balajiviswanathan_resume

Balaji Viswanathan

+91 95261 25505 email:[email protected]

Professional Synopsis

Over 14 years of experience in management and execution of IT projects in the Banking and Insurance domains on IBM Mainframe, SAS & Java platforms in both Waterfall and Agile [SCRUM] SDLC methodologies. Over 4 years of onshore experience in Germany in different roles from Project Management to Technical Architect in Banking and Insurance domains.

Experience Synopsis

Over 14 years of experience in application development and maintenance

4 years of experience as Program & Project Manager in B [Allianz Group IT]

9 years of experience in Project Management (3 years) & Execution in Banking Domain [retail & investment – for Citibank Germany & Morgen Stanley]

Scrum Master in key projects for 18 months with a joint team from both India & Germany.

Managed end to end execution of Re-Insurance Data Warehouse projects using SAS Suite & J2EE Technologies

Experience in Technical Migration projects [application & infrastructure] in Mainframe, SAS & Java platforms for Banking & Insurance domains.

End to End execution of large Data conversion project [ETL] for complete banking system as part of Application migration in IBM Mainframe

Mainframe Re-engineering projects as part of Credit portfolio in Banking domain

Program management with a team size of 30 to 35 on Time & Material [T & M] mode

Experience in responding to RFPs and successfully converting them across different areas [Technical Migration projects, IT Operational Support areas for SAS & L1/L2 support, Transitioning to Managed Services Delivery model]

Handled projects of varying types – development, maintenance, operational and helpdesk across classical Waterfall and Agile models

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Key Accomplishments

1st position as part of Routes to Success [Future Leadership program 2014-15] in Allianz IT [India level]

One of the 5 finalists for Business Leader award [2013] in Allianz IT [India level].

Business expansion by 100% within a year’s time and defining an offshore structure aligned with the business units in Allianz Re [2012 – 13]. Received appreciation from IT ADM Head.

Managed an organization wide Bain High Performance behavior campaign on “Collaboration & Team Work” across Allianz Trivandrum [2013 - AES results showed a 9% points increase in Collaboration].

Part of a 2 member team to win “Tata Crucible Business Quiz” for Trivandrum region, representing Allianz [2013, 2014 regional finalists]

Invited [by COO of Allianz Re] and participated in Allianz Reinsurance COO management offsite [2012]

Responsible for the successful execution of data conversion project as part of Citibank Germany/Targo GmbH EBS Banking Migration project. Appreciation from Citibank EBS Project Head [2005-09].

Won “Star Award” in recognition for the reengineering of the Credit Booking system as part of Citibank mainframe application system [2002-04].

Work Experience

Project Manager in Allianz Trivandrum since March 2011 Technical Project Manager/Project Lead in Hexaware Germany/India

[Citibank/Targo bank Germany] from 2005 to 2011. Software Engineer in TCS [Morgan Stanley Germany] from 2004 to 2005 Senior Software Engineer in Hexaware [Citibank Germany] from 2001 to

2004.

Skill Constellation

Functional o Insurance & Reinsurance

Reinsurance P & C premium risk and loss modeling, data warehouse, reinsurance accounting process applications, exposure to insurance claims handling application

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Re-engineering expertise in P&C and health insurance printing applications

o Banking Data Conversion for retail banking domain – Mapping, data

Modeling from source to target systems, conversion reconciliation, set-up of conversion pre-requisites for large retail banking data conversion.

Credit recommendation & scoring, Credit Booking and complete Credit life cycle processing

Technology o Mainframe

PL/1, COBOL, NATURAL, IMS DC, JCL, Endevor, ,Expeditor & other mainframe tools [NDM file transfer, File Aid etc]

o SAS SAS/Macros, SAS/Base, SAS Stored Process, Web report studio,

SAS Cubes, Information Delivery Portal, SAS DI Studio, SAS Enterprise Guide

o Database IMS DB, DB2, Oracle, ADABAS, SAS Tables

o Java Exposure to Java - Java [1.6], J2EE technologies – SPRING,

SEAM, JPA, Java Script, JSF, JBoss [6], Jenkins & MAVEN. Process & Management Tools

o Experience with PMP [Project Management], Agile [SCRUM – Certified Scrum Master], CMMi processes, ITIL processes [Certified]

o Management Tools – PlanView, Jira, Confluence, Microsoft Project Plan, HP Quality Center

Educational Qualification

M.E. (Distinction) in Electrical Engineering from College of Engineering Guindy, Anna University.

