Mainframe Developer experience in JCL, COBOL, DB2

Name: Vijayakumar Chakravarthy

Cell: 864-***-****

Email ID: ************@*****.***

Career Objective

To become a part of a software development team where my potential skills are utilized to employer growth and where I can carve a niche for self-development.

Experience Summary

Technical Lead with 13 years of Total IT Experience in Enhancement and Production support projects with hands on experience in Mainframe - JCL, COBOL, DB2, VSAM and CoolGen.

Possess exposure to CICS online application minor changes such as user data validation and user exits.

Good experience in performing Requirement Analysis, Impact Analysis Document, Program Specifications and database design, Unit and System Test Scripts, Customer Acceptance Test Scripts (CAT) and Implementation Checklist for application enhancements.

Strong technical knowledge on JCL, Cobol and DB2 program developments and abend fixing.

Worked on production support CA7 job monitoring and abend fixing.

Good working knowledge on mainframe tools like AQT, SPUFI, QMF, ENDEVOR, CA7, CICS Explorer, IBM File Manager, CA File Master, Abend Aid, etc.,

Having experience in Insurance, HealthCare, and Automotive domains.

Good experience in planning and coordination for deliverables launch schedule and KT handover to support team prior to implementation and provide warranty support.

Technical Skills

Primary Skill

COBOL, JCL, DB2, VSAM, CA GEN 8.5/CoolGen

Database

DB2, VSAM, Oracle

Version Control Tool

Endevor, Changeman, SVN, VSS, LIMA, GuardIEN, Host Encyclopedia

Other Tools

AQT, SPUFI, QMF, Xpeditor, CA-7, CA- File Master, IBM File Manager, IBM Debug Facility, CICS Explorer, HP ALM, ServiceNow, JIRA, Toolset, CA GEN Studio

OS Environment

IBM Mainframe Z/OS, Windows 10

Certifications

INS 21

DB2 700

Employment History

Name of the Employer

Designation

From

To

Duration

Cognizant Technology Solutions

Senior Associate

Oct 17, 2016

Till Date

4 Years 4 Months

Hewlett Packard

Enterprise

Specialist

Nov 9, 2015

Oct 14, 2016

0 Year 11 Months

TechMahindra

Senior Software Engineer

Sep 16, 2013

Nov 6, 2015

2 Years 1 Month

Larsen & Toubro InfoTech

Senior Software Associate

Jan 29, 2008

Sep 11, 2013

5 Years 7 Months

Project Profile 1

Employer: Cognizant Technology Solutions

Client: Metropolitan Life Insurance Corporation

Location: Greenville SC, USA

Project Name

Group Claim Products

Team Size

6

Working on this project

March 2020 to Till Date

Technologies

JCL, Cobol, DB2

Project Summary

Unified Disability Solutions (UDS) is a claim processing application that supports claim validation/adjudication, claim decision making, claim payments and claim reporting. Client Specific is performing required claim process specific to that particular client using UDS by means of software changes for generating reports and claim validation factors. Reports generated as part of client specific have primarily benefits and payment information of employees for respective customers.

Roles and Responsibilities

Working as Technical Lead in Client Specific Project in Claims portfolio in Mainframe JCL, COBOL, DB2.

Responsible for end-to-end software deliverables starting from requirement gathering phase till production launch phase. Responsible for delivering minor changes which come as Incidents, conducting weekly project status call where the ongoing, completed, new changes explained in detail to clients and highlight any potential risk in meeting the deadline. Provide the JIRA, Service Now and Weekly Status Report updates.

Engage in functional requirement walk thru session with clients and gather the requirements. Define Cognizant’s scope of work with respect to system functionality and dependency, raise queries on the unclear requirements and get clarification and pass it on to the team.

Perform Impact Analysis in the system and come up with potential change/recompile components and prepares the impact analysis document which includes programs, tables, JCLs, control cards.

Provide Estimate for the proposed software changes for the Development effort, share it with clients and clarify/justify with the number of change components and the size of change it involves wherever the client feel the effort is more or less. Responsible for revising the estimate based on requirement change and get the estimate approved by clients.

Prepare high level design document which include network diagrams, flow diagrams, program changes, database changes, report layout changes, User Interface (screen) changes. Prepare System Test (SYT) Scripts and Customer Acceptance Test (CAT) Scripts and share with project team and CAT Users. Schedule meeting with clients (MET TL) and MET Disability design review team for all design presentation, explain the changes on the impacted components and resolve client’s queries.

Take up complex program changes such as introducing new feed to downstream system, developing new programs for new reports, SQL optimization and write dynamic JCLs.

