QUALIFICATIONS:

• Experienced Information Technology (IT) professional in the areas of Business System Analysis, Technical Writing, Quality Assurance (QA), User Acceptance Testing (UAT), and Project Management.
• Extensive IT consulting experience in Financial Services, Education, Retail, eCommerce, Manufacturing, Airlines, and Marketing projects.
• Comprehensive knowledge of Agile, Scrum, Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC), Project Management Life Cycle (PMLC) and Software Testing Life Cycle (STLC).
• Excellent communication (verbal and written), analytical, research, and presentation skills with an outstanding ability to communicate with both technical and non - technical audiences.
• Adept at directing and accomplishing simple to complex projects independently or as part of a team, while staying calm and focused amidst fast paced and high pressure situations.
• Very quick learner.

• Project Management: SharePoint, JIRA, Version One
• Databases: Microsoft (MS) Access, SQL Server
• Languages: SQL, HTML
• Software Applications: MS Word/Excel/PowerPoint/Outlook, Microsoft Access, Adobe FrameMaker, Adobe Acrobat, Paint Shop Pro, Lotus Notes, Visio, iRise, SnagIt, Adobe Illustrator, Dreamweaver, httpFox,, WebEx, Level 3, GoToMeeting
• Content Management Systems: Adobe Experience Manager (AEM), Adobe Target, Jive

CORE EXPERIENCE:

• Agile Software Development
• Business and Functional Requirements
• Business Process Manuals (BPMs)
• Business Process Modeling (BPM)
• Coaching and Mentoring
• Content Management Systems (CMS)
• Data Analysis
• Enterprise Application Integration
• GAP Analysis
• ISO Documentation
• Iterative Development
• Joint Application Design (JAD)
• Omniture
• Object Oriented Analysis
• Process Mapping
• Product Owner
• Project Management Life Cycle (PMLC)
• Relational Databases
• Service Oriented Architecture (SOA)
• Software Testing Life Cycle (STLC)
• System Analysis

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE:

Senior Business Analyst - Consultant

Confidential

Responsibilities:

• Lead Business Systems Analyst on the Content Management System Replacement project to move the company’s intranet from a RedDot platform to a Jive platform.

Lead Business Systems Analyst - Consultant

Confidential

Responsibilities:

• Lead Business Analyst on the ecommerce team (delta.com) for the AIR4 project. This project provided a suite of Passenger Service Systems (PSS) to Virgin Airlines (VA).
• Responsible for creating gap analysis between the Delta system and the VA system.
• Main liaison between Delta's ecommerce team and VA's Business and Technical Teams and was responsible for organizing and facilitating JAD sessions between the teams.
• Analyzed VA Change Requests (CRs) to ensure they provided necessary detail for the Delta Development Team to code.
• Prepared supporting documentation for the eCommerce Team to present in executive solution review meetings.
• Performed extensive testing to ensure all subsystems and applications functioned correctly on the VA test website.

Senior Business Analyst - Consultant

Minneapolis, MN

Confidential

Responsibilities:

• Lead Business Analyst for all of the capella.edu eCommerce projects.
• Gathered and assessed detailed business requirements and recommended business solutions that satisfied sponsor/stakeholder needs, while continually exploring and assessing options for value-add for business.
• Acted as a liaison among business stakeholders/product owners and the Development Team in order to elicit, analyze, communicate, and validate requirements for changes to business products, processes and systems.
• Created and delivered test plans, test cases, and functional, system integration testing to ensure quality of product.
• Provided BA support to Development Team (onshore and offshore) and offshore Quality Assurance (QA) team during development, testing, and implementation.
• Performed UAT, documented and tracked all errors/bugs.
• Contributed to successful project completion within budget and on time by identifying risks and developing/recommending mitigation strategies.
• Developed process and procedures to use during weekly deployments.
• Lead BA on the project to implement Adobe Experience Manager (AEM), a web content management system (CMS) for capella.edu.
• Trained and mentored associate BAs and new BAs.