Certifications & Training

Scrum Master certified ITIL V3 Certified PMP Training completed Trained in Coaching as part of BUILD initiative.

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Management & Leadership training as part Routes To Success [RTS – An Allianz IT initiative]

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

ACIS (Captive unit of Allianz Group IT) till date from March 2011

Program & Project management for Allianz Reinsurance

Client : Allianz Reinsurance (Unit of Allianz SE)Role : Project Manager & Account Management [partly]Team Size : 33Environment: SAS [Base, Macros, BI, DI, Enterprise Guide, Cubes, Web

reports & Information maps], Java[6] & J2EE technologies [JSF, Java Script, SPRING, SEAM, JPA, Hibernate], Oracle PL/SQL, HP QC & QTP for Testing [automation & manual]

Tools Used : Jira, Confluence, HP Quality center, QTP, Plan View

Roles and Responsibilities

Responsible for the offshore delivery team for Allianz Reinsurance. Scrum Master role for Application Development and Maintenance [in CAO,

CFO & COO areas] – Estimation & sprint planning sessions, participation in daily standup and retrospective calls.

Ensure optimal capacity management and forecast, monitoring and tracking of resource utilization and resource adequacy.

Business expansion through account mining. Direct reporting to Allianz management on project status – through weekly

project reporting, monthly engagement reporting, Quarterly senior liaison engagement and project reporting, weekly and monthly VCs and conference calls.

Liaise with colleagues in OE [Allianz Re] IT Department, Vendors and Business to ensure good communication and co-operation between all related projects and systems.

Organize Allianz Re management and IT visits to ACIS and visit Allianz Re premises for customer relationship.

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Finance control - Billing & invoicing, budgeting for the engagement, P & L calculations, control and monitor of costs, coordination with Allianz Re and ACIS finance for contractual and finance related activities

Resource management - people management, recruitment coordination, engagement on-boarding, project allocation, definition and review of performance target reviews [PTRs]for the team, coaching and mentoring of team for both professional and personal development

Involved in the process harmonization exercise to align scrum practices with elements of Waterfall model.

Description: Allianz SE is the largest P&C insurer in the world and Allianz Re is the re-insurer Allianz group companies and 4th largest re-insurance major in the world.

Allianz IT [India] provides Application maintenance and support services across 6 major business verticals spanning applications across multiple technologies –

CAO [Chief Analytics Office] – This business area is used by risk analysts team [actuaries] and make use of the following applications [Technology stack – Java & J2EE, SAS, Oracle and Unix]

o PRISM [P&C Premium Risk Modelling] – SAS Data warehouse used for premium risk calculation and loss model simulation for catastrophic and non-catastrophic business. Major releases as part of Solvency II program.

o ASPIRE [Allianz Standard Portfolio Information Reporting] – SAS Data warehouse used for portfolio information uploads by different OEs.

o SVT [Security Vetting Tool] – Used for security related information upload.

CFO [Chief Financial Officer] – This business area is used for accounting information and interfaces with core reinsurance application of SICS

o ADT [Accounting Data Transfer] – Used for bulk uploading of financial data into the core reinsurance application – SICS.

COO [Chief Operating Officer] – Comprises the enterprise data warehouse application with the following split

o SAS BI [Business Intelligence] – All reports for end users using a combination of SAS Cubes, Information Studio, web reports and stored processes

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o SAS DI [Data Integration] – data warehouse of the core reinsurance application with data from all sources [SICS, SAP, etc]. Contains 7 different data layers with SAS ETLs and databases in Oracle & SAS.

o Successful knowledge transition of application and takeover of support from a Allianz Re vendor partner to ACIS for both the applications as part of SAS Roadmap for business expansion.

