Karthick Natarajan

Karthick Natarajan, PMP

Email: [email protected]

Phone: 1-814-218-3554

 

 

PMP certified Project Manager poised to contribute unique blend of project management, technical leadership and exemplary customer-support skills, along with commitment to excellence, to your firm’s value by ensuring that project supports strategic mission and objectives within scope, budget, and schedule.

 

Achievement Highlights

 

• Fifteen years of experience in Information Technology with Seven years of experience as a Project Manager.
• Project Management Institute certified Project Management Professional.
• Certified Scrum Master by Scrum Alliance.
• Experienced Project Manager leading cross-functional teams with diverse technical backgrounds.
• Extensive experience in developing and maintaining software applications for Insurance, Utility, Automobile and Textile domains.
• Worked in the Insurance field delivering Portal Solutions, Policy Issuance, Claims Handling, Risk Management, Loss Limiting, Medical Bills and Invoice production systems.
• Experience in working with projects on Oracle and Java based technologies
• A self-motivated professional and natural communicator possessing good technical, initiating, leadership and problem-solving skills to increase customer satisfaction.
• Experience leading teams at Onshore and Offsite development center.
• Experience in Analysis, Design, development, testing, implementation and support of various Applications.

• Recognized for strategic thinking, technical expertise, implementation abilities, and innovation while handling tough assignments and providing quality results
• Over six years of experience with the Insurance Industry delivering solutions for Property & Casualty and Portal applications.

 

 

Professional Experience

 

Erie Insurance, Erie, PA

ValueMomentum

Sr Project Manager/Scrum Master                                                                Apr 2014 to date

 

Erie Insurance is expanding their online experience in the areas of Agent, Customer and Employee. Agent Experience is the first of the three and the project involves redesigning the existing site and build additional capabilities.

 

Responsibilities:

• Setting up Agile processes playing the role of an Agile coach.
• Running the project in the agile methodology including daily standup, backlog grooming, sprint planning, sprint demos, show & tell and retrospectives.
• Delivering solutions for the sales and marketing division on their Agent, Customer and Employee portals.
• Build application to Intuitively launch quotes from the web and mobile portals for the Personal, Commercial and Life lines of business.
• Trigger mass emails to Agents with an email engine supported by Zeta.
• Support the redesign of the existing Agent portal system.
• Analyze scope of work for Billing Inquiry and Rate processing systems.
• Collaborate with the commercial lines quoting system to delivery their business through the portal.
• Working with the PMO team to ensure compliance to enterprise level processes and updates.
• Managing the team, analyzing the team mix for correct staffing.
• Explore and implement new technologies and tools.
• Identifying and implementing an agile tool in the project.
• Using Rally as the chosen tool for agile project management. Working with QA team to setup Rally to QC connectors.
• Lead requirements and translate them into operational plans (story cards).
• Status review meeting with Business PM, Section Supervisor and other Stakeholders as appropriate.
• Working with Project managers of other projects to ensure the execution methodologies are in sync.
• Planning ahead for upcoming iterations and looking for alternatives if there is roadblocks in the existing scope of work.
• Identifying scope of work and tracking changes to the scope.
• Establish metrics for measuring key project criteria.
• Produce Burn down and Velocity charts along with scope movement across iterations.
• Create stakeholder list and build communication plans.
• Helping the team gain efficiency by helping them identify and sort out the issues.
• Playing the role of a servant master by assisting the team in anyway possible to help enhance not only productivity, but also the quality of the work environment.
• Work with the procurement team on Vendor management for Agile tools and Enterprise Search capability.
• Plan and monitor costs, operational budget, risk, issues and staffing requirements.
• Control Project’s Cost, Schedule and Scope. Create Change Requests as needed.

 

 

Novartis, Florham Park, NJ

Wipro Technologies

Sr Project Manager                                                                                       Jun 2011 to Jul 2012

 

As a part of the Novartis group IT strategy to phase out Lotus Notes and to move to Microsoft SharePoint, Novartis Pharma, NIBR, DevIT and OTC are planning to start migration of their Lotus Notes databases to SharePoint 2010.

