Vikas Menon

Leads planning and execution of long term roadmap. Single point of contact for all communication & shares executive updates, project status, risks to all levels in Zynga

• CONTENT ROADMAP: Accountable for content roadmap delivery and primary responsibility was ensuring that roadmap delivery was along predictable lines. Managed complex dependencies & led capacity planning of 70+ cross functional team members, external licensees and vendors to deliver 10% more content& 2 major updates in 2023, while improving team NPS by 22%
• LEADERSHIP: Led production vertical (9 producers) in 70+ member team. Primary point of communication across division representing project status across organization and within team. Instituted culture of data driven and risk register frameworks to have single source of truth that conveyed key updates across org. Frequently presented to Zynga Executive team, including CEO. Led team All Hands Agenda and presentations.
• PROCESS IMPROVEMENTS: Built a culture of continuous process improvements built around the core pillars of transparency, shipping high quality work and team happiness. This culture improved pre-production effectiveness by innovating on our workflows & significantly improved release quality of our live operations year over year.
• COSTS & RESOURCING: Tracked and maintained Headcount, vendor effectiveness and budgets. Primary point of contact in submitting budget needs and creating costs/roadmap scenario based planning. Partnered with talent team in identifying talent gaps and hiring.

Responsible for game development pipeline and roadmap. Led capacity based planning designed workflows for 40+ cross functional organization. Managed a production team of 3

• WORKFLOW PROCESSES: Reviewed and iterated on the pre-production phase. Focused on prototyping and visualizing what needs to be built before estimates are provided. Helped deliver major features on time and budget, and led to major success for the game outperforming targets by 15%
• QUALITY & EFFICIENCY: Set standards for AAA execution, bringing player perspective in game development and improved release standards by reducing unplanned releases/hotfixes QoQ. Streamlined execution by automating core areas that were susceptible to errors, and by creating event templates
• PROJECT MANAGEMENT: Transitioned the entire project planning framework from Google Spreadsheet to Smartsheet and then eventually to JIRA to give consistent visibility and accurate representation of the work that was happening at any point of time. This transition helped forge deeper trust and partnership with executive and discipline leaders and helped provide accurate forecasts for roadmap

Production & execution lead for for various games directly involved in ensuring quality & business targets are met.

• LIVE OPERATIONS: Spearheaded live operations pod and planning to deliver high quality experiences for players. Established quality benchmarks and outlined KPIs to analyze game health. Defined live game matrix that outlines SLAs & priorities running live game
• STRIKE TEAM: Led "Ninja Pod" that worked outside game roadmap to deliver faster, incremental and more experimental features to players that could then be baked into the roadmap. This pod worked with very loose processes with emphasis on shipping incrementally. Directly led to revenue improvements over the year.
• VIP PIPELINE: Was the primary player representative in the Studio. Led calls and interactions with VIP players over telephone conferences, focus group testing & social channels. Helped bring in relevant workflow changes that took in feedback/suggestions from players in the feature development pipeline

Founded AyAuto Radio Rickshaws - on demand rickshaw hailing service which scaled to a 15 employees running tech & operations, and contracted more than 300 rickshaws successfully. Links: https://yourstory.com/2012/02/enough-haggling-with-auto-wallahs-dial-ayauto/amp

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/mumbai/challenging-the-auto-cracy/articleshow/10284006.cms

• OPERATIONS: Delivered more than 2000 trips per day in less than 3 months of starting the business. Managed business, product & marketing and operations
• FUNDING: Pitched business to investors and angels. Acquired funding from Angel Investors on the back of a strong business case and value proposition