IT Service Management – This is a classical operational support activity spanning across the following areas

o IT Production Support: Defined and mutually agreed SLAs govern the following

Release management and production support for all applications – with a critical focus on Enterprise core data warehouse [SAS BI & DI]

Jira-Confluence Support – Administrative support covering support and regular upgrades.

o Global Workplace Support - Infrastructure support covering application to windows terminal support – cutting across 5 priorities that are defined as part of the SLA.

Testing - Core testing team covering the aforesaid areas except the support activities. The team provides both Manual and Automation expertise with a special focus on creation of Allianz Re specific Automation Test Framework for different applications [PRISM, ADT, DAP, etc]. Testing uses HP QC & QTP for test case definition & execution along with MS-Excel for the automation framework.

CUO – This involves two critical applications GRIP [Global Reinsurance Platform] and DAP [Digital Agro Project – currently under development].

Project management for Fireman’s Fund Insurance Company (FFIC)

Client : Fireman’s Fund Insurance Company (Unit of Allianz of Amerca)

Role : Project ManagerTeam Size : 15 to 18Environment: Mainframe (COBOL, SAS), Testing, BI (SAS, IBM Data-stage

on UNIX)Tools Used : Plan View, HP Quality center

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Responsible for the delivery team that supports respective business applications.

Direct reporting to Allianz management on project status Work with colleagues in OE [FFIC] IT Department, Bridge head, Vendors

and Business to ensure good communication and co-operation between all related projects and systems

Project Management activities for Application Development and Maintenance - Estimation, planning, execution, monitoring and control, risk identification and mitigation, quality assurance., regular tracking of resource utilization and capacity plans.

Finance control - Billing & invoicing, budgeting for the engagement, control and monitor costs, coordination with FFIC and ACIS finance for contractual and finance related activities

Resource management - people management, recruitment coordination, engagement on-boarding, project allocation, definition and review of performance target reviews [PTRs]for the team, coaching and mentoring of team for both professional and personal development

Tailoring of existing and evolution of new life cycles, standards and guidelines for project, maintenance and operational activities – with the help of QA.

Description: FFIC was part of Allianz of America (AZOA) and has since been merged with GC&SAllianz IT [India] provides Application maintenance and support services across 5 major applications spanning multiple technologies –

Mainframe [COBOL , SAS, JCL] – Provide support to Archiving and Statutory and Regulatory financial reporting areas.

o Provide Business analysis support for statutory and regulatory reports – creation, delivery of reports to Business, clarifications on queries to Business

o Support minor enhancements [typically between 5 and 30 PDs] Testing

o Testing projects [typically more than 30 PDs]o Building of standard test cases for the application

Business Intelligence – IBM Datastage, BI – Data Modelling [DB2 on UNIX machine] & SAS covering

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o Minor and major enhancements [typically between 5 and 30 PDs]o Infrastructure support viz. database maintenance and query tuning in

production.

Associate Project management for Allianz Deutschland

Client : Allianz Deutschland AG - GermanyRole : Project ManagerTeam Size : 12 to 15Environment: IBM Mainframe - PL/1, COBOL, IMS, DB2, JCLTools Used : Plan View, Mercury Quality center, SXP, SDT (Allianz

Internal tools), Abendaid


Associate Project Manager at offshore location in India. Direct Reporting to Allianz management on project status Planning, estimation, risk identification, coordination with Allianz

Deutschland, monitoring and control. Technical Review of High Level design documents Ensure Quality process adherence

Description: Allianz Deutschland AG is one of largest insurance majors in Germany and part of Allianz SE one of the largest insurance conglomerates in the world. The project is

Conversion of Print application of Health insurance application Conversion of Property and Casualty Insurance Management of OMS application

The applications were maintained in a combination of PL/1, COBOL, IMS (DB/DC), DB2, JCL. The project envisaged conversion of about 0.5 million LoC of COBOL to PL/1 as part ABS (Allianz Business Services strategic initiative).

