John Easton

Scarborough, ON, M*W*P*

https://ca.linkedin.com/in/johndeaston

ad3jxb@r.postjobfree.com https://www.linkedin.com/in/baqaguy 416-***-****

Senior Consultant/Business Analyst

Experience with Agile Methodology Experience with multiple successful Small, Medium and Large-Scale Complex Information Technology Implementations

Comprehensive background as a Business Analyst involved in several, small, medium, and large very complex computer software implementations. Known as a collaborative problem solver, practiced in capturing and clarifying business requirements, documenting high and detailed level requirements, documenting functional requirements, writing test plans and test cases, and web page redesign. Background includes managing test cases using Microsoft software, software testing and quality analysis of web-based and client / server-based applications in Windows platforms.

Strong interpersonal, communication and project management skills with demonstrated success diplomatically facilitating discussions and negotiations with stakeholders as well as training offshore testing teams using both Waterfall and Agile SDLC methodologies.

Additional areas of experience include:

Knowledge of Agile scrum methodology as a business analyst, project manager and test lead

Facilitate requirements gathering and design sessions with multiple stakeholders to extract requirements, turning them into use cases, user stories, sequence diagrams, etc. to meet development and stakeholder needs

Acting as liaison between business stakeholders, and software development team

Training presentations, documentation and user guides

Coordinating with operations, business and all related stakeholders to provide all necessary document and details

Good knowledge of various operating systems

Professional Experience

Tools/software/RDMS used summary:

Microsoft - SQL Server RDMS, SQL, Test Manager, Visual Studio, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Visio, Teams, Outlook, SharePoint, Project (Project Manamement), Publisher, web services, XML, Windows 98/2000/XP/Vista/7/10

Other – BeyondCompare, Total RDMS, Snagit, Snipping tool

Video Conferencing setup and usage – very familiar with Cisco, Zoom, Webex and Teams

Caregiver Commitment 2023 to 2023

Temporary full-time caregiver during family member’s illness.

Echelon Insurance, Mississauga, ON 2022 to 2022

A leading specialty insurer who works with broker partners to provide Personal and Commercial insurance solutions

Business Solutions Consultant

Worked on screen flow and messaging for new business and endorsement transactions within Guidewire policy administration (Policy, Claims and Billing Centres).

Administration of Guidewire user accounts including roles and permissions.

Provided Level 1 and 2 technical support to resolve incident reports and inquiries in Guidewire

Broker Management System support.

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Professional Development / Career Break 2016 to 2022

Laid off from CGI IIS department due to a lack of work.

Consistently received excellent annual performance reviews.

Software Tools/Development Methodologies and Concepts self-study (some examples).

oThe BABOK Guide – the Business Analysis Body of Knowledge

oA Guide to SQL

oJava programming concepts

oProblem solving

oIT Project Delivery

oAgile Project Management

oAgile Software Development Lifecycle and Process Workflow vs Waterfall Software Development

oTypes of software testing

oJIRA

oUser Stories and Use Cases

oThe Agile Business Analyst – Moving from Waterfall to Agile

oPowerPoint

oVisio

oExcel – Functions, Formulas, Pivot tables

CGI Inc., Markham, ON 2005 to 2015

A leading information technology (IT) and business process service provider.

Business Analyst, Insurance Information Services (IIS) 2011 to 2015

Participated in and led planning process, delivery and implementation of several internal projects (used waterfall and agile SDLC methodologies) that delivered new and enhanced insurance web-based application services. Services were within comprehensive portfolio of personal automobile risk and personal property services on Windows XP and Windows 7 operating systems designed and written within a .net framework.

Supported, maintained and enhanced P&C (Property and Casualty) insurance products such as the AutoPlus System (which allows insurers to access detailed and up-to-date reporting of personal automobile claims, policy and driver information), MVRS (3 year driving records), FleetPlus (historical commercial policy and claims information), DPR (one year driver performance records); Access to comprehensive property and claims data via HITS (online access to personal property claims data), and CTS (Commercial Tracking System for commercial property claims).

Captured and documented business requirements, enabling signoff by project sponsor to facilitate functional specification analysis.

Translated business requirements into functional specifications, assisting development and testing teams in creating technical specifications and test plans.

Worked in an Agile SCRUM environment with a team of developers and quality assurance members.

Worked with the stakeholders to develop, maintain and prioritize backlog items; design creative solutions with development team members.

Helped manage and coordinate project deliverables with project manager(s).

Documented precise and accurate User Story acceptance criteria, providing clear understanding of project scope up front by team members, thereby eliminating misinterpretations of purpose of sprint.

Engaged in Sprint planning (identification of tasks, estimating, resourcing) and agile scrums which allowed for close tracking of sprint progress versus expectations, resulting in sprints that met deliverables within timelines.

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CGI Inc. (Continued)

Prepared and executed test strategies, test plans and test cases, ensuring changes met requirements thereby avoiding costly programming fixes and delays in delivery.

Contributed in gathering and reporting several critical test metrics, allowing project sponsors to measure actual progress to plan, identifying any risks and necessary mitigation steps.

Participated in implementation planning and execution, ensuring smooth transition of system changes to live production with minimal disruptions to other system and users.

Three introductory courses into the Guidewire P&C insurance delivery application suite that span the entire P&C insurance lifecycle—underwriting, policy administration, billing, claims, and reinsurance management.

Received an Impact Award, recognizing partnership and quality on client project.

Lead Business Analyst/Offshore QA Team Lead, User Experience Redesign project (IIS) 2013 to 2014

Lead an offshore testing team during the redesign of Web based user interfaces for the IIS portal and the Automobile and Property web based services screens. Project involved over 20 CGI members.

