Quick History Notes

My Thoughts (Blogs) My Personal Story Quick History Notes

Mr. Richard Tesmer Consulting, Coaching, and Speaking

Summary of Richard Tesmer's Project/Portfolio Management Skills

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Nunc nibh diam, blandit vitae vehicula dapibus.
Fusce et ornare sapien, non euismod felis. Integer et risus quis arcu totam rem aperiam.

Strategic Project/Program Planning

Created measurable KPIs for the accountability of the enterprise programs for SAP, Salesforce, and SAP eWMS to drive decisions, exceeding budget targets by 20%.
Documentation of management strategy through SWOT and GAP analysis.
Support the creation of the project or program charter, project initiation documentation, project planning documents, and business processes aligned with expectations.
Skills in talent management through recruitment and strong relationships with developers (on and offshore), IT professionals, security specialists, logistics, and procurement resulting in teams with the lowest turn over rates in the companies history.

Budget Management and Cost Reduction

Expertise in increasing sales targets by 10-20% through creating and using collaboration platforms.
Managed five major programs simultaneously, ensuring all deliverables met timelines and quality
standards; established effective feedback loops with clients, improving project alignment within
strategic direction by over 30%.
Highly skilled at managing active projects portfolio valued at $15M annually, with medium ($500K
to $1.5M) to large-sized projects/programs ($1.5M to $5M).

Team Leadership and Development

My plan to overcome resistance to Agile, was overcome by creating a hybrid approach called ScrumFall. This allowed an iterative approach while working within the project's triple constraints.
I am a specialist at implementing new technologies, improving projects, automation, customer engagement, customer relationship management, and performance.
I lead local and global project teams as shepherd leader, a servant leader, and a mentor.
I have built PMO teams of twelve senior-level project managers, paired with six junior project managers, four business analysts, and onshore/offshore development teams, elastically sized to high of 90 programming resources.
I excel at leading self-organized, agile, high-performing teams with a hands-on approach to building relationships, supporting end-to-end customer success stories, and resolving real-time issues.

Silos and Collaboration

With technology changing so quickly, Agile's use of Kanban and Scrum was added to replace most Waterfall projects, which led to smoother collaboration between matrixed teams.
I take pride in the development of global multicultural staffing of project resources with a high cultural empathy and sensitivity, which contributed to a 90% year-over-year retention rate of clients.
Through the combination, I was able to lead the combined efforts of Professional Services with Project Management teams. Resulting in an improved environment for custom applications, business units breaking down silos, and collaborating for improvement in communication.

Change Management

Custom solutions using COTS and/or customized Power Apps for data warehousing, defining and executing infrastructure plans, and working with projects leads to controlling scope and maintaining business priorities.
I place emphasis from day one on a project that Project Sponsors and stakeholders will need to create a Change Control Committee.

Risk Management

Balanced all project crises and, as needed, escalate executive leadership.
Using historical data analysis, complex project risk registers are part of project coordination, management, data integrity, directory services, business processes, mitigation strategies, and escalation points.

Stakeholder Management

As a leader filled with intellectual curiosity, on top of customer risk management, I led the teams to keep all project timelines under control.
Meeting business needs with solid customer feedback loops to build upon user experience and create alignment with strategic direction.
Managed teams in a matrixed environment using cross-functional collaboration to build and maintain various projects and technologies.

Center of Excellence

I dealt with daily prioritization by monitoring the PMO dashboard: a pipeline of 300 NGO, NPO, and For-Profit clients with an average of 65 active projects.
I ensured all team members, especially project managers, continue developing skills with additional training.
I analyzed workflows and established priorities for daily operations.
Commercial software such as Nintex Workflow and Microsoft Power Platform tools in Microsoft 365 are used for continuous improvement and future-proofing.

