Summary of QUALIFICATIONS

Business Systems Analysis:

• Self-directed. Strong analytical/problem solving skills and a technical systems background enables me to take on complex business/systems issues and break them down into understandable, actionable parts.
• Strong communication skills. Experience working with others business customers, developers, management, etc. to translate business requirements and specifications into component system processes and/or workflow diagrams.
• Extensive Systems/Business Analysis for Data and Processes Mapping between major systems for the merging of 2 Fortune 500 companies.

Technical Skills:

• Work/Process Flow and System Flow Diagrams, VISIO, Quality Center, IBM Rational JAZZ, Visual Studio Express 2008 wire frames , Technical Spec Writing, Use Cases, SQL, SharePoint, MS Office Suite WORD, EXCEL, Outlook, PowerPoint , COBOL, CICS, JCL, TSO/ISPF, Snag-It
• Communication:
• Strong people skills successfully applied in all of my jobs to-date - most recently in my position at ESPN.
• Organizational:
• Proven ability to take on complex, fuzzy assignments and use my analytical and organizational skills to create coherent, logical and comprehensive plans to address them in a professional manner.
• Skilled in developing, and overseeing the development of comprehensive work plans, test plans and project plans to orchestrate the development, testing and implementation of system changes/enhancements.
• Designed and populated a Documentation Database, for the Premium Audit System that I managed at the Travelers. Made updating this database part of our system implementation process ensuring that it was kept up-to-date. This saved countless hours of analysis by providing an up-to-date resource for systems information and processes and also served as a great training tool for new hires to the area.

Analytical/Technical:

• Proven analytical and problem solving experience - primarily in the IT arena. Working knowledge of a variety of technologies and systems tools including: Cobol, Relational Databases, SQL, CICS, MQ, Object-oriented development, TSO, Change management Endevor, SDLC , JIRA and Quality Center.
• Research skills include ability to read DB2 COBOL code, in order to understand what a program is doing at a detailed level, as well as experience in writing SQL queries to run against relational database/tables, as required.
• Broad knowledge of Property/Casualty Insurance business e.g. Policy / Claims / Risk Management/ Check Reconciliation / Premium Audit , but adept at quickly learning other business processes, as required as evidenced by my recent work at ESPN.
• General office skills include: WORD, EXCEL, Visio, Powerpoint, SharePoint and various E-Mail and instant messaging systems.

Professional Experience Confidenital consultant

Sr. Business/Analyst

• Hired into the QA Area of Emerging Technology IT to work on the large and highly visible SDR Project . Specifically, my job was to work independently and utilize my strong analytical, technical and documentation skills to redesign the area's testing platform and processes going forward. To this end, successfully achieved the following:
• Proactively worked with others on the project QA, business/analysts, business customers, systems people, etc. to gather background needed for a thorough understanding of the business/functional requirements for the new InGame Sports Applications.
• Provided on-going gap analysis to project team. Highlighted areas where the requirements were sketchy or not adequately defined. Documented questions/issues needing further analysis into a central business requirement management repository created for this purpose.
• Created comprehensive test plan strategies for several InGame Applications most recently Baseball to ensure 100 requirement coverage using various permutations of business workflows.
• Worked with Project Team to identify and bundle project requirements into 4-6 week sprints. Attended daily scrum meetings as part of core project team.
• Created and documented individual mini test plans, by sprint, into Quality Center. Developed each sprint test plan as an independent piece of the larger overall project test plan. In addition, my test plans developed for previous sprints became part of a growing project regression test bed.
• Executed test cases for each sprint, and recorded pass/fail and notes in Quality Center of test results. Documented defects found during testing in JIRA.
• Provided a thorough, repeatable base from which to test various aspects of the SDR Project.

