Aakash Kuna

Senior Business Analyst

Phone: 303-***-**** Email:ac6noz@r.postjobfree.com

Senior Business Analyst with 8 years of experience in Investment Management, Banking, Insurance and Finance domains. Proficient in Software Development Life Cycle methodologies such as Waterfall & Agile, combined with outstanding track record of transforming business ideas into conceptual models and software solutions.

Professional Summary:

Performed AS IS and TOBE analysis for documenting Business Requirements Document (BRD), which in turn helps in transforming to Functional Requirements Document (FRD).

Experience in requirements gathering by conducting Joint Application Development (JAD) sessions and Fit/Gap sessions.

Expertise in Requirement Elicitation techniques. Highly proficient in coordinating with the team and in working with users, stakeholders to elicit the requirements using Focus groups, Interviews and Brainstorming sessions.

Proven experience in end-to-end business process mapping, business and technical requirements analysis, business planning, modeling, verification and product development.

Developed and maintained Agile artifacts; sprint backlog, burn-down chart and Involved in Scrum events such as Backlog Grooming and Story-Point Estimation.

Facilitated Agile Scrum Ceremonies: Sprint Planning, Daily Scrum Call, Sprint Review and Sprint Retrospective Meetings.

Proficient in using UML in behavioral, structural modeling – created Use Case, State chart diagrams, Activity diagrams, Class diagrams, Sequence diagrams, Process flow diagrams and Data Flow diagrams (DFD) using MS Visio and Rational Rose.

Created workflow scenarios, designed new process flows and documented the business Process and activities of the business from the conceptual to procedural level.

Designed and developed Wireframes, UI mock-up screens, Prototypes for better visualization by using Balsamiq and integrated with JIRA, PPM and Atlassian tools.

Created Requirement Traceability Matrix (RTM) for tracking and managing changes based on project’s evolving needs.

Used JIRA for defect tracking and reviewed them in subsequent iterations of the application development process and facilitated Triage meetings.

Effectively and accurately communicated relevant project information to the client and project team.

Trained users on the changes being released and conducted post production activities like getting feedback from users, prioritizing tasks with business users.

Possess excellent written and verbal communication skills. Responsible, self-motivated and organized.

Strong knowledge in software testing lifecycle, review and approve test plans and test cases, use of testing tools and Defect tracking mechanism and coordinate Sanity and User Acceptance Test(UAT) activities.

Technical Skills:

Domain

Banking, Insurance, Finance.

SDLC Methodologies

Waterfall, Agile (SCRUM), Hybrid

Business

Process Modelling Tools

MS Visio, Rational Rose

Wire Framing Tools

Balsamiq, Pencil

Project Management Tools

JIRA, Rally, TFS

Document

Management Tools

MS Office - Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook

Content Management Tools

MS SharePoint

Database

Management Systems

Oracle, SQL Server

Requirement Management Tools

Team Foundation Server (TFS)

Operating System

Windows, Linux

Professional Experience:

Client: M&T Bank, Buffalo, NY Nov 2016 – Present

Role: Sr. Business Analyst

Project Description:

M&T Bank Corporation is a bank holding company headquartered in Buffalo, New York. The goal of the project was to make enhancement to an online electronic trading platform and affirmation platform for its customers, brokers and institutional investors and to implement the graphing feature to the existing trading system for the premium clients. This new feature will help to summarize the investor's investment and help them improve their investment strategy. The graphing feature includes portfolio based and investment based graphs. It almost covered capital markets including fixed income, stocks, futures, options and foreign exchanges. With the new feature, the investors can see asset, sector allocations, rate of return, daily volume, technical analysis and other analysis. The project followed agile methodology.

Responsibilities:

Assessed the scope and impact of business needs through analysis and completion of all enhancement specifications.

Conducted interviews with Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) in understanding different usage of all kinds of graphs (like pie chart of investment goal, sector, currency; stacked value of asset allocation, investment, tax status).

Conducted interviews with investment analyst and investment advisor to get the function calculation (return calculation, P&L calculation) behind each graph.

Collaborated with cross functional teams on a regular basis to gather requirements.

Defined and developed the ETL process to load the data into the landing tables during the land process. Prepared Data Mapping documents based on graph requirements.

Conducted JAD sessions with the stakeholders, end users, and SME, to determine the critical business processes and identify key functional requirements for user's terminal adhering to the order management systems.

