Forrest Smith Email & Phone Number

Santa Rosa, Ca, Us

Austin, Texas, United States

Key contributor responsible for eliminating a UAT backlog of development work awaiting final testing and approval for implementation. Validate results against requirements to ensure vendor’s student education management information platform met federal mandates, state and local agency customizations, and industry standards. Increase UAT productivity and assist other support analysts in completing assigned UAT work efforts.• Confirmed version release upgrades and state specific customizations tracked in ADO met specified requirements at both the local and state agency level for the platform used to manage public education student data.• Identified data validation errors, severity levels, improving system functionality and reliability.• Validated data mapping in agency uploads for improved accuracy and efficiency.• Verified data consistency with requirements in both ADO and JIRA, ensuring strict adherence to standards.• Validated final data submission, enhancing information quality.• Managed testing requirements and results in JIRA for tracking, follow-up, and reporting.• Reduced UAT backlog significantly while contributing to improved release content rollout.

Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States

Formulate design solutions/system upgrades, day-to-day support, and administration of the Retail POS system and associated processing, including resolution of any system or business issues/concerns. Define new functional requirements and create user stories, manage product enhancements and priorities including backlog prioritization, refinement, and creation of acceptance criteria. Define the data vision, roadmaps, and growth opportunities; build relationships across the enterprise and secure buy-in and adaptation of change efforts. Maintain a thorough understanding of business process issues and challenges, help identify opportunities for leveraging data/analytics, ensure performance of the solution aligns with organizational expectations and regulatory requirements, and coordinate to successfully implement those requirements.Manage the transition process from the existing POS product to the new solution - decommissioning effort and data retention requirements, including closure of the existing pipeline, plus pilot and full rollout during production overlap. • Research and resolution of design issues, implementation of new release features, BAU tasks, and user/system issues resolution.• Research and resolution of Salesforce-related issues involving ICE/Encompass LOS and Conversational Cloud platforms. Ensured minimal disruptions in old/new POS and Encompass LOS products.• Manage Product Backlog, including prioritizing and refining User Stories, formulating acceptance criteria, and agreeing on the 'definition of done'.• Maintain a comprehensive, in-depth understanding of complex business process challenges, identifying viable opportunities for leveraging data/analytics.• Facilitate successful ICE/Encompass LOS integration from POS products - troubleshooting, mapping issues resolution, testing, and end user support.• Ensure optimal solution performance aligned with organizational expectations and regulatory requirements, coordinate implementation efforts.

Granite Solutions Groupe, San Francisco, Ca

Engaged in multiple business consultant/contractor roles with Wells Fargo while not otherwise employed. Positions included Business Analyst/Project Manager, UAT Coordinator, Regulatory Analyst, and Strategy Consultant.Project Manager/Business Analyst ConsultantAnalysis and capturing business requirements for Wealth Management, Investment and Fiduciary Services. Project Management during transition from an external vendor to an in-house solution. Prepare BRDs. Develop test scripts. Review and recommend process improvements.Business Consultant, UAT CoordinatorCoordination of all UAT related activity for Wealth Management, Investments and Compliance work streams during a system upgrade and acquisition. Coordination of work efforts related to user acceptance testing, status reporting, defect tracking, maintaining test scripts, maintaining traceability matrices, resource scheduling. Business unit and management reporting. Test planning. Documenting test results and statistical reporting.Regulatory AnalystAssist Compliance with planning and conducting regulatory stress tests to meet federal mandate. Business Strategy ConsultantUAT Program Lead for the Wholesale Transformation team supporting a Wholesale Onboarding Case Management Tool at Wells Fargo. Responsibilities include transition from a vendor to in-house resources while leading the UAT efforts across multiple workstreams, analyzing business requirements, identifying, and mitigating potential risks, status reporting, ensuring deliverables meet audit criteria, and ensuring project objectives are met, supporting a monthly release deployment cycle.

Santa Rosa, California, United States

Business Systems Analyst and Administrator responsible for the support and enhancement of an Oracle based Sales System and various Deposit Systems. Conduct business and systems analysis for said applications to meet industry standards as well as bank specific needs. Document business requirements, SOWs, design documents, and technical specifications. Develop test cases, test scripts, and prepare implementation plans. Prepare and maintain project plans. Coordinate system upgrades. Ongoing support of assigned applications.

Analysis and design of a rules-based decision engine for automating underwriting conditions in a digital mortgage lending application using Encompass.

Frisco, Texas, United States

Analysis of business requirements for retail lending product and articulation of those requirements into system specifications defining core system or other related systems functionality. Duties include: communication with product management, sales, customers, project managers and compliance directors to identify and prioritize system requirements; preparation of system specifications using prescribed templates (epics, user stories, workflow diagrams, process flows, etc.) and articulating business requirements identified by the product management team or customer; preparation of test scripts necessary to support business requirements; coordination with team members and customers to evaluate various lenders business requirements to the reference application functionality, existing and pending.

