Product Management · AI & Digital Transformation

Som Ruge

Product Management and AI / Digital Transformation Leader

Durham, NC · 20+ years

I turn strategy into delivered outcomes for global teams across the US, India, Australia, and Thailand, and I'm now applying AI to how teams plan, decide, and ship.

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20+years leading programsUS, India, Australia, Thailand
90%team predictability after a SAFe rolloutFEI Systems
25%faster time-to-market for key deliverablesFidelity Investments
$5Msaved a year by a monitoring platformCiber Inc

Selected work

Three programs: what I did, and what changed.

Scaling Agile across a delivery organisation

Program Manager / Sr. Scrum Master / RTE · FEI Systems · 2017–2022 Team predictability raised to 90%

What I did

Led the enterprise Agile transformation, implementing SAFe across 10+ teams (~60 people).
Ran the Agile Release Train.
Coached teams and introduced delivery tracking.

Outcome

Team predictability raised to 90%.
Execution efficiency up 75%.
Release cycle reliability up 25%.

With AI today

Use AI to summarise sprint and PI data into early risk signals, so the RTE spends time on the conversations, not on building reports.

Governance that sped delivery up

Director, Program Management · Fidelity Investments · 2022–2026 Time-to-market for key deliverables cut 25%

What I did

Directed delivery across 8+ cross-functional teams (40+ people).
Partnered with senior leadership on executing the strategic roadmap.
Established governance frameworks.

Outcome

Delivery predictability improved 20–30%.
Time-to-market for key deliverables cut 25%.
Delivery defects and escalations down ~20%.

With AI today

AI-assisted status synthesis across programs, drafted from tickets and notes and reviewed by a person, to cut reporting time and surface cross-team dependencies earlier.

A monitoring platform that paid for itself

Project Delivery Manager · Ciber Inc · 2009–2016 $5M saved a year

What I did

Implemented an enterprise-wide Database Activity Monitoring system.
Separately, managed a 15+ person team delivering a $3.5M SaaS platform on Microsoft Azure.
Set up the delivery KPIs.

Outcome

$5M saved a year.
Development time down 35%.
Quality up 22%.

With AI today

Anomaly detection that flags unusual database activity for a person to review, instead of rules that have to be tuned by hand.

See the projects →

Experience

Sr. Business AnalystJuly 2026 — Present

FEI Systems · Columbia, MD
Director – Program ManagementMarch 2022 — May 2026

Fidelity Investments · Durham, NC

Directed program delivery across 8+ cross-functional teams and built the governance model behind them.
Program Manager / Sr. Scrum Master / RTEJan 2017 — March 2022

FEI Systems · Columbia, MD

Led the enterprise SAFe transformation and ran the Agile Release Train.
Project Delivery ManagerNov 2009 — Dec 2016

Ciber Inc · Washington, DC

Delivered a $3.5M SaaS platform on Azure and an enterprise Database Activity Monitoring system.
Earlier

Test Lead, Wipro Technologies (2007–2009) · Senior Test Analyst, ANZ IT (2005–2007)

Projects

MahaPrabha Gurukul — learn Bhagavad Gītā shlokas

A free app I built for families to learn Gītā shlokas a step at a time: hear a real recitation with each phrase lit up as it is sung, learn the sounds, chant and record, then remember with gentle memory games and spaced review.

React
TypeScript
Cloudflare Pages & D1
Child-safe privacy

Start learning How it's checked

Free · no ads · no sign-up needed. First edition: 18 shlokas, more coming.

Where the AI fits

Built with an AI coding assistant; the lesson texts were drafted with AI help and the Sanskrit is checked against a proofread edition. The app itself runs no AI, and a child's learning stays on their own device.

Som's Trip Planner — plan trips together, live

A collaborative trip planner I specified end to end before writing any code: one shared itinerary, map and budget that everyone on the trip edits live, even across dropped connections.

React
TypeScript
Cloudflare Workers & Durable Objects
Postgres
Real-time collaboration
Guardrailed AI

Try the live demo How it's built

No sign-up: the demo opens a sample trip with a bot editing alongside you, deleted after 24 hours.

Where the AI fits

The assistant drafts days, fills gaps and estimates costs, then shows the changes as a proposal. Nothing happens until you accept.

PNotes — a local-first notes app with optional AI

A notes app I built end to end to get hands-on with applying AI to everyday tools. Create, tag, pin, and search notes stored entirely in your browser.

React
TypeScript
IndexedDB
Bring-your-own-key AI

Live demo Source

Where the AI fits

Optional, bring-your-own-key: summarising, tone rewriting, and tag suggestions. The app works fully without it.

How I apply AI

Start from the decision, not the model

Find where a team loses time or makes a decision blind, and apply AI there. The "With AI today" notes in each case study start from that question.
Keep a person in charge of what matters

AI suggests; people decide. In Trip Planner the assistant proposes changes and nothing happens until you accept; in PNotes every AI feature is optional.
Measure it like any delivery change

Adopt it when it moves a delivery measure, the same way I've tracked predictability and time-to-market for 20 years.