Perform the peer review for coding, unit and system test results and capture the review comments in review log, assign and track System Test and CAT defects to closure. Responsible for obtaining pre-implementation sign-off from project stakeholders.

Prepare the implementation plan for the software release and provide walkthrough session to all the stake holders. Involve in pre-implementation activities such as smoke test and ensure the production is working fine before implementation. Engage in implementation activities and co-ordinate with operations team for code promotion, Database activities including program bind, new table/column creation and refreshing/bouncing the online environments. Post implementation, perform IT checkout, validate the online screen flows, and pass on the results to Business users for their checkout. Connect with business and ensure if the changes are working fine and get Post-implementation sign-off. Provide the 30 days post implementation warranty support for the implemented changes.

Project Profile 2

Employer: Cognizant Technology Solutions

Client: Lincoln Financial Group

Location: India

Project Name

Individual Annuity Operations (IAO)

Team Size

4

Working on this project

May 2017 to Feb 2020

Technologies

JCL, Cobol, DB2, CA Gen

Project Summary

Customer Service Workstation (CSW) is an Individual Annuity Operations Portfolio Call Center application primarily used by Call Agents for inquiring the policies, make financial and other client transactions. It is an online application developed in CoolGen with Mainframe DB2 Backend. It also contains Mainframe batch jobs, CICS Programs for loading and fetching contract/policy details into CSW from Backend Admin systems.

Roles and Responsibilities

Worked as a Technical Lead with hands on in Mainframe Technologies. Led Customer Service Workstation (CSW) Online Real time application which was primarily used in Client Call Centre portfolio.

Take complete ownership in delivering application changes for Annuity product releases every quarter (Spring, Summer, Fall and Winter releases). Responsible for delivering small enhancements which come as Incidents.

Led a team of four members and guiding them technically and functionally. Responsible for prioritizing the tasks and assign to team members and track to deliver.

Responsible for coordinating with all stakeholders of the project and publishing regular status to all through weekly status reports.

Perform Requirement Analysis and Impact assessment on solution proposals and estimate the overall effort of the project. Organize requirement clarification sessions with Clients for better understanding of the complex requirements. Prepare query log and capture the requirement clarifications from clients and store it in share point for knowledge purpose.

Responsible for preparing High level for in-scope software changes and coordinating with all stakeholders to get the approval of the proposed design. Responsible for preparing Micro design document (low level design) for software changes detailing to Database design with ER Changes, code changes with or without recompiles, User Interface (Screen) Changes.

Prepare Unit Test Scripts after completing the Macro and Micro Design Documents for each of the requirement with positive and negative scenarios with multiple iterations. Responsible for preparing External Design Document (EDD) for copybook changes and sharing with the upstream and downstream systems for aligning the changes across impacted applications.

Request DB2 DBA for making database changes aligning to Data Model Changes and verify the changes done by DBAs by loading and unloading test data and ensure database is in R/W mode.

Work on code changes and get it reviewed by senior members in the team. Fix the review comments and add it to the lessons learnt.

Prepare Work Breakdown Structure and delegate the individual tasks to team members. Review of code changes with the help of code review checklist. Review the Configurations Items (CI) Log for code changed and recompiled software components for a particular project release. Review the Bind requests and table load requests and verify if the process is successful.

Delegate Unit Testing Tasks to team members and do peer review of test results captured against the unit test scripts. Responsible for migrating the unit tested CoolGen source code to system test environment and deliver the executables/code to QA team for system Testing. Responsible for providing support to QA team during system testing defect/clarification and ensure defect is fixed with in the stipulated SLA given by client. Assess and Delegate medium and low complexity SYT defects to team members and track to closure. Work on SYT Critical Defect that must be resolved within a business day that requires strong technical and functional capabilities and provide permanent fix.

Once system testing is completed, promote database changes and Code Changes to User Acceptance Test environment for UAT testing and deliver the code to Client UAT users. Raise service now ticket for deploying new version of software on UAT user machine and provide the UAT code for installation. Provide support to UAT users during UAT testing defect/clarification and ensure defect is fixed with in the stipulated SLA given by client. Assess and Delegate medium and low complexity UAT defects to team members and track to closure. Work on Critical UAT Defect that must be resolved within a business day that requires strong technical and functional capabilities and provide permanent fix.

After UAT completed, initiate pre-migration activities two weeks prior to production launch by giving email notification to different stake holders of the project for production deployment.

Prepare application back out/recovery plan so in case of any rollback decision made, the old production code can be put in place i.e., restore application to original state. Prepare application KT handover document for use of the Production support team after warranty period and organize a KT walkthrough session and explain what changes are going into production with respect to the project requirements.

