Project Manager Management

SUMMARY

. PMI Certified Project Management Professional having around 12 years of

progressive IT Industry experience with last 6 years focused on IT

Project/Program Management, comprehensive planning and large-scale

project implementation for global organizations such as American Express,

Aetna Inc., Staples Inc., MetLife, Dun & Bradstreet, General Motors and

Covad Communications etc., and well versed with respective SDLC

Methodologies, Tools and Processes.

. Successfully executed projects with budgets ranging $3M-$5M with team

strengths of more than 40 spread across geographical locations.

. Excellent communication skills and ability to drive projects from

Discovery/Pre-Define, Define, Design, Development, Testing &

Implementation phases with focus on quality deliverables for each phase.

. Coordinating with Business stake holders, Management teams, Business

Analyst, Quality Management, Testing, Infrastructure & Implementation

teams as well as External Vendor partners.

. Highly focused and results-oriented in supporting complex, deadline-

driven projects; able to identify goals, objectives, priorities and

resolve issues.

. Single point of contact for all Account/Project/People management

activities.

MANAGEMENT SKILLS

. Program Management - Communications, metrics, risk management, costs,

SOW's, CR's.

. Project Management - Initiation, estimation, planning, execution,

scheduling, tracking, reporting, implementation.

. Business Development - Currently involved in streamlining business

development initiatives, Co-ordinate new business development activities

with Client Partners.

. Account Management - Planning, resource forecasting, team development and

training.

. Relationship Management - Build/maintain client relationships,

expectations/escalations mgmt. Single point of contact for all the

project related tasks.

. People Management - Aspirations, career planning and appraisals.

OTHER SKILLS

FUNCTIONAL TECHNOLOGY

Banking & Financial: Credit Card Technologies: J2EE, IBM Websphere V6.1,

Rewards Programmes. IBM RAD V7.0, IBM Tivoli Access Manager

Retail: Payment Systems. V4.4, Oblix NetPoint CoreID 6.1.1, JSP,

Healthcare: Billing & Enrollment HTML, Java script, iPlanet Directory

Systems Server Ver 4.1, Oracle, UNIX, Windows

S/W development life cycle (7, XP).

methodologies.

Thorough knowledge of PMBOK guide 4th Testing Tools: HP Quality Center

edition. Other Tools:

Experience with SDLC methodologies of EPIC (Enterprise Portfolio Information

Global Clients such as American Control) & Clarity: Project Management

Express, Aetna, Staples, MetLife, Tools which helps in managing all

General Motors and Dun & Bradstreet aspects of project - budget, resource

etc. management, forecasts, time tracking,

Requirements definition, functional risks, issues and change control

specifications and gap analysis. management, status reports etc.,

Implementing projects, end to end Planview - Project Management Tool.

testing, user acceptance testing and Microsoft Project Plan, Sharepoint,

roll-out/support. Borland Star Team, Calligo, Collabnet.,

Experience in implementing COTS ClearCase, QuickBase, ClearQuest

(commercial off-the-shelf) products.

WORK AUTHORIZATION

. Permanent Resident (Green Card). Authorized to work for any employer in

the United States.

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

Aetna Inc., Hartford, CT July

2010 - current

Billing, Enrollment & Accounts Receivable (BEAR) Program, Project Manager

Project Summary:

Aetna Individual Markets's (AIM) goal is to be the premier individual

health insurance provider, underpinned by market-leading capabilities in

Billing, Enrollment, and Accounts Receivable functionalities. As part of

this strategy, AIM is seeking a solution to enable straight-through online

enrollment, multi-channel billing and payment, flexible billing options,

consolidated billing for ancillary products, and creation of accurate

invoices. This solution will be part of the overall future state vision

supporting Aetna's business and operational goals. Currently, Billing,

Enrollment Account Receivable activities for Individual Market customers

are managed within GEMS systems. GEMS is a business developed application

and is deployed on HP 3000 hardware. As HP decided not to support HP3000

starting 2010, business is seeking a new Individual Billing, Enrollment &

Account receivable solution that will replace GEMS and also provide

strategic capabilities. This project introduces new Billing, Enrollment &

Accounts Receivable solution that replaces the existing GEMS platform.

The overall program is very huge with so many functional areas &

integration points with Benefit Focus vendor and with more than USD 27M

budget. So, to make it more manageable, to stay with in the affordability

funding levels, & to mitigate the risk of not getting the Open Enrollment

Moratorium exceptions for member system changes, it is divided in to five

projects with clear scope identified in each of the streams.

