PERSONAL DETAILS

 

NAME                                 Philip Graham Mellor

DOB                                    23rd July 1960

NATIONALITY                  English

E-mail                                  phil.mellor@characterdata.co.uk

Address                               1 Central Drive, Heald Green, Cheadle, Cheshire. SK8 3AD

Tel                                        +44(0)161 437 5142 or +44(0)161 286 8753                    

Mobile                                 +44(0)7770 932 721

Web Site                             http://www.characterdata.co.uk

 

Career Summary 1977 to present.

 

In the 25+ years I have worked within Information Technology, over 14 years within Financial Services, I have acquired experience across the range of system development disciplines within the full development lifecycle from operations, in 1977, to project management, since 1989; initially using traditional Large Systems Development Methodologies, and since 1999 RAD techniques in web based projects. I have worked for in-house IT departments and within the private sector as a permanent member of staff, contractor and sub contractor, maintaining budgetary control of client (staff) costs and third party supplier budgets.  I have the ability to assimilate information very quickly that enables me to formulate suggestions and alternative solutions and develop these to a successful conclusion using my personality and man management skills in both technical and business areas.

 

The web enabled systems I have worked on include, Call Centre (Shop Direct), workflow (Barclays) Credit Card (Barclaycard)  Unit link products (Royal SunAlliance-IFS),  internet banking (Nationwide), call centre for direct selling (Liverpool Victoria FS), front line commercial vehicle insurance (RSA), and mainframe based systems including call centre credit card payments (RSA), Electronic Data Interchange (RSA),  private and company pensions (Guardian) , manufacturing command and control, and back office legacy systems (Lloyds/TSB).  Key clients are listed below.

 

I have proactively developed my career gaining valuable experience of system development areas; structured programming, system design, system analysis and database design using structured development methodologies and since 1989 project management.

 

I have 15+ years’ hands on experience of the full project life cycle as Senior, Programme and Project  Manager in a Matrix Management structure using PMW (Niku), Microsoft Project, PRINCE 2, SSADM and Hoskyns’ (now Cap Gemini) PRISM development methodology. I have excellent skills in planning & control procedures, risk analysis, configuration management and quality assurance. I have written standards for all aspects of application testing and for project estimating.

 

The environments, for systems development, have been Web based client server, networked PC’s and IBM & Tandem mainframe. I have self-trained in various technical languages ranging from PL/1 and REXX to Visual Basic and HTML. I have undertaken formal training in e-Commerce development and have managed many Web based projects to completion utilising in house, permanent staff, contract staff and third part suppliers. 

 

I have Client Management experience and have managed, planed and co-ordinated development projects spanning different sites, suppliers, development & testing teams and hardware platforms, using formal planning models for development, testing and maintenance projects. If viewing this CV online (Word not PDF) click the following links for more information.

 

Key

Senior Project Development Manager              

e-Commerce Projects Development Manager

Project Development Manager

Positions

Infrastructure Project Manager

Testing Project Manager

Technical Team Leader

              

Client Manager   

Consultant

 

Key Clients

Nationwide Building Society

Liverpool Victoria Friendly Society

Royal&SunAlliance

 

Barclays Bank

Lloyds TSB

RSA International FS

              

CIS Co-operative insurance

Guardian Insurance

Manufacturing

 

Shop Direct

 

 


February 2005 – August 2005

 

Position                           PROJECT MANAGER; PROPERTY RENOVATION

I have used the last six months to manage the renovation and upgrade of my portfolio of rental properties within budget and to time scales.

 

November 2004 – February 2005

 

Position                           PROJECT MANAGER; Shop Direct

I joined Shop Direct as a Project Manager. I was responsible for managing changes to the Call Centre system to support the Catalogue business across 3 sites and 2,000 sales advisors. The development team covered the WebSphere Chordiant front end, the Oracle legacy database and the Enterprise Service interface. I managed the development team and the test team (new concept to Shop Direct). Liaison with operations and technical support group was highly successful during the implementation. On a weekly basis I met with the Call Centre operations managers and trainers. The 3-month development was completed to plan, as was the implementation and roll out across the three call centres. I declined a contract extension to concentrate on my renovation projects.

 

Environment                       MS Project 2000, Office 2000, Chordiant , WebSphere, Oracle.

 

July 2003 – August 2004

 

Position                           PROJECTs MANAGER; Barclays bank/BARCLAYCARD

I joined Barclays as a Project Manager within the Distributed Services arm of IT. I was responsible for compiling and presenting bids and proposals to the Banks ‘clients’ for various projects. These “web” based projects were for Barclaycard (CardPac replacement) and Barclays Private Client business areas. My main responsibilities were to maintain correct budgets and liase with financial services using SAP6.2, create and maintain master plans using Niku and to liase with technical Project Managers in a matrix management structure to secure resourcing through the full life cycle of each project. My initial 6-month contract was renewed on 1 occasion.

