SUSANNA VARGHESE ESRA

PHONE : 408-***-****

EMAIL : acrsg3@r.postjobfree.com

PROFILE

Goal-oriented, results driven, analytical and innovative Business Analyst with 6+ years of experience in Retail, Computer Systems, Ecommerce. Successful at evaluating existing business processes to identify and recommend key improvement areas.

Core Strengths:

Leading/Motivating Technical Support Teams

Operational Management

Program & Project Management

Team Management & Mentoring

Resource Planning

Supply-Demand Analysis

Process Optimization

SDLC Implementation

Cross Functional Communication

IT Best-Practices & Methodologies

SKILLS & ACCOMPLISHMENTS

•Hands on experience in full Software Development Life Cycle (Waterfall, Agile & other SDLC implementation) and Project Management Life Cycle (PMLC).

•Highly commended ability to work under minimum direction and use independent judgment in decision-making.

•Strong research, analytical and problem solving skills and experience working under and meeting critical deadlines.

•Possess excellent communication and interpersonal skills to conduct large meetings and presentations to stakeholders, business and technical teams.

•Experience in updating base copies while the changes in configuration occur in development process and properly document and report the changes to the management.

•Discussed wireframes of User interfaces (UI) for the application to maintain design consistency throughout the site.

•Coordinated software upgrades and releases for test and production environments.

•Applauded for the ability to effectively facilitate the process of knowledge transfer between business, technical and development teams.

•Extensive knowledge in testing applications developed with Drupal and Content Management Systems

•Understand the needs of the business and design reports, dashboards analysis and presentations to help them manage their Business.

•Participated in the bug review meetings, updated requirements document as per business user feedback and change in functionality of the applications.

•Adept at capturing business and functional requirements in the process of designing business models – Context Diagrams, Use Cases, Class Diagrams, Activity Diagrams and Unified Modeling Language (UML) using MS Visio

•Knack for business process engineering, process flow modeling, data modeling, risk assessment, risk management, change management, and escalating problems to senior management.

•Meticulously performed Fit-Gap analysis, User Acceptance Testing (UAT), SWOT Analysis, Cost Benefit Analysis, handled change requests and communicated them to senior management.

•Conducted walkthroughs, surveys, questionnaires, interviews, brainstorming and Joint Applications Requirements Capturing Session (JAR) and Joint Application Development (JAD) sessions for conflict resolution.

TECHNICAL SKILL SET

SDLC Methods

Agile, Waterfall

Software

MS Office Suite, MS Project, MS Visio, SharePoint 2013

Modeling & Designing Tools

MS Visio, Erwin

Requirements Gathering & Version Control Tools

IBM Rational Composer,

Testing Tools

Selenium

Change/Quality Management Tools

Bugzilla, Rally, Jira

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

PayPal, Phoenix May 2015- Sept 2015

Project Coordinator/ Project Analyst ( Contractor)

Supporting role in the PMO office for all projects related to Payments

•Supporting Program Mangers on all projects that require coordination with the development team.

•Supporting all Product Development Managers for any task that includes Rally and SharePoint2013.

•Tracking user stories on Rally & SharePoint and creating reports on the statuses of the user stories.

•Tracking user stories on Confluence, Updating Confluence on the statuses of the development work.

•Hand-on experience on Rally & Confluence.

•Following up with different offshore/ offsite teams on different payment projects.

•Analyzing and creating reports using Excel. Extensive usage of Excel which includes using Macro level formulas.

•Creating power point presentations for the Program Managers

•Facilitating meetings on behalf of the program managers.

•Hands on experience with ownership tools, Helping the teams find the owners to the components/ packages.

•Supporting Program managers in meeting the deadlines for regression sign offs.

•Hands on experience in MS Projects creating Project schedule.

