Project Manager

HOPE GINIKA

Skilled professional business analyst with 8 years of proactive experience in banking and finance domain. Possess detailed knowledge of various Software Development Life Cycle methodologies (Waterfall, Agile and RUP). Possess excellent analytical skills in capturing/analyzing system, business processes, Object-Oriented Design/ Modeling, requirement documentation, and Project Management.

PROFESSIONAL SUMMARY:

Excellent knowledge of banking industry (Retail banking, Investment banking, Private banking, Portfolio management, Asset management) and financial services especially in secondary mortgage market.

Expert knowledge in various capital market instruments and securities including Equities, Fixed Income Instruments, Risk Management (Credit and Market Risk), Mutual Funds, Derivatives, Hedge Funds, ETF’s, securitization, Mortgage backed securities, Asset backed securities.

Excellent knowledge of pricing capital market and money market securities such as fixed income securities, equities and derivatives how they are impacted by the Bank Secrecy Act, Dodd Frank Act, Anti-Money Laundering, OFAC and Customer Identification Program (KYC/CIP), Basel II compliance using industry standards and regulatory guidance, etc.

Proficient in AML& Trade Surveillance tools such as Actimize and good understanding of related topics.

Detailed knowledge of Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) including Waterfall, Agile Scrum and Rational Unified Process (RUP).

Proficient in creating Business Requirements Documents (BRD), Functional Requirements Document (FRD) and Requirements Traceability Matrix (RTM).

Facilitated series of Joint Application Development (JAD) sessions for requirement selection.

Functional experience with User Stories, Use Case Analysis, UML, Business Process Modeling and Change Management.

Detailed knowledge with Data Warehousing, Data Modeling, Data Migration, Data Mapping and development of Entity Relationship Diagrams (ERD).

In-depth knowledge of Online Analytical Processing (OLAP), Online Transactional Processing (OLTP) and Extraction Transformation Loading (ETL).

Expertise in conducting GAP Analysis and Browser Compatibility Testing in a multi-platform environment.

Strong experience in Automation and Manual Testing including System Integration Testing, Security, Functional Testing, Structure Testing, Regression Testing and User Acceptance Testing (UAT).

Strong Project Management skills including planning, monitoring, budgeting and risk management.

Self-starter with excellent interpersonal skills and attention to details. Ambitious, delivery focused, result-oriented and out-of-the- box thinker with excellent quantitative and communication skills. Possess a blend of analytical skills and leadership capabilities.

EDUCATION

Master in Technology _Project Management

TECHNICAL SKILLS:

MS Office (Excel, Word, PowerPoint, Project, Visio, Access, Outlook), MS SharePoint, SQL Server, HP (Quality Center), ALM, Rally, Rational Suite (Requisite Pro, Rose, Clear Quest), Erwin, SSIS, SSRS, Actimize.

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE:

Client: M&T Bank, Buffalo NY.

Duration: January 2015- Present

Role: Senior Business Analyst

Project: AML &Trade Surveillance

This project was to implement securities reporting application, which met AML requirements while catering tracking functionality. It provided detailed funding information of managed accounts by customized inquiries and offered a complete view of the securities portfolio of clients. This initiative app helped to collect data from both internal &external sources, allow clients under the same household to be clubbed under same portfolio and generate reports by different durations or at any time point. This project followed Agile Scrum methodology.

Responsibilities:

Worked closely with PMO team to present, justify and negotiate the project estimate with business stakeholders.

Worked on reporting application and interacted with various business teams for requirement gathering & analysis and conducted JAD sessions to quickly gather business & functional requirements.

Prepared Business & Functional requirement documents for securities reporting application using standard SDLC templates in MS Word.

Maintained SDLC standards by documenting Project Request Document, Project Planning Document, BRD, FRD, Scope Document, RISK Scorecard, and Planning Phase End Metrics.

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.

Created High Level Design Document, Test Plan & Test Case Document, and Release Plan.

Used Rally to maintain and update status of each change request, enhancement, production issue and bugs for test results.

Maintaining all the project documents and updating them regularly with the new updates and enhancements in the application.

Analyzed & resolved Production issues, working closely with Onsite & Offshore development teams during the project to achieve product delivery timelines.

Involved with making appropriate commitments through story selection, sizing and tasking.

Involved in Scrum Sprint Planning Sessions, Backlog Grooming, Sizing, Sprint Retrospectives & Reviews, Daily Stand ups, User Stories and Acceptance Criteria.

Created and prioritized the Back Log in Rally, coordinated Planning Sessions and maintained User Stories and Acceptance Criteria.

Tools & Technologies:

Agile Scrum, Microsoft Office Suite 2010(Word, Visio, Project, Excel, Access), Rally, Microsoft SQL Server 2012, HP QC, Actimize, MS Project, SSIS, SSRS.

