Yakoob
Over * years of extensive experience as a Senior Business Analyst with
Banking & Financial Services domain in Business and Functional requirements
gathering, analyzing requirements, business process re-engineering, object-
oriented design/modeling and Project Management with strong understanding
of sequential and iterative approaches like waterfall, RUP and Agile to
manage the software development life cycle (SDLC).
PROFESSIONAL SUMMARY:
. Experienced in capital and money market instruments within investment
banking and brokerage environments like Fixed Income instruments,
Income (Mutual Funds, Bonds, Asset Backed Securities, Hedge Funds) and
Equities, ETFs & OTCs, FX, Derivatives, etc.
. Experienced in Trading, Settlement and Messaging concepts (Straight
through Processing and SWIFT), Transfer Agency Services, Trade
Lifecycle, and Hedge Fund strategies.
. Excellent knowledge of Security Master, Account Master, Fund
Accounting (Portfolio & NAV Accounting), Anti-Money Laundering, OFAC
and Customer Identification Program (KYC/CIP), Basel II compliance
using industry standards and regulatory guidance, etc.
. Excellent understanding of reference data and transactional data of
financial instruments like derivatives, fixed income, equities, etc.
. Expert in writing documents like Business Requirements, Functional
Requirements that match Technical system setups, front/ middle/ back
office, and Use Case, Vision, Scope and Project Plan Documents.
. Expert in using MS office applications for day to day activities, MS
Visio for drawing flow diagrams and MS Project for prioritizing and
managing individual tasks.
. Proficient in creating UML diagrams like Use Case Diagrams, Activity,
Sequence, Collaboration, Class, State, Workflow, Process flow, Data
flow and Deployment Diagrams.
. Proficient in creating mapping spreadsheets, Source to Target mapping
documents including transformation rules.
. Worked closely with various Business Object teams working on different
technology platforms like Crystal, Cognos and Microstrategy.
. Experienced in Data Analysis, Data Quality Management, Data Profiling,
Data Cleansing, and Data Integrity as well as maintaining reference
data and defining transformation rules for Data load and Data extract
processes.
. Experience in writing SQL queries for data validation exercises using
Oracle SQL Plus, SQL Server and TOAD.
. In-depth understanding of various SDLC methodologies like Agile, RUP,
Scrum, Waterfall etc, Product Data Management and QA methodologies
such as making Test Plans, conducting User Acceptance Tests and
creating & executing Test Scripts/Test Cases.
. Expert in facilitating all levels of management, developers, QAs,
stakeholders, business users and off-site teams in JADs, brainstorm
sessions, whiteboarding by conferences and WebEx.
. Strong leader and team builder with excellent analytical and
communication skills with capability to handle new technologies and
situations, dedicated to meet deadlines and provide necessary
deliverables and resolve issues creatively by out of the box thinking.
BUSINESS SKILLS & TECHNICAL SKILLS:
Requirements Gathering, Business Requirements Definition, Business
Processes Research, Analysis and Documentation, Use Case Modeling and
Analysis, Functional Requirements gathering, JAD Sessions, GAP analysis and
SWOT analysis, Data Analysis, Team building, Conflict Management, Time
Management, Trade Life Cycle, Test Scripting & Production Support.
MS Windows (2000, XP, NT, Vista, Windows 7), MS Office 2007/2003/2000
(Excel, Word, PowerPoint, Project, Visio, Access, Publisher, FrontPage,
Outlook), MS Sharepoint 2007, Lotus Notes, VB 6.0, Mainframes, SWIFT, Basel
II, XML, HTML, SQL Server 2005/2000, Toad, Oracle 9i/10g, Adobe, HP
(Quality Center 9.2, QuickTest Professional 8.2/9.2), JIRA
EDUCATION & CERTIFICATION:
Bachelor of Arts (Economics), Bombay University, India 1978
Certificate in Canadian Securities, Canadian Securities Institute, Toronto
1998
Professional Experience:
Client: MassMutual Financial Group, Springfield, MA
Project: Management Dashboard
Duration: MAR 2013- Present
Role: Senior Business Analyst/System Analyst
To assist managers and staff to centralize workflow, division information,
and document storage & retrieval, we created a web-based application called
Management Dashboard. Developed in JAVA BXP environment, it is the first
Project within AIS (Alternate Investment Services- Fixed Income). AIS
Dashboard caters various functionalities for different departments like
Client Services, Portfolio & NAV Accounting, and Investor Services in the
form of applications. Inquiries like Portfolio Accounting & NAV Accounting
Checklists, NAV Tracker help accounting team to track Accounting processes.