Facilitated Daily scrum meetings, sprint planning, sprint review, and sprint retrospective meetings.

Documented business requirements and conducted BRD analysis. Applied UML methodology in MS Visio to elaborate functional requirements like, use case analysis, use case diagrams, activity diagrams, and sequence diagrams to define work flow of the project to the IT developers.

Worked with Product owner and scrum master do develop artifacts such as Product Backlog, Sprint Backlog, Sprint Burn down Chart.

Created a product roadmap for the various stages and releases throughout the project lifecycle. Managed the overall performance, publicized the team's progress and successes to make sure they are highly visible to stakeholders.

Helped the project management doing business process management and conducted timely requirement review sessions with the Stakeholders and end users to ensure the product verification.

Wrote SQL queries to extract related data from transaction record database for OLAP purposes.

Environment: Windows, Microsoft Office SharePoint, Rational Requisite, MS Office, SQL Server, Agile, MS Project, MS Access.

Client: US Bank, Minneapolis, MN Jun 2015 – Oct 2016

Role: Sr. Business Analyst

Project Description:

U.S. Bancorp is an American diversified financial service holding company headquartered in Minneapolis, MN. It is the parent company of U.S. Bank, the fifth largest bank in the United based on $353.8 billion in assets and fourth largest in the US in total branches. The project involved working with numerous teams to enhance an enterprise Web-based interface system supporting primarily the loan origination and processing business areas. This application allowed users to maintain and set-up account information, loan origination and many other business areas including loan servicing.

Project Description:

Managed and monitored various scrum events through agile delivery process, worked closely with project manager, product owner and stakeholders to ensure their expectations are met.

Gathered requirements, developed Process Model and detailed Business Policies.

Generated a streamline process to understand the various steps in the loan lifecycle and desired functionality of the new system by interacting with users, management, SME (Subject Matter Expert), stakeholders, lenders, underwriters.

Designed Use Cases using UML and managed the entire functional requirements life cycle.

Followed Agile methodology for the entire SDLC.

Participated in sprint planning, sprit review, daily scrum meetings and scrum meetings as part of agile process.

Worked on numerous lending options for commercial and personal loans.

Utilized Commercial Lending banking application and was responsible for the design and process flow of the system.

These specifications included UML-based use case models and activity diagrams, and usability analysis/user interface

Conducted Gap Analysis for the system considering AS IS and TO BE features.

Responsible for writing and implementation of the test plan, and various test cases.

Develop user manuals, presentations and training manuals as per project specifications and timelines.

Interacted with diverse and multiple teams to maintain the bottom line objectives.

Proficient in writing good SQL queries.

Provided overall project management to multiple projects successfully completing them on-schedule and on-budget.

Built and managed a cohesive team to meet deliverables per project / track assigned.

Provided customer support as required to meet service level agreements.

Prepared the Business Workflow using MS-Visio with input, output, and Pre and Post conditions.

Environment: MS Visio, MS office Suite, UML, SQL Client Server, Windows, MS Project, Share point, Oracle.

Client: HIMCO, Hartford, CT Apr 2014 – May 2015

Role: Business Analyst

Project Description:

The Hartford Financial Services Group, Inc., usually known as The Hartford, is a United States-based investment and insurance company that is part of the Fortune 500 list located in Hartford, Connecticut. HIMCO is a wholly-owned subsidiary which manages the investment of the Hartford Financial Services Group, Inc. HIMCO project was aimed at developing ETL processes to load the target databases.

Responsibilities:

Interacted with Product Owner & Agile Development Team on documenting Scrum artifacts like Product, Release & Sprint Backlog.

Assisted in facilitating Scrum Ceremonies like Sprint Planning, Daily Scrum/Stand Up meeting, Sprint Review and Retrospective meeting.

Involved in performing competitive research and analysis, and conducting user interviews to identify specific areas for improvement and to generate ideas for future functionality upgrade.

Assisted in communicating business process and requirements to technical personnel.

Facilitated Joint Application Development (JAD) sessions with IT groups. Identified the Key Changes and conducted meetings with the Product Owner.

Created Burn down Chart to know the progress of work with time.

Prepared Business process diagrams, State diagrams, Activity diagrams, and Sequence diagrams using Visio.

Documented the Requirement Traceability Matrix for tracing the Test Cases and requirements related to them.

Critically evaluated the information gathered from multiple sources during requirements gathering.