•Project Manager for one crucial projects ‘’ Security Vulnerability Violations’’ in the company

Department of Corrections, Phoenix September 2014- April 2015

Business Analyst

Development of Website ( Contractor)

The purpose of the project was to develop and enhance State-wide Adult Inmate Management System for Inmate Processing using Agile Methodology. The whole project is a multi-year, multi-million dollar effort being developed in cutting edge technologies

•Lead BA and acting PO in a large pioneering agency-wide E-Government project

•Facilitating the definition and design of future state business processes

•Conducting JAD sessions.

•Involved in identifying high priority requirement for implementation.

•Designed wireframes and interactive HTML prototypes

•Shadowed and Tutored a Junior Business Analyst.

•Functional analysis and design activities for IT solutions by eliciting, defining, validating and translating business objectives.

•Agile/Scrum proficiency

•Performing functional analysis and design, including functional alignment, scope definition and negotiation, and business process design.

•Analysis, problem solving and research along with collaboration with developers to design innovative technology solutions

•Achieved and maintain a solid understanding of the business environment as a whole, including business practices, processes and strategy.

STATE OF ARIZONA, Phoenix April 2013 – September 2014

Business Analyst

Development of Website ( Contractor)

The purpose of the project was to develop an online website for all Permitting applications for Department of Environmental Quality in an Agile Methodology .

Roles and Responsibilities:

•Conducted interviews and work sessions with stakeholders and business users to define, clarify and gather requirements.

•Served as liaison between the functional and technical team

•Collected the functional and business requirements by conducting JAD sessions.

•Hands on experience in functional requirement documents and collection of functional requirement from system users.

•Involved in Requirement Scoping and identifying high priority requirement for implementation.

•Discussed wire frames with the UI team

•Designed wireframes and interactive HTML prototypes using Balsamiq

•Gathered requirements and prepared business requirement documents (BRD).

•Documented business processes and technology with the Business Leads

•Responsible for translating BRD into functional specifications and test plans. Closely coordinated with both business users and developers for arriving at a mutually acceptable solution.

•Collected business, system, and functional requirements by conducting detailed interview with business users, stakeholders, and Subject Matter Experts (SME’S).

•Conducted JAD sessions to define the project and to reduce the time frame required to complete deliverables

•Being a part of the CCB ( Change Control Board) making sure that only the ‘’must have’’ changes are analyzed and then passed to the development team

•Making sure all the changes are documented and presented to the business for final approvals

•Communicated and interacted on a regular basis with the project manager and development team during different stages of the product life cycle

•Ensured that all the artifacts are in compliance with corporate SDLC Policies and guidelines,

•Prepared BRD and converted into functional specifications using requirement management tool

•Hands on experience to Sharepoint 2013, Rally Dev, Bugzilla

• Exposure to a comprehensive integrated Requirements Management system based around IBM's Rational suite

•Exposure to Team Foundation Services 2013

NORDSTROM, San Francisco, CA Jan 2012 –March 2013

Business Analyst

Nordstrom Website Enhancement( Contractor)

The purpose of the project was to enhance the e-commerce portal with the shopping cart, check out features and secure & automatic credit card processing (payment processing). They also wanted to include cross-marketing and promotional abilities in addition to a user-friendly back-end to manage orders and customer processing.

Roles and Responsibilities:

•Assisted in the creation of the vision document and the implementation of plan during the inception phase by identifying key developmental steps for the system, describing tasks and primary responsibilities, deliverables and key milestones.

•Assisted Project Manager to create Project Charter and set up rest of the team.

•Designed the Functional Specification Document (FSD) based on the project scope and SDLC methodology.

•Managed Project Schedule and conducted Project Status Review Meetings on timely basis.

•Conducted interviews and work sessions with stakeholders and business users to define, clarify and gather requirements.

•Hands on experience in functional requirement documents and collection of functional requirement from system users.

•Involved in Requirement Scoping and identifying high priority requirement for implementation.

•Discussed wire frames with the UI team regarding different controls on the pages

•Designed wireframes and interactive HTML prototypes for this E-commerce application

•Discussed with the Technical Architect the High-level design of the system and designed the Entity Relationship Diagram (ERD) to give an outlook to the developers and the IT team members.

•Created Detailed Use Cases, Use Case Diagrams, and Activity Diagrams using MS Visio and MS Excel.

