Zeki Kandan

zk_4@live.com
Zeki Kandan

9413151177
Parrish, FL

ZEKI KANDAN
Mobile # 941.315.1177
kandanzeki@gmail.com

CAREER HIGHLIGHTS

Versatile and multifaceted Quality Management leader with unique blend of expertise in process engineering, large scale program management, release management and product support.

• Started career as a hardware engineer, developed firmware as a software engineer and moved into development management before specializing in Quality Engineering at Emerging Technology Vendors. Led Agile Delivery and Testing since 1999 with the early adoption of Agile / XP model at 3Com€™s consumer products incubator while leading Process Engineering function.

•Led eight QA Transformations creating Centers of Excellence at very diverse business verticals: 3Com, Fujitsu, Perot Systems, CNA, Travelers, CDI Corporation, Ampt LLC and Focus Technologies LLC. Formed Release Management functions at CNA, Travelers, Fujitsu and 3Com.

•Led ISO Certification at Fujitsu and Perot Systems. Led CMMI Certification at 3Com and Perot Systems. Conducted first SOX audit at CNA, with the CIO (2003)

• Recently, led IT Shared Services QA CoE transformation Initiative for Personal Lines Business Technology at Travelers Insurance with the help of 200 employee/consultant team members which included a large vendor/partner team. Formed a Test Automation Competency Center (TACC) establishing a robust automation development and execution framework across IT delivery organizations.

• As Enterprise IT QA leader and Corporate Officer at CNA Insurance, I have provided oversight to geographically distributed QA / Testing teams with $20 million annual budget. Provided direction to 30+ concurrent software / application deployments delivering $80+ million quantified benefits to business. Partnered with Guidewire Software for insurance industry€™s first Claim Center in agile development environment.

• Implemented SaaS products over Hybrid Cloud at AMPT, LLC, Focus Technologies, LLC and CDI Corporation. Established a Mobile App Dev/Test Lab as an IaaS at Travelers.

• Initiated and architected Test Automation development framework, implementing well defined automated test strategies and risk-based agile testing methods. Established Test Automation Center of Competency at Perot Healthcare, 3Com, CNA and Travelers. Established Performance Test Engineering functions at Fujitsu and 3Com.

• Developed SDLC-wide processes / procedures, agile delivery methods (XP, Scrum, Kanban), led IT transformations towards rapid delivery models, continuous improvement programs, and introduced approaches to optimize cost of quality. Optimized business processes using Six Sigma DMAIC. Implemented balanced score cards and actionable metrics across SDLC

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

Product Quality Director / Managing Advisor May 2015 €“ November 2015
Focus Technologies, LLC

Adviser to SVP of Product Delivery and the executive leadership team in the transformation of Product Delivery functions of the commercial P&C Insurance SaaS product: PolicyPort. Introduced a Testing CoE model with teams at Florida (Sarasota and Sunrise) and offshore Coimbatore, India. Helped implement Cloud based testing and DevOps strategy (IBM CMS) and Kanban delivery approach using Atlassian JIRA toolset.

Senior Director of Business Technology €“ QA COE November 2011 – October 2013
Travelers Insurance
Hired by the VP of Shared Services to help establish a quality maturity model across IT disciplines. Transition oversight to a team of 200+ employee/contractor mix based on core/flex outsourcing model.
The centralized Quality Management Office provides end to end delivery and support services to the entire set of program portfolios for the line of business: Insurance and Financial Products, Web Services / Platforms and Mobile Applications, Agent Platforms and Services, and Data Warehousing / Analytics / Reporting

Mentored delivery excellence and best practice teams, release management and DevOps staff matrixed into the organization. Partnered with Billing Operations and Business Centers to drive a collaborative delivery model.

Exceeded both internal and external Delivery SLA€™s and improved market delivery time by 36% through leading a team that created an executive dashboard that is the €œSingle-Source of Truth€� for monthly releases/off releases, sign-offs, exceptions, dependencies and metrics. Implemented broad organizational change moving to a more mature release practice, cadence and delivery impacting a $62M + discretionary project portfolio. Created and managed change management communication plan and facilitated bi-weekly education sessions.

Led a cross-functional team introducing an enterprise-wide delivery framework including Agile techniques and Kanban methods. Piloted Scaled Agile Framework through new Agent Acquisition development project. Led IT SDLC tool integration programs: HP QC with Rally (collaborating with AppDev teams) and HP QC with Blueprint (partnering with Business Analyst team). Formulated the initial delivery strategy for eBusiness SMAC (Social, Mobile, Analytics and Cloud) Platform.

Executive Level Consulting Roles July 2004 €“ October 2011
Independent (W2-Based). Business Plan Development and Implementation for Client Success Initiatives.

Major assignments and engagements were:

Product Delivery Executive
Ampt, LLC (Stealth Startup at Ft. Collins, CO) March 2010 €“ March 2011
Owned the development and the delivery of a patented breakthrough PV technology portfolio at the stealth mode start up. I was hired to complete the product development and to direct the launch of the initial product set to customer field trials. Field trials of the initial product set started, on-time, in December 2010. Reported to the CEO assisting with the business plan development. Provided COO-level Shared Services oversight to QA/Testing, Product Release Management, PMO operations, technical publication development, internal training and outsourced IT.