 

Responsibilities:

• Work with the PMO team in two phases to come up with high level estimates, analysis, process flows, communication plans, team sizing requirements and planning.
• Preparation of the Statement of Work for many programs that are starting up for migration from Lotus notes to SharePoint.
• Setting up a delivery approach for the program.
• Working with three distinct divisions within Wipro for sourcing the team.
• Setting expectations of the program with the program director and business sponsor. Helping them in determining the cost breakdowns to be able to obtain approvals.
• Weekly status meeting with the team with updates on progress and directions forward.
• Defining the team structure, roles & responsibilities and project life cycles.
• Categorization of the databases based on estimates provided by the team and fitting it into the program.
• Ensuring delivery of the PMO phase and brining it to a closure.
• Taking the team from a forming stage to performing.
• Resource and manage teams.

 

 

EMC, Westborough, MA

Wipro Technologies

Project Manager/Scrum Master                                                                     Jan 2011 to Jun 2011

 

Service Support Zone is a web application that brings together the various products of EMC. This project is done using the Agile methodology. It is an online tool used to provide support for the products, cater to service requests, search for information on the products, facilitate download of software and provide chat support,

 

Responsibilities:

• Scrum Master managing a matrix team.
• Generate, monitor and track burn down charts.
• Project managed using the tool Version One.
• Conduct Stand up meetings on a daily basis to help the team members touch point with each other.
• Review and estimate backlogs with the scrum teams.
• Work with the team at the beginning of the sprint to pick backlogs for the two week cycle ahead. This involves coming up with Task and Tests, estimation in hours to complete these and assignment to team members.
• Coordinate with the Product owner on prioritization and release planning.
• Interface with the Admin and Environment teams to ensure that dependent backlogs are pulled a sprint ahead so that it does not delay the team’s sprinting process.
• Address issues raised by the team and work quickly to remove the impediments
• At the end of the two week sprint cycle, conduct a retrospective to help identify what went well in the current sprint and what could have been done better.

 

 

The Hartford Insurance, Hartford, CT

Wipro Technologies

Project Manager                                                                                             Nov 2005 to Jan 2011

 

Specialty is a cluster of applications dealing with large businesses and is a part of their Business Insurance. The application does quote and proposal generation, policy issuance, rate calculations, claim handling, loss limiting, calculation of charges, medical bill reviews and invoicing including generation of back up reports. Support is provided for the Presale, PostSale, CDAP, Livestock, @venture and TPA modules of this cluster.

 

The presale application caters to proposal and quote generation using various rating calculations. After that it generates the policies. The claim handling is then taken on by the post sale application. It limits the losses and then performs various calculations that can be loss based, claim based, premium based or loss control and MIS fees. This information is then backed up for auditing purposes. Invoices are then generated and mailed out through a print shop. Billing backup reports are then generated for tallying to the invoices. There are internal and external balancing processes at the early and later stages of the calculations. Medical bill reviews like utility risk nurses, nurse case management are also handled by the system.

 

Responsibilities:

• Manage Invest, Production Support and Maintenance areas of a cluster of applications under the portfolio of Specialty-NADB.
• Deliver solutions for the Property & Casualty Insurance division including Quote generation, Policy Issuance, Charge Calculation, Loss Limiting, Risk Management, Rollup data to interfacing systems, Medical bill reviews, Invoice generation and Billing back up reports.
• Communicate with a diverse group of stakeholders that include the application end users, business customer, Vendor IT team, offshore managers, senior management, project team etc.
• Plan resources for project and managing delivery of projects to ensure they are on time and meet quality objectives.
• Attend reverse demands management and CAB meetings.
• Produce project status reports, manage the team in a matrix environment and resolved day-to-day issues with emphasis on SDLC
• Used PPM for managing production support and enhancement work.
• Coach, mentor and lead personnel within a technical team environment.
• Facilitate meetings and workshops to review business requirement, ensure group participation, issue resolution and team-development.
• Conduct periodic Customer Satisfaction rating surveys and building Improvement plans.
• Perform Root-cause analysis and identify solutions to solve the issue from re-occurring.
• Regular meetings with clients IT Team to go over current activities, capacity planning, addressing issues and planning ahead for the next few weeks.
• Implement LEAN and SCRUM methodologies wherever possible in the project.
• Identify and recommend contingency measures.
• Establish metrics for measuring key project criteria
• Handle Change and Release management.
• Prepare and assist the sales force team in RFP and Bids.
• Abide by the SLAs and report them constantly.
• Coping with vendor changes by providing knowledge transitions.