Inquiries like Trade Tracking & TA Statements Checklists are used by
Investor Services team. Client Services team uses AIS Dashboard to maintain
Client & Fund information. The project followed Agile Scrum methodology.
Responsibilities:
. Experienced in working on Management Dashboard application and
interacted with various business teams like Client Services, Investor
Services & Fund accounting services etc.
. Defined logic to correct many funds in AIS Dashboard for Master-
Feeder Fund Structure for the fixed income instruments like Hedge
Funds.
. Created mock up screens for various modules including Portfolio/NAV
Accounting Checklists, Email Inquiries, Heatmap Reports and NAV
Tracker Reports of various Fixed Income instruments.
. As Scrum Master involved with making appropriate commitments through
story selection, sizing and tasking.
. Worked very closely with the business team for requirement gathering
& requirement analysis. Conducted JAD sessions to gather business &
functional requirements.
. Understood the AML compliance requirements by interacting with
compliance department, and SME experts in the laws/act of
compliances.
. Studied the existing KYP/CIP system and prepared the test data for
the CDD and EDD based on the inputs.
. Managed onsite & offshore development team during the project and
worked very closely to achieve product delivery timelines.
. Prepared Business & Functional requirement documents for Management
Dashboard project using standard SDLC templates in MS Word.
. As Scrum Master involved in Scrum Sprint Planning Sessions, Backlog
Grooming, Sizing, Sprint Retrospectives & Reviews, Daily Stand ups,
User Stories and Acceptance Criteria.
. Prepared mock up screens using MS Visio & MS Paint for Management
Dashboard Project and enhancements in existing AIS Dashboard.
. As Scrum Master created and prioritized the Back Log in Rally,
coordinated Planning Sessions and maintained User Stories and
Acceptance Criteria.
. Maintained SDLC standards by documenting Project Request Document,
Project Planning Document, BRD, FRD, Scope Document, RISK Scorecard,
and Planning Phase End Metrics.
. Created High Level Design Document, Test Plan & Test Case Document,
and Release Plan.
. Worked closely with various teams to identify and document Disaster
Recovery Plan and Production Support strategies.
. Managed Project planning & project status using PPM.
. Analyzed & resolved Production issues, working closely with Onsite &
Offshore development teams.
. Analyzed change requests and enhancements, bugs & production issues
to prepared MTDs and worked closely with development team for
implementation.
. Used JIRA to maintain and update status of each change request,
enhancement, production issue and bugs for AIS Dashboard project.
. Worked very closely with Accounting team, Client Services team,
Investor Services team, etc. during UAT phase & Production Release of
the project.
. Since Management Dashboard is the first Project on Java/ BXP
environment, worked very closely with various technical teams for the
set up and access.
Tools & Technologies:
Microsoft Windows XP, Microsoft Office Suite 2010(Word, Visio, Project,
Excel, Access), Microsoft Outlook, JIRA, Microsoft SQL Server 2012
Client: Barclays, Wilmington, DE
Project: Data Integration/Warehousing
Duration: 11/2011-03/2013
Role: Sr. Business Analyst / Sr. Data Analyst
Phase I: Integrated 122 data elements into the data warehouse from 15
receivable systems.
Phase II: Integrated remaining source systems.
Phase III: Set up customer inquiry module, customer standardization and
implementation of CDH.
Phase IV: Development of ADHOC reporting for BASEL II requirements and data
management utilizing Hyperion. The project followed Agile Scrum
methodology.
Responsibilities:
. Gained good understanding of DOORs and other software testing
methodologies.
. Identified ADHOC scenarios for BASEL II regulatory reporting, and
created ADHOC reports using Excel-VBA.