Working as Project Manager for multiple projects in BEAR program,

responsible for combined budgets ranging USD 3-5M.

Roles & Responsibilities:

. Project Manager for projects in BEAR Program, one of them being overall

Program Conversion Project. The main goal of this project is to handle

conversion of all the existing members in existing system to future BEAR

solution.

. Currently the project is in initial Planning and Discovery phase.

. As part of this project, interact with Business users, different

application owners, solution vendor (Benefit Focus) to identify all the

Business Needs, follow up on the APLC (Aetna Project Life Cycle) process

to document the Business Needs document.

. Manage Business Analyst teams (3 BA's and 1 Lead BA), interact with

development and testing teams, existing system owners, Business Partners.

. Lead the discovery phase to review the business needs document, impacted

applications, risks and issues and facilitate with architects to come up

with Project Solution Documentation.

. Plan for resources required for the project.

. Establish communication channels with Vendor Management Team, Business

Teams, Application Development and Testing teams.

. Follow APLC process; provide forecasting metrics, status reports.

. Create and maintain project plan, action items list with project teams,

drive and monitor progress against tasks and activities.

. Prepare a road map for the team and guide on the planning and execution

of tasks during the initial planning and discovery phase of the project.

. Mentoring and Training activities for the new resources joining the

project team. Developed formal training methodology that is needed for

the new resources to be able to successfully work on the project.

Best Practices & Achievements:

. Streamlined the Project Change Requests that originated in other projects

of the program that are included in scope.

. Created standard templates that can be used across the PCR's that needs

to be used for Requirements Analysis.

. Prepared data mapping templates to collect information data needs of

source and target systems.

. Weekly team meetings for proper tracking of action items.

. Able to stream line the overall scope for the program by actively taking

ownership for replanning exercise.

. Took initiative to consolidate the scope of overall program into more

manageable components and maintaining the scope changes in centralized

repository. This was very helpful for management overview presentations.

Staples Inc., Framingham, MA Oct

2009 - June 2010

Services Project Manager for COM Business Release 4 (BR4) Program - Project

Manager

Project Summary: The goal of the (Customer Order Management System) COM

BR4.0 project is to replace the existing legacy Order Capture and Order

Management systems with the Sterling Commerce application in a phase wise

manner. The Customer Order Management system (COM) will become the system

of record for Staples Business Delivery orders. The Sterling Commerce

Customer Order Management System (COM) for SBD Customer Service project is

being delivered via a number of individual Business Releases. The strategy

of delivering multiple Business Releases allows Staples to introduce the

new order management system while managing the numerous risks associated

with a "Big Bang" approach.

As part of the BR4 release, there are several services that are being

developed and enhanced to support the COM roll out at various stages of the

project. Managed the following three critical services for the project.

Combined budget of these 3 projects and is more than 1M. Also managed

Payment Systems Portfolio for Staples.

Coupon Validation Service - COM module will call this service for all

coupon related tasks like inquiry, redeem, unredeem, and add different

types of coupons lookup and coupon list functionalities. This is one of the

critical services that are being used in all the modules of COM, ie, during

Order Create, Order Capture and Order Management phases.

Financial Posting Service: COM will create and publish invoice records

based on the receipt of a shipment confirmation, a return or the creation

of a cash or merchandise adjustments. These invoice records will be

reformatted by Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) and forwarded to the FPS

service which will apply posting rules to create the data required by the

target systems Cash/Sales, Settlement, and Inventory systems. FPS will

write directly to Cash files for Cash Posting. FPS will create batch files

to feed Inventory and FPS will forward the Settlement data to Settlement

Service via ESB. Settlement will be the only system that will provide a

response to FPS which will be forwarded on to COM.

Settlement Service: The Settlement Service will receive Settlement requests

from consumers.

Upon receipt of the request, the service will read the request and based on

the request elements, process the request. The service will be used by any

consumer looking to receive a settlement payment for card types MasterCard,

Visa, Discover, Staples Open, Staples Commercial, and American Express as

well as gift cards. The service will settle prepaid cards, in the same

manner as it settles credit cards. Also gift cards with a different

vendor.

A response may be sent back to the consumer, depending on the consumer's

requirements. The consumer will notify the provider of their preference

as part of the initial setup between the consumer and provider.

Best Practices & Achievements:

. Prepared Certification Process Guide - which contains all the details

of the certification process for Settlement of transactions with

different banks, checklist, various teams involved and roles &

responsibilities, release calendars of different banks etc. This is

like a hand book for anyone who wants to know about the certification

process which was of great help to the QM, Business and for all the

project teams. Another addition to this is the Environments &

Infrastructure guide which details out all the environments that are

being used for development, testing and deployment.

