Profile Headline

PMI Certified PMP with over 13 years of experience and proven track record in Project/Program Management, Software Application Development, Maintenance and Testing in Banking and Financial Services domain seeking Program/Project Management position in large IT organizations.

Skill and Credentials:

SUMMARY

• Over 13 years of experience as an IT professional which includes over 6 years in project/program management.

• Results-driven Project-management professional with PMI certified PMP credential in good standing and proven track record in successfully managing large Banking and Financial Programs end to end From Planning to Successful closure .

• Exceptional interpersonal communicator who effectively interacts with clients and all levels of management.

• Creative thinker and analytical problem-solver with demonstrated ability to manage projects from planning through execution/completion under the pressure of fast-paced, time-sensitive environments.

• Has managed large projects and programs in for large banking and financial services organizations in the US.

• Successfully managed Transition Delivery management of large engagements with technologies ranging from Mainframes, Oracle Peoplesoft, Ariba, Oracle Financials, Java/J2EE and HP Service Manager 7.11

Recent major accomplishments are as follows:

1. As Transition Manager for a large global sourcing fixed bid Managed Services engagement for a large US Bank, successfully transitioned a portfolio of 47 applications with a FTE count of 36 from another vendor to Cognizant within a span of 7 months. Received Delivery excellence awards from both Cognizant and Cllient for successfully meeting the Project KPIs of Time, Cost and Quality.

2. As Service Delivery manager of a large portfolio of Managed Services engagement successfully managed the Maintenance and Support of a portfolio of 30 applications which included domains as diverse as Mail Systems applications Regulatory System applications, Human resources applications, Ariba, Oracle Financials and HP Service Manager for large US bank.

3. As Risk Management Strategy Program manager simulateneously completed 2 large multi year, multi-million dollar Data Warehousing and Analytics programs end to end starting in Jully 2011 ending in April 2013 achieving the business objecttives within budget and on time. Successfully implemented the IBM Banking Datawarehouse Data model for the first time in the bank.

4. As Project Manager in a large multi year, multi million dollar Commercial Prepaid Card Program successfully completed delivery of multiple workstreams to implement Settlement and Reconcilliation functionalities of Prepaid card transactions.

5. Created Automation tools using Excel VBA for automating the functionality of settlement and reconciliation for the Operational Balancing and Control Line of Business. Highly appreciated and awarded for the creative design and development of automation to reduce manual effort and eliminate errors in manual settlement and reconciliation.

6. As Project Manager of Payaments Optimization program successfully implemented Stamps Purchase functionality in Keybank ATM terminals.

7. Currently working as a trusted Cognizant Capability Champion in the Payments domain for a large US bank.

8. Successfully interviwed and identified Project Management candidates to cater to Cognizant sourcing needs for a large US bank.

PROJECT MANAGEMENT SKILLS

• Experience with managing applications having Mainframes, HP Service Manager 7.11, Oracle Peoplesoft, Oracle Financials, Ariba and Troux.
• Experienced with Personnel Mgmt Team Mentoring, goal setting performance appraisals.
• Experienced in delivering Time Material and Fixed Bid Projects.
• Project Sizing Estimation Experience in sizing IT work Experience practicing different software effort estimation methods.
• Experienced in delivering on complex IT projects with Onsite/Offshore Delivery with teams globally at multi onsite offshore/offsite development centers.
• Experienced in delivering presentations to Project Sponsors on monthly performance metrics, delivery issues challenges, trends and weekly status reports.
• Experienced in managing SOW/Contracts, Staffing Projections, Resource Ramp ups.
• Experienced in Account Management activities, Client Relationship and Business Development Proposals and presentations.
• Program Management - Manages multiple IT projects starting from transition to delivery of high performance project deliverables This involves Prioritization Time Management skills, Achieving maintaining high resource utilization ratios within the program and Scope, Quality, Cost and Communication management skills
• Process Management - Establishing processes standards, identifying areas of improvement in existing processes. Managed Defect Prevention to track, monitor defects, performed Pareto analysis on the defects and provide corrective and preventive actions using causal analysis like 5-WHY analysis.
• End to End Project Management and Delivery of Datawarehousing projects.
• Experience in Managing delivery and Testing of Large Cards and Payments Program.
• Experience spans across Requirements Gathering, Project Planning, Estimation, Analysis, Design, Development and Maintenance of Application Software and Delivery Management.
• Managed team size of around 40 involving diverse skills and varying team size

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE:

PROJECT DESCRIPTION:

• The primary objective of this initiative is to Build a Web based User Interface for the Commercial bank clients to allow self service capability to enroll into the Email and SMS Bank generated alerts and able to manage the Alert parameters based on User entitlements which includes setting up delivery mode email, text, mobile number , setting up quiet times, setting up account threshholds, viewing Message History etc. The key business value driver of this project is to enrich the User experience by providing the ability of centralized administration of Messages and Alerts from multiple sources from one single Message Center. This Project is part of a large Foundational transformation program within the bank for the commercial online mobile banking platform from a transaction-focused banking solution to a relationship-enhancing, best-in-class, web-based financial management system for the commercial clients.
• The Project is currently is the Requirements gathering phase.

ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIES IN THE PROJECT:

• As a Project Manager I was involved in the following actitivities:
• Responsible for developing the Project Plan, Communication plan, Risk, Issues log and Status report for the Project.
• Communicating Project status in Stakeholder meeting, Escalating any potential risks and creating mitigation plans as necessary.
• Creating Project Budget forecasts using EPPIC.
• Creating Resource Plan based on Effort and Duration estimates.
• Setting up Requirements review meetings with interfacing teams to ensure collaboration and effectively manage interdependencies.
• Working with the team to focus on the core business value drivers and avoid distractions.
• Manage conflicts within Line of Business and Technology teams and keep team focused on the Project objectives.

PROJECT DESCRIPTION:

• The primary objective of this initiative was to launch a Benefit Prepaid Card for the clients of a US bank clients for multiple products which included Payroll for unbanked workers, Instant enrollment and Funding for Sate Lottery program, and Government benefits for state governments. This project was undertaken to establish footprint in the Prepaid card business and attract new clients. A comprehensive training program for the Sales and fraud monitoring process was a primary requirement to onboard new clients to the program.
• The Settlement, Authorization, Reporting and Call Center Service would be performed by the Vendor FIS. The Prepaid card issuing bank would perform Client Onboarding using Vendor portal. The project team will also be doing integration with the vendor platform. Underwriting, Pricing, training and marketing will also be performed by the issuing bank
• Multiple Workstreams were included in the Multiyear roadmap of this large program which includes Payroll, Government Benefits Lottery program etc.

ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIES IN THE PROJECT:

As a Project Manager I was involved in the following actitivities:

1. Responsible for developing the Project Plan for the Payroll Program.

2. Responsible for managing the end to end execution of multiple workstreams including Funding, General Ledger Settlement and Reconciliation using FISERV tools, Client Onboarding, Risk and Compliance checks including OFAC, Federal regulations and Currency transaction reporting within an aggressive timeline in a multi vendor arrangement.

3. Designed and developed automation tools using Excel VBA for Settlement Accounting, Chargeback, Representment and Adjustment transaction reconciliation,

4. Created Risks, Issues, Actions and Decision log for Monitoring and Controlling the project.

5. Oversaw Day to Day Execution of the activities of the Prepaid Payroll program and addressed Risks and Issues proactively

6. Performed Test planning and Defect Management with the Enterprise Testing teams using HP Application LifeCycle Management tool.

7. Overall responsibility of adhering to Project Lifecycle Framework and meeting Stage gate success criteria.

8. Working in collaboration with Multiple vendors to clearly define roles and responsibilities and ensure seamless and streamlined delivery.

9. Creating Status reporting for Senior Management.

PROJECT DESCRIPTION:

The primary objective of this project was to implement the Stamps Purchase functionality after conversion of the ATM terminals from Star to MasterCard IPS Payment processor. Following are the Primary goals of this project:

1. Successful processing of Stamp Loading at Key Bank ATM Terminals.

2. Successful processing of Stamp Purchases at Key Bank ATM Terminals.

3. Successful processing of Mutilated Stamps which are returned back to Stamps Vendor.

4. Successful Stamp Inventory Tracking inside Keybank accounting system.

5. Successful General Ledger updates for Stamp Loading and Purchasing.

ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIES IN THE PROJECT:

As a Project Manager I was involved in the following actitivities:

• Responsible for developing the Project Plan for Stamps Release Delivery.
• Reviewing the Estimates and creating Cost forecasts for the Stamps Release
• Resource management incuding creating Resource Strategy sheet.
• Creating Status report and reporting to Senior Management.
• Overseeing Day to Day Execution of the activities.
• Risk and Issues management.
• Test Planning and Defect Management working with the Enterprise Testing teams.
• Overall responsibility of adhering to Project Lifecycle Framework.