 

National Grid Transco, Solihull, UK

Wipro Technologies

Project Lead / Module Lead                                                                           Jun 2002 to Oct 2005

 

Transco is the largest and only gas Pipeline Company in UK. Their RGTA application helps the shippers trade gas. Their ATLINK application took care of the allocation and balancing of gas. These two applications were then rewritten into a single application called as Gemini. Involved in the project in two phases. First phase was to enhance the existing RGTA application due to changes in the network code. The second phase was the rewrite.

 

Responsibilities:

• Managed and lead the conversion project on the Invoicing part of RGTA and ATLINK applications into Entry Capacity and Energy Balancing applications respectively.
• Handled enhancements done to the existing RGTA application due to the changes in the network code.
• Coordinated support during UAT of the enhancement.
• Participated in the kickoff for the rewrite of the RGTA application using Java in a Cleveland framework as Project Gemini.
• Lead a team for preparing System and Business use cases. This was prepared partly from the Business requirement specification provided by the customer. But as it was a rewrite of the entire application, code was also from its existing client server and legacy systems.
• Conducted sessions to the new team members on the application with particular focus on areas critical for production support.
• Sessions were given to the customers to make them aware of what else was coded into their application. This was then incorporated into the BRS document.
• Facilitated preparation of ER Diagram using the rational tool.
• Monitored and assisted the documentation teams in preparation the user guide.
• Supported various stages of testing like System Testing, Performance testing, Operational Acceptance testing, User Confidence testing and finally user acceptance testing.

 

Project Experience Prior to 2002

 

Jardines: Managed a project for their Automobile clients in Doha. The project involves the designing and customization of their sales module. This was for a period of 8 months between Nov 2001 and Jun 2002.

 

Trocon Infotech: Worked on multiple projects leading teams, gathering requirements, designing modules, performing system analysis, developing applications and implementing the project for Textile industry based applications for Richter (Jesta IS), Canada. This was from Nov 1998 to Oct 2001.

 

Infosearch Corporation: Worked as a trainer covering various computer based skills. During this tenure worked as a developer for the Inventory control system developed for AMNEST Corporation. This was from Jan 1998 for a period of 10 months.

 

Education and Certification

• Bachelor of Engineering (Electronics & Communication Engineering), Bharathiyar University, India

• Project Management Professional (PMP), Certified through Project Management Institute (PMI)
• Certified Scrum Master by Scrum Alliance

 

Technical skill summary

 

Project Mgmt. Tools:               PPM, MS Project and MS Office Suite, Clarity, Rally, VersionOne

Operating Systems:                  UNIX, Windows NT 4.0/2000 and XP, OS2

Languages:                              COBOL, C, C++, Java, Pro*COBOL, ORACLE PL/SQL, SQL, Developer 2000/6i/9i/10g, HTML, JavaScript, JCL

Databases:                               ORACLE 10g/9i/8i/7.3.x, MS Access, DB2

Tools/Utility:                            ITG, Remedy, ErWin4.0, T.O.A.D, SQL*Loader, SQL Navigator, Visio, Rational Tools, PVCS, SharePoint

Scripting:                                 UNIX Shell Scripting

Reports:                                   Oracle Reports

Graphics Design Tool:                         AutoCAD, CorelDraw, Adobe Suite

 

LinkedIn Profile

http://www.linkedin.com/pub/karthick-natarajan/40/263/83/