Richard Tesmer's Biographical Resume

20Apr

Astoundry: Senior Project Manager & Consultant

Position Additional Details

Project Title: Senior Project Manager & Consultant
Methodology: Waterfall
Start Date: 04/20/2006
End Date: 06/01/2010

Project Manager: Richard Tesmer, Senior Project Manager & Consultant
Lead Developer: Kirk Roybal
Team Size: 20

I loved running RTAZ Consulting Services, and by 2004, it was clear that over 50% of our work contracts and professional services income was derived from being a contractor to Astoundry. So, it made great sense to give up all the administrative work and to focus on what I loved most- working with clients to find solutions to improve their business processes. So, in April of 2006, I sold the company to Astoundry and immediately went to work for them as a full-time salaried Senior Project Manager and Consultant. As they say, "When one door closes, another door opens," I embarked on the next phase of my professional career.

Astoundry had a lot of clients from all walks of business life - from fintech to oil & gas. So, I had the pleasure of working on several myself. A sampling includes:

Moody Rambin needed a complete revamp of its core applications, which no longer served its needs. It had grown to the point where we needed to upgrade its financial and customer management systems into something more enterprise-ready. We had to ensure the staff was trained in parallel to ensure they could use the new systems as soon as they went live. Moody Rambin's primary business focus is real estate law.
TransOcean, focusing on offshore drilling, must replace an aged resource management system. This system was a COTS solution with over 100 custom ads created in-house over the years. It was time to look for and move to a more streamlined system that would increase performance but decrease the human costs of managing their extensive fleet of ships and staff for those ships. The Team and I started with a SWOT analysis, a GAP analysis, and several brainstorming workshops to help TransOcean pick the right system for the future. The team's extensive experience creating flow diagrams and working mock-ups made the process conclude twice as fast as previous attempts.
ERA Helicopters (now merged with Bristow) is the Uber of Helicopter services. They would taxi staff back and forth from offshore drilling platforms, deliver supplies, and perform search & rescue operations. But they did all that without a mapping system (Google does not yet exist as it is today), so we worked with ESRI to bring in ArcGIS. We modeled the systems first, compiled all the routing details into the database, created polygon layers for each station, and then used the system to create routes. So, just like an Uber, you can see the route before you go, when you pay, and after you pay. Transparent and fair, and a great company to work with.
LifeLock needed a new eCommerce platform and credit card processing system. The current system could not provide all the required functions and would crash, so George and I took on this project together.
- We started with several brainstorming sessions to better understand what the current system failed to provide and prioritize it for the next version.
- We created spreadsheets, used the staff's priorities, and created the top 10 potential vendors.
- We met with the staff to review that list and narrowed it down to 3 vendors.
- We then provided an RFP to those three vendors.
- Along with their proposals, each was expected to do an on-site demonstration and Q&A with the staff.
- The staff were provided with scoring sheets, which were tabulated at the conclusion of the presentations.
- We presented a final recommendation to LifeLock leadership.
- Since I had years of experience in eCommerce and worked with First Data as a partner, it made sense for us further to help Lifelock with the transition and implementation stages.

Sadly, all good things must end. In 2009, we were all brought to Houston (a semi-annual event) to discuss the state of Astoundry and the future and what new things would be on the horizon. It was a pumped up meeting, until.... About halfway through the day, the news announced the beginning of the 2009/2010 housing crash and bank bankruptcies. The stock market was hitting all-time lows. Finance did not look good, and most of us were rightfully concerned about what this meant to all these rosy plans. Management assured the group that all was solid and any client that fell behind in payments would have all work stopped. It didn't take long for the first client failures to occur; some of them had been our best and largest accounts.

The first round of company layoffs started in the fall of 2009, followed by the second round in November 2009. The rest of us, myself included, doubled down and worked harder than ever, longer hours, to do what could be done to save the company and to bring back any of our coworkers who needed a job. Instead, just before Christmas, the third round cleared out everybody except two, who were left to clean up. I was not in the clean-up group.

By June 2010, Astoundry was no more.

About the Author