Skills Summarized – Technology Admin & Resource Mgmt.
(In order of Preference)
Skill
Years used
Last used
Oracle Database Administration
11
Current
PeopleSoft Administration
8
Current
Project Management
12
Current
SQL Performance Tuning
10
Current
Database Tuning
8
Current
Solaris Administration
9
Current
UNIX Administration
12
Current
Database Design
18
Current
SQL Server Administration
12
Current
Quality Assurance
9
Current
Application development
18
Current
ETL (Data Conversion)
15
Current
UNIX Shell Scripting
11
Current
PL/SQL
11
Current
SDLC
15
Current
WebSphere Admin
8
Current
Mentoring Development Best Practices
5
Current
ITIL Foundations
5
Current
Agile / Collaborative Method
2
Current
SCRUM
2
Current
HTML
14
Current
Compliance
5
Current
Data Modeling
7
Current
Linux
7
2005
RPG
10
2004
AS/400 Administration (DB2 DBA)
10
2004
Cobol
11
2009
Storage Administration
6
2004
C++
10
2005
SOA
3
Current
PVCS
8
Current
Microsoft Windows
14
Current
J2EE
10
Current
Java
10
Current
Application Messaging
5
Current
Business Objects
4
2009
Portal Admin
6
Current
Crystal Reports
7
Current
Perl
5
2008
Hyperion Administration
10
Current
FileNet
7
Current
Cold Fusion
3
2001
Please continue on next page for a detailed account of skillset with examples:
Skills (Detail) – PM, Mentoring, UNIX, Windows, AS/400 & Oracle
Skill Set
Organizational
Rebound
Qualifications
When I joined Navajo Refining (Now Holly-Frontier Corporation), the
Company, was in heavy debt and a big lawsuit. The improvement of
processes, timely and accurate information - improved the production,
management and profits. The importance of Information Technology was
realized in this company and we spent heavily in restructuring our IT. Couple
of last quarters before I left, our employees saw the biggest bonuses in the
history of this company, and by further improvement in structure and
culture, they will see even better results.
I joined USFoodservice (now USFoods) right around the downfall of Enron,
and learned that USF was also an Arthur Anderson client (the very reason
for SOX) and right in the middle of biggest lawsuit in human history. With
hard work and tireless efforts, we turned the company around by not only
establishing compliance but helped take the sales from $9.8 B to over $20
Billion today. This besides other cost cutting options via margin
management, truck builder, contract and rebates management etc.
Management
experience:
Agile /
Collaborative
Method.
ITIL
Foundations:
Managing
Services,
Changes,
Incidents, etc.
From 1996 onwards, I have been managing projects and resources in
various forms and at different levels. With 19+ years of experience I am
good at early project evaluation, resource requirements and capacity
planning. I also encourage talent development which benefits both the
individuals and the company and have initiated mentorship programs that I
first learned about in late 90s when outsourcing was picking up and
overseas support companies were introducing programs to improve quality
and production.
At USF we are increasingly moving away from using the waterfall method,
and employing Agile Methodology to several new projects. Project
managers with good understanding of Agile are now able to parallelize the
development activity. Infrastructure engagement is also more cohesive and
focused helping overall with better management and meeting deadlines.
Changing from Remedy to HPSM (HP Service Manager) was a big milestone
for USF. I did online certification of ITIL Foundations from CBT Nuggets to
understand the overall process, but also how it relates to ICT (Information &
Communication service management). Moving to ITIL helped USF overall to
understand how these changes help with Application as well as Business
development.
I designed and implemented an Intel based system for National Television
Studio that was employed for Titles, Sub-titling, Graphics, special effects and
Animation. I also designed a Graphics & Animation system for National
News Bureau using an Amiga machine. I designed Intel based systems in my
service with PRAL, and for clients at Systems Research.
Systems
Architecture:
I designed redundancy packed Intel based servers and high availability,
reliable and fast Sun Solaris systems for Holly Corporation. I also designed a
single processor Intel Hyper-threaded technology based system along with a
fast disk subsystem for Yates Petroleum that will outperform a year old
quad Xeon processor system and save the company cumulative license fees.
Since those two early examples I have come a long way in designing new
systems and applications. And have led/been a part of many successful
implementations as well as consolidation and retirement efforts to save
cost and increase efficiencies as well as productivity.
I designed database for my project at IIUI university. At CTI I implemented
database and data structures for my set of modules, tested them and also
built interface of these modules with other modules in the project.
On the request from senate and National Assembly of the Govt. of Pakistan,
I created and filtered a national database for inventory and collateral
damage assessment for a customs dry-port. Designed databases for clients
at Systems Research.
Database
Design
Massaged and modified a country wide vehicle database for MVPI to make
it Y2K ready. At Holly Corporation I Designed, implemented, messaged,
modified and converted and handled almost all corporate databases. Finally
for Yates Petroleum I identified shortcomings of their existing system and
designed a more stable database.
