives of Atos and IBM.
- Led meetings with over 15 participants, coordinating across 4 subcontractor teams.
Program Manager Consultant for ECDC
European Dynamics
- Provided the end-to-end management of the SSR program (a 4-year initiative), introducing enormous change in ECDC IT landscape and operational processes.
- Assisted with setting up the program management structure and led a team of four project managers, delivering on time, quality, and budget for a total of 16 projects, with an average of 13 FTE and a €1 million budget per year.
- Designed the program plan by focusing on the benefits highlighted by ECDC stakeholders.
- Decreased the number of change requests per project with 20% by supporting further investment in the analysis phase.
- Designed, implemented, and maintained the communication strategy for the overall SSR program, in line with stakeholders' expectations.
- Introduced new tools and technologies in the operational area of ECDC BI (Qlik Sense), data warehouse, and ETL (FME).
- Decreased wait time within the program to 50% by colocating critical cross-project resources.
- Decreased program costs with 5% by merging projects with concurrent scope.
Project Manager Consultant
Amadeus IT Group
- Successfully delivered in scope, budget, and quality of six consecutive releases of Amadeus eTravel Management from initiation to transition into production.
- Facilitated and controlled the deliveries of five Scrum teams, with team members located in Nice, Boston. and Bangalore.
- Managed the entire release lifecycle throughout Agile delivery, Integration, QA, UAT, and transition.
- Created advanced project reports.
- Managed loads in production outside release life cycle.
Project Manager
IBM
- Successfully delivered seven projects for Vodafone Romania within extremely rigid contractual clauses, generating a 20% profit margin and paying zero penalties.
- Handled a team of subcontractors and was accountable for procurement and contract management.
- Managed the software development lifecycle through requirements gathering, code delivery, integration, internal QA, and UAT.
- Created and negotiated project contracts with both the customer and sub-contractor.
- Built Android applications and web applications for a customer in the telecommunications industry.
Project Manager
BullGuard Software Ltd
- Managed the software development lifecycle through requirements gathering, code delivery, integration, internal QA, and UAT.
- Created detailed project plans in MS Project and monitored progress.
- Performed risk and change management activities.
- Built advanced reports in Excel for presenting the status to BullGuard executives.
- Monitored and controlled project financials.
PMO
BullGuard Software Ltd
- Created project plans for all allocated projects within the BullGuard portfolio.
- Assisted with the implementation of the project server.
- Performed project server administration (creating and editing enterprise calendars, enterprise resource pool, and project plans).
- Monitored the allocation of people across projects and performed resource-leveling.
- Reported data and metrics to the BullGuard program manager.
Pre-sales Consultant
BullGuard Software Ltd
- Provided customer procedural and commercial support for BullGuard's retail partners.
- Performed BullGuards' application localization in nine different languages.
- Created requirements documents for several projects.
- Managed the software releases on different platforms.
- Acted as the single point of contact for BullGuard sales and marketing departments.
Project History
Suveillance Systems Re-engineering Program
Led the modernization of the overall IT technologies and user interfaces for surveillance systems in ECDC.
Managed a 4-year, €4 million program for the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control. Led a team of four project managers and oversaw the work of 13 FTEs allocated yearly to deliver the program’s projects.
Led the introduction of new technologies in both IT and Operational areas, like Business Intelligence tool (Qlik Sense), a consolidated Data Warehouse modeled from scratch and ETL tool (FME) for automated data uploads.
Created a proper structure for enabling the adoption of the new tools and adaptation of associated business processes.
Amadeus eTravel Management
Managed the deliveries of 5 Scrum teams, as well as the Waterfall release cycle from integration to transition in production.
The product represents Amadeus’s web solution for corporate travel, allowing companies to set detailed rules for their employees’ business travels.
Delivered 10 Amadeus eTravel Management releases in time, quality and budget. Acted as an agile project manager for five scrum teams with members in Nice, Boston, and Bangalore. In parallel, for the following phases: integration, non-regression testing, UAT, and transition, I fulfilled the role of the release manager.
Deliveries were split in 1-month sprints, with a release planned every six weeks. Following Agile delivery, the release life cycle was fixed, with a standard duration allocated to each phase.
Monitored progress and financials and created advanced reports in Jira.
BullGuard Mobile Security
Delivered the initial version of BullGuard Mobile Security for Android.
Managed a team of six developers (front-end and back-end), two testers, and one UI engineer in delivering the solution for BullGuard’s security software for Android devices. Led the implementation of antivirus, spam filter, parental control and firewall modules as well as the delivery of the user interface.
Technologies: Java, HTML5, MS Team Foundation Server, Project Server
Vodafone Romania Web Portal
Acted as the agile project manager and scrum master for ten sprints delivering improvements to Vodafone Romania web portal.
Delivered ten releases affecting the functionality of Vodafone Web Portal on time and within budget and scope. Managed a subcontracted scrum team of seven team members, responsible for delivering a release at the end of each sprint, under a target cost model.
The project paid zero penalties and generated a 20% profit margin for IBM Romania.
Technologies: Java, JQuery, Tealium, React, Jira
Education
Bachelor's Degree in Electronics
Polytechnic University of Bucharest - Bucharest, Romania
Certifications
MSP Practitioner
Axelos
Professional Scrum Master Level I (PSM I)
Scrum.org
MSP Foundation
Axelos
ITIL Foundation v3
Axelos
Prince2 Practitioner
Axelos
Prince2 Foundation
Axelos
Skills
Tools
Jira, Microsoft Project, Microsoft Team Foundation Server, Zoom, Trello, Confluence
Paradigms
Scrum, Waterfall Delivery, Agile, PRINCE2, Agile Project Management, Kanban, Change Management
Platforms
Android, Windows
Industry Expertise
Telecommunications
Other
Waterfall Methodology, Microsoft Project Server, Program Management, Managed Service Providers (MSP), ITIL V3 Foundation Certified, PSM-1, ITIL, Public Health, Engineering, IT Program Management, Project Management, IT Project Management, Statistics, Managed Services
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