Project Manager Quality Assurance

Akasi Sanjaysekhar Rao

Email : ************@*****.*** Phone : 469-***-****

ROFESSIONAL SUMMARY

P

Total of 14+ years, which includes Software Project Management, Application design and

development, Quality Assurance. Involved in the various phases of project life cycle, Proposal

creation, Estimation, etc

Managed large testing initiatives in a multi location onsite/offshore teams for Securities,

Banking and Insurance customers such as Capital One, Merrill Lynch, State Street, Farmers

Insurance, etc, which included creation of Quality Management Plan, Testing Strategies and

creation of test plans for projects that were executed using Agile(Scrum) Methodology/

Waterfall/ RUP models.

Experienced in Analysis & development, Quality Assurance of applications for the

securities industry across the United States, Europe and Japan which involved understanding

of business rules and operations for various trading activities in the front, middle and

back office space

Carried out user acceptance testing for the implementation of an integrated order routing

system for a major broking firm, hands on experience for testing of banking software applications

for loan origination and servicing along with e-banking application for retail banking.

Managed and lead development of a hybrid automation framework for the projects in the

Securities and Insurance space

Experienced in implementing “Test process and Quality initiatives” & “Testing as Managed

Services”

Experience in implementing Six Sigma and Lean initiatives

ROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

P

WIPRO Technologies (New York/Tokyo/Atlanta/Dallas/Los Angeles/Boston) Aug 2000 –

Till Date

Senior Manager Quality Assurance

State Street Corporation (June 2009 – Till Date)

Appointed as Senior Quality Assurance Manager for the State Street account, to consolidate

various testing activities into a managed services mode

Managing a team of 135 both Onsite & Offshore that are spread across the following key

projects

Testing of the conversion of the client’s business functions into the State Street

application platforms

System Testing of the BASEL II program at State Street

Co-ordinate with China team of State Street

Involved in managing a budget of $11.5Mn

Work with Senior management team of State Street to lead the transformation of QA

services into a managed service

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Akasi Sanjaysekhar Rao

Email : ************@*****.*** Phone : 469-***-****

Evangelize industry best practices in the account

Estimation of testing requirements including, man-hours, tools, hardware for test bed/lab

and schedule

Resource Tracking and work allocation

Review the Project status with Sponsors, Project Manager and Business Partners

Monitor the work efforts

Mentor the Test Resources

Lead quality assurance activities for Agile/SCRUM projects

Evaluation/assessment of Risk involved in the projects developments and mitigation plan

to overcome Risks

Review and optimize Testing process constantly

Monitor and authorize all the test deliverables

Farmers Insurance Group (November 2007 – May 2009)

Lead and manage implementation of the SALT (System Application Logic Testing)

Managed a team size of 80 both Onsite and offshore

SALT deals with User Acceptance Testing of all the applications for the personal lines of

business and is a model that encapsulates a multi-dimensional approach to functional

testing which involves aspects like automation, code coverage and risk based testing

Formulated the Quality Management strategy document for the program

Involved in managing a budget of $ 40 Mn over a period of 5 years

Led pre-sales activities for testing in other business units

Achieved the following results

• 65% reduction of production defects within a year of its implementation

• 95% of the changed code is covered by the test suite

• 60% of the test cases are executed in an automated mode

Manager Quality Assurance

Capital Group of Companies (July 2006 – October 2007)

Led a team of 40 onsite & offshore resources for delivery of multi-technology middle office/ back

office applications

Involved in managing a budget of $3.5 Mn

Led the startup of client engagement at the Europe office of Capital Group

Involved with senior management of Capital Group to formulate plans for a test factory

based solution

Optimized resource utilization by using LEAN techniques thus saving $150K

Championed AGILE/Scrum methodology

Capital One Auto Finance (January 2005 – June 2006)

As a quality assuranc e manager was a responsible for managing a team size of 45 both onsite &

offshore, which involved testing of Loan Origination and Loan Servicing applications for the Auto

