Sr. Business Analyst

Gopal S Dasari

Bachelors in Commerce and Computers, Andhra University, India

************@*****.***

Ph: +91-955**-*****

Professional Summary:

A seasoned Information Technology professional with 20 plus years of Business Analysis, Quality Assurance and Business Process re-engineering experience.

Exposed to diverse business processes which include Financial Industry, E-business, Banking, Mortgage and Service Industry, Non-Profit sectors.

Functional experience with concentration on Use Case modeling using UML, Business Process Modeling, Data Modeling, Change Management, Technical Training, Software Development methodologies, QA testing, and Systems Testing of client server and web-based systems.

Extensive experience in Quality Assurance and good expertise on SQL,SSIS, SSRS, Web services, Restful services and excellent on hands experience on tools like XMLSpy, SoapScope, soapUI, ReadyAPI, SOACleaner, QTP, Winrunner etc

Experienced QA lead with very good exposure to mentoring a team of QAs and managing them on multiple projects.

Involved in Gap analysis, JAD/JRP session facilitation, process analysis and documentation, functional specifications. Strong Business Analysis Skills including in depth knowledge of Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC), having thorough understanding of various phases like Requirements, Analysis/Design, Development and Testing and Practical knowledge of Agile, Kanban, Scrum, Waterfall and Rational Unified Process (RUP) methodologies.

Extensive experience in Scope Management, Business Process Management, Change Control, Impact and Traceability analysis. Experienced in OOAD techniques, UML with Rational Rose and Design Patterns. Extensive experience in working on client-server, web based applications using J2EE, JSP, Java Servlets, EJB (Session, Entity), JMS and JDBC on Web Logic and Web sphere application server.

Industry Experience in financial services such as Retail Consumer Finance, Credit and Collections, Retail Banking, Mortgage, Asset Management, Credit Card sales along with experience in Accounting, International business, Marketing and sales.

Experienced with structural and behavioral data models using Erwin Modeling tool.

Excellent interpersonal, verbal, and written communication skills and works well on a team to accomplish company objectives.

Technical Skills:

Operating Systems: Win 10, UNIX,

Languages: SQL 201, XML, Schema, XSD and UNIX, C++, FORTRAN, COBOL

Databases: MS SQL server, Main Frames, Oracle 8i/ 9i/ 10g, MS Access, Teradata

Reporting Tools: SSRS, Crystal Reports 9.0, WebFocus

Tools: MS Word, MS Excel, MS Visio, MS Project, SOA Cleaner, soadUI, ReadyUI, SoapScope, Jira, Confluence, Sharepoint, QTP, XML Spy, Rational Rose, RequisitePro, Rational SODA, Contivo Analyst, ClearCase, ClearQuest, iRise, Loadrunner, Team Track, Test Director 8.2.

Quality Management: Concept and Tools of Quality Management, ISO Concepts, Six Sigma Techniques.

Methodologies: Agile Product Development, Waterfall SDLC, RUP, Product Life Cycle, Star and Snow-Flake Schemas

Professional Experience:

Saint Paul & Minnesota Foundation

IT Data Management & Business Analyst

For Datawarehouse and Reporting Services April 11, 2017 to Current

Location: Saint Paul, MN

The Saint Paul & Minnesota Foundation is an amalgamation of 4 charitable organizations which share a common philanthropic goal of providing community based services to communities in the state of Minnesota. The organization uses a customized enterprise level IT solution from a company called Blackbaud. These client based applications are hosted locally and used in the daily work of acquiring Donors, building a relationship with them, identifying worthy recipients and making grants.

As part of the daily work, there are several reporting needs. As a BA, I am tasked with facilitating sessions with business, discuss their reporting needs, identifying the data sources and developing reports or modifying existing reports using SSRS.

I was also involved in implementation of Data warehouse for the organization, identifying the business needs, identifying the data sources and assisting in the designing the target tables in the DW. It is an ETL project based SSIS technology.

As a BA, my general responsibilities included –

Gathering and analysis of business requirements and documenting of FSDs.

