Andrew Knaster

3 Cameron Ct., Apt. A u Nottingham, Maryland u (410) 206-9624 u andy@knaster.info

Objective __________________________________________________________________________

To enter into a long-term relationship with a company that will give me opportunities to apply the analysis skills that I have been developing since 1996.

Profile ____________________________________________________________________________

Analyst with significant experience in the private and public sectors since 1996.  This experience includes a variety of secondary roles beyond those of a “traditional” analyst.  These roles include disciplines such as public speaking, programming, technical writing, testing, statistics, report design and development, classroom and deskside instruction, and end-user support.  Works well in a highly structured and document-heavy methodology like the RUP as well as a very lightweight and flexible methodology such as Agile.

Skills Summary _____________________________________________________________________

Ø Information Gathering Ø Writing Use Cases Ø Documenting Business Rules Ø Agile Ø DOORS Ø Full Lifecycle application of SDLC Ø Ghost Writing Ø High Impact Presentations

Ø Improvising Ø Learning Customer’s Business Ø Mercury Ø MS Office Automation Ø Peer Training Ø Rally Ø Reading Code Ø Remedy Ø Report Design and Development

Ø Requisite Pro Ø Reverse Engineering Ø RUP Ø SharePoint Development Ø Statistics Ø Storyboarding Ø UML Ø Visual Basic for Applications Ø Work Process Design

Professional Experience ______________________________________________________________

Requirements analysT

u Do preparatory work by reading up on existing documents.  The goals of this include getting a better grasp on the overall concept of operations and a beginning knowledge of terms and acronyms.

u Develop a rapport with the stakeholders and SMEs to facilitate future information gathering.

u Interview the stakeholders and SMEs to begin gathering information and building the rapport previously mentioned.

u Draw up a simple use-case diagram and have it vetted by the stakeholder.

u Update Rally (our requirements management tool) record the analyst’s efforts and burn down rate.

u Produce a use-case and have it vetted by the stakeholders so the team has an example to follow.

Requirements Support Tools SME

u Nobody on the team knew Rally, Mercury, and Version Manager (basically PVCS with a user friendly interface).  I trained them on the basic use of them.  Additionally, I wrote policy documents to give the team a clear understanding of what was expected as far as data entry goes.

u I trained the team during a series of brown-bag luncheons where the team was taught the various applications. 

u When I noticed many members of the team were using up a lot of time in MS Office I held a series of one hour sessions to help bring them up to speed.

u I was the local administrator for Rally, Version Manager, and DOORS.

Report design and development

u As the project moved ahead the primary stakeholder needed an increasing number of reports.  Doing these by hand consumed significant amounts of time that could have been used for conducting analysis.  As a result, I was called upon to deliver an application that would produce these reports consistently without needing me to run them. 

u The only skill needed to run this application was button-pushing.  The application produced the following reports:

o Requirements Traceability Matrices in three formats; statistics, summary, and details

o Outliers

o Parking Lot

o Dashboard

o Scoreboard

Work Process Design and Development

u After noticing there was little, if anything, written down in the way business was conducted I saw a need to change the way things were being done (or not being done).  The way I dealt with that was to demonstrate the way things were to be done and distribute brief “cheat sheets” to the team members.  These activities had corresponding work processes.  The goal of the “cheat sheets” was to conquer the typical reactions to a new process such as “I don’t have time for that” or “I don’t know how to do it.”

u I wrote many work processes which were vetted by the project manager and instituted.

u These processes were inspected by the OIG who passed them all.

Recent Employment History _________________________________________________________

Bureau of the Census	Senior Systems and Business Analyst, 2008-2010
Department. of Veterans Affairs	Senior Requirements Analyst, 2007-2008
Department of Agriculture	Senior Analyst, 2005-2007
EULER Hermes-ACI	Senior Webmaster, 2000-2004

Awards Received at Last Job__________________________________________________________

u Uncommon Valor (twice).  The first one was for the work I did in implementing DOORS to produce the Requirements Tracibility Matrix for all use-cases, business rules, test cases, and barcode specifications.  The second one was for the production and automation of high visibility reports that are sent to Congress, GAO, OIG, and people that are in very high positions within Census.

u Commendation for work done in support of the 2010 Census

u Bureau of Census Certificate of Appreciation

Education _________________________________________________________________________

University of Phoenix, Online, 2003 - 2005
Credits toward an MS in Computer Information Systems

Central Baptist Theological Seminary, 1990 - 1994
MA in Biblical Studies

Rutgers University, 1979 - 1984
BA in Psychology and Sociology