PROJECT DESCRIPTION:

• The purpose of the Risk Data Program is to establish criteria, develop and document the sourcing plan for Risk data to include the prioritization of source systems to be pushed through the architecture into the various target risk repositories. The ultimate objective is to, Provide governed data integration and aggregation, resulting in certified data, Provide a common location where detailed Risk data is collected from all relevant sources, stored and certified and finally Transformation into Business Views. IBM Banking Datawarehouse Data Model was implemented in Keybank for the first time as part of this program. This set the basic infrastructure for Shared Foundational Data and Analytics for the entire bank.
• The Overall objective of the Risk Analytic Tool/Model Optimization Program is to provide timely risk information in a sustainable environment that is relevant to the business and enables internal decision making across the enterprise.

ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIES IN THE PROJECT:

• As a Project Manager I was involved in the following actitivities:
• Responsible for developing the Project Plan for Sourcing the system of records in the ETL Integration Hub and creation of Business Views.
• Responsible for developing the Project Plan for the Risk Analytics program
• Reviewing the Estimates and creating Cost forecasts for the Risk Data and Analytics program. Tracking actual spend against forecast.
• Status reporting.
• Overseeing Day to Day Execution of the activities of the Risk MIS project team.
• Risk and Issues management.
• Defect Management working with the Enterprise Testing teams.
• Resource management incuding creating Resource Strategy sheet.
• Overall responsibility of adhering to Project Lifecycle Framework.

PROJECT DESCRIPTION:

• KATS is a web based application developed in ASP .NET 3.5 framework used to Manage the complete life cycle of the Loan processing to fund the Keybank Community Development Banking segment.
• The objective of this project is to utilize the existing KATS platform, to support 4 additional areas in the Community Development Banking segment. One of these areas currently utilizes a Microsoft Access Database. KATS will be used as a functional replacement of the existing Microsoft Access Database, and will supplement the manual procedures used in the other three areas. This will allow the Community Lending Line of Business to utilize to streamline the workflow of Loan processing and meet the Credit risk review reporting requirements mandated by the risk audits.
• The total funding for this project is 450,000 and duration of 9 months and is being executed in Deliverable based T M contract with a team size of 7 team members in an onsite/offshore model.

ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIES IN THE PROJECT:

• As a Project Manager I was involved in the following actitivities until now:
• Reviewed the Project charter, Business proposal and SOW to understand the requirements
• Acquired the team members at offshore and onshore.
• Reviewed the project costing and prepared the resource loading document to accommodate the funding.
• Created the communication plan high level project plan.
• Worked on procuring the softwares needed for the team members by raising requisitions for the license needed. This included VS 2010, IIS. Team Foundation server etc.
• Held Kickoff meeting with the project team, LOB, sponsors to ensure common understanding of the project outcome.

PROJECT 6:

Keybank National Association Application Value Management:

This engagement comprised of several subprojects which I was responsible for transitioning to Cognizant from Wipro and managing the support and delivery of these applications after moving into steady state phase. Listed below are the subprojects which I managed as part of this engagement:

PROJECT DESCRIPTION:

• Mail Systems currently generates 80 of all Key Bank customer mailings including statements, notices, customer letters and check disbursements.
• Mail Systems and Statement and Mail Center Services partner together to provide numerous value-added functions beyond just formatting the data from the sending application. Some of these functions are Document barcoding and postnet barcoding, Target messaging, Certification and correction, archival and Reprints.

PROJECT DESCRIPTION:

• The Regulatory systems portfolio of applications comprises of the Retirement reporting system RRS , Internal reporting system IRS and the Health Savings accounts HSA applications.
• RRS application provides federal reporting information for all retirement accounts. It generates numerous reports including in-house reports needed to manage administer retirement plans. The Retirement Reporting System RRS is a vendor developed StoneRiver mainframe application. The Retirement Reporting Service of Key Bank uses RRS for maintaining information related to retirement plans. StoneRiver is the vendor who has developed this application and they provide yearly releases of the system based on the regulatory changes issued by I.R.S government agency every year.
• IRS is used by Key bank for reporting regulatory information to Internal Revenue Services. IRS Generates composite substitute statements in variety of formats for payment recipients and also creates Government magnetic tapes for the Internal Revenue Services. IRS is a Mainframe application developed by Stone River vendor. Vendor sends the release with new regulation changes in the month of October which are then integrated in the Keybank IRS application.
• HSA application is used inside keybank to process the contributions made by Keybank salaried employees from their paycheck towards the Health Savings account for qualified medical expenses. Health Savings Account HSA is a tax-exempt trust or custodial account, the customer Key Bank Employees whose contributions are made for those covered by High Deductible Health Plan HDHP .