 

Environment                       SAP 6.2, Niku, MS Project 2000, Office 2000,

                                             Unix AIX 5.1, Oracle 9i, WebSphere, Informatica, StaffWare.

 

June 2002 – July 2003

 

Position                           home based business ventures

During this period I developed several websites for local businesses, and installed LAN infrastructures for small business and home users. On the none IT side I developed a large portfolio of rental properties and web based house rental business.

 

November 2001 – May 2002

 

Position                           Senior Project MANAGER; RoyalSunaliance International FS

I joined RSA-IFS as the Senior Project Manager to develop a Web based application to service European Life business selling unit linked products across Spain, Italy and Germany, via a web based application. The development was undertaken across numerous locations using third party suppliers for design (Dublin) and development (Mumbai) whilst retaining in house expertise (IOM & UK) for business requirements. The project was to implement a hardware platform to support future business growth and an application that could cater for each of the European partners with secure printing in each location. The development used a mixture of prototyping, RAD and waterfall development methods. My responsibility was to oversee a team of project managers in a matrix management structure from each area, business, design, development, testing and Infrastructure & Implementation for planning reporting and problem resolution and escalation and to liase at any level from technician to director as appropriate. My initial 6 month contract was renewed on 1 occasion.

 

Environment                       Sun Solaris 2.8, J2EE, ASP, HTML, XML, Oracle 8i, Oracle 9iAS

                                             MS Project 2000, Office 2000, Win2k, AS400 (Life 400)

 

July 2001 – November 2001

 

Vacation

 

October 2000 – July 2001

 

Position                           e-Commerce Project Manager ; Nationwide building society

I joined Nationwide to manage the development and installation of new access channels to the Online (Internet) Bank. My initial project was to develop and re-purpose the Internet Bank for access via the TV. This used XML/XSL and ASP interfacing to existing COM objects to access Sequel 7 databases. The scope of my responsibility quickly widened to include other Web based development projects, and the management of the support and maintenance of the Internet Bank across all browser types e.g. Netscape4+, IE5+, Opera, Risk OS, Mac etc. This included managing all small business enhancements, up to 20 concurrent developments, fault analysis diagnosis and resolution. My responsibilities covered 15 staff and required me to liase with business management, IT management and resource management in a matrix management structure, and directly with the designers, analysts and developers. Formal plans were created using Project Workbench (PMW), and weekly and monthly reports detailing performance and variance against planned milestones. My initial 3 month contract was renewed on 2 occasions.

 

Environment                       NT4, HTML, DHTML, WML, XML, XSL, ASP, VB,C++, Java script, IIS Sequel 7

                                             Project Workbench, Office 2000, Win9x, Win2k, WinME 

               IBM, Unisys, Tandem & ICL mainframes

 

August 2000 – October 2000

 

Position                           Testing Environments Project Manager ; Liverpool Victoria FS

I re-joined LVFS, for a second time, to continue in my previous capacity to resolve a short term resource issue.

 

May 2000 – Jul 2000

 

Position                           Project Manager ; Lloyds TSB

I joined Lloyds TSB as a Project Manager within Branch Systems to manage the development, testing and implementation of the 'one bank' solution to several trial sites. This entailed managing development and testing teams in different locations (Manchester and London), with the implementation teams in Manchester London and Bristol. This required me to travel extensively to the three locations and across the 2 London and 2 Manchester sites. Communication was a key element and I used formal and informal meetings, with written and verbal communication channels. Reporting was on a 2 weekly cycle with milestone planning updated on a monthly basis, although detail planning and monitoring occurred as required.

 

I was offered a 12-month extension to my 3-month contract. I declined the offer.

 

Environment                       Microsoft Office including              MS Project

                                             NT4               Ethernet & Token Ring               X25/ISDN/Kilostream TCP/IP

               IBM & Unisys mainframes

 

March 2000 – May 2000

 

Position                           Testing Environments Project Manager ; Liverpool Victoria FS

I re-joined LVFS to continue in my previous capacity to resolve a short term resource issue. My main task was to train my successor, which was completed ahead of schedule.

 

January 2000 – March 2000

 

Position                Self training in e-commerce.

 

I spent several months developing my Web, Internet and e-commerce skills gaining a working knowledge of HTML, Front Page,  ASP, SQL Server 7.0, Commerce server and Intershop in a 3 tier architecture.

