Archana Govind

Results-driven Manager with 17 years of experience in leading Project Management Office of large-scale projects, programs, and portfolios. | Proven track record of delivering projects on time, within budget, and with high quality | Proven ability to manage multiple teams and extensive experience working directly with senior leadership | A track record of successful project execution, including SDLC and infrastructure initiatives | Adept at managing large, geographically dispersed teams | Demonstrates strong project management skills at managing stakeholder expectations.

UST | Trivandrum                                    Manager                                       (Aug’2023 – Present)

• Managed 5 + strategic consulting programs, delivering $500k + in annual cost savings and 25% increase in operational efficiency. 
• Perform assessments of client business processes, organizational change, IT processes, and technology landscape' identifying transformational recommendations 
• Collaborated with senior stakeholders to develop and implement process improvements, resulting in 30% reduction in cycle time
•  Improvised portfolio performance by 15% through effective tracking and reporting.
•  Lead a team to describe the primary business functions of the enterprise and distinguish between customer-facing, supplier-related, business execution and business management functions. 
• Generate revenue from staff augmentation, consulting, digital and product business for UST Global 
• Technical PM Aviva Investors (May 2024 – Sept 2024) 
• Application onboarding process guidance to the business Governing the team in implementing various applications using indigenous stage gating process which involves seven levels of assessment, including CMDB, Risk, CISO, Software Packaging, Release Management, Utility, and Business Sponsor Sign-off.

Establish KPI on:

• Turnaround time: 
• Reduce the turnaround time from 3 months to 2 months. 
• Introduce fast track process for applications that has less time frame for Go live.
• Cost optimization:
• Reduce the by expanding the team with offshore resources
• Stage gate pass percentage
• Increase the stage gate pass percentage by 10% from 8%.

Nissan Digital India                                                                                      (4th April 2022 – August 2-23)

Trivandrum       

Lead PMO Analyst

• Owning and executing the processes for weekly/monthly reporting, including presenting to senior leadership. 
• Coordinating closely with internal stakeholders to document and track overall portfolio, program, project progress and status against milestones of different program and project. 
• Proactively identify, track and highlight the risks/issues to leadership and enable the teams to drive recovery/mitigation plans. 
• Tracking and reporting the resource management of internal and vendor resources working across various programs/ projects (Onboard/ Offboard and project transfer).
• Monitoring the resource utilization by effective capacity management and resource allocation. 
• Creating a reporting mechanism for quick access to internal KPI and Agile metrics for the department. 
• Review documents, track and report timely on Internal KPI metrics and suggest recommendations to improve the KPI. 
• Lead and drive KPI improvement efforts/ activities for the department. 
• Facilitate project governance, new initiatives and documenting best practices for existing processes, standardizing approaches, and always striving for improvements.
• Assist in driving the strategic direction activities set by Nissan Digital councils for the department 
• Ensure timely update of PMO tools, templates, data and conduct performance analysis and evaluate projects to ensure their adherence to standard PMO/project management practices. 
• Implement existing project management office policies, create models to improve business decisions. 
• Analysing Quality, Cost and Time metrics including project budgets versus actuals and providing reports to Executives. 
• Recommend effective process and methods of reporting financial performance and usage metrics using data modelling, dashboards and statistical analysis
• Project budget management including cost trend analysis, resource planning, monitoring and controlling project execution, project reporting, project assurance and project closure.
• Lead and drive employee engagement activities for the department

EY Trivandrum                                                                                            (31st Mar 2014 – 3rd April 2022)

Sr. Portfolio PMO Analyst

• Effectively manage Portfolio Management Office (PMO). Lead in all aspects of financial reporting, data analysis, pipeline/ innovation demand management and benefits tracking controls.
• Support project prioritization process that enables profitable and sustainable growth.
• Manages and track approvals on project costs, project schedule, and project scope to agreed plan. 
• Develops project plans outlining work plans, timelines, roles and resources; Identifies and leads cross-functional project team comprised of project managers, functional experts and local country managers;
• Manages team progress to ensure achievement of all milestones and deliverables.
• Provides status tracking updates to senior management and all stakeholders of progress through frequent communications of findings at regular intervals via reports and meetings
• Communicate and coach on any changes to process, tool and enablers
• Review and monitor BOSCARD and validate against Milestones
• Measure data quality across tools , drive improvement and ensure quality checks
• Monitor the adherence to project intake process & PPM project setup requisites and improve. 
• Establish demand governance cadence to review incoming project pipeline activity
• Participate in internal delivery reviews as well as PM cadence to get insight on the progress and advise
• Perform periodic performance reviews and share early warning indicators