Perform a smoke test in Production environment with Business given contracts only for inquiry purpose and capture the screen results in share point. Ensure program changes are working fine, online screens populated with data, navigations are fine from screen to screen.

Create Change Request for Migrating the software changes from UAT to Production on the deployment date window and create Endevor packages for production migration. Request the presence/support of CICS and DB2 DBA Teams for performing Online server refresh, Impacted Table Load and Server Bind to DB2 Database.

On Implementation day, Contact DBA team to execute the packages (Server Code) and verify the migration return code and Request CICS team for refreshing Online Production environment.

Request DBA team for migrating the database changes from UAT to Production and verify if the changes are looking good. It should match with UAT. Request DBA team for loading data in Production table and Program Bind with Production environment.

Responsible for performing IT Team Checkout after above said deployment activities. Perform smoke test.

Work on the Production Issue during IT checkout and resolve it as early as possible within the deployment date window which is usually the Saturday and Sunday. Application must be brought up before the Monday Business hours.

Communicate to Clients for starting the Business checkout after IT Checkout is done and Co- ordinate with clients and check if the user can use the application and checkout without any issue.

Communicate to all stake holders that the Implementation process got over after business checkout. Get sign-off from Business for Production Deployment checkout. Support any Issues that come in Production during two weeks of warranty period and provide the fix.

Document the Issues, Challenges, Defects faced starting from Requirement Analysis thru Deployment and share it with the team so that team can gain knowledge on the application and technology and avoid repeating the mistakes in future. Responsible for conducting Retrospection sessions after each quarterly release for walking thru the Defects and Issues detailing the root cause of the defects, solution, steps taken to prevent the similar defect in future and lessons learnt.

Project Profile 3

Employer: Cognizant Technology Solutions

Client: Ford Motors

Location: India

Project Name

VINCENT (Vehicle Incentive)

Team Size

20

Working on this project

Oct 2016 to April 2017

Technologies

Cobol, DB2, JCL

Project Summary

Vincent is a vehicle incentive application that is used by ford dealers for claiming incentives for the ford vehicles sold in North America. Dealers can find eligible incentive programs for the particular car and model year and do the incentive claim, reverse the submitted claims, track the payment details, and generate the reports.

Roles and Responsibilities

Worked as a Team Lead with hands on in Mainframe – JCL, COBOL and DB2.

Perform Analysis, Design, Build and Launch for new software requests.

Write technical specs and test scripts for program changes.

Write new Cobol db2 programs for rolling out new dealer incentive programs.

Perform unit and system testing.

Led three team members and guided them technically.

Took full ownership of the deliverables and ensure quality and timely delivery from offshore.

Assign work to the team members and assist them for any functional and technical queries.

Track work status and update senior management.

Assess project risks and prepare mitigation plan.

Prepare issue log and query log for project issues and queries.

Provide release notes to Release team for software launch on quarterly basis.

Provide KT to support team about the software changes made.

Provide warranty support post implementation.

Perform end-to-end SDLC processes for all enhancement projects.

Project Profile 4

Employer: Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE)

Client: Generali Europe

Location: India

Project Name

SIGIM

Team Size

4

Worked on this project

Nov 2015 to Oct 2016

Technologies

Cobol, DB2, JCL, CA GEN 8.5 and Oracle

Project Summary

SIGIM is a medical insurance claim processing system for the European Generali users. It validates the patient’s details including the medical bill category and cost and adds it to the system thru batch processing. Generates unique case id for each patient and maintains a history of transactions related to a case id. SIGIM is a case id driven online system for both internal and external users.

Roles and Responsibilities

Worked as a Mainframe Developer from Offshore.

Engage in Application Enhancement on CICS Online and Batch systems.

Perform Requirement Analysis, Impact Analysis, Design, Code, Test, and deployment for new software requests.

Prepare technical specifications document and system test cases both positive and negative and get it reviewed by architect.

Prepare database design document and work with DBAs for implementing database changes.

Write new programs and enhance existing programs.

Provide support for migrating CICS online to distributed UI and engage in testing.

Write technical specs and test scripts-unit and system test cases for program changes.

Debug the programs on CICS Explorer and provide fix.

Migrate the source code to production region.

Perform end-to-end SDLC processes for all enhancement projects.

