Farid Alvi

During 26+ years in IT and Telecomm industry, Mr. Alvi carries an in-depth knowledge and rich experience in Project & Quality management, IT / Business process design & implementation, Systems & networks, Business intelligence, Enterprise Resource Planning, Hardware design / development & selection, Software design / development / deployment and Package selection & implementation. As Head of IT Assurance & Audit, he instituted these functions in Ufone as per the guidelines of CobiT & CISA with demonstrated significant process / practice improvement.

After completing Master of Science degree in 1986 with specialization in ‘Computer Architecture and Programming’, he joined a local telecommunications company ‘Digital Communications’ as Telecom R&D Engineer. Experience with this company, polished his understanding and skills in Telecommunication systems which includes Telco hardware and software design, development, implementation, maintenance & Support. It was there, he mastered the understanding of Telco signaling protocol SS7 and indigenously designed conceptual model for ISDN EPABX.

In 1993, Mr. Alvi joined ALCATEL as Project Manager which it added to his skill-base, techniques in structured HW/SW Development, Project Management, Project costing and ROI as well as Quality Management. While working at ALCATEL R&D center in France, I had profound exposure & training to software engineering concepts, methodologies and best practices / processes.

Later, in 1997 he joined IBM Pakistan as Project Office Manager in Professional Services division, where he acquired experience in Business management & relationship. Afterwards with IBM, as ‘Country Quality Assurer’, we got full advantage to apply the knowledge and skills gathered over the past years to evaluate, maintain and improve business processes for the IT industry and rightly safeguard services revenue.

As General Manager, Project Management Office at Dewan Mushtaq Group, he headed the major project of SAP implementation, which covered 12 business units of their 25 group companies, with 82+ variant SAP configurations in all units, while leading a team of 160 persons.

Mr. Alvi also headed the ERP-SAP project at PTML ‘Ufone’. This was a two year project covering complete Telco business functions. This was implemented over 3 quick wins (QW), which were successfully completed precisely on time in Oct’07, Jun’08 & Mar’09. The completed product is handed over to business teams for operations.

Further, he institutionalized IT Strategic functions at PTML, such as ‘IT Assurance’ as per ISACA guidelines, ‘IT Audit’ according to the CISA standards and ‘Service Management’ as per ITIL/ITSM best practices. Also, I trained the functional teams accordingly who successfully run it’s operation with visible improvement in service delivery.

Skills Portfolio

Information Technology

  • MIS, Management Information System concepts – process mapping / implementation
  • Software development, testing and deployment – tools development
  • SDLC (software development lifecycle) management
  • Operating Systems and tools (UNIX, AIX, PC-DOS, WINDOWS, MS Project, EXCEL, CASE tools)
  • Programming Languages (Assemblers, C, UNIX Shell, VB, etc.)

Telecommunications Engineering

  • Hardware design and development
  • Software design and development
  • Process design and implementation
  • Signaling protocols (ISDN, ATM, IP, SSx, X.xx) billing architecture / rationale as per CCITT (ITU) standard Telecommunications Management Network. (TMN)

Quality Management

  • ISO9000
  • COBIT (IT Governance + IT Assurance) – ITIL / ITSM
  • Six Sigma
  • CMM /CMMi
  • Tools development
  • indicators / indices (KPI) development, monitoring & reporting

Costing and Budgeting

  • Forecasting CAPEX and OPEX
  • Opportunity costing and management
  • Project earned value monitoring and tracking

ERP / SAP

  • System architecture
  • Project / process life cycle management
  • Business process design & development

Project Management

  • End to end life cycle management – PMI Methodology
  • PRINCE II
  • Project costing / budgeting / negotiating

Audit

  • Risk based compliance Audit
  • Information System / Security Audit
  • Quality system audit (ISO9000, etc.)