Responsible for reviewing, analyzing, and evaluating business systems and user needs. Define and develop business requirements and functional specifications for new systems and modifications to existing systems. Monitor daily production processes to ensure accuracy and completeness. Troubleshoot and resolve productions issues as needed. Align resources to appropriate projects and monitor progress through implementation. Maintain policies and procedures related to production systems and update as necessary. Develop a team structure to address backup coverage where needed.

Teksystems, San Francisco, Ca

Analysis of business requirements for retail and third party (wholesale/correspondent) lending loan origination system and articulation of those requirements into system specifications defining core system or other related systems functionality. Preparation of test scripts necessary to test business functionality described in systems specifications. Essential duties include communication with product management, sales, customers, project managers and compliance directors to identify and prioritize system requirements, preparation of system specifications using prescribed templates (epics, user stories, workflow diagrams, process flows, etc.) and articulating business requirements identified by the product management team or customer; preparation of test scripts necessary to support business requirements; coordination with team members and customers to evaluate various lenders business requirements to the reference application functionality, existing and pending.

Concord, California, United States

Direct a team of managers, business analysts, systems analysts, and engineers responsible for the technical design, development, construction, implementation, and support phases of a core mission-critical mortgage loan processing and fulfillment system, supporting applications, and all incoming/outgoing interfaces to other systems.• Developed and implemented a capacity planning model to track projects, estimate work efforts, set priorities, allocate/align technical resources, and monitor burn rates/deliverables against both business and technical budgetary guidelines using a combination of MS Project and Excel, Nexus, and Clarity.• Introduced a change management function to support concurrent development of multiple releases supporting more than thirty projects per release.• Architect for multiple environments and infrastructure to support the concurrent design, development, testing and implementation of up to four concurrent releases in various stages following a Six Sigma approach.• Introduced a release management model following a bi-monthly schedule.• Worked closely with Project Managers, Program Managers and Release Managers for all scheduled releases and off-cycle releases to ensure all deliverables were met and staged accordingly.• Coordinated technical and transition analysis support to the onsite transition leads of various releases, assisting with setting up the release phases, duty rosters, user setup and access, and other support to end users. • Reduced implementation errors to zero for three consecutive years.• Streamlined the onshore/offshore function to address base maintenance and support requirements in an efficient and effective manner.

Santa Rosa, California, United States

Business/technology liaison to national and regional operations staff to ensure system solutions meet business needs. Prioritization of technology work efforts and release delivery content. Responsible for business and technology strategic roadmaps both short and long term. POC for escalating critical system issues, setting operational priorities and initial review/feasibility of system solutions. Research business and technology solutions for retail, wholesale, correspondent, and telemarketing divisions. Business and systems analysis for B2B, E-commerce, web-based solutions, and strategic partners. Primary architect for system changes to integrate ABA processing for builder partnerships. Identify and design system changes to support the NAMC acquisition by Dime Savings and the proposed Hudson United merger.Design and implement major systems initiatives for second lien mortgages, piggybacks, and sub-prime lending. Manage the analysis and testing activities for moving Dime Savings retail and wholesale loans from the EDS Lakewood system to the NAMC mortgage origination system, including an interface for moving correspondent loans from Lakewood to MLCS. Manage the development of an Intranet site for posting production statistics to field operations staff and management.Used MS Project as the product of choice for managing project schedules and resources. Deployed an SDM approach emphasizing Agile software development. Design technology solutions to provide processing efficiencies for branch production, streamlining process flows, eliminate redundant processing, and reduced online response times. Delivered a product and pricing engine utilized by the origination application, reducing pricing errors more than tenfold.Organized and staffed the first business analysis and application help desk team responsible for evaluating business requirements, identifying process improvements, developing functional specifications, and resolving operational issues/problems.

Fresno, California, United States

Key contributor in both the systems support and development divisions. Responsibilities included production support, systems performance, client acquisitions, change management, project management, applications maintenance and systems integration. Managed the development, implementation, support and maintenance of all deposit, mortgage, consumer, commercial lending and secondary marketing applications.• Designed, developed and implemented a change control/management facility reducing program migration errors by more than 90 percent.• Prepared recommendations, which upon implementation reduced batch processing time frames by more than 50 percent.• Instituted numerous operational and procedural changes that helped streamline the production process and reduce processing errors.• Implemented new procedures for the client conversion process that resulted in greater efficiency and reduced costs by decreasing staff and associated expenses.

Fresno County, California, United States

Responsibilities included development, enhancement and maintenance of personal and real property applications for the Assessor, Tax Collector, Auditor, and Clerk/Recorder. • Developed and implemented a real property tax system, tax delinquency system and redesigned the assessment roll system.• Developed a recorder's index for tracking and locating statistical and legal records.• Developed a property tax billing and collection system.• Reduced support staff requirements by more than fifty percent by implementing efficiency measures.