Again I kept those early examples to show my development, but have come
a long way in database design, Performance tuning, Mentoring to write
good code, successful implementations based on good capacity planning
and resource management. Not to discount maintenance efforts starting
with good long-term Archival procedures.
Backup &
Recovery
At the university, we were responsible to take backups of our project
libraries. Since then I have handled backups for AS400, Windows and UNIX
systems. At Navajo Refineries, I designed a zero-downtime Backup/Recovery
System. I also helped Yates design their Oracle Backup plan. AS RMAN
became a tool of choice for Oracle and vendors like VERITAS and DB Protect
offered solutions, I implemented/maintained these solutions in a variety of
different configurations.
While I was stationed at Pakistan Customs port at Peshawar for
Implementation of Appraisal software; Working with the Commissioner, I
learned that instead of laboriously trying to shape the software to strictly
follow the business process, sometimes it is much easier and more effective
to mold the business process.
Managerial
Help
At Navajo Refining, I taught the maintenance department how to use
information and avoid over-maintenance thus saving time, resources and
money. In addition we taught them how to plan better using concepts like
Just-In-time planning, Coordinated and correlated maintenance, look-ahead
maintenance etc. At Yates Petroleum I coordinated my projects with a
colleague resulting in a 50% reduction of work and resources for each of us.
We are just coming out of a global recession, and the last 7+ years with USFoods, we have made every attempt to provide food to our customers at
the cheapest possible price, saved every mile of gas and shrunk every
margin we could. Considering Food Industry does not have big margins to
begin with. Every kind of science was employed to study how proper
placement of product on the truck can save cost, how proper reporting of
Capital projects can save on taxes and all this while going green.
Customer
Service:
I am quite patient and helpful to the customers; for instance, had to take
about half an hour to merely point out to a customer where the dollar sign
key was. I have always believed in providing the customer; added value (at
no additional cost to my company) to win goodwill for my company. I even go
to the point of rescheduling my appointments to facilitate my customers. My
philosophy is that I put myself in customer’s shoes to see what kind of
service would I expect and can I deliver better than that. I also pay attention
to details and benefit customers in areas they may not be aware of.
ERP
background:
IBS owns a System for Distribution Warehouses, which in combination to its
rather weak MRP module becomes quite an impressive package. IBM
recognized their power and IBS became one of the three companies in their
Shared Framework project (Commonly known as San-Francisco Project).
Also with IBS I had to take an overview of the Distribution and Financial
portions of JDE. My other experience with ERP was with Systems Research
Limited who was a logo partner with SAP AG. Recently I Administered
DataStream (An EAM Package).
Currently I am a Peoplesoft Administrator, responsible for day to day
support and troubleshooting, patching and Tax updates, as well as system
upgrades time to time, last upgade was last year from 8.8 to 9.1
Data Security
Working with Pakistan Customs, Data Security was one of the main
concerns. Millions of dollars’ worth of material was stocked in the Appraisal
sheds at any given time. Proper handling of Information and backup was of
utmost importance. With Navajo Refineries, I Planned a Backup and
Recovery plan that was implemented across multiple platforms and would
ensure a 24/7 uptime. Despite of 24/7 availability or Oracle, Data-Guard
technology was employed for complete system imaging, besides archiving
and RMAN backups. I designed a similar plan for Yates Petroleum.
With SOX compliance at US Foods, we have employed secure methods of
communication, made use of tools provided by Oracle and other vendors,
worked with application vendors to comply with our higher standards, and
even installed scrambling mechanisms such as CREDANT.
Access
Security
CTI had an elaborate Access control mechanism using AS/400 native
security system. Working with PRAL, I was responsible to manage the usersecurity software designed to control Access security under Pakistan
Customs guidelines. MVPI, Hollycorp and Yates Petroleum had similar
access control software that I managed on multiple platforms. I often
combined the security software and System security features to achieve
even better management.
Here at USF we have employed an elaborate method of using an appdba id
for turnovers, differentiated application IDs from batch IDs and devised
several SOX compliant methods.
With my job at “Pakistan Customs” as a PRAL employee, I led the "takeover"
asserting that “although it will take a little more time in planning; than what
the company we took over from, had originally proposed: yet will deliver
the product on time”. The trick; as they later realized, was to do it right the
first time! Than to be wrong about it and redo parts of it over and avoid
chaos in the first place.
Creativity:
Early Years
On the same project we often lacked the source code for many programs,
not provided by the outgoing company. We developed a smart system that
was able to determine all the possible combinations of outputs based on
the recognized input combinations. This system would then create a
program to satisfy the required logic; and thereby filling in for a missing link.
