Technical Writer Information Security

Lakshmi Nayar

630-***-**** Aurora, IL ***** ********@*****.***

SENIOR TECHNICAL WRITER

Brilliant, multi-faceted, Senior Technical Writer and an outstanding achiever imbibing best practices in documentation, offers a kaleidoscope of industry experience in Telecommunications, Finance, Health Care/Medical field, and Insurance in documenting software and hardware products and services. Combining a rare blend of writing talent with Information Architecture, Business Analysis, and requirements gathering skills, successfully mitigated risks due to inadequate assessment of project scope on several projects and expanded the scope of a key documentation project gaining over $4 million in revenue for the company. As documentation Manager and Subject Matter Expert in customer documentation, revolutionized customary writing practices in to a repeatable, dependable process as part of the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC).

CORE PRACTICES AND DOCUMENTATION TYPES

The following core practices were successfully implemented while creating a multitude of user documentation as listed below:

Information Mapping

Needs Analysis

Information Architecture

Business Analysis

User Task Analysis (UTA)

Quality Assurance (QA)

Peer Editing

Chicago Manual of Style and Corporate Style Guides

User Procedure Manuals

Reference Manuals

On-line help

Release Notes

Installation Manuals

Operations, Administration and Maintenance (OA&M) Guides

Quick Start Guides

Training and curriculum development.

Grants and proposals

Request for Proposal (RFP) (Writing and Editing experience)

Information Security

Instructional Design

Content Management System (CMS) and Document Management Systems.

Health Insurance and Portability Act (HIPAA)

Medical and pharmaceutical industry

SharePoint

MadCap Flare

Documentum

DocToHelp

Virtual Computing Environment

Web-based Applications( Java environment)

ITIL

JIRA/Confluence

SAP knowledge and experience

Darwin Information Type Architecture (DITA)

Application Program Interfaces (APIs)

Lucidchart

EDUCATION

MA in English Literature (with college-teaching experience), University of Mysore, India.

Associate Degree in Technical Writing, Wright State University, Dayton, OH.

TECHNICAL EXPERTISE AND TOOLS

Expert in the following tools (8-10 years of experience): Adobe Frame Maker, Adobe Photoshop, Arbortext Editor (XML application), Microsoft SharePoint, RoboHelp, AutoCAD, File Maker Pro, Microsoft Office Suite: Word, Excel, Power-Point, Visio, Front Page, Outlook, Office Project and Publisher, Paint Shop Pro and Corel Draw. Worked on multiple authoring platforms and Content Management Systems (CMS), including Interwoven’s TeamSite and most recently on DocToHelp. Technical writing experience on the following programming platforms: C, C++, Visual Basic, Java, UNIX, COBOL, Siebel and knowledge of SQL querying and FIX Protocol.

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

CenturyLink (May 2017-Current)

Senior Technical Writer

Engaged in a highly visible project as a Senior Technical Writer to manage and deliver Federal Govt. Responses for Proposals (RFP) initiatives and internal documentation needs to support product and service practices This is a hundred percent remote role and it entails gathering requirements, talking to SMEs, independently handling SharePoint restructuring and overhauling current documentation processes and deliverables. Standardization of content is a key goal to adhere to company practices and Govt. mandates.

Accomplishments: I receive excellent feedback on the quality of the deliverables that assimilates content from across various teams and third-party vendors and is seamlessly recast into standardized formats to exceed expectations and meet tight deadlines.

Antares Capital, Chicago, IL (December 2016-March 2017)

Senior Technical Writer

Fulfilled an urgent need to create User Guides and Training documents for Antares divestiture from GE Capital. The aggressive timeline for documentation was to meet the migration of legacy Financial systems into Black Mountain Systems (BMS). Gained substantial knowledge and understanding of the system; hands-on experience with BMS over the short span of three months and had an opportunity to work with the Business teams and the Technical team to create user guides for CRM and other hubs of BMS. The focus was to create the entire lifecycle of Deals with key touch points to the various business areas.

Accomplishments:

I worked in tangent with the migration and development teams at an intense pace to meet challenging deadlines through the project duration. Worked well in a hybrid environment supporting IOS products and Windows. Created diagrams and flow charts in Lucidchart.

Golub Capital, Chicago, IL (July 2016-December 2016)

Senior Technical Writer

Worked in the Finance Industry, specifically in the Middle Market Financing space and became acclimated to middle market loan processing and life cycle via BMS systems. Worked closely with the Technology Solution’s team in documentation creation and standardization projects. These projects included Network Infrastructure User Manuals, FAQs, SharePoint document restructuring and User Guides, Security Policies Management, New Hire Orientation guide, Communication material, and so on. The role requires interfacing with the Technology team, Leadership and staff to build documentation ground up where required; update, enhance, build templates, migrate content into new templates/format and educate and train individuals and teams to use Word and Email templates in conjunction with the writing standards.