. As Scrum Master, made appropriate commitments through story
selection, sizing and tasking.
. Defined program and project goals, objectives, products, services,
constraints, assumptions, risks and facilitated processes by working
with the GIW team to baseline the scope of work and enable development
of the plan.
. Performed gap analysis/Data Analysis for existing AS-IS Data
model/Database for various referential and transactional entities and
created Data model change requests for enhancement.
. Defined very complex logic for load process of securities (Funds) in
which defined rules for ISIN, CUSIP and SEDOL.
. As Scrum Master, involved in Scrum Sprint Planning Sessions, Backlog
Grooming, Sizing, Sprint Retrospectives & Reviews, Daily Stand ups,
User Stories and Acceptance Criteria.
. Defined data load processing order (hierarchy) for each entity based
on dependency check.
. Gathered Requirements and interacted with Subject Matter Experts to
identify, understand and document business needs for data.
. As Scrum Master, created and prioritized Back Log in Rally,
coordinated Planning Sessions and maintained User Stories and
Acceptance Criteria.
. Analyzed business requirements and functional requirements from
clients and writing of Data Dictionary, Preliminary and Final
Function.
. Developed data mapping documents for all entities, i.e., accounts,
investor-distributor, funds, transactions, foreign exchange rate,
dividend balance, calendar, etc.
Tools & Technologies:
Microsoft Windows XP, Microsoft Office Suite 2010(Word, Visio, Project,
Excel, Access), Microsoft Outlook, JIRA, Microsoft SQL Server 2008
Client: Prudential Financial, Newark, NJ
Project: Limited Partnership System (LPS)
Duration: 09/2010-11/2011
Role: Senior Business Analyst/ System Analyst
LPS is a reporting application compatible with Microsoft Excel for various
business teams such as Investor Services, Fund Accounting and Tax
Department. These reports can be exported as an Excel file to the local
directory. All the User Machines got upgraded from Excel 2003 to Excel
2007. Hence, all the reports should have compatibility for Excel 2007.
Development team has to make the changes in codes for all VB Forms. Some
Reports have already been upgraded based on User's JIRA request. The
project followed RUP methodology
Responsibilities:
Inception
. Collaborated with project manager to define project scope and risks,
determined appropriate methodologies to apply based on Scope/Vision
documents, and developed project time lines for on time delivery based
on SDLC methodology.
. Facilitated discussions involving key stakeholders from
both business and IT to elicit high level requirements and estimate
project feasibility.
. Designed and conducted survey among different end users including
institutional users and brokers to collect detailed requirements, and
documented business requirements according to interviews and user
surveys.
. Mediated conflicts between users and stakeholders on requirements
through JAD sessions.
. Examined Order Management System (OMS) to ensure compliances with
upgrade requirements, and generated documents for the workflow of
existing system and desired system that involved Cash Analysis,
Portfolio Analysis, Order Initiation, Order Execution, Trade Clearing,
and Booking, and performed gap analysis.
Elaboration
. Identified and documented business needs and created detailed Use
Cases using UML, and collaborated with production team to identify and
map detailed existing processes, identify system gaps and
developed functional requirements documentation (FRD) that supported
overall strategy, goals and objectives.
. Derived functional specifications using UML models including user case
diagram, activity diagram, sequence diagram and collaborated diagram
with software architects and developers to ensure that the
applications conform to the requirement and helped to understand
business flow and account relationships in accordance to the specific
databases and tables involved in development.
Construction
. Wrote SQL Queries extensively against different databases, generated
various reports and analyzed them as per the company requirement.
. Maintained Traceability Matrix for the current business processes and
proposed changes.
. Assisted Project Manager in maintaining and monitoring project
progress and status using MS Project, providing high level estimates
of efforts for analysis, implementation and support of application,
estimating delivery schedule and resource allocation.
. Established traceability matrix using Rational Requisite Pro to trace
completeness of requirements in different SDLC stages, and managed
change requests; controlled, tracked and monitored change
requests using Rational ClearQuest to enable successful interactive
development.
