Malini Rao

• Lead a team of Salesforce professionals, enabling delivery of platform improvements as part of a massive transformational program under the theme of "Optimisation & Simplification" for In-Home Care business
• Entered project days prior to go-live, in dire crisis situation and organised team and processes steering deliberations to finish line
• Set up delivery rhythm outlining roles, responsibilities and workflow
• As part of delivery orchestration, also came up with a structure and workflow for JIRA to best suit the need and team and implemented it with guiding principles and instructions to team; all this while planning and organising scope of changes for delivery.
• Provided people leadership for the team that had been working very long hours and needed motivation to take on the next challenge
• Stepped up again further beyond the defined role to conduct Scrum of Scrums to manage program level risks, issues and track outcomes across data migration, delivery and change management

HIGHLIGHTS

• Hired to manage delivery of one of 3 streams within program, ended up orchestrating delivery across functional streams and also organising team structure and processes at the program level
• Turned the Test team was the weakest link in the program with no test leadership or direction to build knowledge & competency, into a productive group of motivated individuals contributing effectively
• Identified multiple areas to optimise utilisation of tools and people, saving thousands of dollars through the stint
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• Lead a team of consultants, enabling delivery of several outcomes as part of a massive transformational program within lending business
• Successfully set up an operational centre of excellence
• Provided due diligence confirming operational readiness for > 25 projects over the course of a year
• Established guidelines and coverage for cloud governance
• Setup release cadence and workflows achieving quality, efficiency and effectiveness
• Successfully delivered >50 releases over 6 months' period
• Provided support & direction on Change Management, standardised approach, process, methodologies & knowledge centres
• Developed insights around performance, integration, test and production support management
• Delivered shared services, training, templates, communications, resourcing, etc
• Built and published PowerBI dashboards for delivery, risk and people insights
• Assessed critical hygiene framework for ongoing maintenance of technology platform/services.

• Managed multiple multimillion dollar projects ($15-25m) from inception to implementation and post production support
• Delivered nabtrade mobileApplication and several enhancements across browser versions used by customers, advisors and bankers
• Built scrum teams, agile ways of working and drove process efficiencies
• Delivered several business outcomes and technology enablers
• Managed stakeholders, published reports covering delivery insights.

• Managed delivery & financials for projects worth $5-10m
• Established delivery workflows, RACI and agile ways of working
• Set up process efficiencies to manage quality engineering, RAID (Risks, Assumptions, Issues & Dependencies), Financials, Change management, Pre-implementation, Implementation and Support
• Managed stakeholders across enterprise systems & teams besides business stakeholders.

• Pulled a data centre exit project out of crisis
• Successfully managed migration of production and non-production servers to Infrastructure on Demand using Rapid migration method to enable exit from the data centre, saving millions of dollars
• Established plans, working relationship with the program team and stood up team for execution
• Ensured clear and timely communication while wading through challenges with data centre move.

• Managed Quality Engineering successfully in multiple projects - Implementation of Citrix infrastructure, telephony system and network connectivity in Philippines, to deliver Collections process for Retail customers of EnergyAustralia
• Change of retailer scenario to ensure tariff change date is the same as transfer date – Oracle CC&B application
• Technical upgrade of network bill validation (NBV) application hosted in cloud environment accessed over private VPN and interactions with market via interfaces
• Huge transformation program implementing CRM on Demand, billing systems (Kinetiq and Oracle CC&B), SAP and market transfer systems in an integrated environment setup
• Second phase of a transformation program (previous bullet point) - Data migration testing as well as regression testing of CRM system and all downstream systems impacted
• Due diligence – scoping, test strategising, effort/resource estimation and initial setup of test team across Melbourne and offshore locations
• A collaborative program of the CECV involving Victorian Catholic schools and the 4 Victorian Catholic Education offices to implement - a) integration of on-cloud applications with on premise applications, services, databases and digital artifacts by utilizing Dell Boomi cloud integration platform, b) Portal for single-sign-on, based on the Red Hat JBoss, and c) Identity & Access Management (WAAD, ACS & FIM).

• Successfully managed Quality Engineering projects ($10-$20m)
• Essent NV - SAP ISU and CRM – Functional and Performance Testing using Agile methodologies for Essent NV, a leading Utilities company in Netherlands
• SAP Upgrade Automation Testing and Transformation Program testing for EnergyAustralia, a large generator and retailer in Australian energy sector
• Seibel CRM Functional and Database Testing for Yahoo!, an American multinational internet corporation.