Client: John Hancock, Boston MA

Role: Sr. Business Analyst

Duration: January 2014 to December 2014

The goal of the project was to develop a reporting system for the credit-trading desk under its proprietary parent application, which will enable the business to generate Profit and Loss account reports and Trading Activity reports. The project followed PMBOK guidelines using agile methodology.

Responsibilities:

Co-Authored the project charter, which included project goals, business case, opportunity statement, and high level timeline and team assignments for the projects.

Worked with senior management and Desk Heads to get approval on project charter and thus defined the goal/scope of the project.

Structured the process breakdown and identifies important project milestones with related timelines to decrease the beta release time by 1 month.

Analyzed data sets, which included Credit Default Swaps, Investment Grade and High Yield Bonds and Distressed Debt.

Created a BRD and FRD through working with the Desk heads and their different business units (Investment Grade, High Yield, and Distressed Debt).

Designed the parameter screen and created a preliminary prototype which implemented all the requirements into the module.

Interacted with SME’s in the construction of Use Case diagrams and Use Case Specifications.

Prepared functionality test plans and test cases, and ensured that the module was linked to Bloomberg and the securities were mark to market on report.

Conducted Regression Testing to ensure the generation of certain datasets regardless of parameter selection

Documented specifications for the following fixed income fields: Credit, CUSIP, Price, Yield, Coupon, and Market value.

Conducted risk assessment of the project

Cross-trained in Capital Markets team on the forecasting process of treasury for Cash, Investments & Debt and Other Income & Expenses.

Coordinated development activities across various departments

Conducted review meeting to continuously assess the status of project with regard to project plan and controlled iterations of the deliverables in conjunction with UAT’s bugs or revisions

Provided technical and procedural support for User Acceptance Testing

Prepared User Manual highlighting the different functionality of the module, and set focus sessions to train the business.

Organized post-launch review meetings to revisit project strengths and liabilities, and to build out better processes for future projects. Team building and wrap-up continued up to this point.

Tools & Technologies:

PMBOK, MS Office Suite (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access, Visio), Quality Center, UML, Microsoft SQL Server 2008, MS Project.

Client: Lincoln Financial Group, Radnor, PA

Role: Senior Business Analyst

Duration: January 2013 – October 2013

The goal of the project was to improve an equity trading system and add the new reporting features to the existing system. It provides the investors a tool to keep track of subscriptions and redemptions, capital commitments, calls and distributions across portfolios and investments. Build and share portfolio rebalancing and reallocation scenarios with the optimal Portfolio Planning Module. The user can get various different report on specific time based on different investment tracking purposes. The project followed RUP methodology.

Responsibilities:

Worked with the trading and financial analysis team to understand the business requirements needed to incorporate the features they wanted working in the system.

Carried out an “As is” and To Be” analysis and documentation on the Bank’s current Information and Investment Management System.

Gathered user and business/regulatory requirements through interviews, surveys, and observing from portfolio managers and UI (User Interface).

Worked with the different business units (Investment Banking, Fixed Income, Equities, Foreign Exchange, Clearing & Execution) within the bank to understand the current business flow

Cooperated with project manager to define project scope, major features, risks, developed project time lines and did business process management.

Conducted User Acceptance Testing (UAT) of new rates clearing eligible products

Performed client and sales support, and overall support of trade flow to vendor and in-house systems.

Examined Order Management System (OMS) to ensure compliances with upgrade requirements, and generated documents for the workflow of exiting system and desired system that involve Cash Analysis, Portfolio Analysis, Order Initiation, Order Execution, Trade Clearing, and Booking, and performed gap analysis.

Prepared data mapping documents to support ETL process and involved in building data models to construct staging warehouse for reporting purposes.

Maintained Traceability Matrix for the current business processes and proposed changes.

Assisted Project Manager in managing project progress, estimating delivery schedule and supporting implementation and application using MS Project.

Developed test plans with QA team and helped to develop test scenarios according to different report needs for system testing and performance testing.

Reviewed test cases, maintained the Requirement Traceability Matrix (RTM) to ensure appropriate documentation is in place.

Conducted UAT, documented and reported user feedbacks to management team, and Created user manuals included the explanation of different reports and how to execute.

Tools & Technologies:

RUP, UML, Rational Requisite Pro, Rational Rose, Rational ClearCase, Rational ClearQuest, Windows 7, Java, SQL, HTML, MS Excel, MS Word, MS Project

Client: BNY Mellon, New York NY

Duration: February 2012 – December 2012

Role: Business Analyst

The project was to make enhancements to an existing web-enabled application for the company’s Financial Subsystem including modules such as Accounts Payable, Accounts Receivables, Invoice, Payment module, and GL Accounts for the accounting sub-system.

Responsibilities:

Conducted JAD (Joint Application Development) sessions to allow different stakeholders to communicate their perspective to one another, resolve any issue that may exist or arise and finally come to an agreement quickly.