. Developed test plans with QA team and helped to develop test
scenarios for system testing, integration testing and performance
testing.
Transition
. Conducted UAT, documented and reported user feedbacks to management
team, and developed training materials for different end users and
assisted in User Training for the new system.
Tools & Technologies:
Microsoft Windows XP, Microsoft Office Suite 2007(Word, Visio, Project,
Excel, Access), Microsoft Outlook, LPN Application, JIRA, Microsoft SQL
Server 2008
Client: Chesapeake Investments Services Inc., Vienna, VA
Duration: 03/2009-09/2010
Project: StatPro
Role: Senior Business Analyst/ Data Analyst
StatPro is the source of referential and transactional data for Security,
Accounts, Benchmark and Performance details for GIW. This project is a fund
account reporting project which involves ETL process of referential data of
entities like Account, Security & Benchmark along with the transactional
and performance data. GIW extracts the data feeds to FSR according to the
business requirements for the reporting application.
Responsibilities:
. Defined program and project goals, objectives, products, services,
constraints, assumptions, and risks and facilitated processes by
working with the GIW team to baseline the scope of work and enable
development of the plan.
. Performed gap analysis/Data Analysis for existing AS-IS Data
model/Database for various referential and transactional entities and
created Data model change requests for the enhancement.
. Defined very complex logic for the load process of securities (Funds)
in which defined rules for ISIN, CUSIP and SEDOL.
. Defined the data load processing order (hierarchy) for each entity
based on dependency check.
. Gathered Requirements and interacted with Subject Matter Experts to
identify, understand and document business needs for data.
. Analyzed business requirements and functional requirements from
clients and writing of Data Dictionary, Preliminary and Final
Function.
. Developed data mapping documents for all entities, i.e. accounts,
investor-distributor, funds, transactions, foreign exchange rate,
dividend balance, calendar, etc.
. Prepared test data for various entities, various test Cases and
performed unit testing exercise using SQL server and Oracle SQL Plus
to examine data quality for the data analysis activity.
. Performed data validation exercise for all load processes, maintained
issue log of data validation issues and fixed such issues working
closely with development teams.
. Analyzed and finalized input feed layout for all entities.
. Prepared the data dictionary for knowledge transfer to the development
team and future use.
. Prepared documented SQL queries for the Production Website and
validated the same.
. Responsible for troubleshooting the issues reported by the development
team in a timely manner.
. Facilitated User Acceptance Testing (UAT) using HP Quality center with
stakeholders and business users, and the errors discovered were fixed
and then verified via regression testing.
. Acted as a liaison between the development team and the business and
worked on resolving the issues reported.
. Responsible for maintaining the latest versions of all the data
mapping documents, documenting all the proposed changes and explained
the changes to the development team.
Tools & Technologies:
Microsoft Office, Windows 95/98/NT/2000/XP/ Vista, Rational Project Viewer,
Toad, Oracle SQL Developer, Oracle SQL Plus, HTML, XML
Client: SCOTIA CAPITAL INC.,Toronto, ON
Duration: 02/2008-03/2009
Project: Self-Clearing Broker Dealers Application
Role: Business Analyst
The project was to develop an outsourcing platform that will allow National
Financial Services (NFS) to offer Broker/Dealers who wish to clear for
themselves defined as Self-Clearing Broker/Dealers. The application
required two separate interfaces for both a window's client/server
application and a web access. Both interfaces involved management and
control of large amounts of complex screen information. User interviews and
testing were critical to ensure that the interface and interaction model
was appropriate to actual real-life scenarios. The project was based on
SWIFT Funds messages, which was to cover all processes of the life cycle of
investment transaction from trade through to settlement/ clearance and
custody services.
Responsibilities:
. Prepared Roadmap Design of the project for Money Movement and Margin
divisions.
. Worked with Investment SME's, Financial Analysts as well as other
business teams on requirements gathering to write the Business
Requirements Documents of all the Business Processes.
. Created use case and process flow diagrams.
. Captured existing workflows of Firm Funding, Cashiering, Retail Cash
Management, Banking Services, Funds Transfer, Retirement distributions
and Margin divisions and converted all the workflows to Future State
Business Designs in the projected Environment.
