|
William J. Cook 11 Ridgeway Road |
|
|
Professional experience |
|
||
|
Profile |
William (“Bill”) Cook is a Senior Project Manager in the Application Innovation Services Practice in Global Business Services at IBM. He has extensive 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 system migrations and data integration across platforms. |
|
|
Career History |
06/2006 - To date IBM, Portland, ME,
Senior Project Manager PM and Senior Management Consulting (C-Level) 07/2001 - 06/2006 AscendantOne /
ISO (AQS), Internet Insurance Rating Software Vendor, Engagement Manager Senior Project Manager and System Integration Leader 12/1999 - 04/2001 Kana, Internet
Knowledgebase Company, Natick, MA, US Principal Consultant Engagement Management, Project Management, Director of Systems Integration, Director of Training 07/1998 - 12/1999 Computer
Technology Associates, Federal Sector Professional Services Firm, Bethesda,
MD, US Managing Consultant Subject Matter Expert on Practice Development and Project Management 02/1997 - 07/1998 IBM Global
Services, Project Executive Subject Matter
Expert – Year 2000 06/1995 - 02/1997 Sybase, Database
Software Company, Atlanta, GA, US System Architect Architect / DBA / OOP Developer – Strategic Program Manager Year 2000 Services 02/1986 - 06/1995 Unum, Life and
LTD Insurance Company, Portland, ME, US Senior Programmer / Analyst Re-engineering
Specialist / 07/1983 - 02/1986 Aetna, Life and
P&C Insurance Carrier, Hartford, CT, US Programmer / Analyst Expert in System Platform Migrations |
|
|
Assignment History |
IBM Application
Innovation Services, Financial Services Sector Major Aerospace
Component Manufacturer 8/2010 – Present Unified Messaging
Migration Project Description: Complete upgrade of Outlook 2003 to Outlook 2010 along with the addition of email archiving (Enterprise Vault), replacement of Live Meeting and Instant Messaging with Microsoft Lync, upgrade of Blackberry Enterprise Services, Real Fax upgrade, and associated network, database, infrastructure upgrades and server consolidation at a single datacenter. This project is also responsible for the communication of this upgrade as well as training for over 15,000 end users across four continents. Major Network
Infrastructure Supplier (Performance Testing) 11/2010 – 5/2010 eCommerce B2B Website
Design Project Description: Provide project management direction for B2B eCommerce website design including development of Use Cases, Wireframes, and detailed micro-design artifacts. Major Financial Services
Company (Performance Testing) 06/2010 – 10/2010 Project Description: Mr. Cook provided project planning and management for the deployment of a performance test environment, test planning, and test execution planning. Major Financial Services
Company (Investment Management Systems) 01/2010 – 06/2010 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 – 12/2009 Project Description: Mr. Cook led 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 - 07/2007 Senior
Project Manager Project Description: System Stability Assessment. Mr. Cook led 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 - 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-like 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. ISO / AscendantOne 07/2001 - 06/2006 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. Kana Internet
Knowledgebase Company 12/1999 - 06/2001
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. Computer Technology
Associates, Federal Sector Professional Services Firm 07/1998 - 12/1999
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. IBM Global Services 02/1997 - 07/1998 Project Description: Mr. Cook was
a major contributor to the Year 2000 Sybase Database Software
Vendor 06/1995 - 02/1997
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. Unum, Life and Diability
Carrier 02/1986 - 06/1995 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. Aetna, Life and P&C
Carrier 07/1983 - 02/1986
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. |
|
|
Key Skills |
Project Management Senior Management Consulting (C-Level) Systems Architecture Application Development Systems Integration Enterprise-class Testing Business Process Development and Re-engineering Thought Leadership |
|
|
Education |
|
||
|
Qualifications |
Bachelor of Arts in Criminal Justice |
|