Significant Accomplishment: Lead BA during a multi-phased rollout of new, extremely complicated, courseload planner tool. Created exceptionally detailed requirements, which used complicated business rules and mathematical formulas. Worked closely with the offshore Quality Assurance team to ensure they understood the requirements and all testing was done correctly and thoroughly.

Senior Business Systems Analyst – Consultant

Eagan, MN

Confidential

Responsibilities:

• Senior Business System Analyst (BSA) on a project to rollout an entirely new legal blog on a WordPress platform.
• Worked with business stakeholders to elicit, analyze, communicate, and validate requirements.
• Collected, analyzed and synthesized data to document requirements, and translated into detailed technology needs and formal specifications.
• Ensured needs of stakeholders and business were met.

Business Systems Analyst – Consultant

Minneapolis, MN

Confidential

Responsibilities:

• Sole Business Systems Analyst (BSA) on a project to take pharmacy software, which had been used exclusively for Medicare, and make it usable for commercial clients.
• Incorporated seven years of changes and enhancements into five user manuals, without the supporting change documentation. This needed to be done before the modifications could be made to the software to enable it be used for commercial clients.
• Created master acronym/glossary document for internal use and client use.
• Created detailed procedures for extremely complicated pharmaceutical processes.
• Set up and captured graphics to demonstrate steps in the workflows for use by developers and business owners.
• Performed UAT.
• Worked 100% remotely.

Significant Accomplishment: Became a Subject Matter Expert (SME) on Magellan’s pharmacy software (FirstRx) in a very short amount of time.

Senior Business Systems Analyst – Consultant

Eden Prairie, MN

Confidential

Responsibilities:

• Created and maintained business and functional requirements for a complete redesign of the current myOptumHealthStore.com website. This included all website text and graphics, use cases, UML activity diagrams, business rules, data conversion rules, wireframes, and all other documentation required by the SDLC.
• Conducted JAD sessions with all levels of a large corporate environment (executive management, business users, Marketing, Project Managers, SMEs, outside Development Team) to discuss and analyze issues, define scope, and gather data to be used to create the business and functional requirements.
• Analyzed and performed QA testing on the new website to ensure all functionalities worked seamlessly.
• Primary point of contact between business and outside Development Team (Development Team was not part of Optum).
• Held onsite and offsite business meetings with the outside Development Team to monitor progress, note issues, and work on resolutions to the issues.

Significant Accomplishment: Used analytical expertise to review the changes that had been made to the myOptumHealthStore.com website and studied the website flow. Discovered there were numerous inconsistencies, gaps, and errors in the new website. Was able to correct the problems, devise new solutions, and ensured the new website was functional and went live on time preventing Optum from being out of compliance.

User Experience (UX) Analyst – Consultant

Bloomington, MN

Confidential

Responsibilities:

• UX Analyst on the Financial Services team for the bestbuy.com website.
• Followed the Agile development processes.
• Analyzed business requirements, held JAD sessions with the Information Architect, Designer, Business Analyst, and Copywriter to discuss and analyze issues, define scope, and gather data to be used to create the User Test Plan document.
• Performed QA testing which resulted in finding several issues that would have derailed the deployment.
• Led UAT sessions with the members of the Financial Team members and with business owners.
• Tracked defects using JIRA, generated defect summary reports, and retested defects to verify issue was satisfactorily resolved.

Significant Accomplishment: Created new UAT template for use by all eCommerce teams.

Senior Technical Writer – Consultant

Sacramento, CA 

Confidential

Responsibilities:

• Participated and contributed, as a member of a cross-functional team, using the Scrum development process, for a project with the Confidential.
• Created and edited software and hardware user guides for a contract using Data Item Descriptions (DIDs) to ensure technical documentation met the specific requirements of the Confidential.
• Participated and facilitated numerous JAD sessions with SMEs, Lead Information Architect, technical staff, and customer support engineers to develop proficiency in internal processes and guidelines.
• Employed BMP to create wireframes, illustrating the complicated weather sensing processes, for use by Confidential end-users.
• Worked closely with and fostered good working relationships with the Confidential and the Technology group.
• Designed training sessions (used use cases, wireframes, and activity diagrams) and formulated actions based upon expected results.
• Oversaw and directed work of other associates assisting with this project.

