Arun Iddya Rao, Csm, Flmi

Arun Iddya Rao, Csm, Flmi

ARUN IDDYA RAO, CSM, FLMI

Contact:09902608756 ~ E-Mail:

Seeking assignments in Test Delivery Management in Quality driven organization.

Arun Rao is a senior quality assurance leader with 15 plus years industry experience in delivering software testing as a service across multiple geographies (US, APAC) and industry verticals. Arun specialises in Test leadership, global delivery, business and IT strategy. He has experience leading large test teams in a global delivery model and responsible for delivering projects c. $50M with team sizes exceeding 100 test engineers. Arun is familiar and has hands on experience in the BFSI,Retail domains with specialisation in Insurance and e-commerce businesses on large programs. Arun has consulted for large corporations and is experienced in engaging with senior client stakeholders.

Career Summary

A Senior Leader with 15.8 years of commendable experience in Software Testing, Software Quality Assurance & Delivery Management

3.5 years of client interfacing experience at onsite for an Insurance Major in North America from Infosys. Delivered programs in an onsite-offshore model.

Managed Testing Delivery for the Consumer Goods Client from Mindtree with team size of 100+

Got a reward for the outstanding contribution made towards achieving CMMI – LEVEL 5 recognition for Mindtree.

Owning the Profit and Loss responsibility of the account including attrition/ramp up.

Managed Manual, Automation and Performance testing teams during my tenure till date.

Three Test managers are reporting to me directly. Had the responsibility of interacting with project managers where there were only test leads in the team.

Instrumental in bringing automation (Robot Framework) to the Consumer Goods account and there by winning customer confidence and reducing the effort by 30%.

Possess LOMA Step One, LOMA 280, LOMA 290 and LOMA 301 Certification on Insurance Domain.

Mindtree Certified Project Manager(MCPM) Certification from Mindtree.

Managed End to End testing for different programs including the different types of testing like Functional, Automation, Performance and User Acceptance Testing.

Rich experience of working on numerous projects and ensuring delivery of projects within time & cost parameters. Adept at developing test plans using requirement documents and functional documents.

Played a pivotal role as Account Anchor for 1 year for an Insurance Major in North America from Infosys.

Excellent at executing various software quality assurance activities for enhancing effectiveness of application. Deft in interacting with client side professionals for system study, requirements verification and analysis.

Sound knowledge & experience in various stages of project lifecycle right from Business Case through Solution Execution.

Managed projects having different types of testing like functional, integration and regression testing as well as quality processes followed in software development. Proficient in testing tools like Rational Robot, QTP/UFT, SharePoint, SOAP UI, Microsoft Visual SourceSafe (VSS) and Quality Center.

Exceptional communication, collaboration & team building skills with proficiency at grasping new technical concepts quickly and utilize the same in a productive manner.

Have worked and managed extensively on Life insurance domain, P&C Insurance domain and Consumer Goods projects.

Awarded the Project excellence in delivery and in customer delight for my previous projects.

Managed projects in both Agile and Waterfall methodology.

Anchored Recruitment Drives to help Testing Practice get good talents both for Infosys and Mindtree.

Mentoring and Career Development of testing team members.

CERTIFICATIONS

LOMA’s FLM1 & Step 1 Certification (Insurance Industry) in May 2008

Infosys PM Elite Lite Certification (Equivalent to PMP) in 2010

Mindtree Certified Project Manager – MCPM (Equivalent to PMP) in 2012.

High Impact Presentation- Certification from Dale Carnegie Universityin 2016.

Highly Inspiring Fully Involved (HIFI) Manager Program from Knolskape in 2016.

Certified Scrum Master (CSM) certification from Scrum Alliance in May 2017.

Finance and Banking Fundamentals certification from Finitiatives Learning India Pvt. Ltd in 2017.

PROFICIENCY FORTE

Project Operations

P&L

Conducting case / system / process study for project planning, scoping, estimation & tracking.

Implementing project plans within deadlines.

Defining best practices for project support and documentation.

