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Profile
Mike Stevens is a very experienced and successful UK IT Consultant Solution Architect with over 25 years IT experience and over 10 years Management experience.
He has extensive experience of the full IT service development life cycle, including Pre Sales, Business Analysis, Enterprise, Domain, Solution and Technical Architecture.
Mike has successfully worked as a Solution Architect:
- Within different Design Governance processes, e.g. Prince style Authority to Proceed or Number One Priority, Fast as Possible, Agile.
- With different project complexities, e.g. £250k to £16m or geographical locations.
- On multiple projects, within a portfolio, at the same time.
Mike has successfully worked as a Solution Architect with a number of Financial Services blue chip companies, Government Agencies (including Security Clearance) and has Retail experience at Phones4u.
While Mike wishes to remain living within Derby, he is highly mobile, willing to undertake a 1 hour daily commute (preferred), or work away from home Monday to Friday.
Industry Experience
- Financial Services.
- Retail.
- Government.
Skills and Competencies
- Enterprise, Domain, Solution and Technical Architecture.
- Product selection processes including Request for Information and Proposal. This has been undertaken as both a supplier and a customer.
- Business Process Design and Re-Engineering.
- Design of COTS solutions including integration with 3rd Parties and Legacy systems.
- Service Orientated Architecture (SOA):
- Application including Object Oriented design.
- Data including On Line Transactional and Data Warehousing.
- Infrastructure including Servers, Networks, SANs and Virtualisation.
- Security including Access Control, Networks and Application.
- Resilience including Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity.
- Trouble Shooting and Problem Solving.
Latest Career Summary
- Sept 2005 to current - Independent Solution Architect Contractor
- Jan 2005 to Aug 2005 - Solution Architect Contractor within EDS
- Aug 1998 to Dec 2004 - Solution Architect Contractor within LogicaCMG
Latest Career History
Jan 2013 – Mar 2013 – Architect / Technical Author– Working Links – Sheffield and London
- Undertake a short term Enterprise wide high level review of Working Links IT systems, and produce a technical document. Scope included Business, Application, Infrastructure, Data and Security architecture.
- Review included systems hosted within a 3rd party Data Centre Cloud and as Software as a Service (SAAS) solutions.
- Systems included Active Directory/DNS, Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Microsoft Dynamics AX, Microsoft SQL Server including Analysis services, SharePoint Server, VMware, Citrix XenServer and XenApp.
- Document included identified concerns and issues which would be risk assessed and resolved by the business as usual IT team.
Jul 2012 – Dec2012 – SharePoint Enterprise Architecture Wiki - Home
- Develop a new SharePoint Wiki site to define a high level end to end Enterprise Architecture process, with the Internet version being available for viewing here.
Jan 2012 – June 2012 – Lead Solution Architect – Barclays Bank – London
As a Lead Solution Architect within the Retail Bank, including Barclaycard, complete the End to End High Level Solution Design for Symphony (PPI) Automation solution for both Flow (Customer initiated complaint submissions) and Proactive (Barclays initiated letters to Customers which may lead to Customer complaint submissions)
Solution included:
- Integration with current Business Processes and IT systems, including Correspondence Scanning, Complaint Handling, Calculation, Payment and Correspondence Printing.
- Creation of a single Customer Database pulling together all current and closed Customer Accounts, with their Products, PPI policies and Transactions. Database to include all Customer accounts from any companies taken over by Barclays for which Barclays may be liable for PPI mis-sales.
- Automation of Complaint Handling process to reduce average handling time and people. This involved use of new Web Service (SOA) integration with current systems or where this was not available, or development possible within required timescales, then use of Blue Prism robot automation processes.
- Automation of Logging solution to Reject vexatious submissions, i.e. where complainant does not have a Barclays Product or a Product with a PPI Policy and duplicate submissions.
- Automation of existing Complaint Handling State based solution with manual initiated state Complaint Case changes to a Pseudo Workflow solution where Cases are automatically moved to the appropriate state, e.g. Logging, Decisioning and Close for Rejects.
- Improvement of existing Complaint Handling solution to provide for each key stage for Management Information (MI), Key Process Indicators (KPI) and Automation events.
- New Infrastructure to provide an Internet PPI Submission Web Site with appropriate security processes to ensure it could not be mis-used.
- New Infrastructure to provide an Intranet PPI Portal to assist the manual handling of Complaints in the most efficient way, e.g. supply all available data, ask Complaint handler to supply other information and then return all data to Rules Based Engine to continue with automation.