 

October 1998 – December 1999

 

Position                           Testing Environments Project Manager ; Liverpool Victoria FS

I joined LVFS to manage the implementation of change to the General Insurance call centre system. My role was to manage; co-ordinate and resolve any IT development or business issues that did not comply with the current production environment.  This involved managing the change control process, risk analysis and resolution, through formal meetings and documentation.

 

My remit covered change control over systems development through the testing life cycle that included, system testing, acceptance testing, model office, stress and volume testing in several mainframe environments that included interfaces to oracle data warehouse and other non IBM mainframe systems. This required me to communicate in writing and verbally on a daily basis in a matrix management structure.

 

Key responsibilities were to create, monitor and re-plan at macro and micro level with the business managers, their teams, IT development and IT technical support teams, identifying key milestones and project critical path to meet the objectives of the call centre manager. Budget control (internal cross charge) was applied within the change control process, with other managers responsible for the overall project budget.

 

My initial 3 month contract was renewed on 4 occasions; I declined the last offer.

 

Environment                       IBM Mainframe CICS, DB/2, IMS DB/DC, PL/1,  COBOL, Assembler. JES2

Unix/Oracle

Microsoft Office 97               MS Project                              MS Mail

PMW                                             Schedule+

 

 

June 1996 – September 1998

 

Position                           Projects Leader FI Group for Royal&SunAlliance account

I joined the FI group as a Projects Leader within the Finance Sector. I managed a team of ten analyst programmers covering three areas, Credit Card payments, EDI broker communication and Commercial Fleet business.  These involved a mixture of mainframe, client server and PC applications, developed in house and utilising third party supplied software.

 

I was responsible for project management, daily, weekly and monthly reporting, issue control, quality audits, risk analysis and the creation of project plans. I was responsible for monitoring progress and resourcing the projects based on these plans. The plans covered the full development life cycle through to post implementation support.

 

I was also responsible for the liaison with the third party suppliers and user groups. For the non-mainframe systems I was solely responsible for the system testing and the co-ordination of user acceptance testing. I successfully implemented testing environments including a testing LAN and introduced the users to a formal testing methodology.

 

To successfully complete these tasks I used my pro-active nature alongside the technical experience I have gained over the years I have worked in IT. The support budget was approximately £750,000 (internal cross charging) P/A. Costs were reported and monitored on a monthly basis through formal written reports. Any over or under spend had to be justified against authorised change or production error correction.  

 

My initial 12-month contract was renewed on 3 occasions.

 

Environment                       DB2                                     COBOL 2                            IMS DB/DC

                                             REXX/ISPF

                                             Word for Windows .               PMW/w 2.0.02                   Lotus Smartsuite

                                             Access/Novel LAN               WIN 3.1                                             OS/2 WARP

                                             CASEPM (GUI development)                                     ROMA (Middleware)

 

February 1993 - June 1996

 

Position                           Project Leader CIS Co-operative Insurance

I joined the CIS as a project Leader within Operational Systems.  The initial project was a seven-man year development to automate a manual accounting system.  This was developed through the full project life cycle, from Feasibility Study through to User Acceptance testing and implementation. The solution involved a mixture of mainframe and PC processing.  The project team consisted of staff from seven in-house departments, Analysis, Mainframe Programming, PC Programming, Operations Support Group, Users, Auditors and User Support Services. I was responsible for the planning and control, monitoring progress and reporting and justifying variance from the plan, and the co-ordination and communication to all parties on the progress of the project. I was responsible for the initial estimates, time and cost, and applying change control through out the project. The implementation of the enhancements was to budget (approximately £275,000 internal cross charge) and within the estimated time scales.

 

On transferring to New Systems Development, I managed the interface between the new Life Business systems, three payment collection systems and the Agents payment system.  My responsibilities were to investigate requirements through liaison with the user groups, other interested user departments and other project development.  The implementation of the new system was totally dependent on this small but key project. Key areas here were with configuration management and concurrency due to new development and maintenance working in parallel.

 

I then managed an independent system test team consisting of nine analysts.  This team of testers developed system test packs primarily for the accounting processes for each business area within the new Life Business System.  The approach and methodology to system testing was based on the Hoskyns PRISM methodology for testing. This entailed the creation of test conditions, test cases, test scripts, test data and expected results to create the full system test pack. This methodology was also tailored for use in the user acceptance test environment.

 

All the above projects were planned and tracked using PMW. Budgets were based on an internal cross charge between IT and the business areas. I wrote quality library standards on estimating and unit, module program and link testing.