When OMACO MVPI hired me for their Y2k project; I was able to deliver in
three months, an estimate of the work required which in a nutshell was:
“14,000 programs and files combined, within a period of 15 months at hand
(testing period inclusive)”. I Elected to Down-date and within two weeks,
wrote a Wizard that could use the Field Descriptions stored in a Database;
and patch the existing code to be Y2k ready. The company then requested
me to go ahead and make them Y2k ready by actual expansion of fields and
have the previous data converted to this format, so as to reduce a few steps
in a later conversion; for their Power-builder development. I gladly wrote
another Wizard in the next six weeks that will in a matter of about 6 hours
rewrite the total code, expand the database files and expand the data itself,
copy the data in the expanded files and replace the complete old system
with the new one.
Creativity:
Today
For Holly Corporation, I structured the hardware with a notion to eliminate
any single point of failure, and the ability of failover switching transparent
to the user. For Executive information; Our current database structure feeds
to an Executive information layer, which will be utilized by remote devices
handled by executives; to dynamically draw models and create reports
interactively. This feature will enable them to access information with just a
few clicks; that by conventional ways would have taken months of
interaction between this individual and a skilled programmer.
Oil refining is a very dynamic industry, With Hollycorp jumping into the
realm of mergers and acquisitions in order to extend the effective area of its
business. We achieved a software proficiency whereby these dynamic
changes can be addressed on the fly; in fact with the last acquisition, the
whole conversion and takeover process completed in less than three
months.
Database
Conversion
Platform /
Database
Integration
Source Code
Documentation
Data
Manipulation
I did some conversion at CTI but the first major Conversion was at PRAL. At
MVPI. I did Y2K conversion, and converted a little over 14 thousand
programs and files. At MVPI I also did data conversion for PowerBuilder
development. At Navajo Refining I did DB2 to Oracle migration besides
various conversions and migrations. At USF we completed consolidation of
over 100 companies on one system, and this is besides numerous other
conversions and consolidations.
I helped a friend for his integration of AS/400 with RS6000 in the ministry of
Finance, Pakistan. I did Client Access Integration at CTI and MVPI. At
Hollycorp and Yates Petroleum I used iSeries ODBC to connect DB2 with
Access, SQL-Server and Oracle. Lately at USF, several small databases were
consolidated using oracle APEX. I have over the years - used text files, flat
database files, CSV or other delimited formats, tables and last but not least
XML technology for transportation of information.
An aspect of IT that most programmers dislike, but it gets easier if you
follow a format that flows with your process, and you document as you
goes. Individuals and organizations make the mistake of just throwing
documents "in a bucket", and not thinking about the retrieval process
making it hard to find when you need it. I organize documents in a
consistent way and use keywords in metadata just in case.
Pakistan Customs Did not has Inventory or Asset Management System, and
after the Dry-port at Lahore was burned down I used SQL/400 and Query
Manager/400 to construct inventory reports requested by the Senate and
National Assembly. In almost all of my jobs I had need to create various
reports. Instead of creating hundreds of similar reports, I try to create
several selection options within one report to keep the system simple. At
Navajo Refining I advocated the use of Oracle Discoverer as a tool for endusers and executives to be able to manipulate data and be able to make
minor customizations.
Strong web
design skills:
Have done web development for the clients with Systems Research. And
developed intranet, User security, Shopping Cart, Payment Transactions etc.
Administered Oracle Application Server (Apache), Apache Tomcat, Microsoft
IAS and Web Methods.
Experience in
manufacturing
environment:
CTI is a communication equipment manufacturer. System Research and IBS
has clients in various manufacturing disciplines. Hollycorp is in the business
of Oil Refining and Yates Petroleum is an Oil Producer.
Experience in
Distribution
Industry:
Hollycorp and Yates Petroleum own Pipeline & Transit companies for all
Crude as well as finished and semi-finished products distribution. IBS has
clients mostly in Distribution Industry. In Addition my experience with
Pakistan Customs gave me some insight into international trade, freight and
appraisal processes. US-Foods is the second largest Wholesale food supplier
in US with sales exceeding $20 Billion.
Experience in
Communication
industry
ERP
background:
CTI is a major communication company in Pakistan, a research facility and a
major supplier of viable army communication equipment. At IBS, Navajo
Refining and Yates Petroleum, I have learned quite a bit about wireless
devices and their application in today’s business.
IBS owns a System for Distribution Warehouses, which in combination to its
rather weak MRP module becomes quite an impressive package. IBM
recognized their power and IBS became one of the three companies in their
Shared Framework project (Commonly known as San-Francisco Project).
Also with IBS I had to take an overview of the Distribution and Financial
portions of JDE. My other experience with ERP was with Systems Research
Limited who was a logo partner with SAP AG. Recently I Administered
DataStream (An EAM Package).