Documented high-level and detailed business requirements and functional specs, enabling programming teams understanding of project scope and changes required.

Worked closely with developers who were programming within a .net framework.

Provided test progress metrics to project sponsor, allowing tracking of daily progress and identification of mitigation steps when slippage identified.

Participated in strategic planning sessions, identifying project scope, complexities and capturing estimates as part of creating a new system.

Led and trained offshore staff gathering estimates and assigned testing tasks, tracking actual progress versus planned, ensuring testing was on target and any slippages were quickly identified and corrected.

Wrote and executed Test Plan and Test Cases using Microsoft Test Manager 2010, ensuring proper documentation and tracking of test cases, allowing for controlled test environment with bug identification and resolution.

Estimated level of efforts and staffing required for testing, enabling reduced costs and keeping project within budget.

Participated in baseline, system and regression testing, ensuring changes met requirements and keeping development and retesting costs down.

Reviewed updates of existing application guides, ensuring updates were accurate for publication.

Arranged and lead multiple training sessions for clients and offshore members, enabling understanding of what changes were made, what processes changed, and navigation within Web pages, allowing for smoother client transition post-implementation.

Participated in final release deployment meetings, executed post-deployment testing plans and checklists, ensuring deployment went smoothly thereby avoiding expensive and time consuming troubleshooting and expensive delays.

Received Bravo Award for achieving high level of quality assurance pre and post-deployment of system changes.

Business Analyst, various other CGI projects 2005 to 2011

Worked on various non-IIS P&C assignments internally (Gore Mutual Insurance for example) and at client sites (Allstate, Aviva Canada) that delivered new Web based and Client / Server based applications and enhancements to existing applications.

Met with project stakeholders, subject matter experts, and department heads, identifying high- level and detailed-level business requirements, ensuring requirements were complete and agreed upon.

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CGI Inc. (Continued)

Participated in Q&A and joint application design sessions with client capturing requirements and defining scope which led to more accurate estimates of project duration and effort required.

Supported client account with change management activities and scheduling of changes successfully by meeting client targets and contractual obligations.

Documented business process mapping, existing and proposed, as part of process analysis and redesign, reducing inefficiencies and resulting in cost savings.

Documented business requirements, high level and detail level, ensuring all parties involved had clear understanding of project requirements, eliminating potential misunderstandings.

Performed data mapping and design of report layouts so that development team could meet target deliverables.

Executed test cases and reported defects as part of quality control.

Identified gaps in understanding of requirements, and resolved all outstanding questions, avoiding project delays and reducing project costs.

Obtained formal solutions and estimates from developers for planning of testing window.

Tracked testing progress compared to estimates, providing metrics to management for analysis and risk mitigation as required.

Tracked life cycle of work orders as part of client service level agreements.

Identified and escalated project risks triggering mitigation tasks, minimizing impact to project schedule.

Provided subject matter expertise support for quality assurance and user acceptance testing by less experienced staff thereby keeping project on schedule.

Assisted with data conversion activities, satisfying application requirements.

Coordinated build content approvals along with necessary documentation, supporting source code deployment so that code changes could be tested and verified.

Mapped business rules to business requirements into functional specifications.

Completed the design and functional specifications of a Broker portal to enter Commercial Lines insurance new business proposals and policies (including underwriting rules, field edits, messaging, web page flow)

Acted as a liaison between client and internal CGI development staff coordinating Portage RTG web application work orders submitted for both application enhancements and defect resolution. Responsible for being able to replicate client defects based on an understanding of underwriting rules, policy rules, business rules, and field edit rules tables in order to guide developers in their resolution of a problem.

Project Manager, Corsair Close Out project at CGI 2009

Project managed process improvement project to banking application.

Developed project plan to schedule associated projects milestones and deliverables within agreed timeframe.

Provided weekly and on-demand project updates to CGI and client senior management as requested by client.

Coordinated development, unit, integration, quality assurance, and regression testing efforts and timelines, verifying solution was achieving target performance improvements.

Coordinated and scheduled production deployment efforts, obtaining necessary approvals as part of client service level agreements.

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ALLIANZ CANADA, Toronto, ON 1999 to 2005

Provider of property and casualty insurance (home, auto and business).

Business Analyst, S.T.A.R. System 2000 to 2005

Co-managed the daily operations and development of the S.T.A.R. Property & Casualty (P&C) personal and commercial lines (auto and property) insurance application.

Strong familiarity with policy new business, renewals, and endorsement declaration pages, policyholder letters.

Programmer / Analyst, S.T.A.R. system 1999

Performed maintenance, technical support and code enhancements to the S.T.A.R. P&C system on an AS/400 platform.

Education

Bachelor of Science (BSc), Geology, McMaster University, Hamilton, ON

Diploma, Mohawk College of Applied Arts and Technology, Computer Systems Technology, 3 year Co-op program, Hamilton, ON

Professional Development

The Intuitive Jira Guide for Users, November 2023

How Does User Experience (UX) Matter, Techcanvass Academy, September 2023

Managing Requirements with JIRA, Techcanvass Academy, July 2023

Certified Business Analysis Professional (CBAP) Certification, working towards

Microsoft SQL Server 2012 for Analysts, Option Train Inc., March 2016

Certificate of Studies, General Insurance Essentials, IIC, October 2009

Associations

Member, International Institute of Business Analysis (IIBA)

Awards

Bravo award from CGI Inc. for extraordinary effort on IIS Portal refresh, March 2014

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