Mark Ferguson - Sr Project Manager, Prestige Services LLC

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Work Background

GSKProgram Director, Sr Project Manager

Feb. 2022 - Apr. 2024Supported GSK to realize four key strategic objectives of the J2C (Journey to Cloud) program - Security and Operational Resilience, Business Agility and Growth, Productivity, and Cost Optimization.  Two thousand applications and four major global data centres are in scope for this program.  Managed the full life cycle of the program – Discovery and Application Dispositioning, Technical Governance, Wave Planning, Migration Execution, and Application/CI Decommissioning.  Led the cloud readiness initiative for services required in the cloud. Ensured that all services followed Security, Compliance and Hosting policies and standards.  Conducted Application Rationalization reviews to ensure that application roadmaps aligned with organizational strategy.  Facilitated the Migration Factory integration with Security and Enterprise Architecture teams.  Partnered with Microsoft, Google, Accenture, and Cognizant professional services to execute on the program deliverables.  Project Managed four concurrent workstreams with including project plans, RAID logs, status reports, and project financials.  Conducted multiple Incident Management Table-Top Exercises (TTX) and Simulations to ensure that GSK staff and processes are ready to support GSK critical services in Azure and GCP prior to migrations. Documented and helped drive GSK technical product / services cloud capabilities. Partnered with Security and Enterprise Architecture teams to ensure Azure / GCP capabilities were Qualified.  Created Program artifacts – RAID log, Project Plan, Communication Dashboard (Program execution status, metrics, and etc…), Cloud Migration Readiness List, Application Discovery Trending burn-up charts, Program Financials, and etc…  Proof of Concepts (POC) and Pilot migrations were executed to gain Lessons Learned and adoption/confidence with the organization.  Facilitated the Enterprise Architecture Cloud Migration Technical Governance Forum meetings with application owners to determine application dispositioning. (Cloud, On-Prem, or Edge)

E-470 Public Highway AuthorityePMO Director

Feb. 2019 - Jan. 2022  Responsible for optimizing the execution of projects at an enterprise level. This required collaborating with various stakeholders within the organization. The project portfolio exceeded $600 million dollars. Resource, schedule and financial planning processes were created and executed. Communication with senior leadership and the E-470 Board of Directors on the project portfolio’s execution was required to ensure alignment with the organization’s Strategic Goals.  Developed and implemented a project financial management capability within the organization. This process required organizational resources to input their weekly actual time allocations for each project. To minimize adoption risks, existing disparate time reporting tools were leveraged. The extracts from these legacy tools were transformed and consolidated into a repository. Next, weekly project forecasts (by resource) were extracted from the portfolio management tool called Meisterplan. Weekly financial reporting for each project was generated and published on the ePMO Project Financial Health dashboard and within individual project status report.  Developed and implemented an ePMO Project Portfolio Dashboard. The audience for the Dashboard is E-470 Board Members, E-470 Directors and Managers. The Dashboard was created in the Smartsheet tool. All widgets in the dashboard are kept current by connecting the lower level Smartsheet project sheets.  Created an Enterprise Master Schedule between major projects with interdependencies. These seven major projects had a combined budget of $400 million dollars. These projects spanned life cycles that exceed five years. Optimized execution of project tasks will mitigate the risk of rework, change orders and budget overruns.  Conducted Project Performance reviews and identified lessons learned to improve project efficiencies. ePMO Director/Sr. Project Manager  Managed up to 10 concurrent projects for various stakeholders. When I arrived, the organization was performing at a level 1 in the Capability Maturity Model (CMM). I introduced the concept of weekly project status reports for each of the projects that I was working on. All projects were managed with Smartsheet. Next, I created dashboards in Smartsheet for the project portfolio. Up to this point, there was not a method to show all the projects that were in the portfolio. The portfolio consisted of several projects that were between $22 million and $99 million dollars. This dashboard was reviewed weekly with key members of the organization to provide transparency and visibility.  In October 2019, I was appointed as the ePMO Director for the organization, and I reported to the Executive Director. I created an ePMO Maturity Roadmap that was adopted by the leadership of the organization. The organization was challenged with determining which projects to execute and the associated resource constraints. Therefore, I collaborated with senior leadership to develop an objective scoring methodology that stacked ranked the projects. This scoring methodology consisted of five categories. By stack ranking the projects, leadership was able to prioritize which projects should be worked next.  I evaluated portfolio management tools to manage the portfolio. Meisterplan was selected and I configured the tool to ingest the projects from Smartsheet and conduct the scoring. Also, I facilitated portfolio management reviews and scenario planning based on resource constraints. I created a process to formalize project requests. A Smartsheet form was created so that staff could input project requests for consideration.

