SUMMARY:

• Applications management, program management, project management,
• Ten years in independent consulting as program manager, project manager in financial services
• Leadership track in the healthcare industry, managing all IT services in small / Mid - sized corporations, managing multiple levels of managers
• Proven track record delivering on large projects, portfolio of small projects
• Managing large teams with extensive and creative vendor contracting models - staff aug / fixed price / service models
• Continuous improvement with development and testing practices, effecting measurable results
• Proven strength in budgeting, budget adherence, resource planning
• Proven strength in taking initiatives, conflict resolution, building relationships, effecting change in behaviors

PROFESSIONAL HISTORY:

Confidential, Chicago, IL

Manager, Applications

Responsibilities:

• Delivering continuous streams of large and small projects with annual budgets of over $2.3M, adhering to stringent funding practices; repeated records of meeting timelines, goals and budget; meeting complex resourcing demands with staff aug and, fixed price models
• Projects include migration of 10 applications from MQ messaging to a Solace architecture, creation of shared services (towards an SOA architecture) for a Trade order Entry application, major upgrade and functional changes for the Fundlinx trading and recon system; SWIFT automation for unitized funds trading system, major enhancements for Private Equity trading workflow system, …
• Effected major improvements in testing practices by contracting with vendor for testing as a service (replacing staff aug); self-driven initiatives in creating automated testing; collaboration with Software Quality Management (SM)
• Strong record of negotiating with portfolio managers, and coaching and collaborating with Enterprise Project Resources, in order to bring about improvements in areas such as requirements gathering,, UAT management and reporting, and managing to fiscal year budget constraints
• Strong initiatives negotiating and resolving conflicts with business units and in improving stakeholder accountability
• Track record of mentoring project managers, technical leads and development leads in communication, adherence to processes and overall success
• Management of constantly shifting funding pictures; complex ongoing resource management and allocation efforts;

Consultant, Project Manager

Confidential

Responsibilities:

• Managed creation of business, information and application architecture for delivering a data warehouse for commercial risk model creation and execution; led the visioning and creation of additional architectural artifacts for effective communication and strategy
• Transition leadership during reorganization; managed Technology assignments to re-align program activity; organized Technology teams and managers to address strained business relations and make an effective case for technology value-add; multiple presentations
• Created Technology program plan for architecture and application development; eliminated entire program work stream through reorg, resulting in efficiency gains and fewer interdependencies; adherence to milestones for Basel regulatory reporting; created reporting of Technology program financials, addressing structural discrepancies between tracking systems; coordinated fiscal year budgeting

Technical Environment: Teradata, Informatica, SharePoint, Clarity

Confidential, Chicago IL

Consultant, Senior Project Manager

Responsibilities:

• Managing multiple trading applications development projects with offshore and onshore teams located in Chicago, UK and India
• Delivered on budget, on schedule, multiple application enhancements for Trade order entry and processing, adhering to stringent corporate SDLC standards; requirements management efforts, consolidating from multiple business areas; orchestrating elaborate User Acceptance Testing and tracking for in scope, regression and non-functional requirements
• Managing development of client portfolio rebalancing application; iterative prototyping efforts; hands-on efforts with business analysts on documentation of detailed requirements; business partner and negotiations on review and approvals
• Ongoing engagement with Alternative Assets business managers and change management groups, negotiating program strategies, funding gates and scheduling considerations; delivering workflow applications projects for bank loans, private equity total market value and fund of hedge funds; resolution of competing interests, conflicts and transitions;

Technical Environment: J2EE, Oracle, Linux, WLS11, MQ

Confidential, Chicago IL

Consultant, Senior Project Manager

Responsibilities:

• Managing multiple vendors and internal IT team building SharePoint MOSS-based website.
• Managed Oracle database upgrades to 11g enterprise wide for 100+ applications, coordinating DBA and application teams.
• Managed creation of new corporate website - effected significant course corrections from day 1 - introduced formal test planning for vendor and client, change control and regression testing; re-planned development milestones to correct slippages; re-planned vendor testing, content loading and UAT activities so as to ensure progress during holiday months
• Raised IT/Client collaboration to required levels - managed expectations and participation of strong internal client group; negotiated buy-in on task assignments, ownership issues and challenging scheduling decisions; ensured continual risk identification, assessment and responses
• Defined entrance and exit gates for vendor contracts; ensured vendor adherence to contracting terms; negotiated warranty coverage for defects with vendors; managed successful installation - tracked “T-minus” plans, pre-install and post-install verifications; managed GO/NOGO process; anchored execution of installation activities; managed 3 post-install releases.

