Kirti Thakkar

SUMMARY

. Over ** years of experience in multiple disciplines including Software

development, Release management, Configuration Management, Devops

and Project management.

STRENGTHS

. I have successfully setup Devops practice and managed large Devops teams

at multiple organizations.

. Build and Manage Devops team for gaining operation efficiency in fast

paced IT organizations.

. Code Management of the Retail banking application code and its Web

embedded counterpart.

. Thorough experience in Configuration management and Change management

using Subversion, TFS, Serena ChangeMan DS, PVCS, ClearCase for different

set of codes using Branching, Merging and Tagging/ labeling.

. Proficient in the SDLC standards and Expert in planning code migration

schedules and preparing run books/implementation plans, writing deploy

scripts, validation scripts in Powershell.

. Code Push and Data migration for each release to the new test environment

and production environment on Client-Server applications impacting 4000

client machines.

. Project Management experience including Estimation, Resource Planning,

and Schedule adherence, Risk mitigation for billing and backend financial

QA projects.

. Successfully planned (including back out) and executed emergency releases

for various Banking applications.

. Comprehensive understanding of a product life cycle and its release cycle

and stages.

. Participated in release planning from Business Concept Paper Analysis,

Requirement Analysis, Test Planning, Test Execution, Final Certification,

Post Mortem Analysis and Closure Documentation.

. Risk assessment and back out planning, preparation of emergency packages

using various version control tools (Vault, TFS, Serena changeman,

subversion) and testing for back out process and scripts.

. Good knowledge of Change management models like Lewin change model.

. Extensive experience in Audits and improvisation of project's compliance

with multiple standards like - ITIL, SOX, SDLC, PCI, CMM levels.

EDUCATION

Sardar Patel College of Engineering, Mumbai University, India

Bachelors in Engineering, Major: Electronics

Vivekanand Education soc's Polytechnic, Mumbai University, India

Diploma: Diploma Electronics and Video Engineering,

TECHNICAL SKILLS

Database: SQL Server, DB2, oracle8i, Postgres

Programming/Scripting: ASP, VB, C, C++, VB Script, XML, HTML, ARGO,

JavaScript, PERL, Powershell

Tools: Rational Robot, Rational Manual Tester, RequisitePro, Rational Test

Manager, Rational ClearQuest 6.0.1.2, ClearCase 6.0.1.1, Rational

Functional Tester, QA Run (Compuware), WinRunner, Load Runner (7.2), Quick

Test Professional, Test Director, TrackRecord. SoDa, RUP, Crystal reports.

Version Control Tools: Serena ChangeMan DS, Harvest, VSS, PVCS,

Clearcase, CVS, Subversion, Serena Dimensions, TFS

OS: Windows NT, Windows 9X, Windows XP, UNIX, Linux RHEL 4

Monitoring tools: Splunk, SCOM, Extrahop, HP Siteminder

CI and deployment tools: Altiris, SCCM, Anthill-pro, Cruise control,

Hudson, Jenkins, Octopus, WebDeploy

Network Administration: Network setup, maintenance/ Image creation and

client-server setups, Wireless LAN setups and applications, BMC patrol,

Cohesion tool, Autosys

Servers: Windows 2003, 2008 R2 (.NET framework 3.5, 4.0), IIS 7.0, Apache

http server, JBOSS app server, SMTP Exchange Client/Server

CERTIFICATIONS AND ASSOCIATIONS

. Certified Software Tester (CSTE) - certified by QAI

. Member of ASQ - American Society for Quality

. Certified in Core Banking functionalities and Investment Banking by

Globecon institute.

. ITIL V3 certification

. Certified Scrum Master

ACCOMPLISHMENTS

. Ahead of schedule on Project Migration of applications into Configuration

Management tool, Serena Change Man DS.

. Spearheaded the automation of current Release Management process for ACH

project.

. At Redbox Managed deployments to 39,000 kiosks, built and lead

support/deployment team now at 8 members.

. Lead Build and release engineering team to deliver complete environment

management solution to different teams using scrum.