Documenting Source to Target mapping of data fields.

Creating/Modifying Reports using SSRS.

Data analysis and preparing technical specifications on FSD.

Documenting business process flows on Visio.

Preparing test plans and was also involved in actual testing after the development is complete.

Mentor a team of business QAs and ensure all business scenarios are covered under their test plans.

Determine the level of regression testing needed and ensure all regression test scenarios are covered by QAs.

QA responsibilities of the end product ranged from testing the app to managing QAs in a lead role.

Production support as needed after going live.

Performing Gap analysis via Traceability Matrix.

During my tenure at the Foundation, I was involved in multiple projects some of which are outlined below –

Merger – On Jan 1, 2020 The Saint Paul Foundation officially merged with Minnesota Community Foundation and came to be called as Saint Paul & Minnesota Foundation. Prior to this merger, we had to convert the data of Minnesota Community Foundation from Foundation Power to Blackbaud environment. As a BA, I was involved in this project implementation and my responsibilities included –

Researching the data sources in Foundation Power and identifying the target SQL tables and columns in the Blackbaud env.

Worked with developers in designing an ETL process that extracted data from the Foundation Power source tables, perform necessary conversions (as required) and load them into the Blackbaud tables.

Identify and document all reporting changes due to merger.

Implemented all the identified reporting changes in Test and Prod envs via SSRS.

Researched and identified changes needed in the Data Warehouse due to the merger.

Worked with the developers in modifying the SSIS process that feeds the DW via a nightly job.

Performed IT QA testing of all the changes implemented, before handing it over to UAT.

Ensured regression testing and new functionality testing is covered under UAT.

Planned the production implemented with the support team.

Involved in post-production checkout.

Automation of Grant Payments – The legacy grant payment process of the Foundation involved manually printing checks. The Foundation was not equipped to store bank account details of the Grantee organization owing to PCI compliance. But with the growing number of organizations requesting for automated fund transfers, this project is initiated where the IT created two process –

1.To store sensitive bank account information from the Grantee orgs in a Vault.

2.Create and securely process a weekly NACHA file to the Bank that contains all the sensitive data.

As part of this project, my duties involved –

Gathering and analysis of business requirements and documenting of FSDs.

Documenting the end to end business process flow of the entire Credit Application process on Visio.

Identification of data sources and data flow and creating source to target data dictionary.

Assisting the developers from time to time in clarifying any questions.

Perform IT QA on the new process.

Mentor the business users in documenting all testing scenarios, staging data and help in UAT.

Support during production implementation.

Post-production support – as the business analyst in the project all issues or questions are routed primarily to me. I first diagnose the problem, identify the root cause and plan the necessary course of action.

OnBase and App Enabler Implementation - OnBase allows for the scanning, storage, and retrieval of paper documents, as well as the importing, storage, and retrieval of electronic files. It also helps manage workflow by routing documents to queues custom designed for individual departmental needs. This project was implemented to assist the Grants Administration and the Donor Services teams to store and retrieve legal documents as needed during their day to day business.

Facilitate JAD sessions and gathered detailed requirements that are documented in BRD.

Reviewed the requirements with Hyland team (OnBase) and ensured all scenarios in business requirements are met by the product.

Assisted in implementation of the product in test environment and helped in training.

Self-taught the product with help tutorials and training videos and personally trained business end users.

Planned the production implementation of the new product and assisted in post-production checkout.

Supported the applications in production environment by researching with the vendor (Hyland) and answering the questions from the business end users.

Bluestem Brands Inc.,

Business Analyst

For Web applications and ETL Services in Credit & Collections March 21, 2011 – March 24th 2017

Employer: Technilead Inc;

Location: Eden Prairie, MN

Project Description:

Bluestem Brands Inc is a multi-brand retailer, delivering a wide range of products with shop at home convenience through E-Commerce and Direct Marketing via Fingerhut and Gettington brands. In addition to offering a large selection of brand name products, Bluestem brands also offers a variety of credit options to provide families on a budget, the flexibility of paying over time.