• Successfully orchestrated System Tests, SIT, UAT and BVT for quarterly releases in a Waterfall delivery setup
• Managed quarterly contingency exercises for web-based applications including Payments, Receipts, Treasury and Trade services for corporate bank accounts
• Coordinated production deployments and verifications successfully, with about 50-60 people at minimum, within 4 hours' change windows each time
• It was a high intensity, time critical activity requiring agility, attention to details and composure to deal with challenges/issues as they cropped up.

• Managed testing for 2 projects - Implementation of Web application within Corporate Workplace replacing Client-Server based legacy systems
• Enhancements to Mortgage applications and Universal Decision Engine within Consumer Real Estate Group
• Managed a team of 10-15 offshore and 6 onshore and was also hands-on with database level testing and triages
• Conducted proof of concepts (POCs) and published reports & recommendations, on the basis of meticulously worked out ROI for selection of test automation tools
• Successfully led the implementation of test automation tool, contributing to cost and time savings.

• Led functional manual & automated testing of suite of applications in a complex integrated environment at UBS (Union Bank of Switzerland), a leading Bank in the UK
• Managed a team of 25 people offshore and 4 onshore
• Earned a number of recognitions during the period for up-skilling and building a team ground up, while ensuring successful delivery of complex stream of work and tight timelines
• Successfully managed team and customers geographically distributed, consistently wading through several delivery challenges
• This project is one of the highlights of my career that showed up my strengths with people, risk and stakeholder management.

• Performed leadership role for functional testing of suite of applications with a combination of client-server and web applications in UBS (Union Bank of Switzerland)
• Led requirement analysis, test scoping, test estimations, resourcing and managed commercials & statements of work
• Delivered test strategies, test plans and test summary reports for multiple projects
• Built test automation strategies, conducted proof of concepts with new tools, and presented well researched data based recommendations supported by ROI and feasibility assessments
• Managed test environment schedules & test data setup
• Managed System testing, System Integration Testing, Disaster Recovery Testing, Security and Penetration testing, Data Migration Testing (ETL), Performance Testing, User Acceptance Testing and Production Verification Testing
• Supported post production/hyper-care period
• Managed risks and issues across streams and phases
• Provided test consultancy and demonstrated end to end ownership of testing deliverables across projects
• Successfully performed people leadership responsibilities, coaching and enabling high performance team
• Diligently managed stakeholders with timely communication, weekly structured reports and useful delivery metrics and insights.

• Played a key role as one of the functional QAEs in delivering strategic enhancements to some of the signature products of JDA built in UNIX environment - Transportation Optimiser product
• Detailed Refinery Scheduling solution called Common Refinery Optimisation Platform for Shell, an Oil & Gas Industry
• Successfully tested enhancements in UNIX environment with use of text tools for creation & efficient handling of datasets
• Ensured defects triage to closure within tight timelines
• Constructed datasets for testing varied functionalities and scenarios, on Java layer and analysed solver output - the optimal plan generated
• Target was to optimise objective functions under varying refinery topology and constraints
• Played an integral of the quality assurance team for a complex refinery supply chain solution
• Even as the junior-most in the team, it was a privilege to be for a client presentation, of the key tests and results.

• Functional Testing of MS Dynamics (NAVISION Manufacturing module)
• Certification testing of a suite of Healthcare products
• Development - Coding in P/AL and Unit testing
• Within 6 months of joining the organisation, led a team of 5 and successfully managed the release from requirements phase through to implementation
• Was chosen amidst all seniors to handle sensitive clients and a project in crisis
• Successfully handled client meetings to resolve issues.

• Internship: 3 months unpaid - A fantastic opportunity to learn Microsoft Dynamics (previously known as NAVISION)
• Successfully contributed to NAVISION upgrades with customer's database as input and data transfer for customised fields
• Performed development and testing activities for Localisation projects
• Published documentation of changes done during upgrade.

• Internship: Consulting firm auditing of risk and asset management in manufacturing industries
• Assisted in capturing context and challenges of the customers
• Contributed to resolution plans and approach, and Documented proposed risk & asset management plans.

• First job! An excellent opportunity in a small-scale industry (Air filters manufacturing for heavy vehicles) as QA professional
• Successfully managed high quality of Air Filters - this involved, quality checks of stocks, production line and sample checks of air filters prior to delivery
• Actively contributed to continuous improvement and training programs for production and logistics staff
• Led implementation of ISO standards across delivery phase.