Aruna Narayanan
Dallas,Texas
Summary
Seasoned technology and business leader with 17+ years of experience, skilled in navigating Agile and Hybrid methodologies for successful transition from Waterfall to Agile. Leadership style focuses on empowering teams to be self-directed and self-managing, while fostering agile principles. Strong background in healthcare business processes and capabilities, bringing energy and enthusiasm to keep teams focused on delivering value in rapidly evolving and dynamic environments. Excelled in various roles, from Individual Contributor in QE and Business to managing teams and projects. Exceptional communication skills facilitate seamless collaboration among diverse teams, resulting in improved business processes and exceeding expectations. Promote a Customer First, Automation First, and Shift Left mindset within the team, firmly believing in the power of One Team, One Goal. Demonstrated commitment to fostering an inclusive work environment as Co-Lead for ABLE and ASPIRE Cigna Enterprise Resource Groups. Graduate of the 2022 Dale Carnegie Leadership program, constantly seeking opportunities for personal growth and development. Currently transitioning from Cigna Medicare to Health Care Services Corporation since March 2025.
Overview
27
27
years of professional experience
1
1
Certification
Work History
IT Project Management Senior Manager
Cigna Government Business Segment
03.2023 - Current
- Currently serves as Senior Manager for the Operations and Business Testing Teams serving the DMOM (Dedicated Medicare Operating Model) program
- Directly responsible UAT/BAT and Operations of Enrollment Domain, Salesforce Health Cloud Domain and Member Digital Domain which are critical pillars in the Medicare space
- Responsible for streamlining and building strong Operations and Business Testing process and teams, while focusing on continuous improvements which includes identifying /using right tools and techniques, appropriate test data and automation
- Works closely with all key stakeholders and teams of UAT, test data, delivery leads, IT PMs and Product Owners for orchestrating the QE efforts successfully
- Preaches Shift Left Testing in all possible domains
- Leads Model Office Testing
- Collaborates with the Business testing team on designing end to end test strategy, test scenarios and laying out Acceptance criteria
- Leads the triage meetings and defect management process and provides guidance to the team as needed
- Conducts PI readouts for the team giving guidance on Agile principles as required
- Ensures automation is considered and built to support quality initiatives and goals
- Manages and builds the strategic partner relationship and is responsible for yearly financial planning and allocations for the resources
- Provides key status reports to senior leadership and stakeholders
- Successfully built a team of 20+ Advisors and Lead Analysts of Business Testers
- Represents Cigna MA in the Corporate forums for discussing test process and practices
- Initiated and Led the Member Migration effort of 700K Medicare Members from QNXT to Facets system end of 2024
- Delivered mission critical core domains as UAT and Business Testing Team Lead
- Provided strong leadership to enhance team productivity and morale.
- Led cross-functional teams to achieve project milestones and deliver high-quality results.
- Established strong relationships with clients and stakeholders, ensuring long-term partnerships and repeat business.
- Improved team performance by providing comprehensive training and fostering a collaborative work environment.
- Received over 100 + Cigna Standout recognitions over the period of 4 years in MA Space
- 2022 Dale Carnegie Leadership Program Graduate and 2023 Dale Carnegie Leadership Program assistant coach
- ERG initiative – 2023 Wintech conference speaker
- Cigna's community service champion Q2 of 2023
Product Owner Senior Advisor | Application Development Manager
Cigna Government Business Segment
12.2019 - 03.2023
- Served as manager/servant leader responsible for quality deliverables of Cigna Government Business portfolio products and projects
- Manages and delivers high-profile/high impact portfolio programs of 5+million technology investments with involving multiple external vendors like MHK, Evicore, Navihealth, Adhere Health, Alegis, etc
- Collaborates with Core Product managers for various programs and delivery leads to decompose and sequence the work
- Drives, owns and delivers the Cigna Government business QMO portfolio backlog for integrated testing
- Plans and conducts the pre-PI and PI planning for the team’s portfolio programs
- Builds partnership, engages, sustains and makes decisions based on dynamic and changing technology
- Provides coaching and support to other QE Product Owners in maintaining/refining product backlog and with deciding/negotiating acceptance criteria and definition of done for various products
- Act as a change agent and help to build and support a learning environment for continuous growth
- Maintains metrics and data necessary to provide visibility on progress, quality and value to stakeholders and matrix partners and senior management
- Testing Project lead for Cigna’s CMS (Centers for Medicare & Medicare Services) Universe team
- Provides portfolio projects and Jira metrics to the senior leadership team
- Managed direct reports and teams onsite, near-shore, offshore in both in-person and virtual settings
- Responsible for creating Medicare Program roadmaps and roadshows for both internal and external stakeholders
- Engaged in internal agile communities of practices and Scrum Masters Forums
- Received 20 Cigna Standout recognition awards over the period of 2 years for various successful deliveries
- During the Covid19 pandemic situation, led regular team check-ins and team meetings
- UAT scripts were automated which reduced manual effort and cost for the MHK program
Program Management Sr Advisor
Cigna-Consumer Health Engagement
03.2015 - 11.2019
- Led project planning sessions with business process owners and key stakeholders to identify the projects goals, objectives, critical success factors, and success measures
- Developed and maintained project plans with the business objectives, key milestones, timelines, resource impacts and task sequencing required to deliver the desired value for each project
