Project Manager Management

Ghani Ahsan, B.Sc.

647-***-**** ******@******.***

Qualifications Summary

A passionate, effective, hands-on Project Manager who successfully delivers your mission critical business and information technology projects to your satisfaction. Proven flexibility and adaptability in program and service delivery, applications development, product development, financial and technical compliance, security, change management, infrastructure deployment and integration assignments and working with customers and multiple vendor environments. Proven ability to manage people, processes and technology and deliver quality solutions.

Enabling your business to become more competitive and customer focused.

Experience Summary

•10+ years Senior PM leadership experience managing all aspects of business and IT projects

•10+ years experience managing the implementation and integration of COTS such as JDE, SAP, SIEBEL, ENSEMBLE, P2K to existing IT infrastructure and applications

•10+ years experience managing in a matrix project environment with internal and external resources at Canada Life, Great-West Life, Sprint, Bell Canada and BlackBerry

•10+ years experience building and managing detailed project plans and schedules

•10+ years formal systems development lifecycles such as PMBOK, Method/1 and RUP

•10+ years experience managing requirements and development of Use Cases

•10+ years experience in managing vendors such as Amdocs, Accenture, CISCO, Convergys, CGI, HP, IBM, Oracle, Siebel and Tata

•10+ years experience managing change, communications and training

•5+ years source control process experience

•10+ years experience using MS Project and MS Office

•10+ years experience working and communicating with senior IT and business leaders at the CIO and Senior VP level at Great-West Life, Canada Life, Research in Motion, understanding issues, presenting and implementing solutions

•10+ years experience in managing expectations of sponsor and multiple stakeholders from IT, business and external customers

•Effective interviewing, influencing, facilitation and meeting management skills

•10+ years project management experience managing end-to-end application development, implementation, transition to support and integration projects in the insurance, telecom and service industries

•3 years experience managing high visibility / high risk, strategic impact business application, business transformation, data migration, disaster recovery, integration, infrastructure, regulatory, compliance, Life Insurance, Reinsurance, and merger/amalgamation projects at Great-West Life, Canada Life and London Life

•Recognized at Canada Life and RIM for the ability to balance formal project management methods with the need for speed to market and quality.

•Consistently recognized by company and client leadership at Sprint, BlackBerry and Canada Life for initiative, problem solving, and getting things done.

Professional Accomplishments

Senior Project Manager Altstra Systems Corp. – Toronto, ON Aug 2014 – Present

Altstra provides information systems consulting services to its clients. Its services include project management, portal development, systems integration and change management.

•Engage potential clients and partners in the development of new services for the small business, professional practice and other new market segments.

•Provide information systems consulting services to clients

•Focus on establishing presence in local consulting opportunities

Senior Project Manager (contract), PCGI Consulting – Winnipeg, MB (Jul 2014–Aug 2014)

Assigned to Great-West Life Assurance Company.

Senior Project Manager (contract) Great-West Life - Winnipeg, MB (Jul 2014-Aug 2014)

Assumed and managed a complex in-flight $2.5 Million Enterprise Architecture (EA) project for the Group insurance business. Managed 4 active work streams and several work packages. Controlled costs of 50+ on-shore and off-shore team members of the client and its contractor.

•Initiated a new project - Services Integration Strategy for the Service Registry and Repository (SRR) Pilot; set-up the project in Microsoft Project Professional (MSPS); created the project charter, created the project status report; conducted project team status meetings; worked with the IS team and sponsors to create a project plan;

•Led the requisitioning, and installation of infrastructure for the SRR pilot

•Created EA project SharePoint site for easy access to project status reporting

Senior Project Manager (contract), Paradigm - Regina, SK (Apr 2011-Dec 2013)

Assigned to Canada Life, a division of Great-West Life Assurance Company.

Senior Project Manager (contract) Canada Life – Regina, SK (Oct 2012 – Dec 2013)

Managed a portfolio of projects of $2 Million in parallel for the International, Individual and Reinsurance lines of business. The systems use IBM z Enterprise Mainframe, DB2, CICS, COBOL, Intel, Linux, VMware, Windows, Oracle and MQ Series technologies.

Completed the end-to-end project management (requirements, design, analysis, coding, testing, and deployment) and transition to support of the following projects:

•Canada Life mainframe data security evaluation and remediation.

•Created access and data security policies and processes

•Strengthened access controls on applications and data.

•Designed and implemented new controls to further secure data transfer between GWL/London Life/Canada Life and Investors Group mainframes

•Canada Life mainframe INGENIUM system applications tuning evaluation and remediation for actuarial and valuation business intelligence systems.

•Significantly reduced CPU and job duration peaks reducing costs

•Reduced month-end mainframe CPU consumption by 25% and the overnight batch processing by 6 hours to complete prior to start of business day;

•Eliminated the need for an expensive CPU upgrade and related software licensing.

