Archana Sridharan Rao

• Actively involved in initiating, planning, execution, tracking / monitoring, controlling and closing the project
• Ensure the project follows all governance processes as prescribed by the PMO
• Closely work with strategic partners to plan and execute on project outcomes
• Track and manage project finances along with month and year end status/budget reporting
• Ensure stakeholders at all levels are kept updated on project progress through Steering group meetings or other methods of communication as required
• Build good relationships with key stakeholders and delivery partners to ensure a smooth delivery of the project
• Escalate appropriate issues to senior management for resolution
• Manage issues, risks and dependencies within the project effectively
• Ensure appropriate change control is followed to manage scope effectively
• Ensure effective service transition has occurred to the operational teams
• Set up and chair project governance meetings as required
• Experience in stepping into Program Management roles as needed

Key Achievements

• Managing a portfolio of projects to deliver on robust IM foundations and effectively manage the pipeline of work for the BigW business
• Managed the Fuel transition program as the IT lead. The program was completed as per the timelines with minimal issues. I have received excellent feedback from the business teams and the IT exec team on the delivery of this transition
• Successfully delivered an under performing complex transformation project within the SOI domain to the revised schedule, budget and scope as agreed by the leadership team. The outcome was a number of end-of-life infrastructure toolset were replaced, delivering benefit to the operational teams and containing operating expenses

• Deliver the project on behalf of the business, and ensure decision-making and communication is bi-directional
• Develop detailed project plans/schedules
• Monitor and control the project’s status and progress against scope, schedule and budget
• Organize steering committee meetings
• Track costs, including reconciliations and forecasts
• Coordinate with PMO on resource requirements
• Communicate with all project stakeholders, including the Steering Committee, Project Team and Vendor through status meetings and the weekly status report
• Identify scope issues and communicate to the Business Lead and Program Management team as required
• Initiate any change requests and ensure that the team follows correct change control processes
• Develop the Run-Sheet (Implementation plan) with input from the project team and business stakeholders
• Present and coordinate project handover to IT Application Services
• Participate in recruitment of project resources
• Key Achievements
• Delivered projects, of varying complexity, under a large transformation programme of work to migrate functionality of the legacy ERP system to the enterprise technology platform
• Effectively managed stakeholder expectations to deliver the change successfully

• Responsible for the coordination and completion of all deliverables to the client within the given timelines
• Managed all aspects of the project including assigning responsibility to team members, monitoring the progress, and ensuring that deadlines were met
• Responsible for carrying out financial reporting of the project to senior management
• Performed a thorough analysis of all the applications and suggested improvement opportunities that ultimately led to cost savings for the bank
• Adept at handling all risk management and change management activities
• Worked with international business teams to understand pain areas in the system and to come up with effective solutions
• Key Achievements
• Performed a thorough analysis of all the applications and suggested improvement opportunities that ultimately led to cost savings for the bank
• Demonstrated a strong ability to secure consensus among cross-functional and cross vendor teams to ensure that the deliverables are completed on time.

• Responsible for coordination of various projects
• Responsible to chair meetings with stakeholders to facilitate the building of new hardware and software architecture
• Educated stakeholders of application teams about the internal processes at Chrysler for successful implementations of projects
• Ensured that there is no schedule slippage for projects by following up with all the stakeholders at various steps
• Worked in accordance with stringent timelines to ensure that the projects are on schedule.

• Responsibilities
• Coordinated with SME’s and business teams to get all the business requirements for the completion of coding and testing activities
• Developed detailed implementation plans by coordinating with the various stakeholders
• Responsible for reviewing all program changes and documentation done by the team
• Resolve all technical issues raised by the offshore team
• Facilitate meetings to carry out end-to-end testing of functionality to ensure that there is no adverse business impact post implementation
• Coordination of data setup activities required for QA testing of modified programs
• Participate in the account level audits for business excellence.

• Provided production support for a mission critical application for the client
• Strict adherence to SLAs as agreed with the client
• Implemented process improvements that increased performance and efficiency of the system and improved business response times
• Ensured use of best practices in all areas of the project
• Trained new employees on mainframe concepts to increase their technical competencies
• Conducted quality assurance audits at the account level to ensure that all projects are inline with the company processes
• Project was nominated for best project at the Mumbai branch level
• Project received a 100% customer satisfaction index for the Oct’05-Dec’05 quarter under my guidance
• Other notable accomplishments
• Volunteered to coordinate the ‘IT Development Day’ event at Woolworths for the benefit of career development of internal staff
• The event was well appreciated by the IT Exec team including the CIO
• Nominated change champion to roll out the enterprise Project and Portfolio Management tool (Sentient) to project managers within Woolworths
• Received several customer appreciation certificates for my contribution at TCS
• statements, debit credit memos in to the Alchemy application $250,000NZD Lion Breweries (New
• Zealand)Core Banking Solution Enhancements Delivered key enhancements to the
• Core Banking System (CBS) application $200,000 USD TCS