Employer
Marks and Spencer PLC
Role
Direct Banking Support Team Leader (Contractor)
Analyst Programmer (Contractor)
Location
Stockley Park, Heathrow
Central London
Dates
April 1997 to April 2001

I initially joined the Customer Direct Mail Marketing Database team as an Analyst Programmer but by the end of the month I was asked to take on the role of Team Leader.

I then oversaw the day to day running of the development team until November 1999.

Key tasks included:

Project Planning
  • Allocating Resources
  • Task estimating effort
  • Capturing actual effort
System Test Planning
  • Data Hygiene and Merging Project (Global Suppression File)
  • I represented the retail business in an IT capacity in a three-way project involving the Financial Services division and a third party supplier.
  • Millennium Compliance Design
  • writing Millennium Compliance System Test Plan
  • Batch Resilience and efficiency improvements

At this point Marks and Spencer had decided that the current Model204 database had reached the end of its useful life and was to be replaced. Consequently I was asked by Marks and Spencer to move over to the IBM led project as their representative on the development team building the replacement product.

Customer Marketing Database Team Leader

(June 1997 to November 1999)

I initially joined as an Analyst Programmer on the Customer Direct Mail Database development team, but became Team Leader after one month.

At that stage the database was written in Model204 with CA-7 batch schedule utilising MVS JCL, COBOL and various in stream utilities.

In my role as Team Leader I was the principal technical analyst for this project, designing system changes to the Model204 database, and its associated COBOL batch processing

Analyst Programmer

December 1999 to April 2001

A DB2 database with CA-7 batch schedule utilising MVS JCL, COBOL and various in stream utilities.

Key Tasks Included
  • Technical specification and coding of the processing to cut-over historical customer transaction data.
  • Defined all and coded some of the processes that restructured customer data upon merging of customer records.
  • Testing and proving of Cut-over and regular update customer processing.
  • Data hygiene, duplicate checking and merging of customers records and accounts.
  • Test Planning writing and execution at both unit and module level

Principal Skillset Used Here

  • COBOL II
  • MVS JCL
  • DB2 v5
  • Selcopy
  • IDCAMS
  • DFSORT/SYNCSORT
  • MS Access
  • MS Word
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