. Setup multiple environments for integrating with 3rd party vendors for

the Redboxinstant streaming initiative. Managed partner relationships and

integrated deployments with multiple vendors for digital streaming.

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

Education Corporation. Chicago, IL

Apr 2014 - Till date

DevOps Manager

Reporting to the VP of Engineering I am responsible for reorganizing the

CEC Devops team and defining the OLAs, SLAs, MTTRs, Application uptime, and

other metrics to align with the overall Software delivery and Support

organization.

. Manage a team of 10 Devops and configuration engineers onsite and

offshore.

. Manage and create new TFS builds using MSBuild and deployment scripts

using Powershell.

. Work with dev teams to check-in processes and deployment standards to

maintain environment uptime along with multiple daily deployments.

. Implement ALM (Application Lifecycle Management) using TFS. To achieve

this goal I am redefining the configuration and deployment management of

the application code in TFS.

Redbox LLC (Coinstar). Chicago, IL

Sep 2012 - March 2014

Technical Release Manager:

All applications at Redbox use scrum and need a standard solution for

automated deployments and manage releases to different testing

environments. Manage the Open API project at Redbox, the purpose of this

project is to allow external clients to use the APIs provided by Redbox.

. Deploy application code to various non-prod and prod environments and

troubleshoot application issues.

. Automate deployments for .Net based applications hosted on Windows 2008

and 2012 servers.

. Implement configuration management best practices across multiple product

lines.

. Chair the Change management meeting to discuss the impacts of production

deployments for various applications and manage deployment of application

to Production environment.

. Work with different projects to discuss impacts of application changes

and internal contract changes for web services since most applications feed

into the project I am leading.

Redbox LLC (Coinstar). Chicago, IL

June 2010 - Sep 2012

Release management/DevOps lead:

Rental Application runs on all Kiosks across the country. The customer

facing application sends all information to servers for further processing.

This client-server application receives updates using custom windows

service (similar to windows updates). The Rental Application is a wide

spread and complex system with approx. 29,000 Kiosks and ever increasing,

30 servers, 2 dbs.

Deployments are done in phases and on a daily basis considering the

frequency of changes and agile methodology. Deployments may have

dependencies on server side, Database, Data collection components and pre-

requisite scripts as well.

. As rental systems Release/Deployment Manager, responsibilities include:

creating and maintaining the automated builds of multiple mission critical

software applications (Rental application/ Services).

. Lead and implement the Fully automated deployment initiative using Web

Deploy and Powershell scripting.

. Implement CI using CruiseControl .Net and evaluate TFS 2010 for migrating

from existing version control system.

. Created the configuration image of servers using MDT (Microsoft

Deployment Toolkit). Created custom tool for deploying server side

components.

. Administration of tools Vault, Fogbugz, Mingle, Cruise Control, Splunk

6.0

. Co-ordinate releases for 4 applications, 2 DBs apps, Security updates

server and client side and BI applications thru regular touch points and

weekly Enterprise Release management meeting with all stake holders.

Environment: Vault 4.0 (version control), NAnt, Powershell Win 2003 and Win

2008 servers, IIS6.0, IIS7.0, CruiseControl, Lua (scripting), Web deploy

(IIS migration and deployments), MDT (microsoft deployment toolkit), vb

scripts, HTA, Splunk, TFS, VS 2012, Jenkins, octopus and Anthill-pro

(deployments)

J P Morgan Chase. Chicago, IL

Mar 2009 - May 2010

Release/Deployment lead:

Commercial card project, for large business clients, to manage the issuing

of corporate cards and track the spending of the employees. The commercial

version of the product was sold to some of the largest business clients of

Chase.

All of the tracking and reporting was done by Chase for the various

businesses thus earning revenue and generating a need to continually

upgrade and maintain the products.

. Write NANT scripts to deploy the code to various client environments for

the testing teams.

. Identifying configuration items for each environment and manage

environment specific properties to ensure accurate delivery of the package

to any given environment.

. Set up the repositories for different code and manage the bug and ticket

workflow for different branches of development. (PnetG, Pnet3, Pnet4).

Manage and control the code and deployment to various environments for

Commercial Card products at Chase.

