SUMMARY:

• Results oriented Senior IT Program Delivery Manager with over 18years of consulting and industry experience in Group Insurance, Life Insurance and Financial Services.
• Led various multi - year Transformation programs using waterfall and agile methodologies.
• Managed cross departmental (Matrix), geographically distributed, multi-region and culturally diverse technical teams, vendors, stakeholders and workgroups in service operations and projects. Consistently met deadlines, worked with limited budget, conflict resolution, onsite/offshore technical teams, SOP (standard Operating Procedure) creation, prioritize assignments and manage multiple projects concurrently.
• Managing IT Production Customer Service portfolio of 50 + applications.
• Customer Focused.
• Managed Programs and Service deliveries with budgets.
• Delivery management using Agile, Waterfall & Hybrid models.
• Executive and C-level Project Reporting including running governance and Steering committee meetings.
• Responsible for delivering services and projects within delivery SLAs.
• Understanding and establishing KPIs and creating processes to monitor and improve them continuously.
• Business Case Development, Cost Benefit Analysis, Total Cost of Ownership (TCO), Return on Investment (ROI), Internal Rate of Return (IRR) analysis
• Technically strong and focuses on building optimal and scalable solutions
• Solution Design and Application development using adaptive, incremental and iterative development principles.
• Managed large-scale transformation/modernization initiatives
• Budgeting/ Resource management expertise, Escalation Management
• Participated and conducted numerous POC (Proof of concept) exercises with Enterprise architects and external vendors.
• Application Deployment & Maintenance, SDLC Compliance, Process compliance and application audits
• System Migrations/ Integrations, data conversion
• Participated in Pre-Sales, Contract Management; RFP & SOW creation
• IT processes based on ITIL/ITSM, PMI’s Project Management Standards, CMMI, Six Sigma Process and Industry Best Practices
• Expertise in bringing down operational cost YoY.
• Strong Consulting background including vendor management, Onsite, Offshore delivery.
• Strong hands on development and support experience on Mainframe applications and integration with distributed applications.

CAREER PROGRESSION:

Delivery Manager

Confidential

Technical Environment: COBOL, JCL, VSAM, CICS, DB2, C#, .NET FRAMEWORK, TIBCOI-process, XML, JSON, JAVA, AWS, Python, Webmethods, SOA, Service Now, App Dynamics, Attachmate VB macros, ETL, CTG and UI Path.

Responsibilities:

• IT Production Service Delivery manager (Incident management, Problem management, Defect management, Enhancements and Projects) for Enterprise Production support team with 24X7 delivery responsibility and accountability for 50+ applications supported by ~70 -member global IT team; with an IT budget of over $4M/year
• Key architect for Confidential in helping Guardian transition from a legacy production support model to a Managed services Model
• Responsible for Service Management, Incident Management, Change Management, Problem Management, SLAs and KPIs, Root Cause analysis and remediation for outages, Risk and Compliance Management, Service Reporting, and drive a culture of Continuous Service Improvement using ITIL/ITSM best practices.
• Leading diverse and multi-disciplined technical teams.
• Working with Situation Management and Confidential delivery teams in getting to root cause of critical S1 outages.
• By leveraging the Program Management expertise, spearheaded tech debt reduction/ app modernization initiatives within production services.
• Worked with the Guardian IT and business in establishing Kanban processes for defect fixes and enhancement initiatives within the fixed priced production support model.
• Initiated several automation projects within production support leading to a ~$ 800k savings for the Client during FY 2018.
• Initiated increased usage of App Dynamics for enhanced production alerting.
• Instrumental in driving tiger team model that lead to improving the aggregate application availability (for all systems) from 9 .99 % during the peak enrollment season (busy season).
• Resource Management - Managed Hiring needs for programs, projects and operations including Appraisals, Salary increases and promotions.
• Responsible for firmwide exercises like disaster recovery, data center migrations for applications within application portfolio.
• Point of contact for all production support escalations and managing a Stakeholder suite comprising - Directors, AVPs and VP (Client’s IT and business, Confidential Management).
• People Management - Team members working across 8 different locations in USA and India.