Charles SchwabSr Project Manager

May. 2018 - Feb. 2019  Worked for the Financial Crimes Risk Management (FCRM) organization within Charles Schwab as a Sr. Project Manager. Responsible for two high profile multi-million-dollar SaaS projects in AWS. Worked with Information Security, Data Privacy, and Cloud Governance teams to evaluate the vendor solutions and integrations from AWS to Charles Schwab’s on-premise network. Security of Non-Public Private Information (NPI) was critical to the firm. Responsible for meeting PMO project governance requirements during the project(s) lifecycle. Also, accountable for the project budget, schedule, risk/issue management, project communications, and facilitations. Communications were required to all levels of firm (analysts to Senior Vice-Presidents). Western Union, Inc. (Financial)

Prestige ServicesGeneral Manager / Senior Project Director

Oct. 2017Greater Denver AreaEngaged with clients to provide custom solution on moving their applications and infrastructures to AWS (Amazon Web Services). Conducted cost, security, and AWS best practice assessments to optimize the customer's cloud experience. Prestige has developed two 'go to market' consulting services: - Cloud Optimization Services - Cloud Journey Services Also, I am involved in Senior Project Management and Business Development services.

Western UnionPlatform Lead - Director

Feb. 2013 - Sep. 2017Platform Lead for the Agent Implementation Management (AIM), Know Your Agent (KYA), and Agent Self Service programs. Accountable for the delivery of all technical capabilities – combined budget of $18m. These technical capabilities were used globally by Regional Operations Centres and Agent Contact Centres. SalesForce.com (SFDC), Java, and BPM technologies were leveraged to support these programs.  Developed / Implemented an MDM roadmap to establish Salesforce as the system of record for Western Union’s Agent Data. The goal was to establish a 360 view of the agent. The roadmap was a multi-phased, multi-year approach. Provided architectural guidance to technical engineering teams. Agent data was migrated to and services were built in Salesforce to support this strategy.  Accountable for portfolio management of projects within the Agent Systems domain. This required coordination of projects across various agent programs. As projects were created, I worked with the business stakeholders to understand the priority and scope. Also, I engaged with the technical leads / business subject matter experts to estimate the effort and determine costs. I created a SharePoint site that listed all the projects in the pipeline. This SharePoint site was an artifact that we leveraged in bi-weekly meeting with senior leadership to validate their priorities and ensure that we all had a common understanding.  Architected and recommended solution approaches to move our Agent Portal application to AWS.  Scrum Master for Salesforce build / enhancement projects. Coordinated enhancements / integrations between three Salesforce Orgs.  Worked with business stakeholders to document requirements that were leveraged by the development teams. These requirements were stored as user stories in Rally.  Executed the transition of RUN (production support / small enhancements) to Cognizant Technology Services. Engaged with 3 other System Integrators to perform the BUILD activities. All of these vendors have on-shore and off-shore resources. Developed and implemented the following processes – Release/Deployment management, Portfolio management, Incident management, and Change management.  Speaker at Dream Force 2014 on Western Union’s use of EchoSign. Western Union has realized significant value with enabling our Sales Reps with iPads/Tablets and collecting prospective Agent data in the field. Sales Reps generate the contract at the Agent’s location and have the Agents attest to the information with EchoSign. This solution has resulted in a 45% reduction in end-to-end Agent activation and 50% in return-to-sales.  Ensured program met compliance and audit mandates  Negotiated with vendors that supplied both technical services and software solutions  Introduced Agile methodologies to both technical and business stakeholders  Established portfolio governance in partnership with our business customers  Managed engineering capacity that met business expectations and budget constraints  Developed and Implemented the BAU (Business as Usual) approach on a go-forward basis  Met global regulator mandates – CBI, FinCen, Southwest Border, and etc…  Mentored and developed employee advancement and maturity Western Union has 500,000+ agent locations in over 200 countries that move more than $92 billion dollars annually. Stakeholders for the AIM program are in geographically separated regions around the globe – Latin America, EU (European Union), Eastern Europe/Asia, MAEEC (Middle East/Africa) and North America.  At any one time, I am accountable for up to 10 major project work streams that are concurrently being executed. Examples of these workstreams are: Development of SFDC services, Org to Org integrations/migrations, OKTA SSO (Single Sign-On), Integrations to legacy applications, Integration of SFDC COTS (commercial off the shelf – app exchange) solutions (Apttus – Contract Mgmt solution), electronic signature capabilities (EchoSign), SFDC governance, Design and implementation of infrastructure zones (Red, Yellow, and Green) within multiple data centres.  Championed Agile-like project approach to deliver incremental value – Rally Administrator. Complied with internal PMO project tollgates (Architecture Review Board, Information Security, Risk Assessment, and SDLC). Created and maintained program/project plan in MS-Project (> 3,000 lines). Integrated project plan with external vendors and internal stakeholders project plans.