Ensuring customer satisfaction and getting repeat /new business.

Managing large size, critical Programs

Risk Management, Budgeting, Change management etc.

Software Testing

Designing test strategy, developing test plans and approving test cases.Scheduling project for release in coordination with other project managers and clients.

Testing software programs to compare to specifications and documentation. Providing technical guidance & debugging/ troubleshooting the application.

Identifying & analyzing the defects, questionable functions, errors, program functionality, outputs, online screens and content.Managing the smooth implementation and testing of the application.

Software Quality Assurance

Providing scope, resource and time estimates for projects presented to QA for testing and analysis.

Presenting QA test status and progress reports as appropriate to top management.

Working with business analysis function to ensure QA testing requirements are appropriately identified and included in the requirements.Monitoring development activities and reporting project progress.

Reviewing the traceability matrix to make sure that all the requirements are covered in different phases of testing.

Team Management

Delivery Management

Large account management

Client Relationship management

Working with the software engineering team for handling system & integration testing & functional Testing. Coordinated with clients for user acceptance testing.Delegating the work to the team members on a priority basis and also basing on the skill set.

Ramping up the teams’ knowledge base if the team member is new to the product or process by providing appropriate training.

Setting objective and managing performance appraisals cycles for team as per the company processes

CAREER HISTORY

Mar’12 till date in Mindtree Ltd, Bangalore as Associate Director

In my Current role, I am responsible for delivering testing as a service for a large Consumer goods company where we are delivering an ecommerce platform that is being rolled out for 350 brands across 50+ countries. My role involves test planning and delivery oversight with focus on delivering a test strategy in this complex programme. I am responsible for building a high performance multi-location test team to deliver this programme. My other key responsibilities in this role are P&L management, stakeholder and client relationship, driving transformation agenda in Test.

Jul’02– Feb’12 Infosys Ltd.,Bangalore as Project Manager

In this role, I was responsible for delivering test as a service for multiple BFSI and specifically Insurance clients. I was based in the US working out of a client location managing global delivery. I worked with Solutioning, Business Analysis, IT Infrastructure teams and was often involved in shaping the solution. I was a part of the account leadership team in the US and my role demanded frequent client interactions including C-level execs.

Nov’01-Jun’02 with Ramkumar Mills Pvt. Ltd., Bangalore as Trainee Engineer

In this role, I was a Management trainee in a textile manufacturing organisation with exposure on inventory management systems,Supply chain and MIS system.

Key Deliverables:

The current programin Mindtree is to manage different types of testing like Functional Testing, Regression Testing, Performance Testing and Automation Testing for all the types of projects for the client.

Accountable for defining the testing strategy, building estimates, reviewing and defining the testing processes.

Planning and scheduling for all phases of testing as well as coordination with multiple external teams, business clients/ offshore team members.

Handled an offshore team size of 100+ members.

Noteworthy Accomplishments/Awards (across the tenure):

Outstanding contributor– Part of the team achieving CMMI – LEVEL 5 recognition atMindtree.

Infosys Excellence Awards for Large & Complex programme delivery ( 2006 & 2008)

PRIMA Awards for Quality and Project Execution Excellence in Infosys ( 2008 & 2008)

ORey Award from North Western Mutual for ‘Beone’ (via Infosys, 2009)

Global Team Excellence Award for Team work and Innovationfrom Infosys ( 2010 & 2011)

Won multiple on the Spot awardsfor outstanding achievements in programsfrom InfosysduringQuarterly Review.

Constantly received highest feedback from my clients.

Certificate of Appreciation -Infosys Campus Connect Program (2006 & 2007)

Corporate Sporting events – Multiple awards

ACADEMIC CREDENTIALS

Bachelor of Engineering(Mechanical Engineering) from Manipal Institute of Technology, Manipal (MIT)/ MangaloreUniversity in 2001.