. Ensure that the team follows the quality standards in all the project

deliverables.

. Created internal knowledge repository for training needs of the team.

Roles & Responsibilities:

. Manage all aspects of project life cycle - project definition phase,

analysis, design, build and implementation phases. Gather all the details

of teams impacted, schedule meetings with Business Partners, Impacted

teams from other groups.

. Overall responsibility of completing the deliverables for the define

phase - Project Charter, high level project plan and budgets by taking

inputs from all the stake holders.

. Review the project charter & project scope statement with all the groups

- Business & Technology teams and send for sign-off.

. Create and maintain project plan with project team(s), drive and monitor

progress against tasks and activities. Responsible for the timely

delivery of all agreed project deliverables and their quality as per the

Clients standard SDLC process.

. Based on the project scope statement, work on the requirements analysis

phase to deliver the project requirements document / business systems

analysis report with detailed requirements, as is, to be, impacted teams

and their scope, assumptions, possible risks/constraints and method of

change (how the requirement will be implemented in detail) for each of

these impacted teams.

. Identify check points are needed with organizational review process such

as Architecture Review Board/Joint Architecture Design Review and

complete the appropriate tasks.

. Schedule meetings with all the impacted teams, business partners, QM

teams for a thorough understanding of the requirements and to finalize

the requirements. Then provide post-analyze costs, detailed resource

forecasts and consolidated project plan.

. Send the requirements report for technology and business leadership sign-

off.

. During design phase - focus on developing the Test data characteristics,

Test accounts; make sure that the test environments are ready, work on

Test approach document, identifying all the dependencies and assumptions.

Work with the Technical teams to complete the Design Report with all the

technical information.

. Send the Technical Design Documents for sign-off for approval.

. Create the check list for all the technical deliverables. Drive with the

teams to complete exhaustive test scripts and follow up in setting up the

project folder in Quality Center.

. Over see the testing process Systems Integration Testing, Performance

Testing & User Acceptance Testing - Setup daily status meetings with all

the teams to resolve any issues. Follow up on closing the bugs.

. Managing funding for the project and for all the teams engaged in the

project. Track time entry of all the project resources.

. Identify and manage risks, issues throughout project life cycle.

. Understand the Scope, Risks, Issues, dependencies and

deliverables/milestones. Manage all project changes using Change control

process.

. To provide timely status reports in detail to Technology & Business

leadership teams.

. Clearly communicate and update project team structure, contact details

and responsibilities. Increasing the team's competency levels and domain

expertise by continuous in-house training and certification programs.

. Make sure all the project teams understand the requirements thoroughly

and are aware of the critical milestones.

. Ensure project objectives, goals and needs are clearly outlined for each

project. Ensure that goals are tangibly measurable, and that the goal is

stated within the document.

. Ensure that the project is meeting audit and compliance requirements.

. Ensure Project Completion Analysis is conducted, documented and shared.

Ensure complete knowledge transfer to the appropriate support/production

support teams after the warranty period for the project is over.

. Consolidate all the project documentation appropriately in a central

repository.

. Take time to recognize the entire project team in a timely manner and

conduct Performance Appraisals.

American Express, Phoenix AZ 2006 -

2009

Next Generation Interactive, Membership Rewards Portfolio - Project Manager

Project Summary: Next Generation Interactive is a program aimed to uplift

the current MYCA (Manage your card account) platform to a supported

hardware and software infrastructure, while positioning the platform to

support the growth and evolution of the online channel. Worked on the

migration of Membership Rewards Portfolio applications. Managed budgets of

more than $1M and team strengths of more than 40 resources onshore and

offshore, interacting with several external partners, Business owners,

Interactive Quality Teams, Systems Assurance Team, Performance Testing

Teams and Infrastructure teams.

. Project Manager for day to day activities of MR portfolio migration to

NGI Platform for 2009.

. Responsible for coordinating with PMO, Leadership and Business teams, IQ

and SA teams.

. Consolidate the Project Charter - review and sign-off from all the stake

holders.

. Focus on all the deliverables as per NGI SDLC Methodology.

. Consolidate the Critical Functions Matrix and review with Business, IQ

and SA teams and get the sign-offs.

. Created and maintained detailed project plans with all teams,

stakeholders and the partners.

. Monitor the progress of the tasks every week with application teams, IQ,

SA and Business teams. Provide status updates to PMO team on each of the

milestone tasks tracked by PMO team.

. Overall responsibility of deliverables and tasks for define,

analyze, design, build and install phase.

