Sally M Solaymantash

Sally M Solaymantash

Independent Information Technology and Services Professional

Providence, Rhode Island Area

Current
  • Test Manager at MassMutual
  • President at Solaymantash Associates Limited
Past
  • Quality Project Manager at CVS/Pharmacy (Rhode Island, USA)
  • Quality Development Program Manager at TIAA-CREF (North Carolina, USA)
  • Quality Development Program Manager at Blue Cross Blue Shield of South Carolina (South Carolina, USA)

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Education
  • University of East Anglia
  • University of Aberdeen
Recommended
Sally M has 1 recommendation(s) 1 person has recommended Sally M
Connections
116 connections
Industry
Information Technology and Services

Sally M Solaymantash’s Summary

I have been privileged enough to have worked for many major corporations worldwide. By doing so, I have managed to uniquely and prominently shape my skill sets over the years; while at the same time being a major contributor to my project teams.
My strengths and training in earlier years allowed me to build on the skill sets in subsequent years; by using ingrained quality management as well as disciplined project planning, coordination and management skills plus the added benefit of truly understanding the entire SDLC through first hand experience. This in turn has allowed me to move from industry to industry succeeding in every role that I endeavored.
My specialty has been leading large and complex projects to a successful conclusion; some involving as many as 34 applications. On occasions, I have had to coordinate efforts of hundreds of resources and have had as many as 40+ resources in my organization.
In a Test Manager role one learns that the optimal and creative management of the tasks and resources is most critical. Invariably the development teams’ deadlines are stretched, whereas the final implementation dates are rarely moved. Consequently, the test team has to be able to absorb the slippages and still be able to certify the timely release of high quality product. To this end, a tight and creative management skill is a must in order to succeed.
In almost every role that I have played, I have been instrumental in establishing process improvements. These involved initial analysis of the existing processes followed by development of new processes based on exiting company culture. After prototyping the developed processes, they were implemented through staged roll out plans. Throughout this period, the initiative was socialized corporate wide through multiple presentations and informal team communications to ensure most successful embracement of the changes.

Sally M Solaymantash’s Specialties:

Financial, Insurance, Healthcare, Manufacturing, Food, High-Tech, Retail and Telecommunications

Sally M Solaymantash’s Experience

  • Test Manager

    MassMutual

    (Privately Held; 5001-10,000 employees; Financial Services industry)

    July 2008 — Present (1 year 1 month)

    Working as part of the Enterprise Information Delivery area to develop and manage a testing organiztion for the Life Information factory.

  • President

    Solaymantash Associates Limited

    (Privately Held; 1-10 employees; Information Technology and Services industry)

    June 1989 — Present (20 years 2 months)

    As an independent consultant I have had operated my own consultancy company since 1989. I have performed consultancy services for many major corporations in eight countries across Europe, United States and New Zealand.

  • Quality Project Manager

    CVS/Pharmacy (Rhode Island, USA)

    (Public Company; 10,001 or more employees; CVS; Retail industry)

    October 2006 — October 2007 (1 year 1 month)

    I rejoined the CVS.com project team to assist with the reconstruction of the new site. On this project I initially assisted in the role of senior Business Analyst and as the project transitioned through I started to build the Quality Assurance foundations and processes for the test team. This involved working with multitude of Business and IT team members both on-shore and off-shore, as well as external vendors and business partners.
    As the project is moving towards the test Phase, I have transitioning my duties to a full time employee to lead the Quality Assurance team through the final stages of the project.

  • Quality Development Program Manager

    TIAA-CREF (North Carolina, USA)

    (Non-Profit; 5001-10,000 employees; Financial Services industry)

    February 2006 — August 2006 (7 months)

    Functioning as a Program Manager working with the new director of Quality Management, I assisted with building a new enterprise wide Quality Management organization. Successfully created strategic and tactical development and delivery plans for the new organization. This included defining new organizational structure and new business flows together with their associated procedures, templates, tools, staffing, training, piloting and budgetary plans, as well as detailed project and communication plans. The initial target areas were Quality Planning (Customized SDLC Process development and Knowledge Transference), Quality Assurance (Metrics, Audits, Communication and Quality Standards & Governance Board), Integration Test Coordination and Configuration Management (including all aspects of Configuration and Change Management). Based on the developed policies and procedures all organization areas were implemented. Recommendation for future expansions and improvements was also made.

  • Quality Development Program Manager

    Blue Cross Blue Shield of South Carolina (South Carolina, USA)

    (Non-Profit; 1001-5000 employees; Insurance industry)

    July 2005 — December 2005 (6 months)

    Functioning as a Program Manager, working with a board of Directors, VPs and EVPs, I assisted with the overall management of building a new Quality Center organization to bringing the company into CMMI compliance. As with any other management role this included defining new business flow together with all associated planning for procedures, templates, tools, staffing, training, piloting, deployment, communication and reporting for various levels of management. The initial target areas were Requirement Definition, Testing Organization and Management Reporting. Based on the developed policies and procedures all three organization areas were implemented. Procedures for Institutionalization, continuous process evaluation and improvement were also put into place to allow continuous growth and maturity.