PROJECT DESCRIPTION:

HRIM is a suite of Oracle Peoplesoft modules to support the Enterprise Resource Planning ERP within Keybank.It comprises of the following modules, HR Self Service, Benefits, Payroll, Recruiting, Talent Management Background Investigation. In addition this application has a HROnline application which is the HRS portal for the Keybank employess. It also has a Kronos TimeOnline application to record the time when the timecards are swiped by employeed. Peoplesoft Tools are also deployed along with the basic modules.

PROJECT DESCRIPTION:

• The Oracle procurement applications consists of procurement/power payer PRC/PPY modules and Ariba application.
• The PRC/PPY applications are process the Purchase Orders, Check Requests and Employee expense reports and is used by the procurement Line of Business to maintain the accounts payable and General Ledger for the procurement payments.
• The Ariba application is used to process the Office supply orders from external Vendors, IT staff augmentation orders from the IT vendors. It controls the approval flow of all change orders raised inside Keybank and sends the requests to PRC/PPY for payments.

ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIES:

A . Transition Manager

• As a transition manager I was involved in transitioning a portfolio of a total of 47 applications from Wipro to Cognizant in a Managed Services contract. This involved gathering information on the technology requirements, FTE counts to support the application, procuring equipments for support, resourcing and Management status reporting. I created the project plan after gathering the inputs from all stakeholders and finalized the SOW for the transition project. The project plan comprised of the Knowledge Transfer, Reverse Transition, Shadow support, primary support and the steady state phase spanning over a duration of 5 months from August 2010 till Dec 2010
• I oversaw, tracked and monitored the transition to ensure due diligence was done to understand the nature of work, understand the SLAs involved, breakdown of effort needed to deliver the Enhancements and the BAU activities like handling priority incidents, performing regulatory compliance functions, Bug fixes and other production issues. Determined the onshore/offshore support team structure and laid down the delivery model to ensure smooth delivery. Arranged several meetings with Line of Business to understand the issues, challenges, pain areas and developed plans to address them.

B Service Delivery Manager

At the completion of Transition in Dec 2010, I assumed ownership of the Mail Systems, Regulatory systems, Human Resources, Oracle Financials, HP Service Manager and Troux portfolio of applications comprising of a team size of 40 team members in an onshore/offshore delivery model. This was a Managed services fixed bid contract in which I was involved in Managing the team, addressing day to day issues, SLA management, taking responsibility of the deliverables of the team, providing estimates to the LOB and project team and status reporting to the LOB and the divisional managers. I was involved in addressing issues with Vendor Support and performance improvement intitatives. I was instrumental in Managing stabilizing hese applications in the steady state phase from January 2011.

Funding and Merchant Payment System:

• The project is to provide funding information to merchant s banks using Demand Deposit Account DDA hand off files, Bank wire files and Automated Clearing House ACH to Federal Reserve files. This application has Fraud tools to prevent fraudulent funding, funding determination tools to determine funding transmission type - ACH/bank wire, Fraud tools to hold funds up to 99 days, Revolving Payment Plan methods, online processing tools to enter Online Funding transactions.
• This application also performs Hold Fee processing to allow holding of fees applied to merchant accounts until billings are validated, creating Merchant funding advice files to merchant banks in both ACH and bank wire format with some bank customization. In addition it also creates ACH to Federal Reserve Funding advice files sent to the Federal Reserve for disbursement of funds to the appropriate merchant funding bank.
• The technologies used are the programming languages COBOL and JCL. The access method, VSAM Virtual Storage Access Method is used to view and edit data files and the merchant funding information is accessed from Merchant manager DATACOM database. The operating system on which this application runs is Z/OS 1.8. Sybase PowerBuilder offhost application is also used to access Merchant setup and transaction related information.
• The other technologies like the relational database management system DB2, the online transaction processing language CICS Customer Information Control System are also used in this application.

ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIES IN THE PROJECT:

A . Project Management Roles:

1. Analyzing the stakeholder requirements and reviewing of Project

Charter and Statement of Work.

2. Assisting the customer's project manager in creation of the project plan and

project scope statement.

3. Managingthe project team Team size of 15 members in an

Onsite/Offshore mix and performing conflict resolution.

4. Hiring new resources in the project team and releasing existing resources.

5. Managing the execution of the project management plan using a work

authorization system.

6. Performance Performance appraisal of Project team members.

7. Control the project activities to the project plan and the project baselines.

8. Perform Risk Identification, Risk Analysis and Risk Response planning for the

project.

9. Create project status reporting and forecasting using Earned Value techniques

and Monte Carlo analysis.

