2018 - 2021
Project Manager at EPAM Systems
We were working on 2 products in Legal business domain: 1. So-called “Google for lawyers”. It’s a web-based container of legal documents and a search mechanism built on top of them. 2. Desktop-based app that provided tools and automation for drafting legal documents. These projects are part of the Managed Service program operating in full ownership mode: the team is ultimately responsible for delivering results end-to-end. It gives a lot of freedom in decision making and a high level of accountability at the same time. Key highlights of my role:
• Managed transition of the project from another vendor, coordinated all the process - from putting together transition plan till start of autonomous work.
• Performed annual roadmap planning - taking into account such things as estimates, budgets, resource plan, priorities, dependencies on other teams.
• Worked under strict SLA with financial penalties for breaching metrics threshold.
• Produced resource plan and team structure, hired the team of 20+ people form the scratch.
• Organised work of the project team, established processes - such as overall project lifecycle, scrum ceremonies, scrum of scrums with external teams, continuous improvements, analysis of metrics, etc…
• Made staffing decisions, managed attrition, worked on retaining people.
• Worked with escalations from client - concerns and complaints about things client wasn’t happy about.
• Did status reporting on different levels - such as status reporting to all project stakeholders, status reporting on program level.
• Operated in complicated setup of Product Owners - there were many of them (~10) and with conflicting interests.
• Organized project management structure, established roles and responsibilities in the team (who does what).
• Coordinated end to end delivery of projects - starting from the initial requirements discussion and high-level roadmap planning till execution of the release plan and post-release support.
• Communicated with difficult client - handled micromanagement, constant pressure, tough negotiations, blame and escalations.
• Client had very high expectations from the team. Persisted in requesting more work to be done than capacity allowed. Team operated under constant pressure of delivering results according to commitments. Thus, absorbed a lot of stress coming out of that.
• Fostered “ownership” mindset in the team. Every project was treated as a commitment, a promise, for which we are accountable for. If an obstacle arose on the way - team should be considering every possible option to mitigate the obstacle without breaking commitment.
Team: 20+ team members, including leadership roles such as Tech Lead, Scrum Master, Architect, QA Lead.