Accomplishments: Within a short span, I was able to build the necessary writing platform, understand tools and functionality (most of which comes from my years of experience), work with the necessary individuals minimally to deliver high quality content and structure. The additional benefit being that I know when I leave I would have imparted the necessary training and tools for the teams to continue quality work.

HCSC, Downer’s Grove, IL (October 2015-June 2016)

Senior Technical Writer

Joined the Security team’s RFP efforts related to EndPoint and Cyber security at Blue Cross Blue Shield to lead documentation efforts for Desktop Services. This was a highly visible project that required hands-on expertise and knowledge of current EndPoint protection products, trends and technologies. This role also required business analytical capabilities coupled with strong testing knowledge.

Provided end-to-end support by attending vendor presentations and actively participating in the Q&A sessions.

Collaborated effectively with project teams leading and making decisions for documentation, testing and was the single point of contact during scrum and stakeholder meetings.

Actively involved in vendor scoring/rating, feedback and final selections.

Actively participated in the Proof-of-Concept (POC) testing by conducting performance/stress tests, usability and interoperability tests.

Solely responsible for documentation and testing from the DES perspective.

Performed end-to-end restructuring of SharePoint for the Desktop Services team. Build a new site driven by metadata content types, lists and other dynamic SharePoint 2010 features.

Worked on Lotus Notes Team Room for document uploads.

Achievements

The project goals were accomplished and the process is being completed on schedule. All deliverables exceeded expectations and were well received with special mention on the quality of my deliverables and summary documentation by the SMEs and team members.

Zebra Technologies, SDO/NOC Teams, Libertyville, IL (August 2015-Sept.2015)

Senior Technical Writer

Worked with cross-functional teams to deliver Operations’ Runbooks for internal teams and multiple Infrastructure and technology documents to support Zebra’s recently acquired Motorola division. As the team lead, I managed the documentation project to ensure consistency across documentation sets by building and maintaining custom templates and editing other technical writer content. The SDO/NOC teams support and manage Zebra’s network monitoring platform utilizing IBM’s Netcool in conjunction with Zebra’s Jump server box implementation. This documentation encompasses the current migration from Motorola, the stood-up environment, and support for current customer and business partner needs. Jira/Confluence were piloted and tested for this project.

Deliverables: Runbooks, Policy documents, SDLC process documents and customer On-boarding documents.

Fermilab, OPSS Group Batavia, IL (October 2014-July 2015)

Senior Technical Writer

As the Senior Technical Writer for the Office of the Project Support Services (OPSS) group at Fermilab, I created, updated and migrated documents and artifacts related to billion dollar projects in conjunction with the Department of Energy (DOE) requirements and guidelines. As part of the efforts, project documentation and training material were standardized and recast including, desktop instructions, award nomination white papers, and project templates such as the Performance Management Plan (PMP) and the Quality Assurance Plan (QAP) templates.

Accomplishment: In a short duration, updated an entire SharePoint website content of documentation and training. Additionally, converted non standardized documentation forms in to standardized, information mapped, reusable content.

Worked effectively with cross functional groups and scientists to review and draft information.

Neutrino Division, Technical Editor

A unique, aggressive and highly visible project that required a Technical Writer/Editor to assess, analyze and provide a solution for group authoring a Conceptual Design Report for the Long-Baseline Neutrino Experiment/Facility project. In essence, it required a quick workaround solution to standup a collaborative authoring platform in Word, minus a Content Management System. The challenge was to burst content that was migrated from an UNIX/LateX environment, allow twenty authors to co-author content, build a robust template, replete with graphics; educate and socialize content to new Word users via standards and tools training.

Accomplishment: Achieved immense success by introducing a tool that easily split content and allowed collaborative authoring, while I introduced a Word template built meticulously to handle the churn and stress involved due to the split/merge exercise. Overall, an exemplary attempt that brought excellent results.

Illinois Tool Works (ITW), Glenview, IL (February 2014-August 2014)

Senior Technical Writer

Engaged as the documentation and training single point of contact to document ITW’s platform and technology needs for applications, service desk support, business units and finance teams.

Managed project documentation including timelines, schedules, communications, and project plans for the IT team.

Built end-to-end training for users across business and IT teams.

Built and modified templates in Microsoft Office to standardize content management at an Enterprise level.

Supported leadership meetings by researching, interviewing SMEs and building content to describe ITW’s technology landscape.