- Ensuring Regulatory Security patterns were followed, e.g. PCI DSS for Credit Cards and Connect Direct Secure+ for secure file transfers.
Sept 2011 – Dec 2012 – Solution Architect – Lloyds Banking Group (LBG) – London
As a Solution Architect within the Direct Channel Internet Banking group, complete Outline Solution Design and End to End Design documents for integration of 3rd Party Providers for Current Account Benefits and Credit Card Rewards products.
- Integration included Web Page changes, Web Services (W/S) and Single Sign On (SSO).
- Web Pages changed using Customer Experience patterns to maximise Customer Satisfaction.
- Web pages tagged to supply Web Analytics with data to meet Key Performance Indicators (KPI).
- W/S used a common Request/Response XML structure within Datapower appliances to provide Validation, Content Based Routing and Transformation to specific 3rd Party W/S WSDLs.
- W/S secured using WS-Security and Mutual SSL Certification process security standards.
- SSO is an Identity Data Provider (IDP) Initiated SAML Assertion from LBG to 3rd Party.
NB: Contract was for 12 months, but after 3 months, LBG issued All Contractors with a cessation of contract notice so they could, during a 10 day period, review resource requirement and implement a rate reduction.
During this 10 day period I was offered a new contract with Barclays IT. Subsequently LBG offered a new contract for another 12 months at original rate but I had already committed to Barclays IT.
Jul 2011 – Sept 2011 – New Apple Mac, iPhone and iPad O/S training - Home
As a Solution Architect understand new functionality capabilities within Apple Mac Lion and iPhone / iPad IOS 5 operating systems.
Aug 2010 – Jul 2011 – Lead Solution Architect – Barclaycard – Northampton
As a Lead Architect for Architecture and Strategy Group review and approve a number of Conceptual and High Level Solution designs for a number of projects including PCI-DSS, Financial Reconciliation and Citrix farm consolidations.
As a Solution Architect in Regulatory and Mandatory Portfolio:
- Develop End to End High Level design for a Real Time Sanctions checking solution by integrating all Barclaycard Acquisition systems with Group Datanomic solution.
Utilise a Middleware solution consisting of both Web Services and IBM MQ within a Service Orientated Architecture (SOA) pattern.
Develop new Match rules for Barclays to minimise number of applications that need to be manually verified to improve take up of new applications.
Explain the HLD to various component design groups and rigorously review their detailed design documents.
- Introduce new Technical Analyst (TA) role to perform an As Is / Current State assessment of all Barclaycard systems that retain Customer and Employee data to assess adherence to Data Protection Data Retention rules. Rigorously review TA outputs to ensure that a Conceptual solution with cost estimates can be properly completed with high confidence within IT and Business.
- Provide Barclaycard Technical support to a number of Group IT projects in Initiation and Design stages including Identity Management for Application Authorised users and Privileged User controls.
Feb 2010 to July 2010 - Solution Architect – Steria at Land Registry - Plymouth
Detailed Solution and Technical design and implementation (with costs) for:
- Video Conferencing using Cisco Tandberg using ISDN and IP networks for both Internal and External connectivity.
- Email Security using Cisco IronPort to provide Anti Spam, Anti Virus, Context Checking and Encryption email processing.
- Automation of an IT Architecture Governance collaboration business process using SharePoint 2007 including numerous workflows using SharePoint Designer 2007.
High Level Solution design (with costs) for:
- Contact Centre solution with options using existing Mitel/Syntellect and new Cisco Unified Communication Manager Enterprise and Express solutions.
- Microsoft SQL Server 2005 cluster for Test/Development environment using, where possible, existing infrastructure from Office Closure programme.
Jan 2010 – Jan 2010 - SharePoint Training – Home
Understand new functionality capabilities within SharePoint 2010
Mar 2008 to Dec 2009 - Solution Architect – Scottish Widows (Lloyds) - Edinburgh
Working with Business Sponsors, using Zachman Architecture principles, provide Conceptual, Outline and Detailed Architecture and ensure approval by Architecture design review team.
Produce Detailed End to End Architecture
for the following projects:
- Web Access and Identity Management as part of LloydsTSB/HBOS Insurance Web Integration project
- ITIL v3 implementation using HP SM7 and BAC 8 including Discovery and Dependency Mapping (DDMA)
- Team/Project Collaboration using SharePoint 2007 including Web Parts and Intranet customisation
Produce Outline Architecture for the following projects:
- Business Intelligence Data Warehouse using MS SQL Server 2005 Integration, Analysis and Reporting Services.