Hexaware Technologies Ltd from April 2005 to March 2011

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EBS Data Conversion for Application Migration project

Client : Citibank Germany Maintenance application (currently TARGO AG Germany)

Role : Conversion Project Lead/ Technical ArchitectTeam Size : 12 to 15Environment: PL/1, COBOL, IMS, DB2, JCLTools Used : FileAid for DB2/IMS, Xpeditor, Platinum for DB2, Mercury

Quality center, NDM CD process

Description: Citibank Germany is a retail-banking major with 3.5 million customers involved in various portfolios viz. loan accounts, debit or checking account, savings account, time deposits, investments, cards, etc. The application was maintained in PL/1, IMS (DB/DC), DB2, JCL & COBOL. [Citibank Germany since 2009 is known as Targo Bank in Germany post the acquisition by Credit Mutuel.]


Project Lead/Technical Architect role at client location in Germany and in India.

Direct Reporting to Client Technical Project Manager and Hexaware management on project status

Requirements gathering, Estimation and Planning, Coordination with clients and offshore team on Estimation and Planning.

Development of Application architecture on IBM Mainframe and High Level design document preparation

Performance tuning of DB2/IMS & Pure batch Applications Definition of entire conversion processes and controls. Part of Core Implementation team at onsite for the complete conversion

application Support Business along with IT for UAT cycles. Definition of test strategy, test data set-up and test cycles. Coordination with offshore team and third party interfaces (ITO, DB

Architecture team, etc) Reviews of low level design documents, code and test plans (Unit and

Integration) KT sessions to team members on application functionality

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This was a data migration project with an effort of more than 12000 PDs (spanning 4 years) within the ambit of migration of entire banking application from a PL/1, IMS and DB2 system to COBOL, CICS, VSAM system (EBS). The project envisaged the conversion of entire portfolio of customer, transaction and other historical data from different systems in the old application to the equivalent systems in the new application

Scope:

Conversion of all customer and account information, transaction and historical data from existing to new system

Identification of all source fields and Definition of transformation rules for all source to target fields.

Data Migration in 4 different Conversions (called Waves) in a span of 6 to 8 weeks (called the Wave period)

Conversion wave schedule over the weekend (called Conversion Weekend) to ensure normal business continuity.

Restriction of specific current system functionalities (transactions) during Conversion weekend

Deletion of all Converted customers after each wave from the existing application

Project Highlights:

Data Model Analysis and & Conversion process definitiono Conversion Scope Definition by assessing all data sources like IMS,

DB2, Flat file structureso Analysis of source fields for corresponding EBS target systems (like

RM, ALS, WM, etc) structures and fields.o Complete architecture definition for conversion process, Design of

Conversion moduleso Definition and execution of test strategy, test environments & cycles,

reconciliation controlso Identify gaps in transformation rules, bad data constellation and

process improvements

Validation of Conversion/Deletion process in SIT, UAT & Wave Testing and GO! LIVE

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o Ensure migration jobs complete in the given blackout windowo 50 rounds of SIT involving different stake holderso 24 rounds of UAT together with customerso 20 Wave runs for end-to-end functional testingo Nearly 4000+ defect resolution in conversiono 5 complete dry-runs before final implementationo Implement Data migration process in waves to generate interim fileso Specific adaptation of existing system (online & batch) for special

conversion weekend – called the Restricted Night Mode functionalityo Reconciliation process for GO LIVE decision o Deletion of customers from databases in the current system

Achievements:

Conversion of more than 7 million customers (2.5 million active and 1 million collection accounts) and over 50 million transaction records (nearly 500 GB of data).

Conversion Data sourced from more than 5 IMS databases (nearly 20 Segments), 75 DB2 tables, 100 flat files and tapes.

Conversion into more than 20 different target systems in EBS Complete conversion of data from existing to EBS system and making the

system LIVE within 36 hours with a 10 minute black-out period for deletion of converted customers

More than 0.2 Million LoC for the complete Waved big bang process Generation of 135 interim files (containing close to 5000 fields) for

conversion with more than 100 reconciliation reports for final GO LIVE decision

Execution of nearly 100 applications with more than 2500 jobs (with Conversion applications alone numbering around 35 with close 1000 jobs) involved in the complete EBS Conversion.

AMODE Re-engineering of Critical IMS Modules from 24bit to 31bit

Scope: Re-engineering of critical and large programs (Online/BMP) from

AMODE24 to AMODE31 bit architecture to prevent production outages.

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Project Responsibilities:

Provide solution to resolve the pre-load problems resulting in production outages of large online and BMP programs.

