Andy Knaster Resume

TOWSON, MD - Andrew G. Knaster

EMAIL: andy@knaster.info

Curriculum Vitae

Qualification Summary

 Over fourteen years experience in business and systems analysis in both the public and private sectors
 Proven success in customer-facing requirements gathering
 Significant practical experience using the Rational Unified Process and the Systems Development Lifecycle (SDLC)
 Experienced with various tools used to support requirements analysis to include DOORS, Rally, HP Quality Center (formerly known as Mercury), Remedy, Rational Rose, RequisitePro, and SoDA for Word
 Able to generate effective and concise requirements artifacts to facilitate the transfer of stakeholder needs to application development staff
 Developing solutions to greatly expand the Microsoft Office using Visual Basic for Applications
 Lead JAD sessions domestically and overseas as well as virtually
 Requirements management in the full Systems Development Life Cycle
 Significant experience using UML, particularly in the construction of use-case, sequence, state, activity, and deployment diagrams
 Leadership skills which were demonstrated during my eleven years of Active Duty and Reserve service with the U.S. Army
 Experience using Visio for Enterprise Architects to engineer and reverse-engineer data-modeling diagrams and entity-relationship models
 Able to leverage database technologies through T-SQL programming, database design and deployment, data parsing and consumption, and report writing
 Demonstrable skills in oral and written communications ranging from public presentations and writing project plans to authoring technical specifications, coding standards, and service level agreements
 Perform gap analysis and change management functions used in the maintenance of current systems and transition to new systems
 Excellent cross-cultural communications skills with experiences ranging from the Americas to western Europe
 Experienced in the process of product analysis, comparison and recommendation using internal and external resources as well as making cases for off the shelf solutions versus custom built applications

Recent Employment History

On Contract to the Bureau of the Census, Suitland, MD: August 2008 to August 2010

Senior Requirements Analyst
 Wrote the use cases and business rules used to develop the software that supported the largest operation in the Census, Non-Response Follow Up, an operation of the Census that gathers the information for approximately 49,000,000 homes across the United States and its territories
 Wrote the use cases and business rules used to develop the software that supported the Remote Alaska operation which gathers the information from locations across the state of Alaska not readily accessible by conventional means
 Local administrator and subject matter expert for applications used in support of requirements analysis to include DOORS, Rally, and Serena Version Manager
 End-user of Mercury (now known as the HP Quality Center) and Remedy
 Created the work processes used by the Requirements Analysis team
 Developed an application with VBA and SQL that extended Microsoft Access and Excel to produce a wide variety of reports used within the highest levels of the Bureau, several of which were presented to Congress, the General Accountability Office, and the Office of the Inspector General
 Trained the Requirements Analysis team in many of the tools used to support its activities
 Trained Help Desk staff in several Census operations and the software used to support them
 Managed the process used to create and maintain the Requirements Traceability Matrix

On contract to the Department of Veterans Affairs, Veterans Health Administration, Silver Spring, MD: June 2007 to August 2008

Senior Requirements Analyst
 Analyze existing requirements artifacts to determine past stakeholder needs
 Work with current stakeholders to elicit current stakeholder needs
 Create projects in RequisitePro to record stakeholder requests, features, use cases, and to maintain traceability between them
 Produce business analysis artifacts to include vision and scope, use cases, supplemental specifications, and business models
 Mentor other analysts in the use of RequisitePro
 Prepare and deliver stakeholder presentations
 Work with project managers on project plans
 Build use case models and logical data models using Visio and Rational Rose
 Collaborate with user experience team for producing wireframes
 Conduct stakeholder meetings
 Travel to customer sites to promote projects prior to their delivery

On contract to the United States Department of Agriculture, Farm Services Agency, Washington, DC: December 2005 to May 2007

Senior Analyst
 Gather the requirements of complex business processes from stakeholders as part of the business modeling and requirements disciplines
 Using information gathered from the stakeholders, produce

various artifacts to include use-case specifications, software requirements specifications, business glossaries, supplemental requirements specifications, screen specifications, wireframes, and vision and scope documents
 Developed RUP-compliant custom templates for the previously listed artifacts
 As lead analyst for RUP/SDLC operations, responsible to ensure business analysis artifacts are compliant with published standards and best practices
 Mentor other business analysts in the application of the RUP and SDLC and the use of the Rational Enterprise Suite
 Serve as lead for bringing Viatech’s operations into compliance with CMMI Level 2
 Identify key use-case flows to quality assurance staff to ensure that sufficient test scenarios are generated to stress all aspects of developed applications
 Reverse-engineer documentation from existing applications through analysis of end-user documentation, interviewing subject-matter experts, and application use
 Support configuration management activities be ensuring requirements artifacts are synchronized with current software releases
 Interface with database analysis, application development, and quality assurance staff to ensure consistent transitions and the maintenance of traceability
 Produce UML models to support project-related artifacts
 Prepare and deliver presentations to stakeholders to inform them of project progress and convey upcoming activities

On contract to Institutional Shareholder Services: September 2005 to December 2005

Senior Business and Systems Analyst

 Liaise with systems, project management and business development staff members to assist in the development, testing, and deployment of a primary, web-based internal application
 Develop applications using XML, XSL, HTML, schemas, DTDs, and CSS
 Perform gap analysis of business data to ensure smooth introduction of new data structures

On contract to The Office of the Public Defender, State of Maryland (OPD) from February 2005 to September 2005

Business and Systems Analyst

 Facilitate the integration of all District and Division offices into the OPD’s case management product, ProLaw
 Serve as the subject matter expert on ProLaw and TrackIT! (the OPD’s customer service management suite)
 Write or rewrite all major business processes related to the use of ProLaw
 Conduct business and systems analysis with the internal customers to determine their specific needs and formulate solutions to meet those needs
 Manage projects with multiple deliverables
 Serve as a primary resource for formulating solutions to a wide variety of business needs
 Develop MS SQL based solutions for data analysis and reporting
 Travel to various offices around the state to gather requirements, nurture partnerships, and develop solutions with direct input from the field staff

On contract to Register.com from July 2004 through February 2005

Business and Systems Analyst

 Liaise with QA, operations, marketing, site engineering, and programming staff members to assist in the coordinated design, development, testing and deployment of business critical applications
 Performed “forensic requirements analysis” on current systems with incomplete or insufficient documentation. This involved researching existing documentation and correspondence as well as conducting interviews with stakeholders to discover application flows and interactions so current applications would have proper documentation and future application scope could be determined
 Gathering requirements and performing business analysis for their new electronic commerce project
 Re-write and maintain the functional specifications (consisting of use-cases, activity diagrams, and sequence diagrams) for their retail path, customer account management, customer service, billing service, and enterprise resource planning systems
 Responsible for taking internal customer requirements, translating them into functional specifications, and conveying them to the development staff
 Assist in the management of the project change request process
 Migrate existing functional specifications from an internal CVS repository to an extranet based repository
 Prepare software release documentation

EULER HERMES American Credit Indemnity
800 Red Brook Boulevard, Owings Mills, MD 21117
April 2000 to July 2004

Senior Webmaster
 Manage web applications through the entire systems development lifecycle
 End to end analysis and development of Internet, extranet and intranet applications utilizing various technological solutions such as IIS, Windows 2000, MS SQL Server 2000, MS Index Server, and ColdFusion
 Model databases by creating entity-relationship diagrams and reverse engineering them with Visio for Enterprise Architects
 Writing terms of reference, project plans, technical specifications, training materials, and policies and procedures manuals
 Interview internal clients to determine their needs