Created multiple user guides, technical documents and handbooks for the development and user teams.

Documented ITW’s web content development and architecture on a .net platform using APIs (REST and SOAP).

Provided class room training for the Operations team.

Worked on JIRA/Confluence for all Project documentation, including user guide progress tracking, application test results and project issues tracking.

Other Initiatives:

Overhauled the service desk’s knowledge management and training sites on SharePoint and Footprints.

Built end-to-end process methodologies for service desk teams.

Worked in an Agile project to build documentation for an enterprise application.

Accomplishments:

Created a strong foundation for a standard documentation practice in an Agile environment.

Created formal documentation and training for multiple applications supported by IT.

Catamaran Corporation, Lisle, IL (February 2013-December 2013)

Senior Technical Writer

Worked on a Federal Govt. project: Federal Information Security Act (FISMA) to document Catamaran’s information systems and security coverage to meet the FISMA certification criteria.

Interviewed Subject Matter Experts and collected information specifications to document the Network boundary assets between Catamaran and the Fed Govt. client.

Documented and created Visio diagrams of the network architecture to reflect the main components and functionality including the servers, security devices such as firewalls, Network Address Translation protocols, storage devices and so on.

Documented the network inventory, software inventory, hardware inventory, protocols, and the access and authorization layers that support the network architecture.

Created policies and procedures to support Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs).

Completed Request for Proposal (RFP) responses for an Arkansas Govt. initiative.

Created templates, edited existing content and created artifacts for documentation.

Accomplishments:

The documentation was a massive success with excellent feedback from the IBM FISMA team and the internal teams stating that the diagram and documentation far exceeded expectations.

McDonalds Corporation, Oakbrook, IL (April 2012-November 2012)

Senior Technical Writer

As a team member of the Deployment Services, established a successful documentation practice to lead documentation delivery efforts across the Areas of the World (AOWs): Europe, Asia Pacific, Australia, and Canada. Interacted with functional and technical groups and led strategy and scope initiatives with McDonald’s teams and partners to manage market and regional expectations for application support and on-going knowledge management.

Developed user documentation in an Agile environment in conjunction with global McDonald’s standards

Worked with the Infrastructure teams to build PowerPoints for training AOWs.

Developed a process methodology document based on the Agile iterative practice.

Managed market engagements through “just in time” documentation deliveries.

Scoped, created, articulated and managed internal and external documentation initiatives.

Documented procedures for the Restaurant File Maintenance (RFM) application on the New Pulse platform.

Worked with infrastructure and IT teams to capture key emerging technology changes related to platform and applications.

Deliverables to markets included application support documentation such as Quick Reference Guides, training presentations, and product support manuals and guides.

Developed documentation on SharePoint sites and pages, Wikis, Blogs, and collaborative authoring and editing mediums.

Used JIRA for project management documentation and issue tracking/resolution handling.

Used Confluence to upload documentation related to market requests and to eelink documents to JIRA issue resolutions.

Accomplishments:

Excellent market response on the quality of the deliverables.

Excellent team work and rapport within the project teams.

Highly successful in building a vision and putting in place a strategy for collaborative authoring and publishing.

Developed a structured platform for an effective, repeatable process, replete with supporting artifacts and a process methodology in place.

Accenture, Chicago, IL (December 2011-March 2012)

Senior Technical Writer

Completed an aggressive, fast paced project for the Information Security team at Accenture, an Agile-based methodology project with iterative steps for document review, updates, and continual interaction with SMEs, project teams, and project leads in the Information Security team at Accenture he objective of the project was to align internal security standards for infrastructure and applications deployed within the Accenture network and map current policies with vendor recommendations. This process helped finalize security measures prior to audit and hardening exercises.

Researched and built security measures for DNS servers. Good understanding of naming conventions and DNS-related risks.

Developed security standards for hardware, software, and platform needs, including measures related to Active Directory and LDAP configurations.

Gathered existing recommendations and analyzed current standards.

Researched and developed security policies based on prevalent vulnerabilities.

Build review decks based on research, existing content, and Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) interviews.

Conducted reviews and formalized content through iterative feedback sessions.

Finalized decisions and created new standards.

Functioned as the group editor to formalize writing standards and edited content for consistency, form, format and style.

Accomplishments:

Highly successful initiative that exceeded expectations at every level.

Led the standards writing practice and incorporated and developed a quick Style Guide for the Security team.

DeVry University, Woodale, IL (July 2011-November 2011)

Senior Technical Writer

Engaged in a fast-paced IT migration project from a legacy system to a web-based virtual environment to support DeVry’s student accounts and operations. Played a prominent role in leading standards and best practices to manage and deploy software, infrastructure, and architectural solutions.

