Mohan S. Banagar

Project management professional with over 19 years of experience primarily in Program Management, Agile delivery, stakeholder alignment & leading cross-functional teams.

Project Manager

Sep 2023-June 2024

Hindujatech Chennai

• Led the development and execution of comprehensive project plans aligned with organizational goals, achieving 100% of key milestones while maintaining strict control over scope, timeline, and budget.
• Increased team efficiency by 60% through a comprehensive analysis of bridging product knowledge and technical skill gaps, enabling feature deliverables stalled for 3 months.
• Lead the analysis of customer requirements to define clear and actionable project objectives, resulting in a 30% improvement in stakeholder alignment and a 25% reduction in rework during development accelerating time to market.
• Successfully implemented Jira as the project management tool, customizing workflows, setting up dashboards, & providing team training, resulting in a 30% increase in task tracking efficiency and 20% improvement in sprint management.
• Navigated conflicting interests to successfully align project priorities, effectively influencing stakeholders, enhancing decision making processes, and ensuring the achievement of 100% of business goals.
• Successfully led third-party integrations, streamlining cross-system connectivity & accelerating commitment closures by 30%, resulting in improved partner collaboration and enhanced operational reliability.
• Established a quality-centric culture addressing accountability challenges, boosting product reliability by 95% and enhancing customer satisfaction scores.
• Lead & mentor a high-performing team of scrum masters by fostering a culture of excellence, accountability & growth through effective OKR management empowering them to deliver their best work and consistently exceed program goals.

Scrum Master & Program Manager

Mar 2021-Sep 2023

Renault Nissan Technology & Business Centre India Ltd Thro' Hindujatech payroll) Chennai

• Collaborated with Business Owners & Product Managers during PI Planning, achieving 100% alignment on shared vision & program objectives across multiple cross-functional, geographically distributed teams within an Agile Release Train ART.
• Partner with Product & Engineering teams to translate roadmaps into executable plans and driving scalable solutions resulting in a 20% increase in delivery predictability and enhanced cross‑team alignment.
• Facilitated cross-functional collaboration via Scrum of Scrums, engaging multiple teams and deartments to proactively surface and managing risks, resolve issues & dependencies (critical path), driving a 20% boost in delivery efficiency.
• Led capacity planning across multiple projects, optimize resource utilization by 15%, ensuring efficient allocation, and balancing workloads to meet business objectives & project deadlines.
• Partnered with executives & business stakeholders to align expectations through structured reviews, leveraging data‑driven decision‑making & recommending solutions that enhanced product scalability and improved organizational agility.
• Expedited product releases by 7 days, overcoming 2-week delays through reorganization & re-alignment of 3 inter-dependent applications resulting in a 20% increase in operational efficiency & widespread user satisfaction.
• Increased productivity by 30% through a comprehensive maturity assessment, identifying gaps, recommending improvements across key competencies, and implementing strategic action plans.
• Successfully implemented SWAT teams across 45+ cross-functional projects teams in handling major incidents, resulting in reducing the application downtime by 95% & saving the business impact of 100K Euros/hour.
• Utilized data analytics to address business problems and sustain key performance indicators KPIs, resulting in a 25% boost in system efficiency, a 30% rise in user engagement, and strengthened customer trust.
• Led continuous improvement initiatives, achieving a 30% increase in efficiency through process optimization, establishing feedback loops, refining practices, and driving the standardization of best practices.
• Earned executive leadership recognition for developing and maintaining a real-time dashboard, enhancing stakeholder satisfaction & improving project management efficiency by 25% through streamlined status reporting & actionable insights.
• Centralized project documentation in Confluence including structured spaces for collaboration, lessons learned, knowledge sharing, best practices & archived reports.

= Contributed ideas & best practices to peers & CoP, to improve the framework. fostering knowledge sharing & enhancing organization-wide effectiveness.

Aptean India Ltd Bengaluru

Project Manager - PMO

Oct 2015-Mar 2018

• Led the transition of all H2 programs to StageGate, enhancing portfolio governance, optimizing resource allocation & improving investment strategies, resulting in a 30% boost in stakeholder confidence & overall program efficiency.
• Assessed the execution of high-impact strategic initiatives, collaborating with project managers and senior leadership to evaluate outcomes and ensure initiatives remained fully aligned with strategic objectives.
• Established a RACI Matrix reducing ambiguity of roles & responsibilities by 15% resulting in improved team alignment.
• Monitored project performance metrics Scope, Schedule, and Cost) against the baseline, proactively implementing corrective actions and recommending adjustments to ensure the project stayed 100% on track.
• Reduced project risks by 15% by implementing a structured change control process, manage change requests ensuring stakeholder approval and thorough documentation.
• Established strategic project governance by streamlining planning processes, standardizing templates and tools, and ensuring adherence to corporate standards, resulting in a 20% reduction in inconsistencies.

Scrum Master

Dec 2012-Oct 2015

• Lead the cadence of all Agile Ceremonies across cross-functional team - Sprint Planning, Standup, backlog refinement, retrospectives & sprint reviews ensuring seamless collaboration & alignment leading to a 20% boost in sprint efficiency.
• Partnered with Product Owners to write user stories, refine, and prioritize sprint backlogs, ensuring 100% readiness for the next two sprints and driving a 25% increase in continuous delivery of business value.
• Increased the development team's productivity by 20% by recommending a knowledge transition plan for QA and transitioning them to work on custom client tasks, resulting in time savings of 10 hours per week.
• Leveraged a dynamic dashboard to track sprint progress using key Agile metrics including burn-down, velocity and cycle time, delivering actionable insights that led to a 20% uplift in sprint ROI.
• Fostered a culture of autonomy and accountability, driving innovations and continuous improvement, while creating a trusting and safe environment, resulting in a 25% increase in team engagement.

QA Lead

Aug 2007-Dec 2012

• Designed and implemented a QA strategy aligned with Agile principles, integrating continuous testing and quality standards throughout the iterative development process, leading to a 35% reduction in defects.
• Led the design, execution, and maintenance of manual and automated test cases, improving test coverage by 40% and accelerating bug detection by 30%, resulting in higher product quality and faster release cycles.
• Analyzed defect trends, identifying root causes & recommending process improvements that led to 25% increase in overall product quality.
• Led and mentored the QA team, fostering a culture of accountability, collaboration, and continuous improvement, resulting in a 30% boost in team efficiency.
• Defined and monitored key QA metrics, including defect density, test coverage, and test execution rates, leading to a 35% improvement in test efficiency and a 30% reduction in critical defects

Bachelor of Engineering Electronics & Communication)

Karnataka University Dharwad, Karnataka