- Led cross discipline team meetings to ensure that all parties are on track with project estimates, requirements, deadlines, and schedules
- Led and made decisions based on a dynamic and always changing technology and business platform of knowledge
- Monitored progress against project goals and objectives and implements communication and reporting mechanisms to manage issues, risks and timely delivery of initiative results
- Built Test Strategies, Test Cases and supported the team in training and execution
- Analyzed and measured the effectiveness of existing business processes and develops sustainable, repeatable and quantifiable business process improvements
- Identified and implemented best practices, coached strategic partners and peers
- Liaison between Cigna IT, Cigna Business and Casenet (Vendor) and other matrix partners
- Direct report to Senior Director
- Oversight & ownership of continuous improvement
- Initiated and led the SME testing process to be Automated which reduced time and effort for Business by 70%
- Key Point of Contact for Casenet (external vendor) and Cigna for communicating Release Notes, Versions, Issues and Defects management
- Initiated and led the offshore automation team who developed and executed rules engine process for both UAT and QE testing
- Led successfully QANI TruCare Rollout
- Bringing in new strategic partners to the team and grooming the team
- Led Chairside visits with Core Users and presented TruCare User experiences to the senior leadership which resulted in modifications of some key business processes
- Trustworthy partnership between different stakeholders and matrix partners
Business Projects Advisor / Business Configuration Lead
Cigna-Consumer Health Engagement-HeV
04.2014 - 02.2015
- Owned and led the business intake process and led 11 member full-stack team for clinical projects
- Managed on several business projects in the Clinical organization
- Business liaison for Key Vendors like JPMC, Mohawk, FedEx
- Supported business leads across the organization for several successful deliveries
- Served as Release manager for enterprise releases and off releases
- Actively contributes to Content development planning and execution
- Lead and executed end to end testing on content delivery of HeV application
- Led Defect Management and Reporting for 5 plus assets as release management lead
- Led the execution of HeV project’s complicated multiple Batch Processing Process
- Supported other applications like ICMS, HCICMS, and DGCAMS etc
- Created Templates for maintenance User Stories which Teams use for every release that resulted in consistent and effective process
- Managed onsite and offshore team of 11
- Led standoff meetings, coached team to participate and perform
- Recognized by SLT for critical release management role
Automation Lead | QE Manager
Cigna
11.2007 - 03.2014
- Owned the QE delivery for the Sales and Underwriting solutions group, responsible for QE Strategy and timelines
- Maintained a strong and collaborative relationship with business stakeholders and Pricing team
- Key stakeholder and QMO lead for SUW releases and owned key assets
- Led the implementation of Proclaim, Facets products in Underwriting assets
- Lead Defect Management Process and performed root cause analysis on defects and production issues
- Subject Matter Expert across several Sales and Underwriting Applications like SalesForce, iQuote, UPM, BenSum and Benefit Sculpting Tool
- Led with the team responsible for introducing vendor-client model to the solutions group
- Formed and Managed the Automation data support and testing team of 6 automation engineers who supported automation for 5 applications in SUW
- Spearheaded the forming of Onsite-Offshore model and the complete onboarding process for a team of over 100 consultants
- Led UAT testing and Train the Trainer initiatives
- I have won 10 Champion Awards from various partnering teams like Pricing, Salesforce, Release Management, Testing, Development and Training Teams
- Led several enterprise critical testing teams at Program level
- Initiated and created process documentation across various projects that are consistent with Cigna Sales and underwriting business unit, saving approx
- 25% of the overall project time which was used across the entire solutions group impacting over 25 projects
- Owned and developed the Offshore Team Onboarding Process which reduced the process time by 50%
QA Automation Lead
First Data (Currently Fiserv)
01.2005 - 01.2008
Interchange Officer
ANZ Grindlays Bank
01.1998 - 01.2001
Intern
CitiBank NA
01.1998
Education
Bachelor of Science - Accounting And Finance
Madras University
Chennai, IndiaSkills
- Waterfall
- Agile
- Scrum
- Kanban
- Hybrid
- Salesforce Salescloud
- Salesforce Healthcloud
- Salesforce Marketingcloud
- JIRA
- Rally
- ALM
- Zephyr
- TFS
- MS Project
- MS Teams
- Service-Now
- Tableau
- Pathfinder
- Clarity
- Confluence
- MS SharePoint
- MS Office
- MS SQL
- APIs
- AWS Cloud
- Net
- Cucumber
- Postman
- MoSCoW
- Poker Planning
- T-Shirt Sizing
- Toad Datapoint
- Teradata
- API
Personal Information
Citizenship: US Citizen
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aruna-narayanan-4a06985/
Certification
Certified Scrum Master Certificant ID 000896076
Certified Scrum Product Owner Cerificant ID 000896076
SAFe Certified Scrum Master
SAFe Product Owner Product Manager
SAFe Agilist
AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
Dale Carnegie Leadership Program Graduate
Timeline
IT Project Management Senior Manager
Cigna Government Business Segment
03.2023 - Current
Product Owner Senior Advisor | Application Development Manager
Cigna Government Business Segment
12.2019 - 03.2023
Program Management Sr Advisor
Cigna-Consumer Health Engagement
03.2015 - 11.2019
Business Projects Advisor / Business Configuration Lead
Cigna-Consumer Health Engagement-HeV
04.2014 - 02.2015
Automation Lead | QE Manager
Cigna
11.2007 - 03.2014
QA Automation Lead
First Data (Currently Fiserv)
01.2005 - 01.2008
Interchange Officer
ANZ Grindlays Bank
01.1998 - 01.2001
Intern
CitiBank NA
01.1998
Bachelor of Science - Accounting And Finance
Madras University
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