Whiteboarding:

Worked with the infrastructure teams to develop technical documents capturing the transition of infrastructure

components from the legacy environment to the new platform/environment. Most meetings were captured via

whiteboard markups that were transferred from digital medium to technical diagrams and documentation.

Created technical documentation and artifacts to support DeVry's IT platform migration from a legacy system to a VMware-based portal.

Supported Infrastructure and IT teams to deliver quality products by capturing end-to-end process documentation for Banner and ePrint processes to support Student Accounts.

Developed Visio diagrams to capture infrastructure and Operating System requirements such as UNIX, Windows and so on.

Built a Solutions Architecture template based on ITIL standards.

Led enterprise level standards committee for the solution Architect team documentation based on IBM standards and writing best practices.

Established and led Corporate standards and Style Guide initiatives.

Accomplishments:

Templates and documents were adapted by the Leadership team as a company artifact.

Document deliveries met benchmark deliverable criteria.

NAVISTAR INTERNATIONAL, Warrenville, IL (November 2010-May 2011)

Program Manager, Publishing Groups

Worked in a high visibility project overseeing the implementation of a Content Management System (CMS) on an XML platform for Navistar Defense and Commercial Publications. Managed key company goals and objectives to steer and convert a legacy-based, diverse authoring and publishing environment into a single source, dynamic platform. Interacted with clients and internal teams to align mutual expectations and manage and champion business sign offs. Key responsibilities included:

Established, documented, and communicated team strategic plan, schedules, and deliverables.

Tracked progress against overall umbrella plan.

Led standards and best practices discussions linking style guides, company standards, and policies to create footprints for Document Type Definitions (DTDs) and style sheets.

Built roadmaps to deploy PTC Arbortext Content Management System.

Ensured that pertinent team communication flows to and from all internal teams and vendors.

Orchestrated regular feedback sessions with authoring teams to identify gaps.

Supplied the impetus for project planning and overall management of all CMS Structured Authoring initiatives.

Fostered awareness of program initiatives to existing and potential stakeholders.

Formulated and defined strategic technology goals and objectives within scope of responsibility; verifying compliance with high level business and technology drivers and architecture.

Established operating metrics and maintained service level contractual agreements.

Reviewed and analyzed activities, costs, operations, and forecast data to determine project progress toward established goals and objectives.

Championed establishment and use of common processes and systems; ensured compliance with standards.

Acted as a focal point for problem resolution and escalation. Identified and resolved or mitigated risks and delivery issues, working within established processes.

Managed costs and balanced internal budget and tracked budget against actual spending ensuring that the plan did not exceed projections.

Achievements: Planned and master-minded the entire implementation strategy by monitoring and executing the program on an Agile-based approach. Maintained control over cost and introduced tracking mechanisms. Educated and socialized CMS Program awareness within internal teams and key stakeholders. Delivered the project successfully within the prescribed timeframe and well below budget.

COMPUWARE CORPORATION, Milwaukee, WI (August 2010-November 2010)

Information Analyst/Senior Technical Writer

Worked as an Information Analyst in Compuware’s Technical Communications practice. Actively involved as the Technical writer on RFP and response submissions, Marketing/Sales presentations, and technical publications. Created new artifacts such as a quick reference style guides and document editing standards for the company and induced structure in to the Technical Communications practice. Created and managed installation and reference manuals for software products on a client site.

MARQUE MEDICOS. LLC, Chicago, IL (August 2009-April 2010)

Senior Technical Writer/Documentation Consultant

Accomplished a key milestone by developing an Operations, Administration and Maintenance (OA&M) guide in record time (6 weeks) for an established firm in Chicago. Documented the entire network architecture, network elements, application platforms, administrative and maintenance tasks, and procedures for disaster recovery. Added a network inventory guide to enable efficient tracking of their inventory. Performed a detailed Needs Analysis, and delivered a quality document where none existed before. In addition, provided recommendations on improving network efficiency and security to meet HIPAA compliance requirements and Disaster Recovery.

VMware Platform

Captured and documented the transition of Marque Medicos’ computing environment from a conventional Windows server configuration to a virtual computing environment including the installation of hardware and software components that support the Local Area Network (LAN). Documented health check monitors to aid Disaster Recovery using embedded Disaster Recovery features in the VMware ESX 4.0 software package.

Medical Writing and Terminology

Proficiency and expertise in medical writing, knowledge of pharmaceutical and medical terminology, and experience in the bio medical writing field.