Finance division

Involved in managing a budget of $ 3Mn

Managing and creation of a testing team from the initiation phase, facilitating for rapid

ramp up of the team for the projects at Capital One Auto Finance

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Akasi Sanjaysekhar Rao

Email : ************@*****.*** Phone : 469-***-****

Formulated the distributed AGILE methodology thus making it possible for offshore teams

to actively participate in the testing phase of the projects following AGILE/Scrum

Methodology

Contribute to enhancement of testing procedures of Capital One Auto Finance to match

industry best practices

Created a hybrid automation framework for a complex rule based Loan origination

system

Achieved the following

• Increased the acceptance of applications developed/ released by the IT team to 100%

Fidelity Information Systems (December 2002 to November 2004)

As a quality assurance manager was a responsible for managing a team size of 22 both onsite &

offshore, following are the highlight of activities carried out.

Gathering testing requirements onsite for Auto, LAI, Home Equity, HELOC, Credit Card

loan types

Preparation of Test execution plan & test case preparation for integration test, system

test, and regression test

Test Automation using Winrunner /QTP thus resulting in quicker execution of the test

cycles resulting in a faster delivery to the FIS clients.

Achieved the following

Increased the acceptance amongst customers of FIS for the ALS COM product from 60% to 95%

Quality Assurance Manager Merrill Lynch – Japan

(March 2001 to October 2002)

Merrill Lynch was in the process of implementing “Fidessa”, which is an integrated order routing

system along with modules for front office & middle office.

As Quality Assurance Manager was responsible for managing a multi vendor team of 12

resources located at Merrill Lynch Tokyo office, was responsible for formulating test plans and

devised test cases for UAT (User Acceptance Testing) and conducting the UAT for the

traders/dealers of Merrill Lynch for the Order Management and Routing (OMAR) and connectivity

modules of Fidessa

Achieved the following

Successfully completed the User Acceptance Testing for the Order Management and Routing

(OMAR) and connectivity modules of Fidessa with no critical and severe defects in production,

this was as part of the Phase-1 of implementation

Project Manager JP Morgan

(August 2000 to January 2001)

‘Websec” is an internet security framework for JP Morgan. The framework is based on the NES

(Netscape Enterprise Server) architecture. Some of the salient features of the framework are as

follows:

Client based authentication and Data encryption

Provides for secondary level of authentication by doing userid-password verification

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Akasi Sanjaysekhar Rao

Email : ************@*****.*** Phone : 469-***-****

Additionally provides for request re-direction, path verification, translation and session

establishment.

As Project manager was responsible for the migration of the entire framework from the Netscape

to Apache/Open standards platform. Responsible to draw out a detailed project plan along with

the work plans, other activities that were supervised were to test the conversion, reviews of

testing activities & release management.

OTC Exchange of India September 1996 to August 2000

Manager –Systems

As Manager - Systems of the OTC Exchange responsible for the maintenance/support and

enhancements of the trading system (TCAM), the TCAM trading system has a C++ based client

and an Appletree database based on a fault tolerant Stratus server.

The system is based on a VOS (ver 13.2) operating system on a Stratus Continuum C-618. As

Project Manager was responsible for the design and development of the Market Making module

for the Exchange’s TCAM based trading system using PL/1 and Appletree as the database. The

development entailed modifying the existing system from an order driven system to a hybrid

model that which accepted both orders& quotes. Thus offering an Order & Quote driven market

on a single platform

EDUCATION

Masters Degree in Computer Applications VJTI College, Mumbai University - 1996

Bachelors Degree in Science Majoring in Physics & Electronic Instrumentation, Bombay

University - 1992

Key trainings attended

Training: System Administration for VOS 13.2 -- Stratus, India

“Software Project Management” – Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore.

Growth Harbinger Program - Harvard Business Publishing and WIPRO

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