Program Manager

Confidential

Technical Environment: Applications built on COBOL, JCL, VSAM, CICS, DB2, Tibco BW, Stored Procedures (DB2 and Oracle), XML, MQ

Responsibilities:

• IT program delivery manager for Billing transformation program (~$3M) to build a new interface/ integration with a SaaS billing software (PB360) for Client’s multiple lines of insurance business.
• Conducted POCs (Proof of concepts) and worked with the Enterprise architects, business teams and the vendor team in the Proof of concept to identify the synergies between Confidential product and client applications.
• Worked with the Guardian IT team and data architects in designing the data and transport layers.
• Participated in requirement analysis and identifying system designs to be worked by Confidential delivery teams.
• Estimation, sizing, establishing project plans and milestones for Confidential delivery team.
• Responsible for End to End program delivery and SLA management with a ten-member onshore and offshore Confidential delivery team.
• Closely managed project risk, dependencies and develop mitigation plan to ensure projects are delivered on time.
• Represented the Confidential delivery team in the Guardian steering committee meetings.
• Ensuring the Confidential delivery stays with the proposed DCM (Delivery center margin) and OI (operating income).
• Leading UAT support and getting business signoffs.
• Transitioning to a viable support model towards the completion of the project.
• Stakeholder management -IT and business (Directors, AVPs and VP)
• Responsible for ensuring project quality by conducting peer reviews, automated and manual unit testing.
• Planning and implementing new software releases and any upgrades driven by SaaS software.

Senior Project Manager

Confidential

Technical Environment: Applications built on COBOL, JCL, VSAM, CICS, DB2, UDB, Tibco BW, Stored procedures, XML, MQ

Responsibilities:

• Program involved development and maintenance of 20+ Mainframe systems across policy admin, underwriting, claims, actuarial, finance, billing and accounting departments with business, systems and operations teams spread across the Guardian's Group Insurance Portfolio.
• Responsible to ensure all contracted applications meet availability, incident resolution and response, FTR SLAs.
• IT Liaison between Confidential, Operation Officers (SVP), Vendor Partners, Business sponsors and Development team.
• Managed projects Hybrid and Waterfall methodologies. Instrumental in migrating some of the programs from Waterfall to Agile as appropriate.
• Responsible for defect management, UAT support, getting sign offs and approving the team's work for deployment.
• Closely managed project risk, dependencies and develop mitigation plan to ensure projects are delivered on time
• Managed projects Hybrid and Waterfall methodologies. Instrumental in migrating some of the programs from Waterfall to Agile as appropriate
• Responsible for defect management, UAT support, getting sign offs and approving the team's work for deployment.
• Managed programs involving all IT partners - Development, Architecture & Design, Data, Infrastructure (middleware & DBA), BA, QA and IT Operations (Change management, Deployment) - Ensured projects are implemented with high quality and adhere to the established IT standards - Audit ready.
• People management - team of 16 application developers working out of US and India.
• Worked with Confidential Pre Sales teams to provide support during any new business initiatives.
• Cross area coordination for High/Major changes being implemented in production.
• Implemented performance optimization projects that lead to ~ $1 M MIPS savings.

Manager Application Development

Confidential

Technical Environment: Applications built on COBOL, JCL, VSAM, CICS, DB2, UDB, JAVA, SOA, CAM

Responsibilities:

• Offshore Program Delivery Manager for $ 13 M USD program. Responsibilities involved leading a 65-member team (peak size including 3 project development managers and one testing manager)
• Worked with Confidential and Farmers IT management teams to develop iterative project schedules and resource planning.
• Project execution using SDLC model.
• Monitored and managed project schedule, budget, scope, work allocations and escalations.
• Identified program risks and mitigation
• Participated in Solution design at client location during the early discovery and requirements phase, also worked as a subject matter expert during the design phase.
• Worked with the Integration and Functional testing team to provide required testing support.
• Creating health and status reports for Confidential and Farmers senior management.
• Coordination with cross functional areas including Framers business, DBAs, Change management teams and Auditors.
• Various project implementations as a part of program delivery and warranty support.
• Resource Management including appraisals, adding /releasing resources, working with Confidential India HR teams for external hiring based on program needs.
• Responsible for program delivery meeting SLAs and Quality standards.
• Rollout of the final released out software for all states in the US for independent and exclusive agents.

Senior Software Engineer

Confidential

Technical Environment: Applications built on COBOL, JCL, VSAM, CICS, DB2, UDB, Tibco BW, Stored procedures, XML, MQ

Responsibilities:

• Mainframe Application developer and SME on APPS (Auto Insurance Application) for Farmers. Responsibilities included design, coding, testing and deployment based on project requirements.
• Assisting team members in designing, reviews and problem resolution.
• Responsible for clearing Integration and Functional testing as per schedule and ensuring defect free code.
• Application performance optimization.

Associate Consultant

Confidential

Technical Environment: Applications built on COBOL, JCL, VSAM, CICS, DB2, UDB, Stored procedures, XML, MQ, CTG (CICS transaction gateway)

Responsibilities:

• Mainframe Application developer working on developing CICS and COBOL batch programs with DB2, VSAM backend.
• Design and development of Automated clearing house for Confidential and integrating with new features like auto debit, bill payment, Check by Phone etc
• Designing Integrations of mainframe backend modules with distributed front end.
• Responsible for clearing Integration and Functional testing as per schedule and ensuring defect free code.