JEFF FURMAN, PMP

Location: NYC/NJ Area Website/Blog:

Mobile: (201) 310-7997 Email:

SUMMARY

PMP Project Management Instructor / Book Author / Presentation Skills Certification Trainer. 15 years experience managing IT projects for Fortune 500 financial firms, specializing in:development tools, QA testing, IT change management, PMO best practices, and risk management, plus 10+ years as a corporate trainer and PMP instructor.

Strong analytical, training, writing, communication and social mediaskills.

CAREER HIGHLIGHTS

Wrote comprehensive book on PMP project management “The Project Management Answer Book”(publisher: Management Concepts, Jan., 2011:)

Won “Instructor of the Year”award, NetCom Info Technology, for my PMP class.

Led many company-wide projects as an IT Manager over 15 years: new product evaluations, QA-Testing, infrastructure upgrades,and training programs.

Led IT Change Management implementation for large NYC brokerage firm, bringing department to 100% compliance (1,000+ users, 24x7).

Designed and taught 12 technical courses for developers, analysts and managers on development tools and mainframe programming languages.

PMO Experience – Manager of the Tools Selection team for Prudential Financial’s Enterprise-wide Y2K effort (1996-1999).

Brought cost-savings of more than $6,000,000 annually for Prudential Financial by eliminating redundant products and restructuring license with major software vendor.

Won 2 customer service awards (“Rock Solid” Award) - Prudential (2002 and 2004).

Initiated the Y2K remediation effort (1991) for Prudential Securities(our department’s early start saved company considerable money in HR and software licenses for this project)

Published articles onPMP, IT software, risk management, and training in: Computerworld, PM World Today, Software Magazine, Technical Support Magazine.

Mentored a college student at Stevens Institute of Technology (Spring 2011) – participated in several in-depth interviews about one of the large projects I had managed for a brokerage firm in NYC. Student analyzed and reported on my project for his term paper.

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

INDEPENDENT CONSULTANT Nov. 2005 - Present

Project Management Instructor / Presentation Skills Certification Trainer / Book Author

Just completed teaching an in-depth2 week Advanced Project Management / PMP prep class for a group of US military officers on-base at Fort Hood, Texas (May, 2011)

Wrote: “The Project Management Answer Book” (published by Management Concepts, 416 pages, January 2011). In-depth practitioner’s guide, Q&A format, PMBOK-compliant.

Taught 80 weeks of 5-day PMP Prep for NetCom Information Technology (New York, NY) and won company’s “Instructor of the Year” award two consecutive years (2008 and 2009).

Taught 30 sessions of Advanced Presentation Skills for two training companies:(NetComand Unitek)preparing instructors forthree certifications: CTT+, MCTandACI.

PRUDENTIAL FINANCIAL (3 consecutive positions below) 1986 - 2005

Prudential Financial, Roseland, New Jersey 1999 – 2005

IT Project Manager / Infrastructure Support Manager

  • Managed group of 5 application support specialists providing technical support for 3,000+ application developers on 16 testing tools and programming languages.
  • Created course materials for new development tools and presented classes and demos for the company’s developers, both locally and overseas (using videoconferencing and SameTime).
  • Led many IT projectsincluding new vendor product evaluations, infrastructure software implementations, and consolidations of competing products across multiple sites.
  • Wrote User Guides and New Product Release Documentation for 16 software products supported by our team; made available in database heavily-used by company’s developers.
  • Wrote testing scripts and documentation for testing new versions of infrastructure software, also for regression-testing against hardware and operating system upgrades, and for Disaster Recovery / Business Continuation testing.
  • Coded and documented 300+ programs, scripts, and job control language sets which were used as templates by the company’s developers. These templates enabled the programmers to quickly utilize many new software products without training (increasing efficiency and reducing costs).
  • Managed education vendors, bringing in training for application developers on new development tools.

Prudential Securities, New York, NY 1991 – 1999

Manager, IT Change Management and Productivity Tools Support

  • Managed team supporting company’s Change Management/SDLC system utilized by applications department (1,000+ users) to move application software into Production.
  • -PMO - From 1996 through 1999 played leadership role in Prudential’s Enterprise-wide Y2K Program as Prudential Securities’ Technical Representative to the Prudential’s Enterprise-Wide Y2K PMO, and as Manager of the Tools Selection Team for the PMO.
  • Created and taught many classes on key development tools, programming languages and Change Management System used by the company’s development staff of more than 1,000 programmers.
  • Wrote documentation (user guides, new product release information, testing scripts) for many key products used by developers. Made available via the company’s online documentation databases.
  • Initiated company’s Y2K program in 1991, leading initial date testing for the firm using date simulation software and data-aging products.

Prudential Securities, New York, NY 1986 – 1991

Technical Trainer / Course Developer / Training Manager

  • Delivered technical training for programmers on development tools (FileAid, InterTest, SmartEdit, Spiffy, Strobe, Xpediter) and new versions of COBOL programming language.
  • Designed and created many technical training programs for company’s application developers.
  • Selected and managed training programs for the IT department’s developers by vendor instructors (CICS, VSAM, DB2).

NEW YORK METROPOLITAN TRANSPORTATION AGENCY 1985 – 1986

IT Education Specialist, New York, NY

  • Implemented and managed video and CBT technical training programs for the MTA and related city transportation agencies, including LIRR, Metro-North, MSBA, and NYCTA
  • Led the creation of the first inter-agency training contract for the NYC MTA, and was the liaison between the agencies and the MTA legal department on the project.

NEW YORK LIFE INSURANCE COMPANY 1984 – 1985

Technical Trainer, New York, NY

  • Taught three modules of company’s Programmer Trainee program (Clists, Cobol, TSO/ISPF).

NYU SCHOOL OF CONTINUING EDUCATION 1984 - 1984

Adjunct Professor, New York, NY

  • Taught computer programming class using Assembler Language.

EDUCATION and CERTIFICATIONS

CompTIA Project+ Certified Project Manager

CompTIA CTT+ Certified Technical Trainer

Computer Applications Teaching License / NYState Education Dept.

PMP/PMI Certified Project Management Professional

NYU School of Continuing Education, Diploma in Cobol and Assembler Programming

New York State University College at Oneonta, BA Degree: English & Biology

LANGUAGES AND SOFTWARE

Programming Languages: Assembler, Clists, Cobol, IBM LE, ISPF Dialog Manager, Rexx.

Infrastructure / Development Tools: AbendAid/XLS, Changeman/ZMF, COBOL testing tools

(Intertest and XDC), FileAid/MVS, Hourglass, Info Management, Lotus Notes, PDS Tools/

Star Tools, Remedy (Change Problem Management),SameTime, Smart Edit, Spiffy,

StarWarp, Strobe/iStrobe, TicToc, Version Merger, and XDC/se (Assembler testing tool).

Personal Computers: Microsoft Office 2007Excel, PowerPoint, Project, Word, and HTML.

PROFESSIONAL ORGANIZATIONS

  • ASTD (American Society of Training and Development), and ASTD NY Chapter.
  • NYC Agile Users Group, NYC SCRUM Users Group, NYC SPIN (Software Process Improvement Network).
  • PMI (Project Management Institute), PMI NYC Chapter, PMI L.E.A.D. CoP (Learning, Education And Development Community of Practice),Agile NYC Users Group.