. Set up cruise control for new environments and deploy packages using

CCNet to various environments.

. Prepare code migration schedule and Run book (steps for migration) for

the Enterprise release management

. Act as Subject Matter Expert (SME) and Single Point of Contact (SPOC) for

all engineering and process elements of Change Management within given

application.

. Lead a team of deployment engineers to undertake deployment processes for

3 different credit card based applications.

. Co-ordinate deployments for various systems like Application code, DB

changes, networking changes (unrelated but impacting apps), PCI related

security patches update to app servers.

Environment: ClearCase UCM, NAnt, Win 2003 servers, IIS6.0, TFS, Team

deploy, CruiseControl

Thermofisher Scientific, Bedford, OH

Oct 2008 - Mar 2009

Role: Release Manager:

A Department of Homeland security initiative to detect the radioactive

materials in the containers passing through various US ports and ports in

allied nations. It finds application in various commercial products also. A

total of 7 products including products being used by department of defense

and homeland security use similar detection concepts coexist.

The project uses C++ for component level programs and JAVA for the end user

interface along with a local SQL database.

. Identifying Configuration items for low level radiation detection

software.

. Identifying configuration items for User interface package and database

to ensure smooth integration of the separate packages.

. Set up the repositories for different code and manage the bug and ticket

workflow for different branches of development.

. Manage and control the code and deployment to various environments for

all the products at Thermofisher. Layout of branching and release processes

for various lines of software development.

. Act as subversion admin and track defects and bugs through the life of

the development cycle.

. Modifying ANT scripts to deploy the code to various environments for the

testing teams.

. Act a Subversion Admin, mentor developers and conduct internal training.

. Documented training documents and SOPs for the release team. Wrote SOPs

for release package validation, staging process, TAR build process

. Maintain ANT scripts to deploy JAVA code. Coordinate deployments to

various test environments before releasing the final package.

. Perform audits of various projects to ensure compliance with CMMI

standards.

Environment: Subversion, C++, Trac, ANT, Linux, Make

National City Bank. Cleveland, OH

Apr 2008 - Oct 2008

Release manager

The IDH (Integrated data Hub) project uses Informatica (ETL tool) along

with Database, UNIX and Autosys scripts. All the components for the IDH

project need to be categorically divided and released to various

environments for testing. The Components are interdependent and hence need

to move to the environments in sync for the application to work.

Other projects included Web Services support, Customer Billing Systems code

Release management and deployment. The goal of the team was to provide

Configuration and Release management service to various projects within the

Portfolio.

. Identifying Configuration items for Informatica based applications.

. Evaluating a release process for Informatica objects, Data base scripts,

UNIX scripts using Change Man DS and TBD (Team based development)

. Deploying the INFA objects using TBD and database scripts on Database

(oracle8i) servers.

. Maintaining configuration management Dashboard pointing to the code

versions in 5 different test environments.

. Analyze RFCs and work with CAB for timely deployments after testing and

approval. Coordinate emergency fixes using emergency change request forms

and timelines.

. Deploying UNIX scripts, AutoSys scripts and Database scripts on

respective servers for all 5 test environments using Change Man DS

deployment utilities.

. Worked 24 X 7 on a rotation basis for Production deployments of Emergency

fixes.

. Following ITIL processes manage and control the changes going to Test

environments and after approval from CCB deploy to Production.

. Participate in a pilot program to evaluate PVCS as version control tool

for INFA code and Shell scripts.

. Migrating web services code into ClearCase from Serena ChangeMan DS.

. Deploy the Web services code To JBOSS App server using Serena Deployment

utility to trigger the Maven scripts to deploy to the correct locations on

the server.

. Deploying the ASP application code on IIS clusters in the Test and

Production domain.

. Configuring IIS servers for role based Log in enhancements.

Environment: Serena Changeman DS, PVCS, TBD (Team based development INFA),

Oracle 8i, UNIX, AutoSys, ClearCase 6.0.1.1, IIS 6.0

National City Bank. Cleveland, OH

June 2007 - Mar 2008

Release/Configuration analyst:

To lead a 3 member team to identify the potential projects for the

Configuration and Release Management process. Application of Configuration

Management and Release Management practices across the portfolios.