10. Perform Change Control procedures by approving and rejecting change requests

using Change Management Tools like CA-ServiceDesk

B . Technical Roles:

1. Enhancing the functionalities of the application and developing software codes

as per requirements.

2. Providing system maintenance and support activities.

3. Preparing case studies and establishing testing strategies.

4. Coordinating with users, clients, onsite coordinator and offshore team of

developers to ensure issue-less project execution,

5. Designing and performing impact analysis for enhancements as per

requirements.

6. Performing unit testing, system testing and user acceptance testing.

PROJECT DESCRIPTION:

Model Region Testing:

• The project is to create a test environment Model region for the application owners to test their code changes or project specific functionality on the Mainframe platform. The technologies used are, REXX programming language, CA7 which is a third party software used to monitor the schedule of jobs and FileAid which is also a third party software used to view and edit data files defined under VSAM Virtual Storage Access Method for the operating system OS 390.
• The other technologies like COBOL programming language, the relational database management system DB2, the online transaction processing language CICS Customer Information Control System , JCL Job Control language and the access method, VSAM are also commonly used to setup a region to test a project. A third party tool PLATINUM is used to make queries in the model database to retrieve information to validate whether the database and the programs accessing the database have been correctly set up in the model region.
• The nature of work also involves creation of several tools with the REXX programming language to automate the region setup or minimize the setup issues. The region setup mainly includes the software refresh, the data file refresh and the database refresh in the model region. In this process the production jobs specific to the applications to be tested are modelized with the help of the tools developed in REXX programming language. The database relevant to the application group in production is also defined in the model region.

ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIES IN THE PROJECT:

1. Understanding the requirements of the project coming to model area for testing

2. Preparation of the CA7 Job Schedule as per the impact of the project on the

applications in FDMS using CA7 and REXX language.

3. Reviewing the Job schedule for double triggered/cyclic dependency issues

using REXX tools

4. Forecasting the errors in a schedule due to missing datasets and other JCL errors

using PROJCL and removing the errors. This also includes identification of

False-errors and documentation of the same.

5. Refreshing the software and the data file to carry out the testing using the REXX

tools while executing the schedule/testing is in progress, query the CA7 database

for various issues like look back issues/requirements posting. Supporting the

execution of the schedule using CA7

6. Transmitting the test output datasets to the off host systems like Oracle or UNIX

based applications systems using Connect direct process.

7. Coordinating with the application groups to resolve their issues, execute the

schedule and review the output.

PROJECT DESCRIPTION:

Debit Back Office Reconciliation DBOR :

Debit Back Office Reconciliation DBOR at Coral Springs, Florida supports the debit card transactions. It captures all the authorization requests from the merchants, routes them though various networks which are connected to the cardholder's banks and then reconciles the transactions between the acquirers and the participating networks. The application requires 24/7 production support from offshore and regular enhancements in compliance with the changes in the interfaces. Apart from this the system also integrates new networks and merchants into the application every year.

ROLES AND RESPONSIBILITIES IN THE PROJECT:

1. Participating in analysis, design, coding, testing, implementation and documentation of the change requests and taking part in the offshore production support activity

1. Responsible for overall quality and timely delivery of all offshore deliverables

1. Coordination with the onsite team lead in accordance with Cognizant's onsite/offshore methodology

1. Collecting and reporting metrics data like effort distribution, productivity, defect density, resource movement etc. for projects using Cognizant's proprietary tools such as Etracker, Ecockpit etc.

1. Preparing and maintaining technical and training documents for Cognizant's Knowledge Repository

1. Preparing various quality documents like PSPH Project specific process handbook , QGBM Quality Goals and Bench Marks , CRAD Customer Requirement Analysis Document , HLDD High Level Design Document , DDD Detail Design Document , CSP Customer Supplied Product , Code review sheet, EBR Enhancement and Bug Fix Reports , Test Procedure, TPR Test Procedure Review , Test Logs, Test Log Review Documents etc. using Cognizant's Qview and Qsmart quality tools.

TECHNOLOGIES USED IN THIS PROJECT:

Major technologies used in this project are VS COBOL II, JCL, VSAM, CICS, EAZYTRIEVE ASSEMBLER. The batch system of this project contains programs coded in COBOL programming language. These batch programs are executed using JOB CONTROL LANGUAGE JCL . The online system of this project contained programs coded in the language CUSTOMER INFORMATION CONTROL SYSTEM CICS . The online maps with which these CICS programs interact are basically BASIC MAPPING SUPPORT BMS MACROS coded in ASSEMBLER language. The data base used for this application is maintained using VIRTUAL STORAGE ACCESS METHOD VSAM .