SUMMARY:

• Seasoned program / project manager in applications and infrastructure, Financial services and health insurance industries
• Successful 10 - year consulting track, delivering on portfolios of large and small projects; in-house leadership roles
• Streamlining multiple projects for efficiency; Global business and technology teams
• Proven strength in senior management / stakeholder relations, presentations, score-cards, reporting
• Coaching PMs (currently PMI mentor); continuous improvement with development and testing practices, effecting measurable results
• Complex resource planning; Creative resourcing and vendor contracting - staff aug / fixed price / service models
• Vendor and product selections, implementations, contracting, vendor management

PROFESSIONAL HISTORY:

Confidential, Chicago, IL

Manager, Applications Projects and Support

Responsibilities:

• Leading global teams of 25 to 40 employees and contractors in multiple project deliveries in 3 major application areas - Alternatives, Mutual Fund Services and Trade Order Entry
• Delivering continuous streams of large and small projects (Waterfall and agile); Java and dotnet applications development, integration, and infrastructure; 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 augmentation and, fixed price models
• Projects included Trade order Entry application enhancements to a shared services model (towards an SOA architecture); (infrastructure) migration of 10 apps from MQ messaging to a Solace architecture; major upgrade and functional compliance changes to the Fundlinx trading and recon system; SWIFT automation for unitized funds trading system; major enhancements to a Private Equity trading workflow system;
• Effected major improvements in testing practices and change management by contracting with vendor for testing as a service (replacing staff aug); self-driven initiatives in creating automated testing; collaboration with Software Quality Management (SQM)
• Strong initiatives negotiating and collaborating with business units and improving stakeholder accountability; negotiations with portfolio managers; 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
• 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 resource management and allocation efforts; using SharePoint, MS Project

Environment: J2EE, Dot Net, ALM, Selenium, WebLogic, MQ, Solace messaging, SharePoint, MS Project, Waterfall, Agile

Confidential, Pittsburgh, PA

Consultant, Technology Program Manager

Responsibilities:

• Managed creation of business, information and application architecture for delivering a data warehouse for commercial risk model creation for compliance; 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

Environment: Teradata, Informatica, SharePoint, Clarity, MS Project, Waterfall, Agile

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 and infrastructure migrations 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, SharePoint, MS Project, Waterfall, Iterative

Confidential, Chicago IL

Consultant, Senior Project Manager

Responsibilities:

• Managed Oracle database 11G upgrades and infrastructure installs 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 (infrastructure and 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 plans, pre-install and post-install verifications; managed GO/NOGO process; anchored execution of installation activities; managed 3 post-install releases.

Environment: Microsoft dot net 3.0, Oracle, SharePoint development, MS Project, Waterfall, Iterative

Confidential, Chicago, IL

Consultant Senior Project Manager

Responsibilities:

• Managed program and project creation with a team of Confidential 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.

Environment: J2EE, Data Stage ETL, Oracle 10G, Linux, Waterfall

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 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, 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

Environment: Microsoft Dot Net 3.0, Web Services, Oracle 10G, Linux, SharePoint, MS Project, Waterfall, Iterative

Confidential, Riverwood, IL

Consultant, Program Manager

Responsibilities:

• 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

Environment: IBM mainframe, CICS, COBOL, VSAM, DB2, WebSphere, Hostbridge, VisionPlus 8.21, Waterfall

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