Project Profile 5

Employer: TechMahindra

Client: Ford Motor Company

Location: India

Project Name

GOLFF (Generic Order Level Feature Forecasting)

Team Size

5

Worked on this project

Sep 2013 to October 2015

Technologies

COBOL, JCL, DB2, VSAM and CoolGen 7.6

Project Summary

GOLFF is a forecasting system that produces part level demand forecast for next 6 months. Parts are Drive, Emission, Engine, Transmission, Body style and Version Series. Monday thru Thursday reports are fine-tuned by analysts and Friday final reports are delivered to the Manufacturing Plant.

Roles and Responsibilities

Worked as an Individual Business Contributor and Module Lead for Projects and SMWs from Offshore.

Perform ID & Assess, Analysis, Design, Build, and Launch Phases for Mainframe (JCL, COBOL and DB2) enhancements.

Engage in application Enhancement for Mainframe Batch and Online (Block mode) systems.

Perform Design, Construction, and Generation on Toolset.

Debug the Cobol program on CICS Explorer.

Perform Analysis, Coding, Unit Testing and Regression Testing for large and small changes.

Provide KT to AM support team before launch of the deliverables.

Make CA7 job scheduling changes and DBCR database changes for launches.

Perform end-to-end SDLC phases for small enhancement projects.

Value Add

Proactively suggested and delivered various scalability enhancements including array size increase and db2 numeric columns data limit before production hang.

Achievements

Received Functional Excellence Award in Dec 2014 for significant contribution towards a critical project.

Received Ford Excellence Award in Feb 2014 for delivering 2-bytes model code expansion project in a short span of three months against the estimated five months.

Received Ford Spot Recognition Award in Dec 2013 for fixing a scalability production issue in a day. The effort includes design, coding & testing, and implementation.

Project Profile 6

Employer: Larsen & Toubro Infotech Ltd

Client: Travelers

Location: India

Project Name

Reinsurance – Schedule-F

Team Size

15

Working on this project since

November 2010 to Sep 2013

Technologies

COBOL, JCL, DB2, CICS, CoolGen

Project Summary

Schedule-F is a mainframe application that is used to send reports to the Insurance regulatory agencies. The regulatory agencies to which the annual statements are reported are.

National Association of Insurance Commissioner’s.

Statutory Accounting Principle.

State Insurance Department.

Roles and Responsibility

Worked as software developer on enhancement and production support systems.

Prepare requirement specs and impact analysis documents for enhancement projects.

Prepare technical design specifications and test case preparation.

Code, Unit and Integration testing for various request and enhancement work.

Implement software changes thru Endevor version migration Tool.

Ensure strict adherence to the delivery schedule.

Provide L2 production support for Batch jobs for product support.

Good experience in CA7 job forecasting and monitoring late queue jobs.

Good analytical and problem-solving skills for abend fixing.

Value Add

Took initiative to convert statically linked COBOL programs to dynamic linking, this initiative helped in reducing efforts & dependency for future enhancements and converting DB2 PLAN to DBRM binding to package to DBRM binding.

Converted all IEBCOPY utility with Sort copy and increased the system performance while copying large volume of records on host files.

Project Profile 7

The Travelers Companies (NYSE: TRV) is the largest American insurance company by market value. Travelers offers a wide variety of property and casualty insurance, Reinsurance, surety products and services to businesses, organizations, and individuals in the United States and in selected international markets.

Project Name

RI PASD – Trafacs

Team Size

7

Worked on this project

Feb 2008 to October 2010

Technologies

COBOL, JCL, VSAM and DB2

Project Description

Trafacs is a mainframe application that processes the Travelers Facultative and contract insurances. It creates, renews the contracts and policies, and generates reports.

Roles and Responsibilities

Worked as an Application Developer for enhancement and production support system.

Understand requirement and impact analysis documents.

Prepare technical design specifications and unit test cases.

Code and Unit Test for various request and enhancement work.

Involve in Production implementation thru Endevor version tool.

Provide level 2 production support for Batch jobs.

Good experience in CA7 job monitoring, abend fixing and job scheduling and forecasting and monitoring and resolving late queue jobs.

Good analytical and problem-solving skills for abend fixing.

Value Add

Successfully Converted Eztrieve elements to COBOL, this conversion saved the extra dollars spent by Travelers in getting license from CA for using the reporting language.

Worked on optimizing Mainframe batch system that resulted in reduction of CPU usage & contention caused during resource utilization, this was highly appreciated by Clients.

Education

Master of Science (Information Technology) from Annamalai University thru Distance Education (2011-2013).

Bachelor of Science (Physics) from Loyola College under Madras University (2004-2007).

Work Authorization

H1B Visa valid until 06/04/2024

Self-Declaration

I declare that above furnished information is true to the best of my knowledge and belief.

Date: 3/1/2021

Station: Greenville, SC Vijayakumar Chakravarthy

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