DISCOVER FINANCIAL SERVICES (DFS), Riverwoods, IL, (April 2008-May 2009)

Project Manager

As a Project Manager for documentation, successfully led a CMS implementation project providing end-to-end support from inception until delivery; supported cross-functional team initiatives, specifically business and technology, made significant improvements to the quality of business and technical documents and enhanced the delivery methodology of documentation.

Master-minded and created a business proposal and gathered requirements for implementing a Content Management System (CMS) in XML. The cost saving from implementing a TeamSite Interwoven CMS was estimated at 30% of production and delivery costs in addition to elimination of other overhead costs.

Created and socialized the project plan/proposal and XML authoring and publishing platform footprints amongst Senior Management and business teams.

Performed detailed gap analysis on pilot versions of the CMS installation. Mapped functional and technical requirements for business and technical teams.

Engaged in Needs Analysis and customer feedback surveys.

Elicited stakeholder signoffs and agreements on the CMS initiative.

Ensured Service Level Agreements were met and the product met or exceeded deployment objectives.

Interacted with vendors and stakeholders. Maintained excellent collaboration with internal and external partners.

Resolved conflicts and led defect removal efforts.

Exhibited resilience, responsiveness, and excellent control over people and project governance.

Managed and exceeded expectations in time line, resource, cost and time allocation.

Authored and maintained user-procedure manuals for applications developed for internal and external customers, such as, Pre-certification manuals for Acquirers, Merchants and Issuers. Saved 45 K on the Pre-certification project (January 2009-April 2009) by developing the documents internally.

Edited, managed, and authored numerous complex, inter-related, technical specification documents and established writing standards by implementing Peer Edit checklists and a Corporate Style Guide.

Created and managed processes for managing and delivering off-cycle projects. This was the first of a kind off-cycle methodology document introduced in the Release Communications process.

Awards:

Won an award for excellence in document delivery.

Won an award for excellence in collaboration with Business Unit (BU) teams.

ALCATEL-LUCENT, Naperville, IL, (November 1998-April 2008)

Senior Technical Writer (Mobility)

Technical writer and Subject Matter Expert in a fast-paced environment developing customer documentation from source information, document specifications (doc-specs), Subject Matter Expert (SME) interview; proficient in analysis and impact assessments for end-to-end documentation. Ensured technically accurate content was delivered using standard documentation practices in aggressive time lines. Authored, maintained, and published a wide range of user documents including Reference Manuals, Operations, Administration and Maintenance (OA&M) guides, Installation manuals, On-line documentation, On-line help for complex products and features in Wireless technologies. Thorough knowledge of Wireless Networks, Mobility platform, and integrated network solutions. Developed multiple documents to support Element Management Systems with focus on key security features to support Information security products and services.

Computing Platform/Environment: Adobe Frame Maker, Arbortext Editor (XML), Microsoft Visio and Corel Draw. Over 10 years of experience in Adobe Frame Maker and 3 years in the XML environment.

Authored and maintained documents on XML Arbor Text Editor and WebIMS for highly visible customer projects.

Through understanding of XML authoring, staging, and publishing using Document Type Definition (DTDs).

Created Help files, and followed XML data flow, parsing, metadata and tagging concepts.

Led defect removal and troubleshooting on Arbor Text Editor and associated CMS.

Researched, documented, developed, and led award-winning solutions for integrated networks managed by Alcatel-Lucent, Qualcomm, Sprint and third party vendors for next generation solutions including Qualcomm-Chat (Q-Chat) and Operations Maintenance Center (OMC-Q) products. Created outstanding Operations, Administration and Maintenance (OA&M) guides and Installation Manuals to support Element Management Systems (EMS).

Created a high quality installation manual for the 9980 Applications Intelligence Network Platform (AINP) project for a wireless router by researching external resources and produced the document in record time.

Researched and defined the scope of a project/product life cycle setting realistic expectations, goals, and milestones for document delivery.

Authored multiple documents related to Security systems for Information Security at the application and infrastructure levels.

Successfully implemented Information architecture guidelines and User Task Analysis (UTA) design in the SDLC framework.

Outstanding Achievement:

Understanding architecture and systems is crucial and attributed to the success of requirements gathering and analysis and unveiled the potential of the OMC-Q documentation. This achievement not only increased the visibility of the project but raised the stature of the project exponentially.

Team Leader:

Team leader for the "optional feature" team handling Project Management tasks including the following tasks: work allocation, web-report maintenance, feature assessment, communications with the BU, external clients, and Information developers. Developed customer documentation for fast features, that is, features with a short life cycle.

Awards:

Won an award for accomplishing a critical deadline in record time.

Won several recognitions for document impact assessments.

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