About Ed Catlett / Activity Consulting
In December 2019 I left my position as Duck Creek Professional Services Insights Delivery Lead in order to start my own solo consulting practice in that space. I wanted to get back to implementing for clients.
I am uniquely qualified to plan and deliver your Insights project. I have the longest and most varied experience available with Insights delivery.
I earned my Project Management Professional (PM)® certification & Certified ScrumMaster® I use those skills to execute your project professionally, effectively and efficiently. I then combine that with my decades of practical real world knowledge to give you reliable, predictable data for all of your needs.
Why all the duck photos instead of a nice ERD or something?
All of the photos on this site are ones that I shot. They represent my approach to planning and executing.
Executing well planned, technical photos requires many of the same skills as IT projects. Projects have always required a mix of technical knowledge, business knowledge, envisioning, strategy, planning, risk and issue recognition and, of course, building the right team.
Always plan and avoid risks and issues but when something goes wrong you need someone on the ground leading the effort who just gets it done.
I am a seasoned IT and business leader who gets it done. I look forward to potentially working with you on your next project
Project overviews continued below …
Insurance Data Projects (partial list)
Duck Creek Insights
Note this is a partial list and does not include practice leadership, teaching, etc.
Large Commercial and Personal Lines Mutual Insurance Carrier
Worked as DL with a team of clients and DCT consultants. Phase one of this engagement mapped all DCT Policy commercial and personal lines data into Insights hosted on Duck Creek’s SaaS infrastructure. Future phases to include other legacy policy sources as well as claims and billing.
Specialty Lines Insurance Subsidiary of a Major Financial Entity
Led a team of 14 people, consisting of on-shore and off-shore client personnel, as well as a core of DCT personnel. Sources included DCT Policy, DCT Claims, a legacy ODS and DCT ISO data. These have been successfully running in production for years. The team continues to add additional elements, reports, dashboards, etc.
Property & Casualty Insurance Broker
Led subject matter expert (SME) model engagement for initial workshops and ongoing guidance. Led workshops to teach the client team how to implement Insights. The courses include understanding recommended project methodology, testing best practices, development best practices, business and technical understanding of the data models, how to use the tools that are part of the Insights solution, etc. The client team is running well and has quickly mapped and validated data from source to staging to warehouse for their first AS-400 based legacy source.
Personal Lines Insurance Carrier
Led subject matter expert (SME) model engagement for initial workshops and ongoing guidance for the first Insights implementation on the DCT SaaS infrastructure. Client team is running well and quickly mapped legacy policy and claims data as well as DCT Claims and Policy.
Personal Lines Insurance Carrier
Assumed the DL role at the request of the Client’s CIO for a Systems Integrator (SI) that had been underway for several months yet no data elements mapped. My initial involvement in this account was to lead a SWAT team to get the project on track. After 2 weeks I was asked by the CIO to take over the leadership for the entire effort beyond the SWAT effort. I was tasked to deliver a 5-month plan to complete all mapping and granular validation of the data. We got the project on target within 4 months and then handed the leadership and deliverables back to the SI partner for completion
Earlier Insurance Data Projects
Program Manager – 8 Source Data Warehouse, Operational Data Store and OLAP Cube
Assumed responsibility for our company’s largest client. This included managing our consulting staff of 12 and the client’s BI staff of 15. The client engaged my company in hopes of recovering from 2 failed business intelligence efforts. The IT department’s credibility with their business community was dropping quickly. Overhauled program / project procedures, documentation practices and responsibilities with quick results. The program was completed to requirements to the revised baseline resulting in reliable business intelligence and a renewed faith in the IT department.
Project Manager – Master Data Management Design Roadmap
Our client engaged us to design a Master Data Management (MDM) roadmap. The goal was to uncover all measures and dimensions, recommending specific items that were suitable for global metrics / key performance indicators (KPIs).
Gathered requirements from senior executives from the United States, Bermuda and the U.K. The differences in the systems’ data, accounting practices and regulatory requirements had to be resolved in a meaningful manner across different business needs, workflows, currencies, etc. Consideration had to be given to future geographic and business line expansion.
This design allowed the client to quickly build a comprehensive Master Data Management system.
Project Manager – Data Warehouse Overhaul
Our client had a data warehouse designed several years ago by their IT staff. It evolved to contain similar elements with inconsistent terminology making it impossible to trust reports. My team documented the data model, data dictionary and the business glossary. Standardized the ETL code / BI infrastructure bringing the 6 hour processing window down to <3 hours.
This project has renewed the business sponsor’s faith in their BI data as well as enhanced the credibility of the IT department.
Project Manager – Assumed Responsibility of Overdue Project
This data warehouse and cube engagement had been going on for well over a year. There had been several different teams on the project making continuity with the client a problem. The inherited risk and issue log had >200 unresolved issues. I implemented formal change control, analyzed, clarified and categorized the risk and issues log, clarified project scope and led development effort which closed out all issues leading to production deployment.
Project Manager – Assumed Responsibility of Overdue BI Dashboard and Query Front End Project
This project had failed to complete some deliverables from the statement of work. I negotiated agreed final deliverable requirements and schedule for completion and sign-off. Created project and communications plans to achieve the goals. Led the re-baseline and development effort through completion on time and within budget.