Confidenital

Sr. Business/Analyst

Worked as part of a small OPM team whose job it was to meet with the various State agencies involved with Connecticut's Criminal Justice System in order to gather Business Requirements for Phase 1 of the Connecticut Information Sharing System CISS Project. Learned with no formal training to use IBM's Rational JAZZ, chosen by management, as the platform for documenting the formal CISS business requirement use cases. Our team met with agency representatives as necessary, both individually and collectively, to define, review and get formalized final approval for the CISS Phase 1 business requirements as documented in the various use cases. In addition to business requirements, high-level agency workflows, for Phase 1, and connection points between agencies were also documented, reviewed and refined using VISIO swim-lane diagrams. The business requirement phase of the project was successfully completed in late February, 2012, and handed off to the vendor for use in their system design, several weeks ahead of schedule.

Confidenital

Business/Analyst

• Duties provided for various projects include, but are not limited to, the following core business/analysis functions:
• Met with Subject Matter Experts SMEs to gain understanding of the business and overall project scope. Interviewed them, as required, to gather the necessary detailed business requirements for specific project s .
• As applicable, took complex, seemingly diverse information and synthesized it into meaningful, manageable workflow and process flow diagrams geared to the particular audience.
• Ensured that any mockups included in the specifications were consistent with the associated written documentation. Enhanced spec documentation, as appropriate, with process and workflow diagram s of various detail - both as a way to 'spice-up' the written documentation and make it easier for the reader to understand processes at a glance vs. wading through written details .
• Took an iterative approach to requirements gathering with the SME s . Scheduled as many relatively short meetings 1-2 hours apiece as necessary to fully gather requirements. Always sent out an appropriate agenda beforehand and led the meeting so as to stick to the pre-defined agenda as reasonable. As part of the iterative process, created/designed window/modal dialog box mockups and/or process/system flow diagrams as a fast way to mirror back requirements to the user and get their feedback/approval. Modified diagram s as needed until got full business customer buy-in/approval. Diagrams developed using Visio, PowerPoint and/or Visual Basic
• Used acquired systems/database knowledge and experience to further analyze the specific business requirements e.g. ran SQL queries, did research using other sources s , etc. , as needed, to fully nail the requirements down and turn them into comprehensive Functional business Specifications.
• Sent out formal Functional Specs email and scheduled spec review meeting s with the project team both the Business Customer and appropriate Systems Development people . Based on the spec review meeting, made any requested changes to specs as necessary in order to obtain their final approval thus making them 'development ready' .
• Developed comprehensive test plan s based on specific project specs also ran regression . Recorded any defects found in testing using visual studio for developers to fix, and, re-tested as required, until developed support was working to specs .

Confidenital

Enumerator

Did not work outside the home during this time due to personal reasons that I would be happy to discuss during an interview

Confidenital

Used various insurance policy processing systems Travelers, Safeco, etc. and the Agency Management System to provide auto and homeowners policy quotes and service existing policies for customers. Interfaced with customers mostly via phone and written correspondence as required.

Confidenital

Systems Manager / Business Analyst Premium Audit System

• Played a significant role in the successful development/implementation of numerous projects, large and small during this time some of the stand-outs, in terms of providing much improved functionality, accuracy and timeliness, including the following:
• Project Lead for the integration of 2 Fortune 500 Company Systems St. Paul's and Travelers P C Insurance Company . This 'Integration Project' was the first, of the merger, to be successfully completed. It required extensive up-front data mapping between the 2 separate Company Systems as well as in-depth analysis, and understanding, of the St. Paul System processes in order to successfully merge all of the Premium Audit Data into the corresponding 'chosen' Travelers System.
• Experience with EDI Systems that fed insurance data on a nightly basis to external partners as required. Data was transmitted to various Agency Management Systems used by independent Agents in their local offices , Paychex, and various State Insurance Bureaus.
• Part of a Rewrite of the Premium Audit System 'Leg' used by the Mobile Auditors
• from an entirely Host-based system to a Host-Interface of a new distributed Client/Server based application using SQL-Server, LotusNotes and MQ.
• Worked on the Table-ization of All Hard-Coded Audit Work Assignment Business Rules. This was a major undertaking, especially with regard to the sheer amount of testing and verification required. It was well worth the time and effort though, as the time needed to revise the Audit Business Rules went from approximately 3 months to virtually overnight. Testing of Business Rule changes was also decreased by the same order of magnitude.