•Conducted JAD sessions with resolve issues and documented the minutes of the meeting.

•Reviewed use cases and other technical documents with IT project staff to ensure business requirements are adequately reflected in Business Requirement Specifications.

•Managed UAT and beta testing cycles and provided post-production support managing defect tickets and RFCs

•Conducted Joint development sessions with the IT team and the business users

•Conducted feasibility analysis in correlation with the Developer to ensure the project was in scope with the timeline defined in the Project Plan.

•Conducted unit testing by writing SQL queries & assisted in technical design specification

•Conducted User Acceptance Testing and ensured the users are satisfied.

GAP, New York, NY Sept 2009 – Dec 2011

Business Analyst

Resign of GAP Website ( Off-site Contractor)

The purpose of the project was to enhance user experience on the GAP’s e-commerce web site by improving navigation and reducing the number of user clicks and also to increase the online sales by providing customers retail level of customer interaction. The application provided website visitors with as much information about the product on the webpage, without repeated browser refreshes, as they would get when visiting the store.

Responsibilities:

•Elicited and gathered user and business requirements through open ended discussions, brainstorming and prototyping.

•Created detail process flow documentation based on the input from system users and understood the system architecture.

•Created new wikis/information portals for various groups for the purpose of wireframe analysis, functional prototype etc.

•Assisted the Project Manager in managing project resources and project timeline using MS Project and Excel.

•Create keyword lists for text-based search engine advertising campaigns.

•Write concise and engaging ad copy to fulfill client needs based on understanding of target customers.

•Designed the Functional Specification Document (FSD) based on the project scope and SDLC methodology.

•Provided administrative and operational support for the PMO in regards to making sure project data is easily accessible, tracking project metrics and distributing project information as needed.

•Performed requirement gathering for integration with the Enterprise Reporting System using Requisite Pro.

•Successfully improved search engine ranking, monitored AdWords and prototyped next generation, Web 2.0 sites with analytics tagging

•Facilitate issue resolution of defects uncovered through testing. Participated in ad hoc testing of system interfaces with Program Participants.

•Utilized Rational Unified Process (RUP) to configure and develop process, standards and procedures.

•Created and maintained Requirement Traceability Matrix RTM.

•Closely interacted with designers and software developers to help them understand application functionality and navigational flow.

•Conducted JAD sessions for communicating with the all Project directors and stakeholders and created Process Workflows and Functional Specifications.

•Worked closely with the Project Manager in handling the scope creep and analyzing its effects.

•Created and managed project templates, use case templates, requirement types and traceability matrix in Requisite Pro.

•Monitored version control and defect tracking activities using Rational ClearCase and Rational ClearQuest.

•Facilitated User Acceptance testing (UAT) for the application as a Business User.

•Conducted training sessions for the Customer Representative Team

Capital One Bank, New York, NY Aug 2007 – June 2009

Sr. Business Analyst ( Off-site Contractor)

This project involved an introduction of a full range of money management tools that help the customers track expenses and income by category, set budget goals and monitor performance against goal for all of their financial accounts.

Responsibilities:

•Facilitated and Managed JAD sessions with Business Directors, IT Directors, Business & IT Project managers, Developers and Testing Teams and other SMEs.

•Controlled procurement, sourcing, contract and resource management functions for high risk projects.

•Gathered requirements and created deliverables such as Project Charters, BRDs, FSDs, and Use-Cases.

•Created wireframes for the application using Mocking Bird.

•Extensive use of EXCEL tables to run and analyze the result data set.

•Validated technical designs created by developers against functional specifications

•Facilitated, coordinated & participated with other teams in approving the project plan.

•Constantly communicated with the off shore team through web conferencing; also responsible for documenting their efforts and progress.

•Extensive use of Excel, PowerPoint, Visio, and other MS Office products was required.

EDUCATION BACKGROUND

•Masters in Business /Marketing – Pune University

•Diploma in Information Technology – Pune University

•Bachelors in Sciences – Mumbai University

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