Career Summary

• 13+ years of rich professional experience in embedded Telecom Software development, out of which six years in various key management roles. Handled large and complex IT projects from inception till delivery.
• Currently working with Powerwave Technologies, Hyderabad as Program Manager for the LTE eNodeB program. Responsible for the product roadmap and release planning, preparation of budget, schedule and budget tracking, feature deliveries, bug fixes and third party vendor management.
• Worked as Senior Project Manager for LTE eNodeB Layer 2 (PDCP, RLC, MAC) product line, leading a team of 50 direct and indirect reportees. Responsible for overall project delivery, Engagement & Delivery management, SLA/KPI adherence, people management and Client management. Also responsible for integration and testing of eNodeB product with different hardware of different OEMs.
• Prior role as Senior Project Manager for Tekelec, USA for Eagle STP feature development and maintenance, leading a team of 45 direct and indirect reportees. Responsible for Engagement and Delivery management, SLA/KPI adherence, people management and Client Management. Globally Integrated delivery (large and Complex projects). Successful transition from an onsite to offshore engagement.
• Prior role as onshore Technical Leader for Alcatel Intelligent services development, system integration of IN Prepaid systems, working out of Namur (Belgium) for 12 months.  Strong understanding of Alcatel SDP, SCP, Prepaid solutions and Integrated Charging Suite. Strong integration experience of IN solution in network.
• Prior role as onshore SSE for SS7 product line feature enhancements.
• Prior role as Engineer for Daewoo Telecom, for development of telecom applications on TDX-100  switch.
• 5 Years of experience working on Global Delivery Model.
• PMP certified and in-depth knowledge & experience of Project & Program Management.
• Strong understanding & experience on CMMI processes. Involved in getting the CMMI level 4 and 5 process implemented for the project and getting the projects audited for CMMi level 5 certification. Also ensured compliance of project with CMMi level 2 and 3 processes

Education: 

• Masters in Computer Applications from Confidential, Pune, India – 1999
• MBA (Part time) in Finance and International Business – 2011

Awards & Recognition:

• Aricent India – Team Excellence Award – 2006
• Aricent India – Team Excellence Award – 2003

Managerial Skills

• Oversee multi-phase, multi-dimensional, multi -resource projects from inception to conclusion while maintaining high customer satisfaction.
• Proven skills in project management and leadership. Planned, directed and managed designated projects. Simultaneously managing multiple development, testing and integration projects.
• Effort estimation, preparation of scope statement, requirements, work breakdown structure and project schedules.
• Technical and manpower planning and tracking. Continually track, monitor and communicate progress against plan to all parties and ensure quality work is completely in a timely manner. Organize project meetings to track status and manage issues.
• Weekly/monthly project status reporting to Customer and senior management.
• Achieving acceptances and deliveries as per agreed project plan.
• Work in close co-ordination with team in multiple locations to achieve project deliverables.
• Manage contractual implications of slippage, problems, timing and resourcing.
• Risk identification and preparation of risk mitigation plans.
• People management and resolving people issues. Conducting performance reviews and salary reviews of persons directly reporting to me. Identifying dysfunctional behavior and taking corrective actions.
• Conducting training sessions for new team members to help them ramp up quickly and become productive within 5-6 weeks.
• Identifying training needs of each team member and preparation of trainings programs and follow up.
• Conducting one to one meetings with employees for feedback, career objectives and solving employee concerns.
• Customer Management
• Customer value creation and relationship management with the customers.
• Responsible for the ultimate success and satisfaction of internal AND external customers and partners.
• Communicating effectively with project teams and customers to achieve customer objectives.
• Handling Customer escalations

Professional Experience:

June 12 – Till Date       Project Manager                   Confidential, Hyderabad, India
LTE eNodeB product development – Completely responsible for the roadmap and deliveries of the LTE eNodeB product. Responsible for:-

• Discussion with product management and hardware team on the roadmap of the product line and planning of timelines and contents of the product releases.
• Budget estimation, preparation of scope statement, requirements, work breakdown structure and project schedules
• Tracking the schedule and budget and ensuring the timely delivery of feature development.
• Stakeholder management and status/metrices reporting of the program.
• Release management & continuous improvements to ensure we are able to deliver multiple releases a year
• Ensure SLA adherence, Productivity improvement, implementation & optimization of tools.
• Collaborate with cross functional teams(firmware, RF, mechanical, production) to ensure that program objectives are met.
• Risk identification and preparation of risk mitigation plans.
• Third party vendor management and ensuring their deliveries align with the product release.