Database Enhancements in Oracle 8i, DB2, Code customization in Avaya tool,

Enhancement to the web application in ASP all were coordinated using the

Configuration and Release management practices for single project Computer

telephony integration.

. To lead a 3 member team to identify the potential projects for the

Configuration and Release Management process.

. Identification of CSCI, layout a timeline and task list for migrating the

application into the Version Control tool, version control of the

development environment, write build scripts.

. Work with test coordinators and analysts to schedule code drops to

various test environments.

. Prepare and own the final freeze for the code move to Production

environment, coordinating the production move along with Line of Business

and tech teams.

. Act as tool expert and provide training and support to the development

teams with Version control tools and Release processes.

. Develop and maintain CMDB consisting of all CIs and track changes being

made to CIs through the lifecycle of the project phase.

. Setting up ClearQuest Web client for the off shore team. Participated in

ClearQuest integration with Rational Test manager to log defects directly

form the automated test cases.

. Act as server admin for win2003 servers managing Login for new User

groups.

. Perform application build and deployment activities using automated

scripts.

Environment: Serena Team Track, ClearQuest 6.0.1.2, Windows XP, IIS 6.0,

Windows 2003 Server, Serena Changeman DS, VB scripting, SQL server 2005,

Siebel 7.5.2, ITIL processes V3.0, ServiceCenter, ClearCase 6.0.1.1

National City Bank. Cleveland, OH

June 2006 - May 2007

Role: Build & Deploy Engineer:

Version control of parallel Developments and Coordination of Code drops to

various testing environments. Managing the Releases to 5 test environments

is the primary function. Release the code developed on two different

development environments and merging the codes after every release.

Test Co-ordination and New environment setup for testing of the Retail

banking application, Customer Connections, using ARGO for a New Project

(Single Charter)

Single charter is National City's effort to centralize all the regional

backend banking processes into one single Central process.

This would enable customers to migrate from one state to another and still

have the same account number. Introduce a new test environment for

functional testing. Coordinating Code deployment and testing schedules.

The project had a front end Bankpro application - Mid-tier was MQ series -

Back end was CICS.

. Instrumental in Building a new testing Environment, Complete ownership

and continual support to a New test environment. Writing PERL scripts to

run various builds and manage environments.

. Version Controlling of the Code in each Test environment (Win 2003 App

Server and Win clients) and scheduling testing on each environments.

. Code Push and Data migration for each release to the new test environment

and production environment using Changeman DS (Serena), also involved in

implementation of the code to the Production environment.

. Risk assessment and back out planning, preparation of emergency packages

Using Changeman DS (Serena) and scheduling testing for back out code.

. Responsibility of assistance in tracking issues through to resolution,

utilizing Team Track and Clear Quest for reporting critical problems to

Upper Management.

. Coordinating development activities and code drops with the offshore

teams. Defect Management and assignment with offshore teams. Conducting

ITIL Process Maturity Assessments.

. Impact analysis for upgrade from MQSeries to Websphere, Merging the

upgrade branch back into the MainLine

Environment: Team Track, Clear Quest, Windows XP, IIS 6.0, Windows 2003

Server, Changeman DS, VB scripting, COM+ applications on win 2003 servers,

DB2, .NET framework 3.0, RUP (Rational Unified Platform), Websphere App

National City Bank. Cleveland, OH

Oct 2005 - May 2006

Role: Release/Deployment Engineer, Configuration engineer

Customer Connections is a Retail banking application using ARGO .

The Systems and Integration testing of the Customer Connections system is

currently done manually by the Retail Automation Group. This testing

consists of specific; project based testing, and regression testing.

. The tasks involve migration of source control, configuration management,

build make system, build verification test (BVT). Realigning the scripts

with each Iterative code push. Involves Regression testing at each

Iteration

. Responsible for migration of technology from QARun (Compuware) to

Rational Robot for ARGO Retail Banking Application. Provide testing

strategy and tool expertise and direction by coaching throughout the

project lifecycle on testing methodology.