 

Environment                       DB2       COBOL                COBOL 2             Datacom               Easitrieve +          CSP        SCLM

                                             Word for Windows .               CASE/LBMS Systems Engineer

                                             Lotus 123R5                  SuperProject                                    PMW

 

February 1989 - February 1993

 

Position                           Projects Manager/Client Manager/Consultant Hoskyns

Major Accounts                     Guardian Royal, ICI, Dunlop, Courtelle

 

I joined Hoskyns Group as a technical consultant, gaining promotion to consultant after my initial assignment. The development assignments I worked on were Financial Services systems, and support assignments on manufacturing and control systems.

 

I project lead and then project managed two large developments for a major pension provider. The first, three-man year project, was to automate an actuarial process, the second, fifteen- man year project, was to develop enhancements to the pensions system to cater for the Financial Services act.  I was responsible for the feasibility study then managing both projects through to implementation. The progress was reported monthly to the steering group, consisting of senior client and Hoskyns staff. Any variance was discussed and justified. Formal change control and configuration management was used to monitor and control the budget, resourcing, scope and end date changes. Additionally, risk analysis, quality control and quality assurance was completed at project milestones.

 

The total budget was approximately £1,000,000 (commercial invoicing of services) and was developed by multiple development teams (up to six concurrently) at three different development locations, London, Birmingham and Manchester and two user sites, Lytham and Edinburgh.

 

I then moved into the Management of Application Maintenance (AM).  This proactive role provided me with the opportunity to manage multiple maintenance contracts, utilising fifteen development and operations staff to provide a turnover approaching £1,000,000 p.a. (commercial invoicing of services) This required me to liase with many different clients regarding bespoke development and cost management. I introduced formal Project Management methodologies such as change control, quality audits and risk analysis, to the support area. I was also responsible for creating resource plans, short and long term, to allow full utilisation of the available staff. I was also line manager for all the staff and undertook monthly and yearly performance reviews. I instigated the quality plans procedures and standards prior to the support area applying for ISO9000 certification.

 

During the four years with Hoskyns, I received formal training in development methodologies; project leading, effective time management, project planning and control, quality audits, effective communication, reviews and appraisals.

 

Environment                       DB2                      COBOL                COBOL 2             PL/1                      IMS DB/DC

                                             MultiMate V4.     PMW V3.1       Lotus 123R3

 

February 1988 - April 1989

 

Position                Systems Designer

 

I joined CCN Systems as a system designer.  I completed two major projects, a system conversion and an appraisal of all current business functionality.  On completion of the first project I gained promotion to the highest grade of system designer. I gained exposure to SSADM as the formal development methodology and the Model 204, a relational database.

 

Environment                       Model 204        COBOL                VSAM                   PL/1      

                                             WordPerfect       PMW V2.0               SuperCalc

 

March 1985 - February 1988

 

Position                Analyst Programmer

 

I joined GUS as a trainee programmer after completing my training with Control Data Institute. During this time I gained programming experience in an IBM mainframe environment, COBOL and JCL.

 

Environment                       Model 204        COBOL

 

October 1977 – March 1985

 

Position                Operations on ICL and Burroughs mainframes

 

I joined Thomas Storey Engineers as a trainee operator using Burroughs desk top computers and later moved to the TSB as a computer operator until made redundant in 1981.

 

I then completed several casual jobs and travelled around the UK until completing a TOPS course in Computer Programming.


                                             Training Courses

 

ICL                                       'GEORGE' and System 4 Utilities for Advanced Operators

CCA                                     Model 204 4GL Programming Language

CCA                                     Model 204 Relational Data Base Management

NCC                                     SSADM V3.0 Structured Analysis and Design

Hoskyns                                             PMW V3.1 for advanced user

Hoskyns                                             PRISM Structured Methodologies

Hoskyns                                             Project Leading

Hoskyns                                             Effective Time Management

Hoskyns                                             Performance and Appraisal reviews

Hoskyns                                             Project Planning and Control Workshop

Hoskyns                                             SSADM V3.0 Design Review

Hoskyns                                             Effective Communication

Cap Gemini                         Advanced Maintenance Workbench

Keye Productivity               Coping with Difficult Customers

Lalcrest                               Mk II Function point analysis

Cap Gemini                         Advanced Maintenance Workbench workshop

Hoskyns                                             Client Management

CIS                                       SuperProject for Windows

CIS                                       Word V5.0 for Windows

Sequel                                  QMF and SQL for DB/2

LBMS                                  Systems Engineer CASE

DP Associates                    Principles of Programming

DP Associates                    Overview of SQL for DB2

IBM/CIS                              Overview of CSP Programming Language and CSP Turbo

Hoskyns                                             Principals of System Testing and User Acceptance Testing

Tech Track                          Fundamentals of Visual Basic

Tech Track                          Programming in Visual Basic

Learning Tree                     Hands on building an e-commerce web site