Oct 11 – June 12       Senior Project Manager                   Confidential, Gurgaon, India
LTE eNodeB Layer2 (RLC, PDCP, MAC) development (Oct 11 – Till Date) – Managing design and development of development of multiple features on layer 2 of eNodeB in LTE networks. Also managing integration of eNodeB product with hardware of 3 different vendors. Responsible for:-

• Discussion with product management on the roadmap of the product line.
• Effort estimation, preparation of scope statement, requirements, work breakdown structure and project schedules
• Tracking the plans and ensuring the timely delivery of feature development in layer 2.
• Support to existing and new customers.
• Integration of layer 2 with physical layer of different hardware vendors. Planning Layer 2 product releases in co-ordination with hardware vendors’ releases.
• Participation in proposal writing and pre-sales activities.
• Release management & continuous improvements to ensure we are able to deliver multiple releases a year
• Ensure SLA adherence, Productivity improvement, implementation & optimization of tools.
• Quality planning and management. Ensure that the quality compliances are met and customer satisfaction is increasing with each release. Ensure compliance of project with CMMi level 5 quality standards. Ensuring that level 4 and level 5 processes are implemented in project. Used MonteCarlo Simulation tool for Quantitative project management (level 4) to manage the project and performed causal analysis and resolution (CAR) for adherence to level 5 of CMMi.
• CMMI Process Compliance – Working with SQA to identify the gaps and closed all the gaps in processes. Faced  Internal Audits and external CMMi level 5 Audit.
• Risk identification and preparation of risk mitigation plans.
• People Management (Appraisals, Salary Increments, Goal Setting, Career development etc.)
• Work with HR to short list candidates for interviews and conducting interviews.
• Identification of the training needs for each team member and preparation of training programs to ensure enhancement of knowledge base.
• Conducting one to one meetings and skip level meetings with team members to understand their concerns and work towards their resolution, providing feedback and setting career objectives.
• Identify dysfunctional behavior in team members, providing feedback and work towards to increase the motivational level.
• Conducting team building activities regularly.

Integration of eNodeB with hardware of multiple vendors

• Participation in discussion regarding interface definition of eNodeB with physical layer/hardware of multiple OEMs.
• Defining of tasks and test cases to be executed during integration
• Discussion with customer managers to align ENodeB release schedule with the hardware release schedule
• Leading support team to solve issues during integration and get acceptance.

July 2010 – Oct 2011       Senior Project Manager               Confidential, Gurgaon, India
May 2006 – Aug 2010        Project Manager                         Confidential, Gurgaon, India
Tekelec Eagle STP Feature Enhancement (Aug 06 – Dec. 11), Tekelec, USA – Managing T&M services for design and development of features on Tekelec Eagle STP. Eagle is a Signaling Transfer Point (STP) in fixed and wireless telecom networks (GSM) and provides signaling, application server and network monitoring functions, supports a huge local and mobile number portability data base and signaling capacity. Eagle is one of the biggest products of Tekelec US and is widely deployed all over the globe. The project involves new feature development on Eagle major and minor software releases and maintenance activity for previous releases. Till now handled 5 major releases involving design, development and testing (feature test, integration test and system testing). Project required close interaction with customer and other contractors spread across USA and India in a global delivery model setup.

Roles & Responsibilities:

• Delivery & SLA Assurance.

• Client management, Participation in Steering Group meetings and summits. Maintained CSS Rating-1 throughout.
• Oversee multi-phase, multi-dimensional, multi -resource projects from inception to conclusion while maintaining high customer satisfaction.
• Define project scope, statement of work, requirements and deliverables.
• Effort estimation and staffing
• Translation of requirements into design, test plans, test strategy and test scenarions.
• Develop detailed task and resource allocation plan for the development and testing phases.
• Track and monitor the progress of the development phase and test cases execution phase according to the plans and take corrective action in case of variances. Accurate status reporting to senior management and customers.
• Resolve all issues to achieve customer acceptance sign off for successful completion of key deliverables.
• Risk identification and monitoring throughout the life of the project.
• Quality planning and management. Ensure that the quality compliances are met and customer satisfaction is increasing with each release. Ensure compliance of project with CMMi level 5 quality standards. Ensuring that level 4 and level 5 processes are implemented in project. Used Monte Carlo Simulation tool for Quantitative project management (level 4) to manage the project and performed causal analysis and resolution (CAR) for adherence to level 5 of CMMi.
• CMMI Process Compliance – Working with SQA to identify the gaps and closed all the gaps in processes. Faced  Internal Audits and external CMMi level 5 Audit.
• Release management & continuous improvements to ensure we are able to deliver multiple releases a year. Capacity planning, Organizing Project Kick-off meetings, Design Jams, Risk mitigation & dependency resolution, Tracking System Integration Testing(SIT).
• People Management (Appraisals, Salary Increments, Goal Setting, Career development etc.)
• Work with HR to short list candidates for interviews and conducting interviews.
• Identification of the training needs for each team member and preparation of training programs to ensure enhancement of knowledge base.
• Conducting one to one meetings and skip level meetings with team members to understand their concerns and work towards their resolution, providing feedback and setting career objectives.
• Conducting team building activities regularly.
• Identify dysfunctional behavior in team members, providing feedback and work towards to increase the motivational level.
• Participation in Program Monthly Reviews (PMR).
• Leading innovation for best practices and getting them registered to company assets.

