I started off my career in technical roles in the domain of Network Infrastructure and IT Operations. Having worked for 15 years in a Fortune 500 company with a global presence and under a highly regulated industry, I have built a solid experience in managing sizeable IT Changes within a complex production environment and with sensitivity to business impact. Apart from operational KPIs, I managed multiple IT Projects in the context of stakeholder management, scope , resource planning, CAPEX/OPEX, workforce hour costs and implementation timelines. As my career progressed, I started to assume leadership positions, managing both local and global teams, across different IT functions. These roles gave me the opportunity to hone people development skills which include mentoring, coaching for performance, understanding intrinsic motivations and team dynamics. 

Technical experience as a network engineer in a Cisco environment, with exposure to LAN, WAN and VoIP, and previously certified in CCNA and CCNP

Subject matter expertise for MPLS and site-to-site VPN implementation which included responsibilities for creating best practices, conducting technical and operational risk assessments, designing solutions for risk mitigation.

NETWORK INFRASTRUCTURE

Examples of infrastructure projects and activities

  • PROJECT DESCRIPTION: Designed and implemented domestic MPLS network for 9 sites in Japan to replace expensive legacy connections, achieving 100% DCFR (annual savings of USD290K)

    MY ROLE: Network design lead, project lead

    STAKEHOLDERS: Japan IT Operations, Site business owners, Network architects, External vendor (NTT)

    DURATION: 3 months LOCATION: Japan

  • PROJECT DESCRIPTION: Harmonized site-to-site connections in remote locations to replace expensive legacy connections, improved site application performance, created framework and best practices as an implementation template for future remote sites, conducted risk analysis and implemented mitigations.

    MY ROLE: Network design lead, project lead

    STAKEHOLDERS: Site IT operations, Site business owners, Network architects, External vendors (Telcos)

    DURATION: 1 year LOCATION: Malaysia, Thailand, India, China, South America, Italy

  • PROJECT DESCRIPTION: Pre-project analysis for multiple network projects

    MY ROLE: Studied the complexity of network topology at site, designed the replacement solution and analyzed cost impact of proposal to determine if a network project should proceed

    STAKEHOLDERS: Project managers, Site IT Operations

  • PROJECT DESCRIPTION: Analyze network utilization to determine root causes of slow application performances

    MY ROLES: Conducted detailed study and analysis of an application to identify its impact to the bandwidth and network performance in Asia Pacific.

    STAKEHOLDERS: Application owner, business owner, site IT operations

With several years of extensive experience in managing IT operations, my expertise lies in ensuring seamless and uninterrupted operations, optimising performance across various platforms, and implementing effective solutions that significantly enhance overall efficiency. I have gained over 8 years of hands-on experience running IT operations on-site and across global sites, effectively supporting voice, network, and application infrastructure to meet diverse organisational needs.

IT OPERATIONS

Examples of operational responsibilities

  • MY ROLE: Incident Manager

    • Effective incident communications and stakeholder management

    • Led major incident reviews, conducted thorough investigations and analyzed root cause of complex incidents spanning across multiple functions

  • MY ROLE: BCP Lead

    • Planned and organized BCP drills across IT operation teams in Asia Pacific

    • Scenario planning

  • MY ROLE: Site IT Resource Owner

    • Managed pipeline of IT projects impacting site implementation

    • Resource balancing across multiple projects

    • Managed cost impacts to operational budget

IT PROJECT MANAGEMENT

As someone with a proven track record of managing IT projects in the capacity as a project lead, implementation lead, and resource owner, I have developed a high level of competency in various components crucial to project success.

    • Developed cost-benefit analysis

    • Gathered business requirements to determine business needs

    • Assessed technical feasibility based on business requirements

    • Identified time and cost constraints

    • Assessed and managed stakeholders using RASCI

    • Created scope statement

    • Created WBS and decomposed work in WBS

    • Planned realistic implementation schedule based on known dependencies, constraints and activity duration

    • Defined workforce hours requirements for each resource

    • Managed resource calendar

    • Identified resources and defined roles, responsibilities and competency requirement

    • Planned procurement needs for RFQ and SOW

    • Planned resource budget (workforce opex) based on workforce hours and workforce rate of resources from different countries using an internal rate card.

    • Identified and managed CAPEX and OPEX items in accordance with procurement defined thresholds

    • Conducted IT risk assessments

    • Documented technical risks and mitigations

    • Worked with operational teams on support requirements for transition to production

    • Worked with IT planners to account for additional support costs to operational baseline

    • Documented lessons learnt

    • Managed all administrative closeout requirements

TYPES OF PROJECTS: Network configuration, application development, system migration, hardware upgrades

METHODOLOGY: Waterfall, Agile, PMP

ENVIRONMENT: Refinery plant, chemical plant, corporate office

CHANGE MANAGEMENT

With a solid technical background, I have developed a comprehensive understanding of IT Change Management over the years. I have actively dealt with various system changes and service operations, which has given me valuable insights into the process. As I transitioned from individual contributor roles to management positions, I tackled strategic and organisational change projects that required careful planning and execution.

  • FRAMEWORK: ITIL

    MY ROLE: Change Manager, Change Approver, Change Planner, Change reviewer

  • PROJECT DESCRIPTION: Rethink the knowledge management service within the context of the entire company rather than just information management within the context of IT

    MY ROLE: Orchestrated the service transition for Knowledge Management from operations to strategic consults, by defining the scope, strategy, service offering, engagement model and change management which led to a successful strategic transformation.

  • PROJECT DESCRIPTION: Transition an applications organization from the traditional ways of working towards Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe), which means embarking on a whole new way of working and changing work processes.  

    METHODLOGY: Kotter's 8 Step Model, ADKAR

    MY ROLE: Plan, execute and operationalize organization change