11 Ridgeway Road Scarborough, ME 04074-8210 207-329-1564 wcook@maine.rr.com |
| Profile | William ("Bill") Cook is a Senior Project Manager with over 25 years experience providing project management, systems architecture, applications development, senior management consulting, and other professional services on a wide range of assignments in diverse vertical industries. Mr. Cook has direct experience in providing coherent, unified technology plans emphasizing a framework of processes which are intensely focused on achieving business goals and objectives. His depth of project management experience includes legacy mainframe, client server, and internet applications. He also brings a practical perspective on systems and data integration across platforms. |
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06/2006 to Present Senior Project Manager IBM Global Services Portland, ME PM and Senior Management Consulting (C-Level) |
Major Financial Services Company (Investment Management Systems) 01/2010 to 06/2010 PMO Director Project Description : Mr. Cook was commissioned to initiate a major upgrade in project management practice and performance for an Investment Management middle-office migration team. He was responsible for integrating nine individual workstreams into a comprehensive program-level project management office including establishing the project planning and program reporting. Mr. Cook then initiated repeatable processes that improved the overall efficiency of the program office and was a key resource for other project managers in an advisory capacity. At the conclusion of this engagement, Mr. Cook transitioned his processes and procedures to the project team improving the overall efficiency of the organization. Major Financial Services Company (Variable Annuities Systems) 08/2007 to 12/2009 PMO Director Senior Testing Manager Project Description : Mr. Cook lead the Project Management Office for a customer who consistently struggled in implementing and using a customized ISV product to manage their Variable Annuity portfolio business. Mr. Cook also rationalized their defect management, requirements gathering, and large-scale system testing processes using IBM Rational products. Utilizing his enterprise project management experience, Mr. Cook assumed responsibility for strategic planning for the organization. Mr. Cook also introduced various custom senior management targeted reporting vehicles to track project and testing metrics. The customer has acknowledged that under Mr. Cook‘s direction that their system delivery process is now predictable and the organization as a whole is improved in meeting their internal and external business commitments. Major Life Carrier 5/2007 to 07/2007 Senior Project Manager Project Description : System Stability Assessment. Mr. Cook lead a successful team of architects and technical specialists to provide recommendation on stabilizing various systems on multiple platforms and languages. In this role, Mr. Cook was the primary customer contact for IBM’s charge to leverage expertise in large-scale, mission-critical websites in the identification, evaluation, diagnosis and mitigation planning to return these systems to full availability. The result of this engagement was to assist the carrier in returning the systems to stated service level agreements, diagnose potential root-cause of outages, and develop actionable recommendations. In addition, Mr. Cook managed an effort to provide a health check for various ETL systems and web applications. The customer then engaged IBM for additional services to implement the recommendations. Major Life and Disability Carrier 10/2006 to 02/2007 Senior Project Manager Project Description : Group Life Products Sales System. For this assignment, Mr. Cook developed an innovative custom methodology to deliver phased system functionality combined with defect management and correction capabilities. Utilizing Agile development techniques, combined with a team based approach, he planned and managed four teams of 6 developers each to deliver advanced functionality on a project that was struggling with quality and performance. The first phase of the system was delivered a week ahead of schedule with minimal defects. Future phases of the system were then transitioned to the client project management team to be managed from plans and techniques he specifically designed and developed for this customer. During the methodology development phase, Mr. Cook included the project managment team in a mentored role to build trust, competence, and to enhance the project managers‘ leadership capabilities. Mr. Cook also participated in developing strategies for the overall project to improve system quality through improvements to configuration management standards, team programming, and defect prioritization, remediation, and testing techniques. Mr. Cook was also instrumental in developing completion criteria for determining when the project phases would be concluded to the satisfaction of the customer and project constituencies. |
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07/2001 - 06/2006 ISO, Internet Insurance Rating Software Vendor Nashua, NH Engagement Manager Senior Project Manager and System Integration Leader |
Various P&C Insurance Companies Project Description
: For multiple customers of this business unit, Mr. Cook had oversight and responsibility for all
phases of the customer engagements from planning the implementation projects to overseeing the complex requirements
gathering process for commercial and personal lines property & casualty rating implementations. He assisted
organizations who were just venturing out onto the internet with setting up their infrastructure and architecture by
establishing policies and procedures for complex change management, systems testing, and operational processes. He
provided oversight on the installation and tuning of the Microsoft Server, SQL Server, Websphere MQ, XML messaging,
IIS, C++ and Visual Basic development tools. Mr Cook was also instrumental in managing vendor relationships and
requirements activities with back office billing, claims, and printing solution providers. Additional responsibilities
included providing project definition studies to determine scope and customer intentions. Mr. Cook managed diverse
business and technical resources to develop the custom methodologies that would be used to perform the build-out of
the customer product lines. He was principally responsible for performing initial customer visits to provide product
installation, configuration, tuning, and training. As projects progressed, Mr. Cook provided senior management
consulting in system architecture, configuration management, and change management. Additionally, he managed
geographically diverse coordination of resources for rating rule preparation and application enhancement coding.