Identify the list of critical programs for the change & Implementation of the changed programs in production

Coordination with Business for ensuring complete regression testing in UAT for this purely technical change.

TCS Ltd. From 2004 – 2005

Client : Morgan StanleyRole : Team MemberTeam Size : 6Environment: NATURAL, ADABAS, CICS, JCL

Description: Morgan Stanley is one of the largest financial service organizations in the world. The project is to support the German operation of Morgan Stanley investment services. The activity involved in help desk support for the order and trade services of its investment domain.

Role and responsibilities:

Involved in analysis/fixing of issues/tickets in the application Direct coordination with client. Participation in regular status meetings and prepared weekly reports on

the project status.

Hexaware Technologies Ltd. From February 2001 – August 2004

Client : Citibank Germany Maintenance application (currently TARGO AG Germany)

Role : Senior Software engineerTeam Size : Part of 30 member teamEnvironment: PL/1, COBOL, IMS, DB2, JCL

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Tools Used : FileAid for DB2/IMS, Xpeditor, Platinum for DB2, Mercury Quality center, NDM CD process

Re-engineering of Online Credit Booking Module

This was a 120 PD project spread across 3 phases with the objective of de-modularizing the monolithic online credit booking module

Scope:

The online (IMS DC Conversational OLTP with access of IMS DB & DB2 Database) credit booking module for direct loans reached the maximum PL/1 compile limit of 58 KLoC (including expansion of all the copybooks, screen structures, etc).

The impact was that no further change could be made in the program towards business requirements.

The program needed to be re-engineered to smaller and maintainable layers for business changes to be taken up

Project Responsibilities:

Direct coordination with clients Analysis and system documentation of the entire system. Preparation of Functional and technical design documents, Integration

and unit test plans. Complete design, coding and testing (Unit & Integration) of the

application UAT & Post production support

Achievements:

Identification of reusable components especially for Terminal Vs Product validation

End-to-End Testing (with batch process) to simulate the working of the re-designed payment plan calculation path

The proposed solution works in the same optimized way as the earlier one (in performance)

Adoption of the approach resulted in the final program size to be reduced to around 19 KLoC.

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Credit Initiation Module – Introduction of Internal Credit Engine

This was a 250 PD project with a scope to completely change the online direct credit recommendation module.

Scope: The online (IMS DC Conversational OLTP with access of IMS DB & DB2

Database) credit recommendation module had two engines – risk assessment and scoring engines.

The scope was to completely revamp the two engines and make them one.

Roles and Responsibilities:

Direct coordination with client at onsite and with team at offshore Understanding of Business Requirements, Preparation of Functional

Requirements document, Technical Design, Integration and Unit test plans, Database design.

Proposal of new design to completely tear down the old risk assessment parameters and score cards and replace with the new Internal Credit Engine (ICE)

Coding and testing (Unit, Integration & UAT) of the application

Achievements: Scrapping down of old routines and introduction of new routines in the

Online flow Performance aspect consideration as DB2 cursor calls in IMS online was

time intensive Batch testing of scoring of customers with cross validation from Business Awarded Start Award for the work in implementation

Introduction of Master Card

This was a massive project for Citibank with Hexaware involvement in one part of it with an effort of around 75 PDs.

Scope

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The scope was to have Master card offered to customers on the lines of Visa card.

The work from Hexaware point of view was on the introduction of changes to Online Enquiry of Master card account status and in payment processing batch.

Role and Responsibilities:

Direct coordination with client from offshore Understanding of Business and Functional Requirements documents,

Technical Design, Integration and Unit test plans. Coding and testing (Unit & Integration) of the application

Scrambling Process

This was a 500 PD project and was critical in the opening-up of test and development environments for offshore activity.

Scope:

The project involved in the masking of all production data (from IMS, DB2 & flat files) to be loaded into the test environments.

Role and Responsibilities:

Involved as a team member in design and development of scramble routine for Names

Unit testing of developed routine & support for SIT & UAT.

Achievements:

Size of data volume and Different field formats for scrambling from different sources

Generic routine to handle various rules to fit across the spectrum field types and sizes.

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