Diana Kowalski Senior Project Manager
Chicago, IL • projectmgr@gmail.com • +1 312-555-0178
Profile Summary
- Senior Project Manager with 10 years of experience delivering projects in healthcare and life sciences consulting, primarily on enterprise ERP implementations and regulatory remediation projects, specializing in WBS-based planning, change-control discipline, and vendor / SOW management.
- Solid delivery toolkit across methodologies (Waterfall / PMBOK, Agile / Scrum + Kanban), PM platforms (Microsoft Project + Smartsheet), scheduling on Microsoft Project, reporting on Power BI, comms / docs on Microsoft Teams + SharePoint, and credentials including PMP, CAPM, and CSM, with strong fundamentals in WBS-first planning, change-control discipline, and weekly status hygiene that keeps sponsors comfortable.
- Deep expertise in project charter, scope, and WBS construction, scheduling, critical path, and baseline management, budget tracking, vendor / SOW oversight, and finance partnership, and change control, quality acceptance, and closure, applying practices such as risk register and issue-log discipline and weekly status reporting tuned to executive vs. team audiences to deliver on-time, on-budget, and audit-ready project delivery.
- Engaged partner working cross-functionally with Engineering, Product, Business Owners, QA, Vendor Partners, Legal, and Finance leadership in regulated healthcare delivery with quarterly steering reviews, contributing to project intake, change-control board reviews, and closure / lessons-learned sessions with a pragmatic, deliverables-first mindset.
- Senior IC who shares delivery excellence and fosters a culture of baseline-and-variance reporting rigor and change-control and acceptance-criteria discipline through PM coaching and process mentorship, while running monthly Project Manager guild and PMO standards review sessions and authoring widely adopted PMO handbooks.
Technical Skills
- Methodologies & Frameworks:
- Waterfall / PMBOK, Agile / Scrum + Kanban, hybrid Waterfall + Agile, PRINCE2, ITIL v4 service-management overlap, change-control boards
- Planning & Scheduling:
- Microsoft Project, Primavera P6, Smartsheet Gantt, Jira Advanced Roadmaps, WBS construction, critical-path analysis, baseline management
- Budget & Cost Management:
- Project budgeting, actual-vs-plan tracking, earned-value management (EVM), cost forecasting, finance partnership, sponsor reporting
- Risk, Issue & Change:
- Risk register, issue log, RAID frameworks, mitigation playbooks, change-control board governance, escalation paths
- Reporting & BI:
- Power BI, Tableau, Looker, SharePoint dashboards, executive status decks, sponsor-grade narrative reports, weekly status memos
- Comms & Collaboration:
- Microsoft Teams + SharePoint, Slack + Google Workspace, Notion, Lucidchart, Miro, executive comms, stakeholder management
- Vendor, Procurement & Contract:
- RFP / RFQ authoring, SOW + MSA management, vendor scorecards, procurement partnership, contract negotiation, third-party governance
- Certifications & Standards:
- PMP, CAPM, CSM, PRINCE2 Practitioner, SAFe Agilist, ITIL v4, Lean Six Sigma Green Belt
Education
Work Experience
- Own end-to-end project management for a regional health system's Epic EHR implementation, a $6.2M / 18-month program with 4 vendor partners and 34 contributors across 6 functional teams; sponsor-approved charter covers scope, schedule, budget, and acceptance-criteria baselines from kickoff through closeout.
- Built the project plan around a 280-task WBS with critical path across 7 workstreams in Microsoft Project, with monthly baseline-vs-actuals reviews and CPI / SPI / EAC variance thresholds at each of 4 stage gates; hit all stage-gate milestones on or ahead of schedule.
- Coordinated staffing across Engineering, Product, and Compliance and 4 vendor partners with a structured intake + capacity-planning workflow tied to the Microsoft Project critical path; cut time-to-staff for new roles from 6 weeks to 12 days and held unplanned reassignment under 5% across the project.
- Managed the $6.2M project budget with monthly EVM reporting (CPI / SPI / EAC tracking) in partnership with Finance, defending 2 scope-change requests at the budget gate; closed 4% under target with no scope deferrals.
- Owned a 48-item risk register with weekly triage, monthly sponsor escalation, and mitigation playbooks across 9 risk categories; closed the 18-month run with zero high-severity surprises and 3 top-quartile risks retired ahead of their target dates.
- Ran the weekly working group and monthly VP-level executive steering review with sponsor-grade narrative decks (status, risks, decisions, asks); produced 18 steering decks and a status template adopted by 3 other Accenture PMs after the first quarter.
- Walked 22 change requests through a formal change-control board with 3 standing voting members (Engineering, Product, Business), acceptance criteria authored against the project charter, and a 48-hour decision SLA; hit 100% business-owner sign-off on first review.
- Managed 6 vendor SOWs and 2 RFPs across retail supply-chain ERP projects end-to-end (intake, vendor selection, SOW negotiation with Procurement, monthly scorecards), partnering with Legal on MSA-level red-lines; lifted vendor-deliverable acceptance from 78% to 96% over 2 fiscal years.
- Adapted methodology to project shape, applying hybrid Waterfall + Agile for retail supply-chain ERP projects (stage-gated rollouts) and pure Agile / Scrum for the digital-storefront workstreams; cut average planning-to-kickoff cycle from 9 weeks to 4 weeks across 6 project intakes.
- Drove 11 project closures with formal acceptance, operations handover, and a 6-month post-closure review; authored Deloitte's project-closure playbook with 34 template artifacts (closure checklists, handover SOPs, RCA templates) adopted by the PMO.
- Partnered with Engineering, Product, Business Owners, QA, Vendor Partners, Legal, and Finance teams across 14 projects totalling $24M over 5 fiscal years; authored 38 project charters, RAID logs, and closure reports that became the team's PMO baseline and onboarded 5 new project managers into the team's intake + closure workflow.