. Provide the sizing estimates for all the streams and follow up on getting

approval and allocation from PMO team.

. Resource forecasts for all the streams. Follow up on timesheets for all

the resources.

. Continuously monitor the risks, issues and any change requests and timely

escalations and resolution.

. Weekly status review meeting with technology leadership team and PMO

teams.

. Engaging all the internal support teams, follow up on their funding

requirements and allocate the budgets and monitor the budget usage.

. Provide status updates to the dependent teams on MR services and track

the timelines of other teams where we are dependent. Follow up on

infrastructure issues, baseline testing, IQ and SA teams for SIT & UAT,

performance testing teams that are on the critical path.

. Review entry and exit check lists for different phases for each of the

streams and conduct phase check point call with technology leadership

teams

. Working with partners and resolving the testing issues.

. Manage other development project impacts and plan on the schedules.

. Work with vendors to get proper support during testing phases.

. Prepare Technology Implementation Plans with tasks for each of the teams

for seamless production install and validation.

. Oversee production validation process by setting up checkpoint calls and

to validate the install.

. Get the sign-off from Business on the production install and plan for

post implementation tasks, warranty phase and hand over to production

support teams and project closure.

Blue Cash Innovation Empowerment tools - Project Manager

The purpose of the project is to create an online reward summary page for

Blue Cash that includes additional rebates information in a simple way to

make it easy for Card Members (CM) to understand the cash back reward

offer. Managed the project successfully with in scope, budget and timelines

from define phase through warranty. Managed team strength of more than 10

resources onshore and offshore with a project budget of $200K (only for our

group and not the entire project costs) and got high CPA scores for the

project from Business Customers.

This is a very successful project with minimal escalations and issues with

appreciation from both Business & Technology leadership. Also went through

Amex internal audits with high rating.

PWP Integrations - End 2 End Project Manager: To integrate with multiple

clients like Travelocity, Rearden Commerce etc. to consume pay with points

services which will enable the card members to make purchases using their

Membership rewards points. And also generate user friendly tool to Amex

Business Partners and Internal customers to generate reports on the PWP

services. Managed multiple Pay with Point service integrations with

multiple partners from define through warranty phases.

Host 2 Host Partner Integrations - E2E Project Manager: Managed multiple

Host to Host partner integration projects that involve real time Membership

Rewards points transfer to several airlines, hotel partners like Southwest

Airlines, Aeroplan & Virgin etc. Managed multiple H2H integration projects

with different partners with team size of around 8-10 people including

onshore and offshore and also played End 2 End Project Manager role

managing both internal Amex Teams, external partners, IQ & SA teams and

Business Partners.

Others:

Also worked as Project Manager on multiple other projects like CID

Verification, Supp Authorization Access, PWP Service Error Reports etc.

with team sizes of around 10 both at onshore and offshore.

Best Practices & Achievements:

. Created a news letter page in Sharepoint where we created a repository

for all the project related deliverables, Minutes of meeting,

accomplishments, milestones, risks, issues, watch items etc. This will be

a one stop point to get all the project status and deliverables.

. Majority of the projects are delivered on time, scope and budget with

minimal escalations.

. Received high CPA scores from the business partners.

. We used to have an action items list internal as well as external for all

the tasks that needs to be completed and cannot be tracked on the project

plans. Daily review of these consolidated lists helped in resolving small

dependencies and tasks.

. Provide guidance to the tech teams on creating a technical check list -

one for each of the streams and each excel document will contain one tab

for each phase, which contains all the tech tasks to be completed that

are not covered in the project plan.

. Scheduled daily status call with onshore and offshore teams, review the

action items list and the tech check list.

. Consolidated all the training materials that are needed to work in the

Amex Environment and ensured that every one joining the team is going

through the induction programme materials. This will help them understand

the complexities and enable them to work more efficiently.

. Insisted teams to use the communication tools like sametime for easy

access to others, taking initiatives for creating project/group email

distribution lists, maintaining one common action items check list etc.

. Get the feedback from the Business Owners, Management and Leadership

teams and document the lessons learnt at the end of each project.

MetLife, Hauppauge, NY 2004 -

2006

Questionmark Perception, Learning & Development course ware Infrastructure

upgrade - Project Manager:

Project Summary: Questionmark's Perception product is used to create

surveys/tests (assessments) within MetLife. It is used primarily in Human

Resources Line of Business Learning & Development. The system includes

reporting features for the owners of the assessments that need to analyze

results. The software is deployed on an out of warranty Windows NT server

connecting to a MS SQL Database server which is also deployed on an out of

warranty NT server. So, the infrastructure needs to be upgraded in order to

meet Windows NT end of life dead line. There are other requirements like

Internet enabling the application and Integrate with MetLife's Learning

Management Systems environment and enhanced reporting features.