Interacted with concerned BPOs and system architects to understand detail level of data flow from various applications.

Identified the current business process, documented the workflow and improved the efficiency of the current business process in the Accounting department.

Involved in requirement gathering, analyzing them and segregating them into high level and low-level use cases. Analyzed and created the process flow diagrams for the Accounting group.

Co-authored the project that included the goals of the project, business case, opportunity statement, and high level timeline and team assignments for the project.

Acted as a liaison between the clients and Technology department of PNC Financial Services Group, Inc.

Detailed design of some of the key aspects of the accounting application like Account payables, Account Receivables, and Journals.

Responsible for designing the various financial reports in General Ledger using Financial Statement Generator (FSG) so as to match closely with the required information in the reports.

Worked with Subject Matter Experts during the project phases to guide the users through the tables, functions, and overall system architecture.

Derived Functional Requirement Specifications (FRS) based on User Requirement Specification (URS). Understand and articulate business requirements from user interviews and then convert requirements into technical specifications.

Identified and created all necessary Business Use Cases from requirements, created UML Diagrams including Use Cases Diagrams, Activity Diagrams, and Sequence Diagrams using Microsoft Visio.

Extensively involved in all ceremonies to make sure that documented functional requirements are met.

Maintained and kept track of stakeholder’s requests for enhancements and changes using Rational Clear Quest.

Understood the business logic, User Requirements and test objectives to develop test plans, test cases and test case execution using Test Director.

Drafted test strategies, test plan cases and test scripts for the installation, GUI, functional, security, recovery, performance and integration testing for multiple software releases using Requisite Pro.

Created differently Traceability views to maintain the traceability requirements.

Performed system testing to ensure the compiled software components.

Participated in Bug-Review meetings with software developers, QA engineers, managers and suggested enhancements to the existed application from business perspectives, provided solutions to existing bugs.

Assisted in Conducting UAT (User Acceptance Testing) to make sure that all the user requirements are catered by the application.

Involved in preparing a simple and detailed User Manual for the application, for an intended novice user.

Tools & Technologies:

Rational Unified Process (RUP), Rational Requisite Pro, Rational Rose, Rational Clear Case, Clear Quest, UML, MS Office, MS Visio, MS Project, Quality Center, And MS SQL.

Client: Atlanticus Holding Corporation, Atlanta, GA

Duration: October 2009 – December 2011

Role: Business Analyst

The project was to develop software that performed real-time pricing of Energy (Gas & Oil) and Derivatives as well as to implement a Reporting project with output options including Word, PDF, HTML, email and mobile device capabilities. Besides, the system was to minimize market risks, which would reduce the costs that incurred on investors and company. The project followed Water Fall methodology.

Responsibilities:

Researched reports’ specifications required for the stakeholders with various forms of output such as HTML, Crystal, Word, PDF and HTML as well as email and mobile device reporting

Assisted project manager with creating detailed project plans, developing, scheduling and tracking project timelines

Documented requirements, associated change requests with requirements and connected requirements with Use Case Analyses

Documented business workflows textually as well as in UML diagrams for stakeholders’ review

Supported IT in creating functional specification documents for the design, development and implementation of strategic projects

Analyzed financial risk sources and their potential impacts on forecasted pricing of Natural Gas, Oil and Derivatives

Involved in creating test plans, flowcharts, and screen mock-ups

Authored progress and completion reports which were then submitted to project management on a weekly basis

Created the User Interface screenshots to be presented to the business

Involved in UAT plans with several test cases for each project to ensure that the system run smoothly after the proposed enhancements or changes have been made

Tools & Technologies:

Microsoft Office Suite (Word, Excel, Power Point, Access, Visio), HP Quality Center

Client: United Bank for Africa

Duration: September 2007 – September 2009

Role: Jr. Business Analyst

The project was to enhance the existing trading site by incorporating and integrating with ETFs trading platforms, whose system interfaces would be tailored to types of customers, in order to increase account quantity and educate customers to have in depth research of ETFs.

Responsibilities:

Interacted with SMEs, Directors, IT and Vendors for overall understanding the need of system and obtained a detailed knowledge of business process involved in the project environment. Analyzed and prioritized user and business rules that must be included in system during the software development

Conducted Gap Analysis to show the current and proposed functionalities of the system. Conducted JAD sessions with management, SMEs, vendors, users and other stakeholders for open and pending issues to develop specifications and converge early towards a design acceptable to the customer and feasible for the developers.

Extracted the business requirements for the end users and prepared BRD supporting documents containing the essential business elements, detailed definitions, and descriptions of the relationships between the actors to analyze and document business data rules.

Created Use Case Diagrams, Activity Diagrams, Sequence Diagrams in MS Visio.

Scheduled meetings with data analysts, developers, and 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.

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