Handled 6 major releases

• Release 44.0 – Oct 10 – Oct 11. Total development and testing effort was 300 staff months
• Release 42.0 – Jul 09 - April 10 – Total development and testing effort was 350 staff months
• Release 41.1 – Dec 08 – June 09 –Total development and testing effort was 150 staff months.
• Release 41.0 – Sep 08 – Dec 08 –Total development and testing effort was 50 staff months.
• Release 39.2 - Mar 08 – Sep 08 –Total development and testing effort was 240 staff months.
• Release 38.0 - April 07 - Jan 08 – Total development and testing effort was 300 staff months

Achievements

• Increased customer satisfaction rating from somewhat satisfied to completely satisfied which helped in growth of offshore team from 30 to 63.
• Developed a training program to help in quick ramp up of new members in the team.
• Implemented practices for continuous productivity improvement.
• Succession planning implemented to take care of attrition in team and career development of team members.

Aug 03 - Jun 06         Team Leader                                Confidential, Gurgaon, India
Systems Integration of Alcatel’s IN Solutions for different vendors: - I acted as a technical expert and responsible of system integration team for IN Solutions like Flexible routing and Charging, Televoting, Integrated Charging Engine.
Role & Responsibility:

• Participation in functional specifications of Prepaid System with customer
• Technical implementation of solutions.
• Defects follow up and leading of support team during acceptance period. Regular status meeting with Alcatel-Lucent front office and customer.
• Implementation and documentation of changes when requested

Development of Televoting, Prepaid Calling card account service, Number Translation IN services and Limit of Credit (LOC) IN services using Alcatel OSP 2.3 platform, Alcatel -The project involved developing intelligent network services: - televoting, prepaid calling card account service and flexible routing and Charging. These service were developed for Slovak Telecom and Perm Telecom, Russia. Host was SUN OS version 5.8 and development language used was C++ and Visual Basic 6.0. Database used in the project was Oracle 8.0
Roles & Responsibilities:

• Overall lead for the project. Travelled to client side for requirements gathering, trainings, design and some part of development. After building good confidence level with the client, returned back to India after 9 months and thereon continued with my work
• Development of GUI’s and emulator using Visual basic 6.0.
• Development of INAP and transport libraries to communicate with the SSP (telephone exchange).
• Development of the service logic, objects and various Service independent blocks (SIBs)
• Development of testing scripts and test plan documents.
• Execution of test cases and defect reporting.
• Integration and testing with the live SSP in Slovak Telecom network

Confidential Egypt - The PPC allows a service user to set up a call from any telephone set without need of operator assistance using a prepaid card. The service user can use the PPC until the limit of credit is reached. The INAP used in service is based on INAP CS-1 specifications. The project involved developing 5 new features on already existing Prepaid service for Telecom Egypt. These features are redial, Abbreviated dialling, Implicit authentication (authentication without password), Payment of phone bill using prepaid card and balance transfer from one card to other. Host was SUN OS version 5.8 and development language used was C++ and Visual Basic 6.0. Database used in the project was Oracle 8.0
Roles & Responsibilities:

• Analysis of the requirements
• Design preparation and Development
• Creation of test plans and testing scripts and test execution in LAB.
• Deployment in live network, integration with SSP and support during customer acceptance test

Apr 01 – Aug 03,           Senior Software Engineer               Confidential, Gurgaon, India
Worked on design and development of multiple features of SS7 product line. Worked on MTP-3, SCCP, TCAP and ISUP layers. Developed Chinese and Japanese variants of SCCP and TCAP layers. Developed distributed SS7 stack, which allowed multiple SS7 instances of the stack to run on same or different machines. Traffic from network and applications was distributed among different instances using different configurable algorithms.

May 1999 – Apr 01,      Software Engineer      Confidential, Gurgaon, India
Message Transfer Part -3 of SS7 protocol stack, Confidential, Gurgaon. - Project consisted of developing MTP-3 layer of SS7 protocol stack. MTP 3 is third level in the SS7 stack. It provides message routing and traffic management functions in the SS7 signaling network. The project was developed for TDX-100, public switch, developed by Daewoo Telecom, South Korea.

Centralized Automated Message Accounting (CAMA), Confidential, Gurgaon. - CAMA system is used for extracting charging information from the switch and transmitting it to a billing center, known as Host Collector (HC). It is an improvement over Local Automatic Message Accounting (LAMA) in which charging information is stored on magnetic tapes and the tapes are manually sent to the billing center.