. Developed build scripts for consistently building software's in a common

build framework - consolidating builds from various teams thereby creating

an auditable, consistent, reproducible environment for performing builds.

. Designed, developed scripts & make system to deploy Argo code builds &

build processes. Developed & deployed automated build verification tests

(BVT).

. Used ITG for Demo deployments in a bid to assess the capabilities as a

deployment tool, Participated in an effort to compare PPM (HP) with RUP in

Pilot projects

Environment: SQABasic, Windows XP, Clear Quest, VB Scripting, VB., RUP

(Rational unified platform), PERL, SQL server 2005, ITG (Mercury),

ClearCase

National City Bank, Cleveland, OH

Jan 2005 - Oct 2005

Role: Configuration Management, Release Engineer, Quality Analyst:

The scope of this project includes implementation of Online Banking/ ACH

(Automated clearing house) New Version Releases to Production and Test

Environments.

Productions New Version Releases are planned every quarter and every

following month would have maintenance releases.

Test Version Release is planned each week in different environments like

systems test and integrated test regions.

The project follows the 'Agile' methodology of development and involves

functional testing through each iteration of development.

. Code Push and Data migration for each release to a given test/dev

environment and production environment using Changeman DS (Serena).

. Created VBScripts for installation of codes packages.

. Change Management and version controlling of the application taking

complete ownership of the code.

. Complete ownership and continual support to test environments and

development environment.

. On-site coordinator for testing with the offshore teams and defect

management using ClearQuest.

. Setting up Configuration Items to be monitored by BMC patrol and Cohesion

tools. Setting up SMTP clients for mail routing.

Environment: Windows XP, Windows NT, Windows 2003, Serena ChangeMan DS, VB

Script, .NET framework., CVS, ClearQuest. TFS, SMTP, ClearCase

National City Bank. Cleveland, OH

Nov 2004 - Jan 2005

Release/Build Engineer, Configuration analyst.

Migrating existing application code from Windows NT to Windows 2003. New

authentication method with active directory for windows 2003 environment to

be implemented. New functionality, "Locator" using MapQuest, to be added.

Replace existing "Site Server Search" by Verity, Ultraseek .

. Understand the High Level Design and analyzing Business requirements for

specific areas.

. Writing ANT scripts for deployment of new modules.

. Participate and conduct SOX compliance and CMM audits.

Environment: Windows XP, Windows NT, Windows 2003, ASP, JavaScript, HTML,

XML, VSS, Altiris, ANT

National City Bank

Jun 2004 - Oct 2004

ARGO is the front end retail Banking Tool.

Developer, Build Engineer

Adding new functionalities to the tool and troubleshoot the existing

functionalities for each version release of the Banking application.

Integrating various systems into the ARGO service calls and enhancements.

. Enhancing existing functionalities using Argo, GUI based tool. Fixing

outstanding defects in existing functionalities for the upcoming release.

. Co-ordinate the code release, after a compile, with the onsite

coordinator for distributing the code to development and break fix

environment

. Developing various scripts to automate release process to investigate

compilation logs.

. Automated Change Man DS build for Customer Connections Application.

. Update DB changes to various environments related to GUI changes,

maintain DB scripts in the Version control tool.

Environment: Windows XP, Windows 2003, ARGO, Rational Rose, Serena

ChangeMan DS, Argo Compiler, PERL, .NET framework, Installshield, SMS

TATA InfoTech Ltd. Mumbai, India

Jan 2004 - Jun 2004

Role: Quality control analyst, Change management analyst

Release management is an internal quality process of TATA InfoTech Ltd.

This process is applicable for all the development projects. Performance

testing of all projects which involved at least 2 servers is mandatory.

LoadRunner was used for this purpose.

. Designed & developed build scripts & make system for consistently

building software's in a common build framework. Interactive HTML pages to

kick off compile.

. Scripting to automate code movements and schedule batch compiles.

. Performed volume testing by transmitting batch files and validating them.

Environment: Windows XP, Windows 2003, Load Runner, HTML, XML, ASP, Test

manager, ClearQuest

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