- Customer Data Integration (CDI) / Master Data Management (MDM) as part of LloydsTSB/HBOS Insurance Customer Integration project.
Compile list of current systems including Applications, Data, Infrastructure and Interfaces for LloydsTSB/HBOS Core Enterprise Integration project.
Jan 2008 to Feb 2008 - SharePoint Training - Home
Undertake Intensive SharePoint 2007 training on home business network. This broadband network includes routers, firewalls, ISA Server 2006,Exchange 2007 and SQL Server 2005. SharePoint sites developed for Extranet and Intranet
Sept 2006 to Dec 2007 - Solution Architect – Capital One - Nottingham
Working as a Architect with Business Sponsors, provide Architecture within a Solution Delivery Model and ensure approval by Architecture Director.
Integration of IT Systems into Capital One arising out of the acquisition of new business including technical and culture challenges.
Using ARIS, document the 3 Year Enterprise Architecture Models for UK Card Platforms using Application, Deployment, Security and Data models.
Using ARIS, construct As Is and Target Enterprise Architecture domain models for the outsourcing of Call Centre and Back Office processing functions.
Provide detailed Architecture for the fast track Tactical outsourcing of one Business Process within an RFP process.
Architect implementation of Privilege User controls for UK to meet Sarbanes-Oxley requirements.
Architect changes to Debit Card payment system providing a more resilient and PCI complaint UK solution.
Sept 2005 to August 2006 - Solution Architect - Phones4u – Stoke on Trent
Within the business context of Phones4u, defined the roles of Architects and Technical Architects, within an IT delivery lifecycle process.
Produce an IT Solution Design Process document and the recommendation for an Enterprise Architect tool from shortlist of ARIS and Casewise.
Working as a Architect provided numerous quick “tactical” assessments for business generated IT change requests, with costed options and recommendations.
Identify Third Party solutions, infrastructure costs and bespoke development day efforts for:
- Service Management, including the implementation of ITIL best practice.
- Web Analytics, including the integration with current eBusiness business practices and technology.
- Workforce Management, including the integration with Cisco Telephony and Siebel campaigns.
- Enterprise Project Management, including the identification of tactical and strategic options.
Jan 2005 to Sept 2005 - Solution Architect - EDS - Dept of Work and Pensions - Sheffield
As Architect undertake an independent review to identify issues and resolutions that had arisen since project entered trial stage.
The review, including the architectural documentation of system, allowed a number of key issues to be identified and resolved.
This gave the Customer confidence to allow the trial to complete and live operations commence.
All other issues were added to a risk log, with recommended solutions, for resolution within next release of project, including
- no common coding standard or methodology.
- hardware and software single points of failure.
- no session persistence between web servers.
- lack of error handling.
- no performance or capacity monitoring.
- likely performance inhibitors as use of system increased.
Apr 2001 to Dec 2004 - Solution Architect – LogicaCMG - Various Locations
Barclays Bank – Caseworks System - Manchester
As Architect in the review and delivery of design identified by Staffware to be undertaken by LogicaCMG as a fixed price contract.
Design and Develop the Staffware workflow process flows.
Citizens Advice - Caseworks System - Swindon, Reading and London
As Architect design solution for a 30,000 user base using VB based client screens that access a Win 2000 Oracle database over SOAP.
Server SOAP components interfaced with transactional COM+ components running on a network load balanced application server farm.
Solution has won the “Best Project - Government to Citizen” in the Government Computing BT Syntegra Awards for Innovation 2004.
Project: Office of Fair Trading - Caseworks System - London
Solution is based on a centralised Microsoft SQL server database, with a XP rich client built with bespoke VB based screens, accessing the database via MTS. The application integrates with standard 3rd party products, including Tibco and Post Code Address. Crystal Reports are used to provide management reports.
Role within project was as the Solution Architect in identifying a number of possible solutions both in terms of Hardware and Software to meet Customer requirement in terms of performance of system. After a number of years the performance had deteriorated to an un-acceptable level.
Project: Government Child Care Agency - Caseworks System - Leeds
Solution is based on SharePoint 2003 with Intranet, Intranet and Extranet functionality to share Government policy and procedures and government visited 3rd Party Child Care companies with members of public.