One of his primary responsibilities was providing thought leadership on large-scale system testing, environment
planning, and operational planning. On an ongoing basis to projects under his control, he also performed resource
planning and financial reporting activities. |
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12/1999 - 04/2001 Kana, Internet Knowledgebase Company Natick, MA Principal Consultant Engagement Management, Project Management, Director of Systems Integration, Director of Training |
Various Director Level Positions Project Description : Mr. Cook managed implementations of complex knowledgebase customer service applications principally in a Microsoft NT Server, SQL Server, and proprietary CRM software environment. He was responsible for system architecture planning, supervising product installation, and tuning activities. He conducted knowledge mapping activities and provided direct project management support on multiple simultaneous engagements. While managing multiple teams of engineers, business consultants, and support personnel on-site and remotely, he also managed relationships across the entire customer spectrum from CEO to network engineer. He held the position of Director of System Integration Practice Development where he contributed to the organization by developing system integration methodologies and practices and performing business development tasks. As part of this role, he managed software integration trials and testing while developing custom integration methods for specific customer requirements. Mr. Cook‘s leadership style also allowed for mentoring junior staff and customer support and technical personnel. He was concurrently the Director of Training and was responsible for courseware development activities while managing a small staff of trainers and content developers. He oversaw the design and provisioning of a state of the art training environment and revamped the original training program for multi-media delivery via CD-ROM. |
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07/1998 - 12/1999 Computer Technology Associates Bethesda, MD Managing Consultant Subject Matter Expert on Practice Development and Project Management |
Managing Principal Consultant Project Description : Mr. Cook helped establish a firm to provide system consulting services to commercial entities for an organization that had traditionally served various US Government and State Agencies. He produced custom methodologies, marketing, and business development assets. He was also instrumental in producing proposal generation and project sizing methods. He set up practices in CRM, e-commerce, system migration, and large-scale system testing. While in the capacity, he also performed project management and oversight on large-scale public sector projects that were in trouble and needed experience to right them. |
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02/1997 - 07/1998 IBM Global Services New York, NY Project Executive |
Y2K Center of Excellence Project Description : Mr. Cook was a major contributor to the Year 2000 Center of Excellence. He developed migration and testing methodologies for major IBM clients. He also provided enterprise class software migration services. Mr. Cook was given responsibility for managing large-scale projects (100+ FTEs). His duties included managing enterprise class infrastructure acquisition and configuration. He was the senior expert on large-scale systems testing and migration methodologies. He was also a lead development and testing tool evaluator. Mr. Cook conducted many public speaking engagements for his business unit. While in this capacity, he developed, delivered and managed; systems analysis, design, testing, configuration management, operations, personnel, financial reporting, and client interaction activities. |
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6/1995 - 02/1997 Sybase Atlanta, GA Architect / DBA / OOP Developer |
Strategic Program Manager Year 2000 Services Project Description
: Mr. Cook was responsible for thought leadership for Year 2000 practice and tool development. He
produced strategy, product, marketing, and methodology collateral. He had control of the largest strategic program
budget in the organization. He also provided direct project management support to internal program resources. He was
an OOP Set Top Box Developer / Project Manager for a large telecommunications company. He designed and built the GUI
interface for a video on demand trial. He developed this application in a proprietary language Gain Momentum
and provided direct support and development experience to product engineers. While on this project he also
held a dual role of managing customer / vendor relationship in complex multi-vendor environment. He was a contributing
DBA System Architect and was instrumental working on a large team delivering performance and tuning benchmarks
development for Very Large Database system used to track logistics operations. |
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02/1986 - 06/1995 Unum Life and LTD Insurance Company Portland, ME Senior Programmer / Analyst |
Development Center Expert Project Description : Mr. Cook had varied responsibilities for introducing new development technologies and techniques to an audience of over 400 developers. He produced C Language front-end graphical user interfaces in OS/2 Warp and was the primary Microfocus COBOL product expert and system development expert. He developed client / server insurance enrollment and confirmation systems to service cafeteria style benefits (using Visual Basic). He was a mainframe / PC integration expert (utilizing various technologies) and provided business and systems application re-engineering expert services. Mr. Cook provided network management experience in emerging platforms. One of his major achievments was to develop various application development environments for both legacy and emerging client/server platforms. He was an application migration expert (from MF to PC), in the technologies of IBM OS/390/ MVS, COBOL, JCL, DB2, VSAM, etc. |
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07/1983 - 02/1986 Aetna Life and Casualty Hartford, CT Programmer / Analyst |
Application Developer and Migration Expert Project Description : Mr. Cook‘s earliest experience was as the lead developer of a production support scheduling system that automated production operating instructions. He was responsible for conducting large-scale system testing efforts. He was also an application migration expert leading pioneering efforts to rehost IBM COBOL development on PC workstations. During this time, he designed systems for source code migration and management. He also provided thought leadership on techniques and tools. As a mentor and guide, he provided leadership to other legacy system developers on emerging microcomputer and personal computer platforms. |
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| Education |
Bachelor of Arts in Criminal Justice University of Hartford, US |