  • Verification Program Manager

    Royal Bank of Scotland/Citizens Bank

    (Public Company; 10,001 or more employees; RBS; Banking industry)

    May 2004 — April 2005 (1 year)

    Royal Bank of Scotland Parent company to the Citizens Bank purchased a credit card division in CT to launch their US CC division.
    As one of the project managers, I was responsible for launch of a new project (Kroger) under the new TSYS system. Once the project went live, all the existing accounts on the FDR system were to be transferred over to TSYS as part of the conversion project.
    My role as Verification Program Manager consisted of managing many components including vender management, tape carrier activities, balancing, data verification, switching, first occurrence and process verification. For all these activities I provided planning of resources, communication, risks, issues and contingencies as well as various management reports and coordinating the implementation.
    Continuing on from the prior role, I managed several of the QA efforts at the Citizens Bank’s headquarters which included Charter One Bank Conversion project, Enabling Project and TestDirector implementation.

  • Quality Assurance Manager

    Merck-Medco/Medco Health Solutions (New Jersey, USA)

    (Public Company; 10,001 or more employees; Pharmaceuticals industry)

    November 2001 — December 2003 (2 years 2 months)

    As one of the QA managers, I was responsible for managing compliance testing of 34 Customer Service and Home Delivery applications. Management of HIPAA QA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act), for Operations department, was one of the projects that my team worked on. The team grew and shrank in size as the various projects progressed through their varying stages; at its peak over 40 people were spread over multiple locations. My primary responsibilities were UAT and End-to-End integration and at times were involved in performance testing. In order to optimize our workload, we took the additional responsibility to utilize automated test procedures and develop a Test Case Database tool to house and manage the activities within the team.

  • Test Coordinator

    CVS/Pharmacy & CVS.com (Rhode Island, USA)

    (Public Company; 10,001 or more employees; CVS; Retail industry)

    July 1998 — November 2001 (3 years 5 months)

    I was responsible for management, coordination and planning of the User Acceptance and End-to-End tests for the CVS e-Commerce Project.
    My responsibilities included, but were not limited to planning and management; reporting to various Directors, VPs & Senior VPs; coordination of about dozen departments within the CVS Corporation across United States as well as the CVS’ Business partners and on-site/off-site external vendors; management and organization of QA approach and standards which included procedures, templates and tools; overseeing and managing the test scenario and data creations; creation of hardware environment for the QA team; planning and management of daily QA activities including staffing plans as well as risks and issues management; at times, ensuring timely creation of all Production Support procedures for the Customer and Store Support Centers; participation in implementation and post implementation support.

  • Data Analyst

    Foundation Health (California, USA)

    (Public Company; 1001-5000 employees; Insurance industry)

    April 1998 — July 1998 (4 months)

    As a latest addition to the conversion team, I was responsible for analysis of the converted data, identification of corruption patterns and solution suggestion for data and application rectification.

  • Software Quality Assurance Specialist

    GTECH Corporations (Georgia, USA)

    (Public Company; 5001-10,000 employees; Gambling & Casinos industry)

    August 1997 — March 1998 (8 months)

    Software Quality Assurance Specialist
    As part of a team responsible for quality control of the Instant Gaming sub-system, for the Gtech Lottery management system, customized for the New Zealand Lottery Commission. My duties in part involved testing and reporting of software problems; writing the test plans and assisting the customer during their Acceptance Testing; training support staff and technical authors; proof reading the technical documents and writing operations manuals and procedures.

  • Design Specialist

    Corning Inc. (North Carolina, USA)

    (Public Company; 10,001 or more employees; GLW; Telecommunications industry)

    April 1996 — April 1997 (1 year 1 month)

    I was responsible for the analysis, design plus management of the development, test and implementation teams of the order processing part of the ICS project for the Corning fiber optics manufacturing plant.

  • Support & Design Specialist

    Tyson Food (Arkansas, USA)

    (Public Company; 10,001 or more employees; Food Production industry)

    August 1994 — April 1996 (1 year 9 months)

    Working on couple of inventory and warehouse systems, running on Tyson's nation-wide network.
    On these projects I was involved with problem identification and correction on the Production systems. Additionally, designed a new tool for purchasing and inventory planning department.

  • Project Leader

    Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC)

    (Public Company; 10,001 or more employees; DEC; Computer Hardware industry)

    June 1989 — February 1994 (4 years 9 months)

    Project Leader (France)
    Portfolio Manager (Netherlands)
    Design Consultant (Switzerland)
    Analyst/Designer (Netherlands)
    Analyst / Programmer (Belgium)

  • Senior Technical support Engineer

    Racal Milgo Ltd (UK)

    (Public Company; 1001-5000 employees; Computer Networking industry)

    August 1988 — June 1989 (11 months)

  • Development Specialist

    Digital Equipment Corporation (UK)

    (Public Company; 10,001 or more employees; DEC; Computer Hardware industry)

    April 1987 — July 1988 (1 year 4 months)

  • Assistant Executive Engineer (Analyst / Programmer/Junior Project Lead)

    British Telecom Research Center (UK)

    (Public Company; 5001-10,000 employees; Telecommunications industry)

    August 1984 — April 1987 (2 years 9 months)

Sally M Solaymantash’s Education

  • University of East Anglia

    BSC (Hons) , Computer Science , 1982 — 1984

  • University of Aberdeen

    Computer Science, Mathematics & Physics 1981 — 1982

Additional Information

Sally M Solaymantash’s Groups:

Cooking Club

  •    eOffice
  •    Executive Suite
  •    Worldwide Management Consultants (22,000+ members)
  •    The Recruitment Network
  •    Software Testing & Quality Assurance
  •    University of Aberdeen Alumni
  •    University of East Anglia (UEA) Alumni

Sally M Solaymantash’s Contact Settings

Interested In:

  • career opportunities
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  • new ventures
  • expertise requests
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