TECHNICAL PURVIEW

Test Planning and Strategy

Estimation frameworks

Agile Test skills

DevOps and Continues Integration

Test tools – HP ALM, Robot Framework, Selenium framework, HP QC,JIRA

Interests

Playing and Watching Cricket

Traveling to nature spots

Watching Movies

Improve my residential community

Watching Yakshagana and Kambla

~ANNEXURE~

MAJOR PROGRAMS

Title:Testing Service Management for one of the CPG customer

Client:A Consumer goods Major from USA

Role:Associate Director/Account Management

Domain:CPG

Hardware:Windows based PC

Software:HP-SAW, JIRA, Robotic Framework

Description:Management of many different projects like – a) Platform development (Sitecore CMS) and modifications Project b) Dental Care website Development Project (Agile) c) Operations Project d) Website Assembly Projects (e-commerce) Automation project to development a framework for all the projects (Robotic Framework)

Scope:Test Delivery Management, Escalation Management and Team Management.

Responsibility:Manage all the testing projects across the account. Bringing automation to the account and there by winning customer confidence and reduce the effort. Bringing DRE to greater than 95%. Achieve CAST of 6 and above. Achieve the testing revenue target for the account.

Title:Complex Commercial Underwriting Project

Client:A Property and Casualty Insurance Major in America

Role:Senior Project Manager/Senior Test Manager

Domain:Property and Casualty Insurance

Hardware:Windows based PC

Software:HP-QC, QTP/UFT

Description:Customer is looking for a next generation end to end Underwriting solution for US/Canada Financial Lines that will allow users to quote & bind submissions, issue, endorse and renew policies. The platform will transform underwriter’s way of working by offering a rich user interface. Future plan is to port other underwriting applications in different business units onto this platform.

Scope:Greater efficiency through easier navigation, better task management, seamless integration.

Responsibility:Management of different scrums from QA perspective. Manage all the testing tracks of the project including automation, casualty, PEP. Create a schedule and plan for the project. Come up with the testing strategy. Identify and track issues/risks/project milestones.Managed automation testing team which was using QTP.

Title:Exposure SolutionProject

Client:AProperty and Casualty Insurance Major in America

Role:Project Manager/Test Manager

Domain:Property and Casualty Insurance

Hardware:Windows based PC

Software:QC, Pega, Datastage (ETL), Cognos (Reports), SOAP UI (Web service automation)

Description:Managing location based risk is increasingly important in the insurance business. This Enterprise Risk management/Global Exposure system will enable the client to recover from a competitive disadvantage with other competitors and take a leading position with a concomitant beneficial effect on loss ratio and overall profitability. The solution will address all of the deficiencies and challenges outlined above by creating a centralized global exposure data warehouse combined with a data capture and workflow management solution.

Scope:Profitability will rise due to better risk management.

Responsibility:Plan, track and monitor the progress of all the 3 testing tracks. Identify the training needs for the testing track. Responsible for testing of integrated GES solution. Responsible for Test case design review, Master Test Plan, Test Data Review and assistance during UAT. Risk management with mitigation and contingency plans. Manage performance testing track (Jmeter)

Title:2011 Universal Life Project

Client:An Insurance Major in North America

Role:Project Manager/ Integration Test Lead

Domain:Universal Life Products/Insurance

Hardware:Windows based PC

Software:Oracle, VB.net, Sybase

Description:An Insurance Major in North America is planning to introduce four products, “Custom Universal Life – Guaranteed”, “Survivorship Universal Life – Guaranteed”, “Single Premium Universal Life – BOLI” and “Single Premium Universal Life – COLI” with the necessary issue and servicing capabilities as part of UL-G project.Client is also planning to make the variable fund options for variable life products consistent with those available to variable annuity products as a part of New Variable funds (NVF) project. UL-G project will deliver two UL-G products,Custom Universal Life – Guaranteed”and“Survivorship Universal Life – Guaranteed”, which will utilize a shadow fund account allowing for maximum death benefit guarantee flexibility (a competitive must) along with lowest possible guaranteed premiums.In order to achieve the lowest guaranteed premium, the cash value of the policy will be reduced to zero quickly. SPUL project will deliver two SPUL products on ULife chassis which allows for a more competitive increased current assumption cash-on-cash rate of return. The company has an opportunity to decrease the risks associated with BOLI and COLI sales and increase single premium BOLI and COLI sales by offering single premium products on the ULife chassis.NVF project will provide systems enhancements and procedures that will allow An Insurance Major in North Americato illustrate, issue, and administer new variable funds.