•ARIA Reinsurance administration system decommissioning

•Migrate ARIA data from IBM/z OS mainframe to Trident client server system

•Archive and delete application objects, tables and datasets from CL mainframe;

•LRG Reinsurance Sites Remediation project. Scope: International Operations I.S. service delivery risks remediation, IT Security enhancement, organizational integration and change management and disaster recovery solution development and deployment.

•Completed and obtained approval for project Charter

•Completed and obtained approval for Disaster Recovery Solutions for remote sites including servers and communications infrastructure

•Completed WBS and project schedule

•Implemented Virtual Service Desks in Barbados and Philadelphia

•Conversion of in-flight projects from Primavera EPM to Microsoft Project Server EPM

Senior Project Manager (contract) Canada Life – Regina, SK (Jul 2012 – Feb 2013)

Managed the Crown Life Amalgamation project. Project scope was to integrate policy administration and policy holder communication systems of Crown Life and Canada Life.

•Managed a team of 15 business and IS resources

•Developed and executed a phased project plan which included creation of Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) and schedule.

•Prepared Implementation and Risk Management plans.

•Transitioned to production and application support

•Worked closely with many senior leaders (Senior VP, Senior managers) finance, legal, actuarial located in Regina, Winnipeg, Toronto, Denver and Hong Kong. Delivered the project meeting their strict time, quality and cost constraints

Senior Project Manager (contract) Canada Life – Regina, SK (Jul 2012 – Dec 2012)

Led the Service Process Improvements project. As a component of a continuous business transformation initiative updated the Ingenium Life Insurance and TAI Reinsurance Systems. Modified Ingenium to change the complex sorting, bundling and printing of all customer output documents for Great-West Life, London Life and Canada Life across all Canadian locations;

•Reduced computer processing time and tedious, error-prone client services labour.

•Saved premium costs by re-calculating retention and ceded amounts for ceded policies

Senior Project Manager (contract), Canada Life – Regina, SK (Apr 2012 – Oct 2012)

Led the Reinsurance Access Compliance project. Managed the business and IT teams. The project remediated the Reinsurance applications portfolio to make it ICOFR regulatory compliant where deficiencies existed.

•Led Project Planning, Architecture Review, Requirements gathering, Systems Analysis, business impact analysis, use cases, business communications, testing and deployment

•Introduced new IT security features including password strengthening, authentication standards, logging and notification of policy violations.

•Web-enabled password changing improved customer service and developer productivity

•Deployed web server and applications to production and secured corporate compliance

•Transitioned to production and application support

•Managed stakeholder and project team communications and meetings.

Senior Project Manager (contract) Canada Life – Regina, SK (Oct 2011 – Jun 2012)

Managed the Advisor Code Enhancements project for the Ingenium and ACP Systems to enable an increase in the number of Advisors. The systems use IBM mainframe, DB2, CICS, COBOL and WebSphere MQ technology to provide Life Insurance and Living Benefits Administration and integration with Siebel CRM and other systems through database replication.

•Managed budget of $400K and a team of 23 IS and business resources

•Developed and executed a phased project plan.

•Managed changes to the data model and data migration of DB2 tables and testing.

•Managed end-to-end testing with Individual Life, actuarial, valuation, claims, compensation and wealth management systems

•Transitioned to production and application support

•Implemented the complex project in 2 releases in May 2012 and June 2012.

•Managed team members located in Regina, Winnipeg, London and Toronto.

Senior Project Manager (contract) Canada Life – Regina, SK (Apr 2011 – Jun 2012)

Led Reinsurance Infrastructure Renewal project. Managed the business and IT teams. This initiative was undertaken to meet regulatory and customer satisfaction requirements. Replaced IBM Power 4, AIX and Oracle 8i based infrastructure with IBM Intel, Red Hat Linux, VMware and Oracle 11g DBMS based infrastructure and provided Disaster Recovery capability.

•Took over in-flight project from existing PM within 2 weeks of joining

•Planned, executed and deployed the highly complex and risky project to meet customer’s quality, cost and schedule objectives to their complete satisfaction and delight

•Managed budget of $1.0 Million and a team of 20 IS and business resources (Architects, DBAs, System Analysts, Developers, Technical experts and business experts)

•Procured and deployed new servers, SAN, operating system and DBMS infrastructure

•Built and tested new interfaces with financial, actuarial, business intelligence and valuation systems such as SAP and AXIS

•Migrated several Terabytes of data and program objects from the old to the new platform

•Upgraded Anti-Money Laundering (AML) data base access to Oracle 11g

•Archived and deleted application objects, production tables and datasets from AIX system

•Performed Disaster Recovery Test and provided evidence to support ICOFR and SOX compliance to OSFI, other regulatory authorities and key business partners.

