Program Manager
Cisco Systems - Saudi Arabia
Total years of experience :22 years, 8 Months
Managing service providers (STC, Mobily and Zain) mega program and projects
* Managing the PMO of Alafanar digital solutions
* Managing a team of 20 project managers, 10 coordinators and more than 80 technical team members to deliver more than 40 simultaneous projects to private and governmental sectors in KSA
* Manage all financial aspects related to the projects related to manpower, budget planning and profit% of projects
* Handling our customers expectations
Managing mega SR 100+ million IT infrastructure project for KSA Ministry of Health (MOH) to create and develop the IT infrastructure network for 100 hospitals to prepare it for HIS, PACS and other IT healthcare systems .
Responsibilities:
• Managing our technical engineers and technicians to deliver the passive and active parts of the project including:
- Installation of Internal/ External network nodes with node Installation pulling, labeling, two sides termination and fluke testing.
- Provide & Install network equipment and accessories including network cabinets, flexibles or cable trays, trunks, cisco access, distribution and core switches and firewalls.
- Managing excavation activities, extension and termination of fiber cables.
- Resolution of our customer’s complaints and service issues.
• Communicating the project status to project key stakeholders including MOH director level.
• Producing timing, costing, scoping and technical design documentation.
• Establishing the overall success criteria for a project, including: time, cost, technical and performance parameters.
• Producing management information, including KPIs and status reports.
• Identify all risks, analyze and properly manage them during the project lifecycle.
• Responsible for obtaining customers sign-off for the projects
Managing a portfolio of multiple projects for Ministry of Communications and IT (MCIT) including their inter-dependencies, resourcing and any proposed changes.
Monitoring the quality of projects outputs to ensure strategic objectives are met.
Conducting portfolio meetings and attend project meetings where required.
Establishing effective working relationships with all stakeholders and ensuring effective portfolio communications.
Identifying resourcing needs in line with the portfolio plan.
Managing staff and vendors to ensure that all milestones are achieved within the agreed timeframes and within the planned budget.
Managing the risks related to the portfolio and the subsequent projects to ensure proper delivery of the portfolio strategic objectives
Responsibilities:
• Leading more than 20 Engineers in the IT operations department which serving well-known customers in Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Gulf.
• Resolution of our customer’s complaints and service issues.
• Provide timely, detailed and constructive performance reviews to the management.
• Encourage, mentor, and support engineers to utilize and expand abilities and knowledge.
• Provide short term and long term plans for my team.
• Interview, hire and allocate technical engineers to meet our customers’ expectations.
• Capacity planning “plans for future projects regarding my team utilization, required trainings or development plans”
• Setting budgets and agreeing project time scales and deadlines with clients.
• Managing staff to ensure that all milestones are achieved within the agreed timeframes.
• Ensuring effective quality control processes are in place to monitor deliverables produced.
• Maintaining client relationships.
• Responsible for identifying, analyzing, measuring and managing project risks.
• Conducting regular impact analysis in order to assess the consequences of the project deliverables on other sections of the business.
• Keeping accurate administrative records of expenditure, accounting, costing and billing.
• Producing project definitions to include validated functional requirements, scope, roles, responsibilities, budgets, timescales and resources.
Major accomplishments:
Managing the IT operation support team to provide our services for our Major customers like:
• KAU (King Abdulaziz University) Jeddah, Saudi Arabia
• Jeddah, Mecca and Dammam Municipalities, Saudi Arabia
• Ministry of Education, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
• SABIC (Saudi Arabia Basic Industries Corporation)
• KFUPM (King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals)
• BSF (Banque Saudi Fransi), Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
• TVTC (Technical and Vocational Training Corporation), Saudi Arabia
• Orange Mobile Operator, Egypt
• VIVA Mobile Operator, Kuwait
• Major project to Implement CMMI level 2 and level 3 to the biggest university in Saudi Arabia.
• ITIL Consultancy Project to Municipality of Jeddah and Municipality of Eastern Region (Dammam), Saudi Arabia.
• Network Monitoring Solution project for SABIC, Jubail, Saudi Arabia.
• Implementation of several IT projects for major banks in Saudi Arabia like BSF (Banque Saudi Fransi), Al Bilad Bank, ….and etc
* Key Skills:
• Deep hand on Experience of project management methodologies such as Agile, PMP, and Prince 2.
• Proven ability to manage programs and many of complex projects simultaneously.
• Expert in budget planning and control.
• ITIL certified with deep knowledge in service delivery management.
• Coming from technical background in almost most of IT areas allow me to better manage any kind of IT project.
• Deliver quality outcomes under time pressures.
• Sound experience in managing large number of team members (50+ resources), and driving project objectives by mentoring, motivating, and encouraging team to surpass defined goals
• Excellent technical, analytical, organizational, and communication skills, for effective interaction with third party (vendors)/stakeholders and all levels of management
• SDLC management in waterfall & agile methodology with product development, enhancement, infrastructure support and data migration projects.