Scope:Making 16 new variable funds available to variable life products. Making 1 new variable fund available to variable annuity products. Changing preset asset allocation models.

Responsibility:To come up with the estimate for the Testing phase.To prepare the detailed schedule for each of the activities.Define the test strategy and Integration test plan for the project. To coordinate with different external teams and client teams. Offshore/onsite coordination. Resolving business related issues.

Title:Consolidated Client View

Client:An Insurance Major in North America

Role:Project Manager / Offshore Testing Team Lead

Domain:Insurance

Hardware:Windows based PC (Acer PC)

Software:EODS, QTP

Description:An Insurance Major in North Americahas grown from primarily a life insurance company to a Financial Security company with a larger and more diverse product and client portfolio. In order to provide ultimate service experience, Client wants to provide a complete client view of financial securities to different users. The consolidated client view application (CCV) will provide that holistic view for the client. Testing will be completed to validate the system behaves according to the requirements specified, as well as to establish a solid regression baseline for future releases.

Responsibility:To manage the entire testing Project. To come up with the estimate for the Testing phase.To prepare the detailed schedule along with resource plan for each of the activities.Formulating test strategy for the project. Offshore/onsite coordination. Resolving business related issues. Functional and Integration test plan reviews. People Management

Title:Life Benefits Desktop Replacement – Phase II

Client:An Insurance Major in North America

Role:Testing team Lead

Domain:Life Benefits/Insurance

Hardware:UNIX, Windows based PC (Acer PC)

Software:Oracle, J2EE, Sybase, Smalltalk

Description:The Life Benefits area of the Policy owner Services Department is the area of the company that ultimately upholds the promise that the company makes to policy owners, which is to make a timely payment of claim upon the death of an insured. The current Life Benefits Desktop is written in technology that is scheduled to be retired. So, we are involved in re-engineeringthe existing desktop functionality to J2EE technology which will benefit the Life Benefits area of Policy owner Services.

Responsibility:To come up with the estimate for the Testing phase.To prepare the detailed schedule for each of the activities.Formulating test strategy for the project. To coordinate with different external teams and client teams. Offshore/onsite coordination. Resolving technical and business related issues. Functional and Integration test plan reviews.

Title: Setup & Make Claim Decisions

Client:An Insurance Major in North America

Role:Software Engineer and Configuration Controller

Domain:Life, Payment Plan / Claims/Insurance

Hardware:Windows based PC (Acer PC)

Software:IBM Mainframes

Description:An Insurance Major in North Americais seeking to re-engineer its existing legacy system infrastructure for DI Benefits and build a new Integrated DI Benefits Platform. As a part of this Case Setup and Analysis and Make Claim Decisions systems are planned to convert from legacy system to J2EE platform.

Responsibility:CM Orientation to the project team. Detailed Analysis and Reverse Engineering of existing forms, Self, Peer and group reviews. Logging the defects found during review into RADAR. Preparation of high level design and detailed level design. Coding and Testing. Ensure compliance with processes defined in CM plan. Conducting CM Audits as planned. Take part in defect analysis.

Title:Ulife GI-Inforce Corrections

Client:An Insurance Major in North America

Role:Software Engineer and Defect Prevention Coordinator

Domain:Universal Life Products/Insurance/Inforce corrections

Hardware:Windows based PC (Acer PC)

Software:Visual Basic 5.0, Visio 5.0

Description:Previously Inforce Corrections were possible only on non GI policies from New Business. Through this project, Inforce Correction functionalities were Enabled for VEL – GI policies and thus making the system work for inforce corrections on all ULife products. It includes all the types of corrections i.e. Data Correction, Premium correction, Delivery correction and also combo correction (Data + Premium correction or Data + Delivery correction).