I am part of the IT wing of BSB where I was involved in multiple projects spanning multiple major and minor release over a period of six years. My role was a combination of Business Analysis and Quality Assurance lead where I was required to manage and mentor a team of testers, walk them through the requirements, allot testing assignments and ensure all scenarios are covered in their test plans.

Credit Decisioning Engine – This is about processing of online credit applications, building the necessary architecture/engine for ‘decisioning’ on a customer based on his CreditScore, annual income, credit history and other attributes. The credit applications could be initiated on the Web or through a Customer Service Rep.

Waterfall SDLC.

As a BA, my responsibilities included –

Gathering and analysis of business requirements and documenting of FSDs.

Documenting the end to end business process flow of the entire Credit Application process on Visio.

Identification of data sources and data flow from multiple channels by creating Data Dictionary.

Assisting the developers from time to time in clarifying any questions.

Mentor a team of QAs and ensure all business scenarios are covered under their test plans.

Determine the level of regression testing needed and ensure all regression test scenarios are covered by QAs.

QA responsibilities of the end product ranged from testing the app to managing QAs in a lead role.

Initial production support as needed after going live.

Next Generation Telephony – This is about implementing a new IVR system (WEST Interactive) for Bluestem Brands Customer and Collections Service. SDLC is RUP. The project is completed in 6 iterations. It involved working on DTMF and ASR systems with extensive exposure to IVR Call flows.

As a BA, my responsibilities included-

Documenting IVR Call flows via MS Visio.

Extensive experience working on DTMF and ASR systems.

Documenting Functional specs needed to develop web services for data flow between the systems.

Built Data Dictionary from scratch detailed the fields required by each web service that fed data to the IVR call flows.

Detailed walk-through of requirements with Developers.

Mentored a team of QAs and ensure all business scenarios are covered under their test plans.

Determine the level of regression testing needed and ensure all regression test scenarios are covered by QAs.

QA responsibilities of the end product ranged from testing the app to managing QAs in a lead role

Testing the web services using tools like SOA Cleaner, soapUI and ReadyAPI.

Training testers in ReadyAPI and soapUI.

Assisted the developers in load and performance testing of the web services.

Production support as needed upon going live.

Re-designing of Account Receivable System – This is a major conversion project where our Account Receivable system with CoreCard was migrated to First Data. We were required to replace our CoreCard system with FD applications. The entire operations were divided into multiple work streams. I was part of the team that worked on Customer Service, Credit and Collections Workstreams. WaterFall SDLC. This project involved SQL Server Integration Services, SQL Server Reporting Services and XML based Web Servicing technologies. FD system is a Main Frame based system.

As a BA, my responsibilities included-

Documenting existing business process using Work Flow Diagrams on MS Visio.

Facilitating JAD/JRP sessions with the business and gathering requirements.

Worked on Functional specs and held walk throughs of the specs with in-house and off-shore teams.

Assisted developers by one on one walk through of requirements and worked with them in close partnership.

QA responsibilities of the end product ranged from testing the app to managing QAs in a lead role.

Mentored a team of QAs and ensure all business scenarios are covered under their test plans.

Determine the level of regression testing needed and ensure all regression test scenarios are covered by QAs.

Testing the web services using tools like SOA Cleaner, soapUI and ReadyAPI.

Training testers in ReadyAPI and soapUI.

Involved in documenting the processes for production support teams, after going live.

For the last 2 and half years, I was extensively involved in the IT operations of Collections & Recovery Department. In the process of establishing an industry standard Recovery system, I was involved in projections ranging from daily dialer campaigns to placement or sale of bad debt accounts to contingency agencies or debt buyers. This project SQL Server Integration Services, SQL Server Reporting Services and XML based Web Servicing technologies Agile/Kanban Methodology is used in development of all the following applications.

AssetSale Process – This was a labor intensive monthly process where all bad debt accounts were identified and sold by bidding to Debt Buying Agencies. As part of automating this manual process, all the myriad business processes involved in our debt sale program were initially documented as Work Flow Diagrams.