. Represent MetLife's application development team to technical partners,

vendors and business partners.

. Work closely with MetLife Project Manages, Directors, Business partners

and the broader HR Application development team consisting of Architects,

Developers.

. Communicate and Co-ordinate with the vendors for solutions.

. Clearly documenting the business needs, scope, roles and responsibilities

from Technology, Management and Vendor teams.

. Doing the POC's and documenting the results and get approval for the

implementation.

. Provide weekly status reports to management on all tasks planned and in

progress.

. Follow up on any pending tasks with respective task owners.

. Scheduling meetings as needed, documenting the agenda, minutes of

meetings and follow up on the resulting action items.

. Monitoring testing and development teams to ensure high quality

deliverables.

Dun & Bradstreet, Chennai, India:

2003-2004 Password Enhancement Program, Delivery Manager.

Project Summary: Offshore Delivery Manager to implement the Password

Enhancement Program across D&B applications. There are a group of

applications where the changes are to be implemented and the total team

size during the peak time is about 40 including onshore and offshore.

. Setting agenda and direction for offshore efforts & management practices.

. Overall responsibility of overseeing application teams, testing, quality

teams.

. Responsible for audits. Managing PMO activities, weekly status reports.

. Managing team, providing guidance, issue resolution.

. Interacting with onsite Account Manager on a regular basis and plan for

the tasks.

General Motors Warren MI, Chennai India:

2002 - 2003

GMSupplyPower Portal Technology Upgrade, Technical Leader.

Project Summary: GMSP involves designing and developing a delegated

administration based user management system using Oblix NetPoint COREId

6.01 and IBM Tivoli Access Manager Ver 3.9 is used for Security Integration

and Access Management requirements involving different products like SUN

ONE Portal Server ver 6.0, Oblix Netpoint COREid 6.01, to replicate the

functionality of the existing User Management system.

. Technical Project Leader to implement the Identity and Access Management

systems using IBM Access Manager and Oblix NetPoint products for

GMSupplyPower.

. Completely responsible for the delivery of Security Manager Module in the

GM Supply Power Portal.

. Setting up the development and testing environments by installing all the

products that are required for the execution of the Security Manager

module. Constantly be in touch with product vendors (IBM and Oblix) for

all technical help, issue resolution. Carry out POC's.

. Managing the offshore teams spread across locations - Chennai &

Bangalore. Responsibility of Integrating the Security Manager Module with

other modules of GM Supply Power project.

. Managing the build and deployment team and by overseeing all the build

and deployment related activities.

. Prepare and review required documents for the Successful Onsite

deployment for installation of the products and for the Application

Installation.

. Providing guidance to the teams for supporting the Client testing

activities and following it up with the team and see that the issues are

closed on time.

. Total responsibility for the deployment of application in the Production

and Pre-production environments at the client site.

. Providing technical training sessions for the team on the new products.

Covad Communications, Chennai India:

2000-2002

Team Leader/Developer

Project Summary: Material Request System is a part of Inventory Module. It

is a browser based intranet application being used by different kinds of

users like Field Engineers, Field Engineer Managers, Logistic Coordinators

and Purchase Managers

. Involved in design, coding and testing.

. Involving in other activities like reviewing quality of the code,

preparing test case document, code review sheets.

. Involved in the final deployment of the system.

. Preparing User Manuals and Training for the clients on the usage of the

system.

Reliance Industries Limited, Bangalore India:

1999-2000

Electronic Data Management Systems, Developer

Project Summary:

EDMS: The vision underlying the complete EDMS (also known as Reliance Gyan

Mandir) for Jamnagar Complex is to provide user a web based environment to

interact electronically to create, view and manage information and also to

retrieve and access documents/records in shortest possible time and easiest

manner, also it is a one stop collection of all Valuable and important

information of Reliance Petroleum Limited, Jamnagar.

. Content Analysis, Development, and Preparation of functional Design

specification, Program specification

. Preparation of Unit Test Plan, System Test plan and User Training Manual.

. Development of User Interface using Java Swing.

. Rigorous testing of the module

EMPLOYMENT

Cognizant Technology Solutions US Corporation: September 2000 - current.

Designation: Assistant Project Manager

Renovision Systems Pvt. Limited - December 1999 - September 2000

Designation: Software Engineer.

EDUCATION

Bachelor of Engineering from Andhra University, India

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