Daily responsibilities included the following:

• Worked with Business Customers to ensure a thorough understanding of their system change requests from a business perspective. Performed the corresponding systems analysis to determine and document the exact system data and workflow changes needed to support each request, including any changes to interfacing systems. Translated the Business specifications into working technical specifications. Based on this analysis, provided users with ballpark costing for each request.
• Managed on-going maintenance and development required for the Premium Audit System. Required developing an in-depth understanding of the stand-alone System e.g. its inputs/outputs, internal processes, systems interfaced with, business customers, etc. .
• Represented the System at various departmental and inter-departmental meetings and did impact analysis as issues came up for my systems and for other systems areas as required.
• Scheduled changes and oversaw the work of programmers making the changes. Worked with programmers to ensure that comprehensive unit test plans were developed and that new support was thoroughly unit tested before moving on to the systems test environment
• Worked with testers to help define test cases needed to exercise new support in the Systems Test Environment. Monitored systems testing results, including regression testing, via EXCEL spreadsheets that documented the results for each test case. Met with programmers and systems testers as applicable to review unexpected or erroneous test results and prepare re-tests as required.
• In addition to coordinating the migration of system release changes through the various test environments and into production, developed specific production implementation plans as necessary. Conducted, and documented, post- implementation reviews with customers and systems personnel to try to continually improve the implementation process. Ensured that all relevant systems documentation was updated to reflect changes implemented and that regression testing databases were updated, as applicable.

Member of Systems Process Improvement Team

Part of a hand-selected team of 8 whose goal was to recommend changes to help facilitate the successful transition of Development Projects to a Production Support Group. This became a progressively more important issue with the increased use of shared component technologies, matrix organizations and focus on rebuilding systems for the future. Our teams recommendations were presented to Management approved and integrated into the existing SDLC Process.

PASD Knowledge Manager

Confidenital

Responsible for designing and implementing a PASD Production Application Systems Documentation IS Knowledge Database that would provide key information needed to effectively maintain a particular production system via an intuitive, easy to use format. Knowledge database would be primarily used to facilitate the out-sourcing of routine production maintenance for many of the Travelers Production Systems.

Confidenital

Programmer/Analyst Claim Reporting Systems Area

• Primary responsibility for program analysis for requests and development of small work and test plans, which provided the basis for the costing back to customer for each request.
• Once go-ahead was given by customer, was responsible for making the program changes, testing including customer verification of results and implementing the support into production.

Systems Supervisor/Administrator PFSD Claim Reporting Systems

• Became Supervisor of the new Personal Lines Only Claim Reporting Systems. Managed 6 programmer/analysts in customizing the Loss Reporting Systems for Personal Lines Only.
• Key projects during this time included rewrite of the General Managers BI Report, implementing flexible component-level reporting and conversion of key reports from paper to on-line host reporting systems with a customized graphical user interface.
• Selected to be part of new System Reengineering Team. Was trained in a new programming technology called IEF now called Coolgen which generated DB2/COBOL code. Worked to design a new reengineered DB2 claim database using IEF. Did data-modeling, created the processes and procedures in IEF to generate the code and did some testing. Reorganization left this project, and several others like it, unfinished.

Sr. Systems Administrator

Confidenital

• Managed 8 programmers in the maintenance and development of Loss Reporting and Risk Management Reporting Systems.

Sr. Systems Administrator

• TCS Testing Area Took over the Claim Testing Area.
• Oversaw the planning, systems testing and implementation of various Claim Versions. Oversaw the on-going maintenance of system testing scripts, testing plans and version implementation plans. This area was responsible for doing the final testing before versions were moved into production.

Sr. Systems Administrator

• For approximately 9 months, managed 6-8 programmers in maintaining the Claim check writing system FASTLINE and the Check Reconciliation System CRS .
• This position gave me exposure to claim financial systems, taking in feeds from Banks, deferred files, etc.