Carl David Blake, CSM

11260 Overland Ave., #10-D Culver City, CA 90230

(c) 512-608-5295 (email) carldavidblake@gmail.com

Professional Summary

Business Analyst and Certified Scrum Master (CSM) with over 6+ years of experience, highlights include:

·         Created functional requirements and process flow diagrams for the upgrade to the Legislative Analysis Software with full iterative SDLC experience at the Texas State Comptroller’s Office.

·         Gathered business requirements from clients and developed high-level design documents with developers input at ThruComm, specifically for the POS Monitoring Software.

·         Carried out User Acceptance Testing (UAT) against our business requirements and obtained confirmation that our software met business requirements, both at Comptroller and at ThruComm. 

Education

·         M.A. in Mass Communication from the University of South Florida

·         B.S. in Biology from the University of South Florida

Technical Skills

·         Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard

·         MS Windows 7

·         MS Office Professional 2010

·         MS Project Professional 2010

·         MS Visio Professional 2010

·         MS Publisher 2010

·         Adobe Dreamweaver CS5.5

·         Adobe FrameMaker 10

·         Adobe Acrobat X Pro

·         Adobe PhotoShop CS5

·         SAP/Oracle/Sybase/SQL

·         iRise Visualization Software

·         Witness Simulation 3.0

·         Rational RequisitePro

·         HTML 5, xHTML, XML, Joomla

Professional Experience

Project Manager/Business Analyst – Independent Consultant                                               01/06 - Present

·         Gathered user requirements and implemented them into a concise business plan for every project.

·         Managed and designed the work flow for the complete development and production of five media projects, which entered film festivals, one of which broke a Guinness World Record.

·         Performed the phases of initiating, planning (designing and communicating), executing, monitoring & controlling, and closing for each project.

·         Volunteering on the web team for PMI-LA, using Joomla, a web content management system.

Business Analyst/Project Manager - Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts                        08/05 – 07/10

Business Analyst/Project Manager - Property Tax Assistance Division (11/08 – 07/10)

·         Gathered user requirements and evaluated scope for each property tax training project. Moving most of our training online, saved the Comptroller’s office thousands of $5,000+.

·         Communicated and interacted on a regular basis with the project manager and development team during different stages of the project.

·         Moved into monitoring software requisitions with Rational RequisitePro, which was an outstanding program to not only enter requisitions but monitor those changes throughout the process.

·         Designed Data Flow Diagrams (DFDs), Entity Relationship Diagrams (ERDs), and web page mock ups using Rational Rose for the Legislative Analysis software programmed in ASP, HTML, and MS SQL Server.

·         Wrote meeting minutes and tested coding patches for quality assurance team for the legislative group.

·         Managed priorities with MS-Project as well as Excel and tracked bugs/fixes with MS-Access.

·         Worked on the legislative team analyzing legislative bills and documenting which ones affected our division.

·         Discussed Texas Property Tax Codes with citizens and local governments and assisted in filing correct forms.

·         Helped perform UAT for the Legislative Analysis Tracking System and the Wild Fire Tracking software.

·         Interacted with the development and testing teams to improve overall quality of the Application.

·         Managed the entire documentation system for Support Services and was asked to repeat that same system for several other divisions, unifying all of the formatting and sending rough drafts to SMEs to keep all documentation up to date.

Business Analyst /Legislative Liaison - Support Services (08/05 – 11/08)

·         Prepared project progress reports and status reports and submitted to the management on an ongoing basis.

·         Performed in-depth Gap analysis with different business groups to ensure that the system initiatives were met, by comparing the actual performance with potential performance for the Legislative tracking software.

·         Worked as the legislative liaison, analyzing bills that affected our division and managed the process of bill review, preliminary notes that affect division, review, analysis, and entry into Legislation tracking software.

·         Created business process models for our procurement software as we updated it.

·         Won two awards as the recycling coordinator—from the Texas Facilities Commission and the Comptroller. The new idea for recycling saved the Comptroller’s office $20,000+.

·         Gathered business requirements for the Legislative Analysis software (moving it from mainframe to web) and met with users to assist them with their concerns and requests.

·         Created the division’s business plan, annual survey, solution design documents, and business process maps.

·         Reorganized the entire documentation system into a simpler and more efficient one.

·         Managed the Pandemic Influenza Continuity of Operations Plan for the State of Texas.

·         Performed risk assessments to ensure that internal controls were in place and operating as intended.

·         Updated the disaster recovery, homeland security, and risk management/assessment plans.

Adjunct Professor (Contract)                                                                                                  02/02 – 06/05

Taught Professional Writing, Freshman English, Public Speaking, Speech Writing, and SAT preparation.

·         Adjunct Communications Professor at The Art Institute of Tampa (1-05 – 6-05)

·         Adjunct English Professor at The University of South Florida—St. Pete Campus (8-04 – 5-05)

·         Instructor for StudyWorks (SAT review class) of Tampa (2-02 – 1-05)               

·         Adjunct English Professor at St. Leo University (8-03 – 12-03)

Technical Writer – CitiGroup (Contract)                                                                               03/04 – 07/04

·         Applied XML techniques to XHTML web pages, as this entire project was totally a Beta-development project with no immediate plans to go live.

·         Wrote training documentation including Oracle database information for the procurement division.

·         Created flow charts of the Internet cloud using Visio for various XML projects.

·         Wrote/edited test scripts for the new XML-based module for the procurement system.

Product Information Writer - Home Shopping Network (Contract)                                     02/03 – 06/03

·         Coordinated production information for TV hosts to promote products.

·         Created web standards with a streamlined style guide, giving the writing team more effective rules to follow.

·         Met with vendors, created requirements to produce commerce content for the website.

Documentation Manager/Junior Business Analyst - ThruComm                                           10/01 – 01/03

·         Managed entire documentation system, including all manuals and network design diagrams (Visio).

·         Worked with the Project Portfolio Management (PPM) team and met with vendors on a regular basis to ensure each plan was being implemented to their approval.

·         Created Data Flow Diagrams (DFDs) for the C+ program developers against a SQL Server background.

·         Implemented a risk management program, wrote design documentation, and created budgets while working closely with accounting, marketing, and business technology systems.

·         Saved company $20,000 by going to online documentation.

·         Gathered business requirements and presented them to the project manager and developers.

·         Helped perform UAT for the CID, a POS (Point of sale) device.

·         The CID was programmed in C, but the monitoring system was VB against a SQL Server backend.

Certifications/Professional Affiliations

·         Certified Scrum Master (CSM), an Agile/Scrum methodology

·         Project Management Institute (PMI)

·         International Institute of Business Analysis (IIBA)

·         American Society of Training and Development (ASTD)