Introduced Hybrid (Public / Private) Cloud configuration for backend, adapted a SaaS model and championed agile test driven development (TDD) techniques and established Continuous integration (CI) environments for rapid application development (RAD).

Managing Director, Quality and Program Management Practice
CDI Corp. / IT Solutions BU (Atlanta, GA) May 2009 €“ February 2010
Brought in to create CDI€™s new Quality and Program Management Practice and provide strategic expert direction to the growth of the business unit reporting to the President of CDI IT Solutions business unit. Owned the P&L and provided sales support and delivery leadership for the practice with $5M revenue target for the first year. Established credibility with DoD contractors and obtained large scale managed services and outsourcing deals. The practice offerings included Agile Coaching services to web development project for Intel.

Head of Account Quality Management / PMO – Owens & Minor Account
Perot Systems Corporation / IT Healthcare Vertical (Richmond, VA) September, 2006 – January, 2009
Hired to establish and lead the outsourced Account Quality Management (AQM) and eCommerce web application delivery programs, working from the client site. Client, Owens & Minor, is a Fortune 500 company and a leading distributor of brand-name medical / surgical supplies to hospitals and integrated healthcare systems.

In this newly created position, working with distributed IT application development teams, established a unified shared services strategy for application development managed services and fast tracked delivery guidelines documents with well-defined templates to be used in coaching / training of application delivery teams. Drove AQM and PMO initiatives (CMMI and ITIL) while directing account€™s Quality Management System implementation (QMS and ISO9001:2000 certification). Transformed client€™s Release Management approach aligning multiple application development streams and introduced maintenance release packaging and emergency release governance. Led the transformation of development model of front-end systems from waterfall to agile.

Director of Programs = Global Application Development (AD) Support
SymphonyIRI – Information Resources Incorporated (IRI) (Chicago, IL) February, 2005 – October, 2005
Business transformation leader in a highly matrixed content operations organization of the pre-IPO company. Program director for establishing the new offshore development support and operations center, including AD QA processes and Support Model. Position was matrixed to executive management of the company. As AD resource manager for offshore AD Global Operations Center (GOC) and as Single Point of Contact (SPOC) for core AD VP€™s, ensured “virtual teams” were in place and SOW-based performance criteria was met

AVP, IT Application Delivery & Quality August 2002 – July 2004
CNA Financial Corporation
Hired into the newly created position as part of the business transformation initiative in consolidation of various
teams into a central QA Center of Excellence (CoE). As a Corporate Officer and Site leader of remote
IT facility with sites at Illinois, New Jersey and India, grew the department to 3 directors, 8 managers
and 105 members of technical staff, overseeing $20 million annual budget.

Provided strategic direction for 30+ concurrent programs and projects delivering $80+ million quantified benefits to business with 3x ROI. CNA had 450+ applications and eCommerce software systems. Partnered with Guidewire Software for insurance industry€™s first Claim Center in agile development environment.

Defined, launched and implemented an enterprise-wide IT Delivery Methodology. Published a
€œHandbook€�, standardized program delivery and provided training to the 800+ members of the CNA IT team. Improved Release Management implementing a simple but robust release packaging strategy, reducing overall (SDLC-wide) delivery cycle of programs and projects by 27% within 4 months of hire (year end 2002) while decreasing the post-release defect discovery rate to 1 defect per 2,000 hours of development effort, industry gold standard being 20 defects in 2,000 hours.

Director, Quality Engineering April 1999 – May 2001
3COM Corp., Residential Connectivity Division
Forming director of the new delivery organization within an internal startup: the Broadband Business Unit.
Division level accountability with teams at Santa Clara CA, Vienna, VA and Rolling Meadows, IL.
Grew department to 7 managers and 47 technical staff and 16 contract engineers (Taiwan), overseeing an annual
budget of $7.2 Million. Owned Engineering System Test, Engineering Documentation, Product Support, Process and Release Engineering functions.

Senior Manager, Engineering Operations March 1988 – March 1999
FUJITSU NETWORK COMMUNICATIONS
Hired to Fujitsu America€™s initial US team of 40 switching system experts and managed Bellcore technical analysis interface for Fujitsu communications product line. Directed Shared Services and Development Operations during the 11 years at Fujitsu, including project management, release management, release documentation, quality assurance, product validation / system test, customer evaluation Lab and first office application testing, technical support, configuration management, Dev/Test Lab management services for Core Switch and Network Management System (NMS).

Manager, Sustaining Development – Switching R&D April 1984 – March 1988
ALCATEL N.A., Raleigh, N.C. (initially at CIT-ALCATEL)
Manager, Sustaining Development Switching R&D
Formed and managed a small multi-discipline team comprised of senior manager-level specialists, conducting in-depth root-cause analysis, developing and verifying appropriate fixes for field use.

Software Engineer, Switching R&D March 1982 – March 1984
ITT-NORTH TELECOMMUNICATIONS
Principal contributor to NX-1E switching system OAM&P software design and development. Solutions architect role for international large scale programs.

EDUCATION

The City University, London, UK
B. Sc. (Honors) in Electronic Engineering

M. S. Computer Science, Course work (except thesis) completed

OTHER

U.S. CITIZEN

ITIL ITSM Foundation Certificate

Held NATO Cosmic Top Secret (CTS) Clearance