PMO Program/ Project Management

Aug 2016- March 2021

• Recommend effective process and methods of reporting financial performance and usage metrics using data modeling, dashboards and statistical analysis
• Project budget management including cost trend analysis, resource planning, monitoring and controlling project execution, project reporting, project assurance and project closure.
• Extract raw usage and financial data from business databases and data warehouse and perform analytics to produce meaningful reports that enable decision making by the Program leadership and Sponsors
• Create methods for automating financial reporting and data analysis to enhance efficiency
• Review and analyze reports for maintaining expenditure controls
• Consult with managers (contractor and Sponsor) to ensure that financial adjustments are made in accordance with program changes
• Match appropriations for specific programs with appropriations for broader programs, including items for emergency funds
• Review and support the development of program performance status / dashboards that encompass key metrics to be reviewed with senior stakeholders
• Review and analyze project data specific to scope, schedule, cost, resources, quality and risk.
• Analyzing the data as required to generate project documentation or reports for the project manager
• Key deliverables include 
• Budget Tracking -Financial budget, forecast and variance (monthly, yearly), invoice racking
• Resource forecast, budgeting
• Program utilization report 
• Program Schedule management – MS Project
• PPM tool – portfolio, project & program updates
• Resource Management SME – EWT Portfolio
•  Developing tailored resource management processes for projects/ programs.
• Develop the client current mode of operation due diligence, including process, people and technology
• Onboard trainings to new PMs on the resource management process
• Resource utilization monitoring report
• Actual vs Forecasted hours- variance report
• Resource estimation
• Resource booking, extension
• Resource Onboarding process definitions

Transition Manager

July 2015 – August 2016

• Responsible for planning and overseeing the transfer of key information necessary for the support, operation and acceptance of solutions deployed into production.  This includes operational readiness, support documentation and acceptance checklists.
• Ensure service transition is planned and executed to schedule, budget and scope  
• Influence customers inside the program to understand and ensure their compliance with the transition process
• Build complex transition plans including infrastructure/application support models, change management, learning & communication deliverables  
• Coordinate the business readiness plan, taking into consideration IT deployment, data migration, capability deployment (training and engagement activities) and any business activities required to integrate new processes or jobs into the ’business as usual’ environment
• Be responsible for installation activities, providing effective team leadership, including information flow to and from operations during project work
•  Liaise with business and IT partners on release scheduling and communication of progress 
• Supported in engineering development of service readiness / transition modeling line with industry best practice.
• Key deliverables include 
• Operations Manual
• Transition impact assessment
• Support Model
• Risk assessment

Change Coordinator

Windows refresh 2003 Program (Global migration) Mar 2014 – Jul 2015

• Execute on project delivery - Provide Change Coordination support for projects assigned based on Project requirements and Provide Change Coordination support to SPM Infrastructure Global Programs.  
• Manage change requests for build, migration, decommission activities based on the project requirement.
• Liaison with the project team to ensure the quality information is captured and to help the project stay in compliance with the global standards.
• Support by W2K3 speed of delivery by raising changes with sufficient lead time to complete activities
• Manage the lifecycle of the change to ensure tasks are closed on with right feedback--Feedback from stakeholder will confirm success in this area.
• Manage and control change approvals, follow ups, as per the change management process
• Engage key stakeholders throughout the change process 
• Change Coordinators manage 100% of server decommissions in line with requirements
• All security exceptions are documented and approved

Hindustan Unilever Ltd                                                                                     (28th Jan 2013 – 23 Mar 2014)