. Performed gap analysis on the complete current state to future state.
. Worked extensively on Equity Derivatives, and Cash Equities on trading
desk.
. Implemented Straight through processing functionality for new
OTC/Equity Derivatives - Prime Brokerage business unit.
. Involved in creating the User Interface (UI) Prototypes for various
report documents and statements to detail the completion of the
clearance transaction.
. Reported weekly status updates to project management and stakeholders.
. Assessed Credit Risk strategies with various internal credit tools and
implemented Basel II strategies to augment Credit availability.
. Mapped financial data, general ledger data, loss event data,
transaction data and people reference data from source to target
database for creating a central Risk Data Repository as required by
Basel II reporting regulations.
. Also, performed data validation and data analysis to test mapping and
development changes.
. Worked on developing an outsourcing platform, enhancing of SWIFT
messaging functionality and implementing Basel II compliance
requirements.
. Assisted in creating and executing Test Cases/ test scripts and
documented all issues identified during the testing phase and ensured
that all incidents were discovered, tracked/ resolved and prepared the
UA test cases for end-user testing.
Tools & Technologies:
Mainframes, Microsoft Office Suite 2003 (Word, Visio, Project, Excel,
Access), MS SharePoint 2007, SQL Server 2005
Client: TD AMERITRADE, TORONTO
Duration: 02/2007-02/2008
Role: Business Analyst
TD Ameritrade is a leading online brokerage firm that offers a full line of
investment products, online trading platforms and market research tools to
help investors (Individuals, corporate, Trusts, custodians) take control of
their financial future. It provides a real-time stock trading data from
exchanges around the world. To enhance its Real-Tick suite of applications
for analyzing, tracking, and trading stocks, futures, options, foreign
exchange, and fixed income instruments for the North American market, TD
Ameritrade recently upgraded its website that allows the customers
(Individuals, corporate, Trusts, custodians) to have in depth research of
the ETFs that they are interested in like analyzing the historical data,
charts, latest news and financials. The project was about enhancing the
existing trading site for incorporating it with the trading platforms and
integrating it with the trading platforms. Interfaced the ETF trading
systems to types of customers. Now any customer (Individual, trust) can
open an account to trade ETFs.
Responsibilities:
. Obtained a detailed knowledge of business process involved in the
project environment.
. Interacted with SMEs, Directors, IT and Vendors for overall
understanding and need of the system. Was able to fine tune the
business rules with inputs.
. Analyzed and prioritized user and business rules as system rules that
must be included while developing the software
. Extracted the business requirements for the end users keeping in mind
their need for the application.
Gathered the requirements for a trust/custodian to open an account
. Prepared High Level Logical Data Models and BRDs (Business Requirement
Documents) supporting documents containing the essential business
elements, detailed definitions, and descriptions of the relationships
between the actors to analyze and document business data rules.
. Established Business Analysis methodology using Agile Extreme
Programming to create Architecture and Interaction models.
. Conducted Gap Analysis to show the current and proposed
functionalities of the system.
. Extensively involved in JAD sessions to converge early towards a
design acceptable to the customer and feasible for the developers.
. Created Use Case Diagrams, Activity Diagrams, Sequence Diagrams in MS
Visio.
. Conducted JAD sessions with management, SME (Subject Matter
Expertise), vendors, users and other stakeholders for open and pending
issues to develop specifications.
. Scheduled meetings with data analysts, developers, System Analysts to
explain the business needs and fine tune the requirements. .
. Made recommendations to improve the current application performance
depending on time limitations and capacity constraints with the aid of
SCR's (Scope Change Requests).
. Authored progress and completion reports, which were then submitted to
project management on a weekly basis.
. Assisted in testing the application for Usability testing to verify
whether all the user requirements were catered to by the application.
. Involved in preparing a simple and detailed User manual for the
application for intended users and tools that will be released out to
the field users.
Tools & Technologies:
MS Word, MS Visio, MS Projects, Mercury Quality Center, MS SQL Server 2000
and 2005, MS SharePoint, M&O Serve ME (Integrated business system).