A sub process of setting up Debt Buyers to who are invited for bidding to buy the company bad debts.

A sub process for setting up monthly contractual sale of bad debts to the debt buyers.

A sub process for setting up recall of sold bad debts for various reasons.

oEach reason would have it’s own Work Flow diagram detailing the business process involved in recalling accounts under each category like Deceased, Bankrupt, Fraud etc.

A sub process detailing the remission of payments, received by the company from the bad debtors, to the Debt Buyers.

Contingency Placement Process – This was a new process implemented where in charged off accounts were placed with Contingency Agencies who initiated Collections efforts on these placed accounts.

A process to place accounts daily with multiple placement agencies.

A process to monitor the status and transactional changes on these placed accounts.

A process to facilitate recall of placed accounts.

An application to batch process payment files from Placement agencies.

An application to audit the inventory with the agencies.

Collections Campaigns – As part of establishing an Industry standard Recovery system the business ran several dialer, email and text campaigns with the customers. This was done by overseas teams in Jamaica and Philippines. I worked on a long term project in automating the whole Collections Campaign Process. Initially, JAD/JRP sessions were held using WebEX or Skype with overseas teams to document the business process involved in running the automated and manual dialer campaigns on IVR. These multiple business processes were documented via Visio prior to converting them to IT requirements for full automation.

Welcome Call Campaigns – campaigns run to detect early fraud on the pretext of welcoming a new customer.

Payment Reminder Campaigns – where customers are informed via phone, text and email about their impending payment due date.

Delinquency Dialer Campaigns – where customers are informed about the past due status on the account and the need for payment.

Reduced Payment Plan, Deferred Payment Plan, Credit Counselling campaigns etc

All these collections campaigns are run by off-shore teams working from Jamaica and Philippines. I had regular meetings with them involving both their business and tech teams. Most of these meetings were done via Skype or WebEX. In these JAD/JRP sessions, I documented the business process flows using visio and reviewed with them. Later, I set up swarm sessions with our tech team where we identified potential points for automation. Accordingly, documented the requirements and worked on its implementation for automation of the process.

As a BA on all the above efforts, primarily my responsibilities included-

Analysis of business requirements and creating Epics and Stories on JIRA.

Data analysis and preparing technical specifications on Confluence.

Documenting business process flows on Visio.

Preparing test plans and was also involved in actual testing after the development is complete.

Performing Gap analysis via Traceability Matrix.

Essentially, I played a combined role of – Business Analyst, Product Owner and Quality Analyst. After the delivery of a given application, I also played the role of production support as and when needed.

QA responsibilities on these projects ranged from testing the app to managing QAs in a lead role.

Mentored a team of QAs and ensured all business scenarios are covered under their test plans.

Determine the level of regression testing needed and ensured all regression test scenarios are covered by QAs.

Detailed walk-through of business requirements with the QA team and ensured they got a good understanding of the process.

Assistance in SQL queries and data staging to the QA team.

Credit Bureau Review Disputes – As part of FCRA regulations, all consumer direct disputes are to be notified to the Credit Bureaus. Every day approximately 500 complaints are manually handled by back end ops. As part of complete automation of this process, a decision was made to build a UI to automate search requirement as part of Phase 1 implementation. As a BA to accomplish this, my primary responsibilities included –

Document the actual functional requirements on Confluence.

Create stories for each functional requirement.

Review and discuss the requirements with the Technical team and with their help-

oDetermine infrastructural requirements to build a UI and create stories and sub-tasks as needed for each environment. Ex – Proposed url, service name, where the app pool should run etc

oDetermine back end data base requirements to support the UI and create stories and sub-tasks as needed. Ex – DB name, Tables, listing people who should be granted privileges based on env.

oDetermine the technology needed for UX/UI and create stories and sub-tasks as needed on Jira. Ex – Basic HTML, Bootstrap (from CSS library) for UX, Angular service from Javascript lib to present info.

oDetermine the service layer requirements that is needed to source data from the DB and present it on UI and create stories and sub-tasks as needed.

