Visweswar K Bulusu

CitiDirect is available in more than 100 countries and 28 languages, with a total monthly transaction value of four billion USD. The program adopted an iterative development model.

Initial challenges included overrun, schedule slippage, and high test case failure ratios.

Actions:
a) Changed the working relationship with a customer to a more level playing field based on mutual agreements. This was achieved by increasing transparency on the efforts involved and getting the customer’s confidence, which resulted in realistic effort estimates and deadlines.
b) Got customer buy-in on the suitable PM/architect bandwidth. Restructured the team to ensure a separate team for defects triage and fixing to not interfere with development work.
c) Expertise-building in challenging areas through enhanced staffing initiatives.
d) Changed to metadata-based design, which created an automatic code generation tool. 40% of the new code was auto-generated, resulting in 10-15% overall productivity improvement.
e) Automated testing of the front end was achieved using QTP and Selenium. This resulted in a 30-40% reduction of dev testing effort.
f) Improved quality by reducing the testing failure rates from 20% to 2-3%.

Spearheaded the conversion of the portfolio from effort-based pricing to story-point-based pricing. Set up the CI/CD framework based on Jenkins, deployed, and accelerated testing automation to enable continuous build, testing, and deployment.

Actions
a) For ongoing projects, I developed the mechanism to baseline monthly story points for the projects based on historical ticket data analysis.
b) Worked with customer management to standardize agile practices across projects. Worked with senior management of the bank to get their buy-in and ensure they communicated to their IT teams. This helped the bank cut down the average release cycle to three weeks and reduced the time to market by 35%.

Ensured bootstrapping of new customer accounts through various measures. Set up the delivery structure for the unit, including project management layers and presales.

Actions
a) Developed a growth strategy along with the sales team. Analyzed business environment, customer spend, stakeholders, competition, opportunities, delivery performance projections, key risks, and challenges.
b) Key outcomes were SWOT analysis of the account, key improvement areas with action plans, targets for key account parameters like revenue and margins.
c) Focused on projects with high growth potential, such as client statements. We started as a team of five, and over one year, we owned most of it.
d) Ensured seamless working of all horizontal practices like CRM, testing, and consulting practices to present our collective strengths to the customer.
e) Apart from winning new proposals, our high-quality delivery in existing projects resulted in a high percentage of repeat business.
f) Expanded presence across all services, including business consulting, development, maintenance, and support across multiple lines of business (Schwab Institutional, Core Brokerage Services, and Schwab.com).
g) Executed large programs using the Agile and Waterfall model.

Set up the project management and delivery structure for the new unit. Ensured particular focus on recruitment and mentoring with skill-building and knowledge management.

Actions

1. Identified target set of skills for the unit. Maintained training tracker and conducted training based on identified gaps.
2. Conducted domain training, leveraging expert groups.
3. Executed internal project for the company IS to ensure bench resources get project experience.
4. Directly in charge of recruitment for the unit working closely with HR.
5. Mentoring Initiatives like structured mentoring of new PMs on the processes and CMM implementation.
6. Knowledge management. Developed website to take care of onboarding and project induction to ensure minimal disruption of the existing team.
7. Worked with sales and senior management to divert accounts and projects to this new unit.

Within 18 months, BCM Hyd grew into a full-fledged unit size 200 with a sustainable structure and high-quality delivery capabilities.

Achievements
These were all achieved working in close collaboration with the customer teams.

1. Reduction of tickets. Studied historical data, identified problem patterns, and addressed root causes. Automated log analysis and error flagging using tools like Splunk. and achieved ticket reduction of 40%.
2. Batch time reduction. Re-engineered the complex batch system involving 35 inter-dependent sub-batches. Time reduction was achieved through multiple mechanisms applying data filters to parallelize long jobs, deep study, and re-engineering specific batches to ensure performance enhancements and strategic initiatives like moving to a common data lake and avoiding multiple data transfers.
3. Achieved two hours reduction in an overall batch run time and cut down red/amber batch status days from 25% to less than 5%.
4. Production support automation. Achieved using automation of manual checks and periodic health checks. Achieved a 40% reduction in the batch monitoring effort.

The applications had interfaced with every key system in the bank like GGL, DDA (payment instructions), risk systems, municipal holding systems, pricing, recon, among others.

Actions
a) Managed the Global Capital Markets IT team, which supported all business-critical applications of GCM, including their international loans system, FX trading, precious metals trading, FI front and back office, treasury and cash management, and collateral management.
b) I coordinated a team of 15 people comprising Infosys’ fleet employees and independent contractors to provide 24x7 support for the desk.
c) The role involved interfacing with senior fleet management, operations, traders, development, and other support teams.

Infosys is a member of BPMI.org, a consortium of about 125 companies like IBM, SUN, SAP, HP, and Sybase. BPML is a language being defined by BPMI.org.

This project is for the conceptualization, design, and implementation of an execution engine for BPML. A large project was executed on the Jakarta EE platform using the latest technology and tools.

The language definition was in the draft stage, and the Infosys team was involved in the early stages, analyzing issues related to the definition.

Actions
a) Drove the initiative, studied the BPML draft version, and evangelized to the right stakeholders.
b) Managed the interface with BPMI.org representatives to resolve language definition issues and conceptualize the BPML execution engine.
c) Prepared demo and presentations for showcasing the product at BPMI.org conferences.
d) Led architecture and design, code reviews, and project management.

The first version of the BPML engine (CHOREO) was demonstrated at the BPMI.org members’ meet in San Francisco and was well appreciated. The initiative culminated with a joint press release between Infosys and BPMI.org.

This is meant to provide potential business leads for the UBS WM sales team.

When I took over, the project was in the red due to missed deadlines and quality issues.

Actions
a) I set up a quality process for the fully onsite team and worked with team members to implement it.
b) For niche skills in the Swiss geography, we used innovative fulfillment options like onboarding local contracting companies to avoid the stringent visa requirements.
c) Set up the project to operate from our local offices in Europe.

CEFS provides a trading and reporting platform for corporations to administer employee stock purchase, stock option, and stock appreciation rights plan.

UBS had 100 corporate customers covering around 800,000 employees, and it was in RED status when I took over and turned it around.

Delivered projects, talent management, and financials for the group.

Some of my key engagements included successful re-engineering of the gs.com website, the premium website for PWM customers of Goldman Sachs.

• 98% — Timeliness
• 0 — Major Security Incidents
• 0 — Production Outages
• 30% — Post Migration Operational Cost Savings

• Collaboration with a large number of stakeholders: senior management, architects, app owners, app/IT support, infrastructure teams, and release management.
• Production changes are happening in parallel with cloud migration. Rescheduling and reprioritizing apps were required.
• Data security: EiT was mandatory, and apps were not prepared.
• Dependencies for each app.

Strong governance model across all teams: senior management, app teams, and infrastructure teams.
• Flexibility in migration schedule: to accommodate the production needs of the apps. The monthly scope of apps was dynamic
• Involving senior management in the solutioning of global issues related to infosec, EUC, etc.
• Aggressive and accurate reporting: indicating the monthly schedule with RAG, global and app-related issues, and risks and stoppers.
• Insulating tech solution team from coordination-related noise.
• Identifying legacy issues with apps and remediation/de-prioritizing.

• 70+ apps migrated to the cloud within the timeline.
• No production outages and issues that came up were resolved.
• No major security incidents.
• 30% cost savings across infrastructure and maintenance.