Internet Security and back to Banking

So I started to look for "regular work" (whatever that is) so I could compare what I’ve been earning to what I could earn in the 9-5ish world. I eventually got an offer from one of the largest banks in Canada. It was a Project Management role.

What I discovered during the past years was much of what I was doing happened to be called Project Management. I never know that there was a formal name of it, I was just working for clients! I started to document all of the projects that I had been working on so that I could get my PMP certification. As it turns out all of this PM and documentation was useful as the Bank hired me to start immediately.

Now you may be thinking, after working for myself and at smaller companies, that a large structure like a bank would not be compatible. Fortunately for me, the area of the bank that I was working for was somewhat like "black-ops" within the bank. We would do non-standard programming, communication protocols, file translations that were not "officially" supported by the bank. If you wanted something done and done quickly we were your team.

My role was to manage the many projects that came into the group and get them done in a timely fashion. It was something that took into account most of my skills. People and project management, communication.

The projects that I worked on varied in nature, multi-tasking and concurrent projects were an absolute necessity. Some projects were small taking only a few weeks to complete to those which were more complicated taking many months and require out of country travel The bulk of the projects involved the electronic transfer of funds through a variety of file formats. This included OFX, EDI, ACH, EFT and others.

Occasionally I would take on other projects that were not the standard type. Once such project involved making creating an XML format (using BizTalk) to transfer funds (and verify an account holder’s physical address) for playing online lottery games. This wasn’t for some off-shore gaming company, this was for a government sponsored lottery corporation (ie New York State Lottery Corporation).

Overall the bank exposed me to a variety of formal SDLC methodologies such as Agile and RUP. I honed my PM skills and exposed myself to other banking systems and technologies.