Significant Accomplishment: Contributed technical knowledge, direction, and analytical expertise to a major, multimillion-dollar Federal Government project involving the mass-scale replacement of weather-reporting equipment at every airport within the United States.

Business Systems Analyst

Pleasanton, CA

Confidential

Responsibilities:

• BSA for the credit card collection back-office applications and the credit card payment website projects.
• Conducted JAD sessions with all levels of a large corporate environment (executive management, business users, Lead Information Architect, Project Managers for business and technology, outside vendors, and onshore and offshore Development Teams) to discuss and analyze issues, define scope, and gather data to be used to create the business and functional requirements.
• Created and maintained workflow diagrams, software processes, use cases, UML activity diagrams, business rules, data conversion rules, wireframes, and all other documentation required by the SDLC.
• Tracked all issues/defects and worked with the Development Teams to resolve all issues/defects and created required Change Requests.
• Managed multiple projects in a highly changeable, fast-paced environment.

Significant Accomplishment: As one part of a newly developed three member team saved the company $14,000,000, in one year, by ensuring the business and functional requirements met the standards of Technology Department, while clearly stating business needs, thus resulting in a markedly lower amount of Change Requests during coding and testing. On one of my projects, I saved the company over $100,000 by redoing the requirements.

Business Systems Analyst/Senior Technical Writer/Trainer 2002-2007 (Staff)

Livermore, CA

Confidential

Responsibilities:

• Lead BA/Technical Writer/Trainer for three of the company’s divisions, federal defaulted student loans, student loan consolidation and verification, and Medicare/Medicaid claims audit and recovery.
• Managed multiple projects, with competing priorities and due dates.
• In the Technical Writer role:
• Created user reference guides for all new products and enhancements.

In the Lead BA role:

• Created and maintained the business and functional requirements, wireframes, and all other documentation required by the SDLC for all system integration projects.
• Participated and facilitated in JAD sessions with executive management, mid-level managers, team leaders, end-users, Development Teams, and SMEs to determine project scope, discuss and analyze issues, and gather data used to create the business and functional requirements and all wireframes.
• Designed desktop GUI for collection, loan consolidation, loan verification, auditor, and accounts receivable user interfaces. Started with wireframes of screen images and ended with exact representation of how the screen was to look and operate, with corresponding requirements. Used by developers during coding and QA during testing.
• Utilized BPM to create wireframes of the process flows for current (as-is) system and the new or enhanced system (to-be) for use by the Development Team (onshore and offshore) and QA.
• Conducted extensive testing on software, during development and at completion, to ensure all business and functional requirements had been met and operated correctly.
• Led development and design process for a new audit and recovery project with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Researched and analyzed audit and recovery workflow. Developed business and functional requirements working with the Product Owner and the Development Team. Created all use cases, wireframes, and UML activity diagrams. Designed desktop GUI for audit interface, used by an outside vendor, and for the recovery interface, used in-house.

In the Trainer role:

• Designed and created training sessions for all new enhancements.

Significant Accomplishments: Designed two completely new software systems, the Loan Verification Certification System and the Audit and Recovery System.

Technical Writer/Permanent and Contractor

Carpenteria, CA

Confidential

Responsibilities:

• Wrote user reference guides and training materials for an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system which was sold to an international market for the Automotive, Life Sciences, Configured Products, and Consumer Products industries. Modules worked on were Financial, Customer Management, Manufacturing, Demand and Supply Chain Planning, Supply Chain Execution, Service and Support, and Enterprise Asset Management.
• Oversaw and managed the documentation process from inception through release, which included conducting research, interviewing SMEs, and developers, and testing.
• Worked offsite, with very limited supervision, for almost seven years. Have no problem being disciplined, focused, and getting the job done.

Significant Accomplishments: Created the company's first uniform set of documentation. Involved taking several years of updates and bringing the original documentation up to current state. Established style standards to be used by the department.