Sabika Rizvi

Seasoned Project/Program Manager with over 10 years of experience working with business stakeholders in product, technology, and operations delivering high-profile, complex business and technology projects. Superior consultation, negotiation, and consensus-building skills to work collaboratively with internal and external stakeholders and business partners.

Proven background in project management methodologies and standards (PMBOK) to successfully deliver projects within approved plan, scope, and budget. Adept in management of projects end-end (initiation to completion) using PMLC/PMBOK (PMI), SDLC, Waterfall, Iterative, Hybrid, Agile/Scrum/Kanban, TDD (Test Driven Development)

Thales Canada

Lead Project Systems Design Specialist                                                      Aug 2017 – May 2022 & Jan 2023 – Present

• Drove the planning and execution of the full project management life cycle and ensured deliverables were achieved on time and budget for the deployment of the Transportation solution (Thales SelTrac Communication based Train Control – CBTC product) into urban railway 
• Closely worked with the project stakeholders, technical and functional experts, created a project charter, gathered functional and technical requirements, developed project plans which included resource assignments, schedule, budget, milestones, scope, risk identification/mitigation planning, and plan for implementation
• Led the completion of the team's deliverables for design activities related to requirement development, system design modelling, customer compliance mapping, and gap analysis ensuring compliance with CENELEC standards, and structured as per IEEE railway standards and model-based system engineering (MBSE) concepts
• Managed team collaboration, addressed cross-dependencies and delays, and facilitated cross-functional reviews while ensuring the team's alignment with the project milestones; 
• Conducted comprehensive analysis/consolidation/conversion of customer specifications into concise system/subsystem requirements as per IEEE and system engineering practices outlined by INCOSE guidelines
• Facilitated project planning, scheduling, forecasting, execution, daily stand-up, retrospective, sprint, and release planning meetings by engaging with the cross-functional Agile teams; created user stories, participated in delivery planning and reviews, backlog grooming, and prioritization
• Communicated effectively, presenting key information to help leaders make timely and well-informed decisions and contributed to information to strategic plans, and identified process improvements

AMD, Markham, ON

Project/Program Manager                                                                      May 2022 – December 2022

• Work with key business and technology stakeholders to understand the product features to define the project scope and determine the resource requirements, timelines for validation, planning, execution, and technical issue resolution for AMD's Graphics products.
• Build, drive, and execute the technology strategy and roadmap, successfully manage communication with the project sponsor, business/technical/functional experts, create project charters, work breakdown structures (WBS), gather functional and technical requirements, develop business cases, project plans, schedule, budget management, milestones, risk identification/mitigation, and change management
• Facilitate Agile initiatives from initiation through release, providing oversight on Agile/Scrum practices, including project planning, daily stand-up, retrospective, sprint release planning meetings, and the Scrum of Scrums
• Manage and track project schedule and budget and report progress to all stakeholders through the Product backlog, Epics (User stories) Sprint Burn-Down Reports, Iteration Burn-Down Reports, Acceptant & Evaluation criteria, and velocity target updates
• Ensure vendor compliance with key contract deliverables by reviewing evidence based on the agreed schedule with IT management 
• Work with the chief engineers and platform leaders to drive validation, execution, and schedule/lead co-validation and qualification of AMD products with customers’ & partners’ hardware and software products
• Communicate effectively, presenting key information (C-Level status reporting) to help leaders make well-informed decisions; facilitate and drive continuous improvement of the activities, based on the surveys, lessons learned, best practices, etc

Brock Solutions, Kitchener, ON

Software Developer                                                                                                  2016 – 2017

• Participated in the requirement gathering phase for a $3M metal mining facility; interfaced with manufacturing suppliers to convert customer needs into technical specifications
• Developed custom Java-based web application using object-oriented programming concepts for Manufacturing Execution System (MES) controlling large-scale metals production, enabling automated track and trace methodology through the supply chain traversing from R&D to production 
• Interfaced directly with customer teams to demonstrate the product through design walkthrough sessions, gathering feedback on the way for future product improvements
• Consistently applied software engineering best practices for the full software development life cycle, including coding standards, code reviews, source control management, build processes, testing, and operations

CIENA Corporation, Ottawa, ON

Software Engineer                                                                                                     2014 – 2016

• Supported the development of embedded C/C++ software on Ciena’s 6500 family of optical switches, including improvements to existing software, development of new features, and support of new hardware
• Participated in all stages of software development, including requirements analysis, design, implementation, test, and maintenance; configured and simulated real-time network applications on Ciena’s proprietary 6500 broad-band and photonic cards.
• Interfaced with software/system engineers to diagnose and resolve high-priority customer issues, performed root cause analysis for network-affecting bugs found in design to accelerate feature readiness for customer-targeted releases
• Delivered recommendations for software performance improvements through results retrieved by test-driven development (TDD), automated unit testing, and comprehensive integration testing

BlackBerry Ltd

Radio Test Developer (Co-op)                                                                                    2012 – 2013

• Led the design, implementation, and maintenance of a fully functional firmware regression tool utilizing integration web platforms and RF hardware, used extensively to automate and streamline the reproduction of complex production issues
• Primary test coordinator for RF modem calibration trials for BlackBerry prototype radio Modems
• Key contributor in platform stability enhancements through continuous development of verification scripts testing the performance of RF transceiver characterization per 3GPP standards
• Built on firmware-embedded development experience through proprietary antenna tuning algorithm design, used in antenna performance optimizations of in-house radio modems

Carleton University, Ottawa, ON – Bachelors in Electrical Engineering (B. Eng)

Scrum Alliance – Certified Scrum Master (CSM)

Scrum Alliance – Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO)

Project Management Institute (PMI) – Project Management Professional (PMP), Currently Pursuing