About Christos

Welcome to my about page. This section provides some summary information about Christos Charistas.

Summary information

I am a PMP® , ITIL® , ScrumMaster® and 9x Salesforce certified IT Professional with 20 years of experience, based in Munich Germany.

I managed 20+ projects with current Project under Management <5M € in budget. Wrote 20+ business policies and procedure handbooks. Supported 600+ customer accounts. Authored manuals for IT and business processes.

Building reliable technical infrastructure and improving business workflows on an optimized budget is my field of focus.

I leverage all industry-standard toolsets to manage teams and assets including PMI® Project Management and ITIL® change management standards. Finally, I am open to adopting other tools to meet the needs of the team, project or client demands.

Learn more about me by visiting my resume page.

Certifications and education

I have a BSc in Computer Science from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki.
In addition, I have demonstrated my high level of knowledge and expertise and I am also proud for my following accomplishments:

Project Management Professional PMP ITIL v3 Foundation Certified Scrum Master

Furthermore, I have extensive hours of training and continuous education in the following fields:

  • Microsoft® Windows® Server Network Infrastructure
  • Microsoft® Exchange Server
  • Cisco® Certified Network Associate Program
  • Salesforce® CRM Certified Administrator and Consultant Programs
  • ISACA® Certified Information Security Manager (CISM)
  • (ISC)² CISSP® – Certified Information Systems Security Professional

In my view, professional certifications demand a robust understanding of the knowledge and specialized skills that are necessary to perform with a high degree of competence in a field.  Furthermore, additional annual requirements for training or practice ensure currency of skill and knowledge of new developments in that field. Professional certification sets a standard for skills, knowledge, and performance across the field of content work and information products

Specialties

  • Salesforce CRM and KPIs
  • Project Management
  • Agile Metholodies and Scrum
  • IT Infrastructure Planning
  • Change Management
  • Server and workstation technologies
  • Cisco networks
  • Software and Web Application Project Management
  • Communication Technologies and VoIP Solutions
  • IT Audit
  • Authoring and Documentation

What I Can Do

I help businesspeople build reliable technical fundamentals and achieve their business goals utilizing affordable budget resources. My strategic planning and implementation eventually helps clients who struggle to excel on technical infrastructure, data management, business process organization and CRM. Whether it’s your datacenter, software, telco service provider, CRM, website, blog, social media accounts, KPI or more, scheduling and implementing the necessary works to achieve the goals at an affordable budget is essential. Eventually that’s where I come in.

Project Management Methodology

As a PMI-PMP utilizing the Critical Path Method (CPM) is essential for me in instructing parallel tasks to be executed by the team. Continuous incremental improvement of the team leads ultimately to increasing chances of reaching project completion within the deadline. The PMP practices are internationally recognized and are listed in the PMBOK (Project Management Body of Knowledge). Project management as per PMBOK includes five primary parts of a project which are Initiating, Planning, Executing, Monitoring/Controlling and Closing.

Using the ITIL Framework

ITIL sets out to examine service strategy, service design, service transition, service operation, and continual service improvement. It is designed to standardize the selection, planning, delivery and support of IT services to a business. Following ITIL methodologies through the IT Service Management Lifecycle strongly leads to positive impact on how IT departments support the business, organisationally speaking and otherwise.

Practiciting Agile

I develop doftware with a methodology based on iterative development, where requirements and solutions evolve through collaboration between self-organizing cross-functional teams. Agile methods or Agile processes generally promote a disciplined project management process that encourages frequent inspection and adaptation, a leadership philosophy that encourages teamwork, self-organization and accountability, a set of engineering best practices intended to allow for rapid delivery of high-quality software, and a business approach that aligns development with customer needs and company goals.

Using the Scrum Framework

A Scrum process is distinguished from other agile processes by specific concepts and practices, divided into the three categories of Roles, Artifacts, and Time Boxes. I use Scrum to manage complex software and product development, using iterative and incremental practices. Scrum significantly increases productivity and reduces time to benefits relative to classic “waterfall” processes. Scrum processes enable organizations to adjust smoothly to rapidly-changing requirements, and produce a product that meets evolving business goals. An agile Scrum process benefits the organization by helping it to

  • Increase the quality of the deliverables
  • Cope better with change (and expect the changes)
  • Provide better estimates while spending less time creating them
  • Be more in control of the project schedule and state

Experience

Currently I am a Lead Consultant for Digital Business Solutions at NTT DATA, a leading provider of business and IT consulting and part of the Japanese NTT Group with 242.000 employees in 88 countries. Our international client portfolio comes from diverse industries such as Automotive, Telecommunications, Manufacturing, Banking, Financial Services and more. Before that I served as IT Manager for Meli Group Ltd, a B2B oriented enterprise offering destination management services for the travel industry. While practicing this role, I lead the company’s technical efforts and managed the IT project deployment life cycle and budget. In all my roles I built and lead teams to develop business critical applications. In addition I created and enforced processes for IT workflows, incident and case management, develop strategic plans and project roadmaps to achieve business goals.

Before all of the above, I ‘ve worn many hats in my career – programmer, graphic designer, translator, music producer, marketer, IT consultant.

Other Interesting Information

I speak four languages and have traveled to four continents.

Finally, I am a Competitive Tennis Player, Enthusiastic World Traveler, Licensed Offshore Sailor and Boat Skipper, Passionate Language Learner, Amateur International Cuisine Chef !