Create an architectural diagram, process flow using Visio.

Responsibilities:

Served as a liaison between the business specialists and the technical team.

Responsible for gathering user requirements.

Participated in JAD/JRP sessions/swarms for requirements gathering.

Facilitated Daily Stand ups, Scrum meetings, walk-throughs and reviews during the technical design phase of various projects.

Facilitated brain storming sessions and swarm sessions with all the appropriate resources to iron out the technical design/architecture on the basis of business requirements.

Developed technical specs showcasing the architecture, the database constraints, rules etc by which information is processed across platforms.

Used MS Visio for Process modeling and Business Process flow diagrams.

Extensively involved in process mapping using MS Visio.

Responsible for data analysis and data mapping via MS Excel essential for the messaging done with the internal client systems (WEB, IVR and Phone applications) and the systems of record A(SQL Server DBs).

Prepared Functional System Design (FSD) and the corresponding technical specifications to document the changes in UI for both Web based and internal UI used by customer service reps.

Extensively involved in data mapping exercises to streamline the data required for processing during the messaging.

Participated in performing risk assessment surveys to identify security requirements.

Involved in process testing of the XML Messaging/ Web Services by using tools like SOA Cleaner Express and SOAP UI.

Involved in data validation and Source To Target testing via Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio.

Extensively involved in regression testing during various phases of the design.

Has a good understanding of SSIS and SSRS packages and their role in the overall development of the project.

Worked on MS Project in scheduling the test plans and release management of project deliverables.

Used MS Sharepoint, Jira and Confluence in sharing project deliverables and other related documents.

Prepared test plans, write test scripts and executed test scripts as the project develops.

Involved in concept phase, definition, development, deployment and testing phases of all the requirements in a project.

Involved in training the business on the new changes implemented on the UI, reports and internal tools.

Trained newbies on the business practices, tools used and specs documented.

Environment: Agile, Kanban, Jira, Confluence, Sharepoint, SSIS, SSRS, SOA Cleaner Express, SOAPUI, MSAccess, MSExcel, MSProject, Powepoint, Quality Center, UI XML, XML Spy, Rational ClearQuest,

Wells Fargo (Technology & Operations Group) (Formarly TIG)

E Systems Consultant

Providing Web Services in Retail Banking Nov 2007 – March 18, 2011

Location: Minneapolis downtown, MN

Employer: Sansam Systems Inc., (2007)

Technilead Inc., (from 2008)

Project Description:

Our team, Retail Web Services, is a web service provider to various front end client systems. It is a middle ware application catering the requirements of the clientele. As a web service provider we support various operations like Account Opening, Account Closing, Reactivation of Closed Consumer Accounts, Account Conversion, Generation of PDF documents/forms, Processing the Form to the Form Systems of Record(Back end data base) and Inquiring interest rates and rate details and Updating of rates of various Consumer/Business/Time and Loan Accounts and Annuities. I am involved in a number of projects spanning 12 releases. My responsibilities included analysis of business requirements, documenting the requirements, data analysis, preparing technical specifications and process testing after the development is complete. Essentially, I played a dual role as both – Business Analyst and Quality Analyst.

Responsibilities:

Served as a liaison between the business specialists and the technical team.

Responsible for gathering user requirements that are specific to our scope of work.

Participated in JAD/JRP sessions for requirements gathering.

Facilitated meetings, walk-throughs and reviews during the technical design phase of various projects.

Extensively involved in development of xml schemas using XML Spy to facilitate the messaging between the systems/applications.

Responsible for data analysis and data mapping via MS Excel essential for the messaging done with the client systems and the systems of record.

Prepared Functional System Design (FSD) and the corresponding technical Service Specifications to document the business requirements and the technical design required to meet those requirements.

Used MS Visio for Process modeling and Business Process flow diagrams.

Extensively involved in data mapping exercises to streamline the data required for processing during the messaging.

Participated in performing risk assessment surveys to identify security requirements.

Involved in process testing of the Messaging/Services by using tools like SOAPSCOPE.

Involved in data validation by submitting queries to MS Access.