Currently I am a PeopleSoft Administrator, responsible for day to day
support and troubleshooting, patching and Tax updates, as well as system
upgrades time to time, Currently upgrading HRMS.
Customer
Service Skills:
Multiple Task
Handling:
I am quite patient and helpful to the customers, in one instance I had to
take about half an hour to merely point out to a customer where the dollarsign key was. I have always believed in providing the customer; added value
(at no additional cost to my company) so as to win goodwill for my
company. I even go to the point of rescheduling my appointments to
facilitate my customers.
Starting from my first job at PTV, in almost all jobs, I dealt with multiple
projects simultaneously. I have been dealing with various data processing
problems pertaining to Resource Management, Technical Administration,
client support, reporting needs and new development all existing mutually.
At CTI, Systems Research, IBS, Hollycorp and Yates Petroleum, I dealt with
multiple projects and clients at a time. In fact seven different projects; all of
different nature, dealing with one to five groups per projects and two to
twenty-five people per group at the same time is what I topped.
At Navajo Refining, A Subsidiary of Holly Corporation, I wore various hats. I
was the Administrator and DB/2 DBA for AS/400 and all resident
applications. Administered the Solaris Machines and all relevant services. I
was the Oracle DBA administering all Oracle Based applications including
DataStream, Hyperion Reports and OTG Document Management System.
Currently at USF we handle multiple infrastructure functions and projects
along with assigned corporate projects we lead
SDLC Process
Management
Throughout my career, I have been involved with various activities of
Software Development Life Cycle. Starting from data gathering, to Analysis,
Design, Development, Testing, Implementation, Project Management and
Post-Implementation support. During this course I have Co-managed and
Managed various projects at different levels. I used Standard Life Cycle
Models like: Waterfall model, Prototype Model, Spiral Model, Incremental
Model, V Model Cyclic Model or CMM etc.
At USF we follow a well-defined SDLC policy. The process is divided into
phases, and templates are available on SharePoint to guide and document
the process for each member of the team. Each project does two
presentations one at the completion of design, and the other towards the
finalization of testing, allowing companywide concept sharing and
implementation coordination.
ISO
Documentation
At CTI I wrote Software Development Procedure and Work Instructions for
Programmers and Programmer Analysts. At Systems Research I supervised
all ISO Documentation for the Development group, reported and discussed
this documentation with the ISO committee and held tutorial sessions on
this subject.
Markup
languages
I designed web pages using HTML, Java Script and Cold Fusion etc. I also
administered Web Based applications interfaced using XML.
Portal
Integration
I configured and administered Oracle’s Portal 30 based applications. For
Navajo, I studied the scope for Implementing Oracle Collaboration suite as
well as Microsoft Portal.
B2B/B2C
Administration
At CTI and Systems Research, information exchange between systems was
done transporting text files I managed my modules to be consistent with
the format. At CTI and Systems Research, information exchange between
systems was done transporting text files I managed my modules to be
consistent with the format. At Holly Corporation I administered DataBridge
transferring the information between systems using markup tags and
markup language.
At USF we are using TIBCO to integrate our data-warehouses with the
Ecommerce and other applications. For PeopleSoft, Integration broker is
being used.
Project Documentation I was the main author for our thesis at the
University. I documented the design for graphics systems at NNB and NTS. I
Did Technical documentation for my modules at CTI. I was also part of the
team who did documentation for ISO certification. When I joined PRAL to
take over customs operations from another company, Technical
documentation for that project was non-existent. I started from scratch to
make sense out of the software where most of the code was missing. With
Systems Research, I wrote and supervised ISO documentation and a few
project documents.
Project
Documentation
As a Project manager with IBS, I was responsible for Pre-Project
Documentation, Functional Documentation, Technical Documentation,
Software Bug Reports, and user documentation. With Holly Corporation, I
was part of Project Scope Assessment team. I was then a member of Core
team incorporating major players from each group in the company an effort
to modernize the overall operations corporate wide. I created and
supervised documentation from Pre-project phase to Technical
documentation, security documentation, executive summaries and almost
all important IT documentation.
At USF I facilitate a project manager from the infrastructure aspects. Ensure
specified hardware requirements are procured and ready, Software installs
are done as per specifications, and oversee customization to ensure a well
performed system is going to production. All of this is documented on
SharePoint with standard template with complete transparency to the
project at any given time.
Teaching
Throughout my career, I had to teach users applications or other computer
skills. At Systems Research I held Y2K and Data Conversion Sessions and
presentations. Also I held training sessions and presentations on ISO
preparation and certification. At PRAL I held various Application Training
sessions and even Basic Computer Training sessions. At Navajo I held a
DB2/UDB Administration session. To Serve the community, I volunteered
some time to GED students in Georgia and I held a few much appreciated
classes for Head-Start in New Mexico.