Bangalore

Demand & Resources Analyst

• Regular review meetings with the functional and regional business partners to review current and anticipated demand for the CoE service
• Resource manage the internal and flex pool for project resource assignments, ensuring that work is evenly distributed to the most appropriate resource.
• Highlighting any future over and under demand issues for the CoE.
• Handling Resource clashes, emergency work schedules and project reschedules
• Diplomatically handling project clashes for the same resource
• Being the first point of contact for all CoE Resources for any problems or issues they may have with their projects
• Ensuring CoE and IT standard PPM processes are deployed, operated and applied consistently.
• Becoming the CoE SME for the standard Unilever and IT GPMO project processes
• Providing program process and analysis support to the Program Managers and Management Team within the CoE
• Reviewing and undertaking quality assurance checks on gate documentation, business case for individual projects within the CoE
• Raising compliance issues or risks identified on projects to CoE management and project program owners.
• Pro-actively building relationships with key stakeholders and owners of major projects and programs to improve the quality and inputs to standard program, project processes and reporting to the IT & ES customers/stakeholders.
• Ensuring the CoE processes and GPMO Services are cascaded to and understood by all of IT, ES and its stakeholders via agreed communication channels.
• Establishing and maintaining ways of working with PM, SME, BE, DA teams to support the CoE processes.
• Ensuring all resource change requests are handled appropriately
• Drive understanding of the Process & Standards via; relationships, and formal / informal training.
• Conduct quality assurance of projects within defined portfolios
• Actively seeking out and implementing continuous improvement initiatives

Photon Infotech (P) Ltd                                                                                   (14th Mar 2011-17th Jan 2013)

Bangalore

Sr. Executive. RMG and Scrum Project Compliance SEPG

Scrum Project Compliance – Agile SEPG

• Manage Scrum projects for the customer
• Weekly agile review for Project compliance
• Weekly meeting with Project members/ Project manager on Agile compliance
• Weekly/ Monthly scorecard on programs and projects
• Review on documentations/ scrum calls/ Release/ QA etc
• Review Program / project deliverables
• Review Projects documents process compliance, and issue the quality 
•  
• Resource Management
• Managing the resource management pool and project management office an account in Photon
• Prepare and send RU Report on daily basis
• Prepare/Map people on projects to utilization – Review with PM/DM and CH
• Manage the bench list and ensure they are allocated as buffer on live projects or are on training projects
• Mapping new requirements (hiring requests) to existing people available
• Mapping people available on projects to new requirements and plan for back-fill
• Working with DM’s/SAM’/CH’s for people projection and planning
• On-board/ Off board resources using the client interface - GSOT
• Resource tracking for the projects
• Contract tracking and reporting
• MIS Reports to the management
• Maintain Trackers, uploads in Team room
• Work with internal/external functional teams in order to gather and document requirements
• Work with DM’s/SAM’/CH’s for people projection and planning
• Ensure that the execution of tasks comply with relevant departmental processes

ITC Infotech India Ltd                                                                                (29-Aug-2007- 11th Mar 2011)

 (100% subsidiary of ITC limited Bangalore) 

Assistant Manager PMO (RMG)

• End to end resources tracking for the cluster BFSI with resource count 350.
• Resources Accounting (BFSI)
• Account/ BP/ Cluster level numbers
• Billable/ Non-billable numbers
• Resource requests tracking and updating in Peoplesoft.
• Billing instructions based on the time sheets and SOW billing rates & payment terms
• Account-wise cost tracking and suggestions for correction to Delivery Managers, if any
• Creating and verifying the pricing sheet from PeopleSoft.
• Get monthly billing projections from all account/ delivery managers and projections to Finance every month
• Regular interaction/ coordination with Sales, HR, Finance, Facilities and Quality teams and various other departments.
• Resource Management – Resourcing, Staffing plans, Statement of Work, Resource Forecasting, Subcontractor management and oversight. 
• Coordinate with Dept. Heads and Project managers to assign resources.
• Raise and chase Service Requests (RFS) till closure in people soft.
• Own the Time Management system and administrate time sheets for all deployable resources and ensure 100% compliance.
• Contracts tracking, renewal follow-up
• Reports on resource utilization, bench analysis and project costs to the management.
• Operations/HR/Admin.
• Tracking Visa processing and ticketing requests and details
• Follow-up with Travel Desk and visa cell on visa processing and ticketing requests
• Onsite/Offshore Coordination.
• Employee engagement related activities tracking
• Visa processing - Plans and coordinates International travel arrangements, including travel itinerary, hotel accommodations, schedule and agenda. Processes passport, visa and travel insurance applications and other travel requirements
• Overseas Travel extensions tracking and approvals 
• Deputation (People who are likely to cross 150 days on deputation-onsite)
• Forex upload request for resources on deputation- Fortnightly
• Resource/ projects contract expiry & renewal requests
• Purchase orders
• Planning and Procurement – Desktop / Laptops procurements, Responsible for administrative functions including office maintenance and equipment. 

• Master’s in Business Administration in Human resource Management ( MVJ College of Engineering affiliated to VTU Bangalore) 2005-2007 
• PG Diploma in Counselling Psychology (2018) 
• B.com from Kerala University (2001-2004)