Used Access reporting to generate ad-hoc reports.

Participated in business process solution development workshops to gain understanding of solution requirements and documented technical procedures for installing and executing SOA objects.

Extensively involved in regression testing during various phases of the design.

Have done Logical and Physical design of database using Erwin and used Erwin for mapping the xml data which was used to transform data across.

Worked on MS Project in scheduling the test plans and release management of project deliverables.

Used MS Sharepoint in sharing project deliverables and other related documents.

Prepared test plans, write test scripts and executed test scripts as the project develops.

Involved in concept phase, definition, development, deployment and testing phases of all the requirements in a project.

Extensive usage of Quality Center for test management and business process testing of web services in SOA for a given release.

Involved in post merger operations with Wachovia.

Trained newbies from Wachovia on the business practices, tools used and specs documented.

Environment: Rational ClearQuest, SOAPSCOPE, MSAccess, MSExcel, MSProject, Powepoint, Quality Center, Sharepoint, Rational Unified Process (RUP), Visio, XML, XML Spy, HOGAN 3270, EXTRA! X-treme, Data mapping, Erwin, UML, RPG App.

Wells Fargo Home Mortgage

Business Analyst/Data Analyst

Automation of Home Mortgage based loan system May 2007- Oct 2007

Location: West Des Moines, IA

Employer: Sansam Systems Inc.,

Project Description:

It is a web based application developed to support Wells Fargo Home Mortgage (WFHM). The end user is the Home Mortgage Consultant (HMC) working for WFHM wherein the application facilitates recording online the primary borrower's personal information, orders the credit history of the borrower through credit report agencies like RELS or Equifax and evaluates his income, assets and liabilities. The application further facilitates in calculation of mortgage costs like prepaids, closing fees and other credits and also includes governmental regulatory declarations which are mandatory to be filled by the primary borrower. Finally, it helps the HMC in Floating the Price and decisioning the Loan. This project was aimed at automating the entire mortgage system with the intention of closing more loans in less time. The system was designed using Java in the front end and Oracle at the back end.

Responsibilities:

Served as a liaison between mortgage specialists and the project team.

Responsible for gathering user requirements and specifications for designing a mortgage based loan system using and documenting the same.

Extensively involved in maintaining requirements traceability and communicating any changes to these requirements to different business groups and programmers.

Led and conducted JAD/JRP sessions for requirements gathering, analysis and design of the system.

Used MS Excel for data analysis and mapping to spot trends, isolate issues and drill into increasing levels of details.

Worked on presentations of data flow by using MS Power Point.

Used MS Access queries to generate output reports for analyses and use them as data sources to build multi dimensional models.

Worked on MS Access reporting tool in creating and customizing data reports.

Involved in streamlining the acceptance process for rule changes/updates and reduce time to production by using simulations as part of approval process.

Created context and workflow models, information and business rule models, Use Case and Object Models during the analysis using Rational tools.

Designed the system, prepared UML and sequence diagrams using Rational Rose and Visio.

Responsible for writing detailed descriptions of user needs, program functions, and steps required for developing or modifying software programs using Rational Rose (UML).

Prepared Detailed Design Specifications (DDS) and Functional Specification Documentation (FSD) and communicated these to the stakeholders.

Actively interacted with different business groups to perform Gap analysis to identify the deficiencies in the system by comparing the actual objectives with the system objectives desired.

Conducted Business Requirements, Functional and Technical meetings with Business groups.

Used MS Visio for Process modeling and Business Process flow diagrams.

Extensively involved in regression testing during various phases of the application.

Used Quality Center in requirements management and test management for a specific release.

Prepared test plans, write test scripts and execute test scripts as the project develops.

Worked on MS Project in scheduling the test plans and release management of project deliverables.

Used MS Sharepoint in sharing project deliverables and other related documents with the project team members.

Acquaintance of the AOW system used by the business line.

To be aware of all system changes affecting the business line.

Developed Data Models and generated Database schema Structures and developed data flow diagrams.

Testing of the application and posting

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