Interacted with the developers for resolving the bugs reported in JIRA and various technical issues related to the requirements.

Prepared UAT Test Plan for various Test Scenarios.

Conducted functional walkthroughs and User Acceptance Testing (UAT) sessions.

Assisted in creating User Manuals for customers.

Worked with Quality Manager to ensure Quality for all the deliverables in the project.

Environment: SQL Server, Oracle, Rational Requisite Pro, MS Visio, JIRA, MS Office, Balsamiq, SharePoint.

Client: TATA AIG Insurance, Hyderabad, India Feb 2012 - Mar 2014

Role: Business Analyst

Project Description:

TATA AIG offers personal auto, commercial auto, workers' compensation, homeowners and umbrella insurance. The project was to automate the Insurance claim system by providing real time monitoring for its Auto insurance division. The project involved developing a system in place for online quote applications to obtain reliable quotes in real time from existing web portal. The Project was undertaken to enhance the existing functionality of convenient access to real-time quote information with the ability to download quote information. The application also helped agents to obtain quotes for their customers.

Responsibilities:

Analyzed the system by performing As-Is study and created To-Be process flow in order to determine whether solutions meet the high-level business requirements.

Provide support across different domain areas such as Auto Assignment, Payments, Claims Data and Appointment Logs, Auto Estimations, Flood Claims etc.

Analyzed the Business rules for Claim assignments throughout the New Jersey, so as to have balanced work load for all the claims representatives.

Assisted cross-functional teams from Property and Casualty division business teams such as Annuities, Securities, Policy & Program Evaluation Team, Project Sponsors & Actuaries.

Utilized corporation developed Hybrid approach.

Elicited business requirements from core business units via JAD sessions, teleconference meetings, semiformal and formal meetings.

Documented the requirements in pre-existing Business requirement document(BRD)

Responsible for process modeling from inception through implementation and post implementation optimization along with associated UI design.

Planned and defined system requirements with Use Case, Use Case Scenario and Use Case Narrative using the UML (Unified Modeling Language) methodologies.

Worked closely with user experience(UI/UX) team for creation of wireframes and prototyping for web portal.

Designed quality user stories making sure that they meet INVEST criteria.

Conducted Sprint planning meeting with developers and testers to review user stories, assign story points and cards to a respective sprint.

Engaged in analyzing requirements, identifying various individual logical components, expressing the system design through UML Diagrams.

Coordinated User Acceptance Testing (UAT) on a monthly basis with the Subject Matter Experts(SMEs) to make sure that all the requirements are addressed in the application.

Assisted with the development of user manuals and trainings to help educate users on the new functionality.

Environment: MS Visio, JavaScript, Rally, Pencil, Microsoft Office Tools, SQL Server, Hybrid Methodology

Client: Karvy Financial Sevices, Hyderabad, India Feb 2010 - Jan 2012

Role: Financial Analyst

Karvy’s financial services business is ranked among the top-5 in the country across its business segments. The Group services over 70 million individual investors in various capacities, and provides investor services to over 600 corporate houses, comprising the best of Corporate India.

Responsibilities:

Researched business conditions in local, regional and national areas.

Designed & Enhanced detailes Excel based quantitative financial models used to perform valuations(DCF, Comparables) and conduct monthly financial forecasting. Forecasted revenues with a variance of less than 5%.

Assisted in the preparation of budget.

Partnered with senior leadership and executive teams on a regular basis to discuss financial results compared against forecast.

Delivered reports and provided ad-hoc analysis regarding the monthly financial performance and KPI’s to the CFO.

Developed daily, weekly, and monthly pricing and margin reports for the management team using Microsoft Excel, which led to more oversight of ongoing business decisions and initiatives, helping the company to increase their profitability and meet growth goals throughout the year.

Prepared company profitability analyses with ROE and IRR on a quarterly basis.

Coordinated month end close activities, reviewed monthly financial statements auditing for accuracy in reporting.

Assisted in the preparation, review, and administration of contractual proposals

Provided training and mentoring to other analysts

Used Excel Power Pivot to create data tables/queries/reports as a "mini-data warehouse" for the finance team.

Coordinated financial operations and/or financial planning activities across organizations, functions and/or business units.

Partnered with business unit leaders to provide tailored in-depth analysis to identify trends and KPIs in order to better align with the company's overall strategic vision and goals.

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