Responsibilities:
• Working closely with customers like Vodafone Germany, UK, Ireland, Qatar, Australia, Ireland, Italy, …and etc. to understand their requirements.
• Managing the following IT teams (+20 Engineers and Technicians) to deliver the expected service to our customers:
- Data infrastructure team (LAN/ WAN)
- Voice Infrastructure team for VoIP connectivity and routing voice calls
- Oracle team
- Seibel team
- Microsoft infrastructure team (DNS, DHCP, ….and etc.)
- Storage and servers team
• Arranging and managing all project related meetings.
• Producing timing, costing and scoping and technical design documentation.
• Establishing the overall success criteria for a project, including: time, cost, technical and performance parameters.
• Writing progress reports & presenting them to the management.
• Producing & maintaining project management plans.
• Tracking activities against the detailed project plans.
• Utilize standard change management tools “Remedy” to implement deliverables as appropriate for each organizational change, such as: impact assessment, stakeholder engagement plan, communication, logging, statistics…etc.
• Producing management information, including KPIs and reports by effectively managing incidents and changes.
• Monitoring the effectiveness of incident, problem and change managements and making recommendations for improvement.
Major accomplishments:
• VoIP connectivity between Vodafone Egypt Headquarter and 14 remote sites (2008), this was including:
- Removing traditional PBXs inside each remote site and replace it with Nortel IP telephones connected to the main HQ IP PBX
- Utilize WAN and 3G connectivity data network to connect phones to IP PBX instead of traditional E1s
- Using Microsoft systems, Dell Desktop PCs, EMC storage, HP servers, data network infrastructure based of cisco hardware and Juniper for firewalls
• New Call center in Egypt for MVNO (Mobile Virtual Network Operator) in Italy(2010), this was including:
- Vodafone Italy requested from us in Vodafone Egypt to host a new call center for a new MVNO concerned with the Arab customers in Italy
- Call center hosted in Egypt for around 100 seats based in Nortel Succession 1000M PBX, WebSphere IBM IVR, Telestrat call recording, Nice IEX for workforce and Genesys CTI solutions
- Using Microsoft systems, Dell Desktop PCs, EMC storage, HP servers, data network infrastructure based of
• Establishing new call center for Vodafone UK in Egypt (2009), this was including:
- To Implement new call center hosting 1000 seats for UK in Egypt(Gradually and on several phases)
- At phase 1 the call center was hosted at Vodafone Egypt systems (Nortel Succession 1000M PBX/ IBM WebSphere, Telestrat call recording, Nice IEX for workforce and Genesys CTI solution) through H.323 trunks (G.729 codec)
- At phase 2, We changed the technology instead of using H.323 IP trunks between Avaya IP PBX in UK and Nortel IP PBX in Egypt and use Avaya IP telephones connected directly to UK Avaya PBX and CTI solutions
- Using Microsoft systems, Dell Desktop PCs, EMC storage, HP servers, LAN& WAN infrastructure based on cisco routers and switches, Juniper firewalls and IPS
• Establishing new call center for Vodafone Ireland in Egypt(2011)
• Establishing new call center for Vodafone Germany and another one for Vodafone Qatar in Egypt(2012)
• Business Continuity Plan using VoIP solution for Vodafone Egypt call center(2009), this was including making use of having 2 Succession 1000 M Nortel IP enabled PBXs in 2 different buildings and provide BCP solution to Vodafone call center (500 seats in 2 different buildings have the capability to fail over automatically to the voice system in the other buildings
Responsibilities:
- Responsible for the operations& maintenance of several Nortel meridian option 81C PBXs “Nortel is currently known as Avaya-Blue”
- Working with the telecom operator to maintain the connectivity of several PRI links
- Configure the Dialing plans for the PBXs
- Fix the software problems, bugs and errors
- Vendor management for the voice vendor “Avaya”
- Troubleshooting the H/W of the Nortel PBX (Cards, network shelves, IPE shelves, Cables, HDSL, etc)
- Operation and maintenance of Motorola UHF Radio repeaters (MSF 5000)
- Operation and Maintenance of the company CCTV network
Accomplishments:
- Successfully upgrading the 81C Meridian PBXs to be Nortel succession 1000M IP PBXs
- Keep the system availability between 99.8%: 100% during my work in Seavin
- Participated every year in the bright star project “annual training project between Egypt military forces and other Arab and European forces”
” My role was to provide and maintain the voice services to these forces and I achieved it successfully with many certificates of honor from their leaders”
• Network administrator Microsoft windows 2000
• CISCO Switches, Routers Installation and configuration
• Instructor of MCSE and CCNA courses
• Maintaining software applications, operating systems with regular maintenance.
• Complete configuration, installation and support of equipment in a Microsoft Windows environment to the specifications of client proposals
• Responding to inquiries from staff, administrators, service providers, site personnel and outside vendors to provide technical assistance and support
Bachelor Degree in Electrical Engineering ( Communications and Electronics)
I have a Bachelor degree in communications and electronics from faculty of Engineering, Alexandria University. My Graduation project was about 2G and 3G mobile communications and I've got excellent degree.