People Management

  • Remote teams management – on site teams management – vendor management
  • Excellent interpersonal relationship
  • Command over written and spoken English and French languages, besides Urdu (mother tongue)

Process Management

  • Design/define performance measurement and KPI – design/execute performance optimization
  • Change management
  • Contract management
  • Balanced score card

Key Projects / Assignments

  • ERP-SAP implementation at Pak Telecom Mobile Limited (Ufone)
  • SAP implementation at 12 of the 25 companies of Dewan Mushtaq Group totaling to almost 82+ modules
  • Assessment / evaluation of SAP proposals received by Dewan Mushtaq Group from Siemens and Hyundai IT, Korea. – Detailed audit of the Dewan Mushtaq Group IT functions, producing comprehensive document of 80+ pages
  • Definition & implementation of Software Quality System based on the guidelines of CMMi.
  • Definition and deployment of Quality system in compliance with CMM for a US based software house.
  • Re-engineering of all MIS functions as part of complete organizational BPR
  • Union Bank Call Center Interface to Midas-Kapiti on AS/400 using VC+ and RPG – NADRA Swift Registration System for National ID card data collection.
  • Design, development and implementation of RPM status monitor and controller for a local textile industry – Project Office Management for Integrated Customer Management System (ICMS) IBM Pakistan team – Software development for export. (Banque la Hénin, France)
  • ISO 9001 certification for software industry. (ALCATEL, S/W Design Center Islamabad, Pakistan) – Telecommunication billing system for a rural telecommunication network.
  • Design and development of high wattage power equipment.
  • Hardware and Software design and development of Digital EPABXs.

Trainings Received

  • Successfully completed certification training on “COBIT 4.1”
  • Successfully completed professional training and examination on “Internal Auditor ISO 27001:2005 ISMS” – Integrated Auditing of ERP (November 2008)
  • ITIL / ITSM, IT Service Management; (February 2004)
  • Project Management, a five day course based on PMI body of knowledge (Jan.’ 2003) – Teach the Teachers; IBM-ACE IT curriculum (June’ 2001)
  • ISO9000 Lead auditor certification (May’ 1998)
  • Software Quality Management through ISO 9000 (Feb.’ 1998)
  • IBM Worldwide Solution Design & Delivery Methods, WSDDM (Dec.’ 1997) – Programme on Project Management (Sept.’ 1995)
  • On job Project Management training at ALCATEL CIT in France (May.’ 1993 to Feb.’ 1996)
  • Software Development Methodology at ALCATEL CIT in France (May.’ 1993)
  • Completed 200 hours French Language course (during employment with ALCATEL)

Trainings / Courses Delivered 

Academic Courses

  • Conducted a 6 credit hour course on “Project Management” for BBA program at FAST NU, Islamabad.
  • Conducted a 3 credit hour course for MCS program on “Software Development and Testing” at SZABIST, Karachi.
  • Conducted a 3 credit hour courses for BCS / MCS programs; “Computer Architecture”, “Operating Systems”, “System Analysis and Design” and “Data Structures” at Greenwich University.
  • Conducted a course on ASQC curriculum for “Software Quality Engineer” at NED-CCEE
  • Conducted a 9 cr. Course on “Basic IT” curriculum of IBM-Advanced Career Education.
  • Conducted a 3 credit hour course for CS program on “Computer Operating Systems” at MIT (Mehran Institute of Technology)
  • Conducted a 3 credit hour course for computer science program on “Physics” at MIT, Karachi.
  • Conducted a 3 credit hour course for postgraduate program on “Total Quality Management” at GIMIT, Karach

Professional Courses

  • Delivered a seminar on “Challenges of Establishing a PMO” in the 29th monthly session at the PMI Karachi
  • Seminar on “Project/Risk Management” at Pakistan Society for Training & Development
  • Delivered a seminar on Rational Unified Process in collaboration with IBM Pakistan (sole distributors of Rational)
  • Seminar on “Total Quality Management” at NIPA (National Institute of Public Administration), Pakistan
  • Seminar on “Quality Management in Service Industry” at Bankers’ Equity as consultant for Corporate Consulting