Technical Environment: Microsoft dot net 3.0, Oracle, SharePoint development

Confidential, Chicago, IL

Consultant Senior Project Manager

Responsibilities:

• Managed program and project creation with a team of Accenture business program managers, architects, business analysts and business project managers in a commercial credit card application migration program
• Created RFPs for sourcing reverse engineering,design and development of custom mappers and custom reports; data migration utilizing Datastage ETL technologies.
• Consolidated requirements, architecture, approach and RFQ documents.

Technical environment: J2EE, Data Stage ETL, Oracle 10G, Linux

Confidential, Chicago, IL

Consultant, Program Manager / Senior Project Manager

Responsibilities:

• Resolved business dissatisfaction through issue and risk management; revamped program meetings with business, introducing committed focus on issue resolution and action plans; maintained individual budgets for 6 releases for 30 resources ($3M overall)
• Improvement in testing efficiencies through collaborative test planning, improved documentation of requirements and workflow, targeted integration test design and targeted “smoke” tests; successful efforts in corrective actions, coaching and mentoring
• 38% improvement in software quality through introduction of (defect density) quality metrics, root-cause analyses, test-driven design and improved vendor contracting; 100% record of implementing lessons learned from 4 team sessions
• Delivered on time, multiple development and integration projects for Fixed Income trading groups in Chicago and London using Confidential Financial’s Portia system; gathered workflow and SWIFT messaging requirements and business rules from multiple trading, custody and technology teams; created SDLC documents including scope, risk matrix, UAT and project plans
• Managed creation of investment portal from multiple Transfer Agency systems located overseas with a supporting data warehouse; coordinated requirements from business teams in Dublin and London; oversight for project plans for 5 project teams; proactively initiated data quality assessment and mapping efforts resulting in schedule gains; managed 3-day design checkpoint to streamline complex efforts

Technical environment: Microsoft Dot Net 3.0, Web Services, Oracle 10G, Linux

Confidential, Riverwood, IL

Consultant, Program Manager

Responsibilities:

• Delivered on time, (subset of) $30M integration and migration efforts (President’s ) of a credit card system (Vision Plus) for a joint project (iSYS) of US-based Discover teams and UK-based Morgan Stanley teams; offshore development resources in Pune, India;
• Led natural work groups for requirements and design phases for credit card processing functions of embossing, chip & PIN, encryption / decryption, self-select PIN, payment hierarchy; baselined requirements through complex approval gates;
• Streamlined requirements creation, review and approval process for 55 system functions; ensured mapping and tracking of granular business needs and change requests into detailed documentation and test planning; ensured cohesiveness among disparate sources
• Met development timelines, leading 12-15 application leads/PMs over 55 system functions through program planning and review for up to 110 project resources (on-site as well as off-site in England, Scotland and India), while adhering to PMO standards
• Created program practices for project teams - guidelines for multi-stage requirements review, project schedule maintenance, weekly status reports, report cards; mentored PMs on red and yellow statuses, dependencies and follow-up communications
• Effected 18% in cost savings through changes in testing strategies; brought together disparate groups to joint strategizing and planning, earlier in the calendar, advancing testing schedules; met timelines and goals for a series of coordinated tests including systems testing, integration testing, UAT, volume testing, failover testing and migration mocks, dress rehearsals and deployment

Technical environment: IBM mainframe, CICS, COBOL, VSAM, DB2, WebSphere, Hostbridge, VisionPlus 8.21

Confidential, Deerfield, IL

Applications Management Consultant

Responsibilities:

• Completed on-time integration of credit card application front-end to 3rd party dental practice management software enabling access to an installed base of over a 100 dental practices; proactive interactions with product management on requirements and scope
• Completed multiple external customer boarding on to soap/XML based apply & Buy retail private label credit card system; QA and integration testing among departmental, corporate QA and external customers; successful deliveries, progressive process gains over repetitions; completed and managed several data mapping tasks for file and message interfaces
• Managed to and implemented corporate PMO practices in the group; self-trained on current practices; trained other PMs and IT associates on adhering to and coordinating PMO processes in all project phases; coordinated / authored creation of QA methodology, for system testing, regression testing and user acceptance testing

Confidential, Oakbrook, Illinois

Senior IT Director

Responsibilities:

• Managed 50 staff, 5 managers and Project Managers
• Managed implementation of Filenet document management system for a knowledge management undertaking; managed business/IT workflow and process improvement efforts in document intake; leadership efforts in “selling” process; managed IT efforts for initial software install; and additional server installs to improve document flow
• Managed delivery of (subset of) $12M Big 5 engagement including clinical Data products architecture, website redesign, Customer Relations Management system (Siebel), Document Management System (Filenet), Directory Services