University of California, Berkeley

Project/Program Management Consultant

I’ve co-founded PM Positive with my wife Ami Atkinson Combs to offer support in the form of training, coaching, and a like-minded community for exceptional project managers who are invested in building skills and strategies for success in work and life.

PM Positive

Co-Founder

I provide training and support to help people build sustainable mindfulness meditation practices.

Mind on Breath

Founder and Instructor

I partner with organizations undergoing significant business transformation, providing expert management of projects and programs and leading the development of supporting processes, tools and teams.

I integrate the needs of key stakeholders to achieve optimal engagement and create a shared, dynamic vision, collaborating with executive sponsors, functional leaders, PMO personnel, project team members, end-users and external vendors.

I lead the delivery of business software applications as well as the IT infrastructure required to effectively run them.

I develop and manage high-performing project teams, whether co-located at one site or working around the globe.

For details on the various clients, projects and programs with which I’ve engaged, please see below, and for highlights of LinkedIn recommendations received from former colleagues, please download the attached PDF.

Combs Consulting

Principal Consultant and Co-Founder

Led Business Readiness workstream and served in the Project Management Office for a HR people and payroll systems project (SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central and Preceda, respectively) for Costco warehouses in Australia

Costco Wholesale

Business Readiness Lead/PMO Member

Co-led the deployment of new HR people and payroll systems (SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central and SAP HCM Payroll, respectively) to 40,000+ users across Canada

Program Deployment Co-Lead

•	Served as a SAFe (Scaled Agile Framework for the Enterprise) Product Manager for Nike’s HR Operations Technology group supporting global pay and time systems

•	Working with key HR business stakeholders, identified and prioritized work items for quarterly planning and delivery by HR Operations Technology Agile teams

•	Collaborated with HR Technology SAFe leadership, product management, and Agile teams to mature SAFe processes and best practices

•	Developed SAFe Product Management tools and templates, including an Excel product management data tracking tool for use in conjunction with Nike’s SAFe planning and execution software system

Nike

HR Operations Technology Product Manager

• Led implementation of a global SAP SuccessFactors Human Resources Information System (HRIS) for US, Japan/Asia-Pacific, China and Europe regional users, including employee information and performance management modules, in close collaboration with executive HR leadership.

• Co-led PMO, developing framework, processes and tools, which enabled the gathering and reporting of project status, plans, budgets, risks, issues, and inter-dependencies, as well as new project requests/evaluations.

• Served as IT Infrastructure Program Manager overseeing global teams and enterprise projects, covering network implementation, user authentication and email.

• Led implementation of Microsoft Office 365 email for US and Japan regional users.

• Led Agile team delivering Wacom “Developer Relations” website releases.

• Led US SAP ERP conversion to a new tax engine and then the subsequent operating system and database upgrade. 

• Led SAP ERP cutover from legacy systems to new Global SAP ERP system for US and Europe regional users. 

Consulted with Wacom through my own company, Clearstream Consulting, LLC (now Combs Consulting).

Wacom Americas

Senior Program/Project Manager

• Led real estate data analytics web application development effort, managing an off-shore software development team based in Pakistan to deliver a novel, high-quality software product

• Implemented software development best practices with respect to requirements definition, testing and QA

• Collaborated to design and implement a gamification strategy using the Bunchball gamification platform

• Gathered and documented user payment system requirements, led development and served as primary tester

Consulted with RealAnalogics through my own company, Clearstream Consulting, LLC (now Combs Consulting).

RealAnalogics

Director of Operations

• Contracted to revive a troubled project in-progress to develop SAP Business Objects Universes and Web Intelligence reports against Epic Hospital Billing data for Revenue Cycle and Finance customers, re-engaging key stakeholders, developing a revised project plan, and leading project to a successful completion

• Chartered, launched and successfully led two other projects, one to deliver more Universes and Web Intelligence reports against Epic data for Revenue Cycle customers, and the other to develop, standardize and deliver Epic finance statistical data for Finance stakeholders across all Providence regions on Epic (AK, WA, MT, OR)

Consulted with Providence through Global IT Resources (http://www.globalitresources.com/).

Providence Health & Services

Senior Project Manager

• Led development of Global Footwear Planning (GFP) project portfolio and service desk management best practices. 

• Developed and implemented enterprise release testing and cutover best practices for use by GFP.
• Led a year-long, medium-scale project to develop and implement a system supporting the “short-lead time” footwear supply chain, delivering full scope on-time and on-budget.

• Managed cutover and stabilization for GFP to replace legacy software tools with a single, integrated footwear supply planning system.

• Managed a small-scale project enhancing the newly-integrated footwear supply planning system.

• Served as a lead on the global program to upgrade company’s SAP ERP systems, managing testing, cutover and stabilization for GFP, as well as Asia footwear factories, and leading these activities on two subsequent enterprise releases.

Consulted with Nike through Bradson Consulting (http://www.bradsonconsulting.com/).

• Co-led implementation of early-stage Project Management Office (PMO), including project portfolio management practices, project management methodology, key tools and templates, and training for program and project managers.

• Led IT strategic planning project, performing in-depth analysis of the current state of customer support, corporate and manufacturing applications, IT infrastructure, and IT projects, then defining the desired future state and the specific means achieve it.

• Managed data center project program to upgrade existing facility and build out a new co-location space, including power/cooling, LAN/WAN connectivity, servers/racks, and SAN storage. 

• Led a corporate digital signage project to select and install flat-panel screens, network infrastructure and software, enabling delivery of manufacturing, performance metric, and HR content to strategic locations throughout company. 

Consulted with REC Silicon through Return Consulting for first 14 months, and then Clearstream Consulting (my own firm) for final 5 months.

REC Silicon

• Led the Research Informatics program for all Research departments (200+ users), managing budget for capital projects, maintenance agreements and support and three full-time employees, including two programmer/analysts and a DBA, plus contractors.

• Established and directed PMO for IT group, with support from an expert PMO consultant, resulting in definition and prioritization of PMO deliverables, and standardization of key project and program management practices including governance, budgeting, project planning, status reporting, and project/system portfolio management. 

• Established and led the Research IT Governance Group to prioritize and oversee the portfolio of projects and systems, working in conjunction with Research senior management and department-level stakeholders.
 
• Managed projects in the areas of records management, data analysis, storage, and access, as well as inventory management, productivity tools, and others.

Theravance

• Transitioned from researcher position to a webmaster and programmer, developing web applications in the PHP scripting language with MySQL and Oracle databases on the back-end, as well as programming with Visual Basic for Excel (VBA) to build sophisticated Microsoft Excel and Word applications
• Responsible for management of corporate intranet site, designing, building and supporting numerous applications for most business units

Corporate Webmaster / Developer

• Served as a team member on research projects to support analysis of drug candidates
• Managed drug screening personnel, resources and projects, from assay development to execution to data analysis and reporting 
• Led our department’s information technology process improvement efforts

Associate Scientist

Served as a pharmacology research project team member in designing, developing, executing, and reporting on cell-based drug screening assays and results

Affymax

Senior Research Associate

Isolated and expanded rare blood stem cell populations using FACS technology and software along with novel mammalian cell culture techniques

Systemix

Research Associate II

Performed research as a member of the Human Genome Project, running DNA fingerprinting experiments to map human chromosome 19, contributing significantly to the map of this chromosome

Jesse Combs