•Transitioned to production and application support

•Managed stakeholder communications and stakeholder and project team meetings

•Managed team members located in Regina, Winnipeg, London and Toronto.

•Received praise from the VP Reinsurance on project results

Senior Project Manager, Altstra Systems - Mississauga (Aug 2010 – Apr 2011)

Led the creation of a software development and marketing unit at Altstra Systems.

•Built and launched a political campaign web-site.

Senior Project Manager (contract), Dixie Electric - Concord (Jan. 2010 – Jul 2010)

Reporting to the IT Manager, led the creation of the RFP for Dixie’s ERP system.

Senior Project Manager (contract), Research in Motion - Waterloo (May 2008 – Jan 2009)

Led the Enterprise Tools Enablement (ETE) project at Research in Motion (RIM) Customer Support Operations. Managed the business and IT teams. Developed and launched the BlackBerry Expert Support Center (BESC). BESC, a custom portal improved customer service for RIM’s key Enterprise customers. It provided access to technical knowledge and trouble-shooting tools such as BlackBerry wireless Enterprise Activation Readiness, SAP COTS resident customer subscription agreement details and Remedy COTS resident on-line incident and case management using Web Services.

•Took over in-flight project from existing PM within 2 weeks of joining

•Led a team of 15 BAs, Developers, Designers, UE Analyst, Program Designers, Solution Architects, Quality Assurance Specialists, Provisioning and Mediation engineers, Legal Counsel, Communication Specialists and Product Service Marketing, Program and Account Managers to deliver a business solution appreciated by customers.

•Using MS Project, developed a detailed project schedule to leverage the waterfall and iterative, Agile development methodologies in use at RIM

•Solution provisioned SAP, Remedy and BlackBerry Relay Systems using web services secured by a DMZ to host web servers servicing external customers

•Managed stakeholder communications, training and stakeholder and project team meetings.

•The team developed and deployed 3 releases on time into production in only 7 months

•Product recognized by business leaders and enterprise customers

Senior Project Manager (contract), CM Inc. - Markham (Dec 2007 – Mar 2008)

The Rural Economic Development System (REDS) is a multi-tier, web-based e-Commerce system developed for the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs (OMAFRA). It processes funding applications, contracts, claims and cases for the RED program.

Senior Project Manager (contract), Bell Canada - Toronto (Jul 2007 – Nov 2007)

Led teams for two Workforce Management System (WFM) projects. The projects targeted improvements in customer service levels for residential wireline customers and replaced old Nortel infrastructure. Managed business and technical teams from Bell, CGI, and IBM.

•Defined project scope, developed project management plan, WBS and cost estimate for the $2 Million “Visibility” project using IEX Corporation’s TotalView system.

Senior Project Manager (contract), ConceptWave Software Inc. – Toronto (Oct 2006 – Feb 2007)

As a PM in Professional Services, I led the team for ConceptWave’s Order Management COTS product to develop and deliver TeleQuote, a quotation and order management portal for their customer.

•Took over in-flight project from existing PM within 2 weeks of joining

•Managed internal budget of $350,000 and a team of 6 developers.

•Wrote the Statement of Work (SOW) including SLA’s for testing and on-going support

•Solution transformed and replaced a cumbersome, slow and error prone manual process

Senior Project Manager (contract), MTS Allstream Inc. - Toronto (Feb. 2006 – Aug. 2006)

Managed the Legacy Systems project of the Enterprise One. Integrated legacy billing, project management and Cognos PowerPlay with SAP R/3 ERP COTS. Merged two instances of SAP.

•Joined an in-flight program as PM representing Allstream and worked with MTS and Accenture teams on the program

•Managed budget of $655,000 and a team of 18 IS resources.

•Developed project scope, charter, project plan, team structure, WBS, MS Project

•Managed business and technical teams from MTS, Allstream, and Accenture

Tools and Technology

MS Office, MS Project, MS Project Server, MS Project Web Application, MS SharePoint, MS PowerPoint, MS Outlook, MS Visio, Primavera Enterprise P6, Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK), ITIL Framework, Remedy, Livelink, SAP, Agile, RUP SDLC, Waterfall SDLC, JIRA, Oracle, Tuxedo, Tomcat, WebSphere, .Net, WebLogic, J2EE, Web Services, IBM Z / OS COBOL/CICS/DB2, WebSphere MQ, IBM AIX, IBM System X86

Education

B.Sc. Electrical Engineering, University of Engineering and Technology, Lahore

Diploma Computer Programming and Operating, Seneca College, Toronto

Professional Development

Member Project Management Institute (PMI)

Member PMI Toronto Chapter

Primavera EPM to Microsoft Project Server EPM conversion course

GE Project Leadership Course

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