Manager of a full stack engineering team for the design and successful implementation of a micro-services orientated and azure based billing and invoicing system, with the goal of business process consolidation and streamlined customer delivery. Coordinating with End Users, Developers, DevOps engineers and SQA engineers to deliver business needs and maintain service quality and availability.

Key responsibilities were

• Managing multi-disciplined development team of 10+ in 3 development centres (US, India, France).
• Acting as SCRUM master: coordinate sprint planning, backlog refinement, and sprint & product demos
• Liaise with business leaders on requirements and feature validation
• Reporting on progress and risks to management team – ensuring deliveries are aligned with dependencies
• Ensure planning is coordinated with other teams to ensure dependencies are met and available
• Document stories and support the team in sprint planning
• Perform development and QA activities when required
• Support legacy systems and participate in on-call rota

After leaving Synchronoss, I took the opportunity to take on the role of Program SQA Manager at Arkadin.

I was responsible for developing the acceptance process and implementation for a new IS system developed by an external consultancy. This included recruiting and managing a remote QA consultancy. Following the business acceptance, I worked on the establishing of an inhouse QA team to work alongside the internal development team (which I also supported the recruitment of).

Key responsibilities were

• Recruitment of QA and development teams
• QA strategy definition and implementation
• Coordination with the development teams, BA teams and business members
• Supporting personal development objectives of my team

Synchronoss Technologies is a NASDAC listed company developing applications and services for tier 1 mobile operators. Miyowa is a developer of mobile social networking solutions provider for major international network operators. Synchronoss acquired Miyowa in December 2011.

At Miyowa, my role is to manage the testing process & teams in the 2 development centres (Bucharest & Marseille). This role involves close cooperation with the development and project management teams and also liaising with customers to agree testing procedures and acceptance criteria. Development and testing is performed on a number of devices including Symbian, iPhone, Android and Windows Phone 7.

Since September 2011, I am also responsible for the customer support operation. This includes managing, recruiting and training the technical support operatives in our Bucharest office and liaising with customers with regard to any production issues. This includes preparing the post mortem documents and monthly status reports and meetings.

Key achievements at Synchronoss/Miyowa include:

• Training all test team members to ISTQB Foundation level (100% exam success rate)
• Improving communication and documentation between development and QA teams
• Raising the profile of testing within the organisation
• Reducing the number of defects in delivered software through process improvements and increasing customer success rate during acceptance testing
• Implementing best practice to increase the effectiveness of testing and reduce the elapsed time
• Improving communication and work allocation between the development centres
• Developing and maintaining tools for managing the testing process and physical devices

Career Break

Site Intelligence is a world leader in Web Analytics software, providing business intelligence solutions to major UK and international brands.

At Site Intelligence, I was a key member of the software development team, working closely with the Development and Consultancy managers. My responsibilities were to ensure that all software releases and patches meet the business requirements, and that the quality criterion of each release was met. In this high pressured and technical environment, an Agile approach to software development was followed. My daily activities included

• Defining all aspects of testing activity
• Mentoring and Training Development resource to undertake testing activities when required
• Recruiting, Training and Managing junior and contract testing resources
• Creating and maintaining project plans & estimate spreadsheets for all team activities
• Hands on execution of tests, including issues diagnosis and bug reports
• Maintaining baseline data warehouses, including customer configurations.
• Developing and maintaining automated test scripts in BASH, Ruby, Perl and SQL.
• Liaising with customers and consultancy team on issue resolution timescales
• Developing, implementing and improving quality and release processes
• Communication with the development team with regard to software quality
• Proving second line support on various issues

I resigned from this role to relocate to France to support my wife in a new role. After leaving the UK in November 2009, I spent the remainder of my time tele-commuting to support the team in daily activities, and in recruiting, training and supporting my replacement.

RM is an educational supply company specialising in IT hardware and software for UK schools.

At RM, my role was as Programme Test Manager within the QCA project which was developing an online test framework for 13/14 year old school pupils, commissioned by the QCA (Qualification and Curriculum Authority). My role included:

• Writing and maintaining the long-term project plans for test activities
• Working with 3rd party suppliers to define testing deliverables and test processes
• Working with the test team leads to ensure the day to day testing activity was progressing to plan, and supporting them with any issues
• Liaising with the Technical Design Authority, Project Managers and other parties to ensure all issues are resolved in a timely manner and that the test team are aware of changes
• Developing excel spreadsheets (using macros) to generate test data as required
• Recruitment of test analysts and contractors as required

Servista is a service business in the telecoms and energy billing industry.

At Servista, I took on the role of QA manager in an established QA team. I grew the team to over 30 people, including permanent and contract staff. I defined and matured the QA and testing processes, and was also involved in the implementation and support processes. Part of my role included heavy involvement in the global outsourcing project, which included visits to India for the recruitment process. Key aspects of my role were:

• Define the test policy, test strategy and test plans
• Line manager responsibility for the 15 permanent team members, including performance and salary reviews, induction and training programs, team moral and effectiveness
• Coordinate activities between the onshore and offshore teams
• Manage the testing team of contractors and permanent staff
• Manage multiple projects in parallel, and supporting the QA lead in each of those teams
• Liaise with project managers, service team and customers for deployment strategy
• Project estimation for all new work entering the business. This included major projects and small change requests
• Negotiate the range of testing with suppliers and third parties
• Working closely with clients to support acceptance testing activities
• Recruitment of the testing team in the UK and India
• Work with a team of managers to define the working practices between the UK and India sites
• Implement standard terminology and methodologies as per BS7925 and ISEB standards
• Support other team managers to implement new processes and standards. This included writing various spreadsheets which were adopted across the organisation
• Planned and implemented regular team meetings for two way communication

Tranmit is a software house, developing software for the E-Procurement arena, providing a solution which includes web based interfaces and electronic document management solutions.

Key aspects of my role were:

• Define the testing strategy within the company
• Create test assets from business requirements and design documentation
• Performing test execution by both manual and automated methods
• Assist with defining other processes
• Implement an automated testing application for system testing, with the view to growth to performance and load testing
• Provide management with feedback as to the quality of the system
• Assist the training team in verifying that training and user documentation is accurate
• Co-opt and support members of the development and sales team into a testing activity as required

Continuing my progress at Entranet, I took over the role of Test Manager.

This position encompassed the responsibilities of Lead Test Analyst, with the addition of defining the processes, and closer communication with the project managers and customers and line management responsibility for a team of up to 20 permanent test analysts across 3 sites (Goring, London and Edinburgh). Key aspects of my role were:

• Define the testing strategy and monitor status throughout the project
• Define technical processes to be used on projects, and within the organisation
• Manage the team of test analysts, and provide mentoring services where required
• Provide Resource Management for the test team within the organisation
• Estimate testing effort for a given project
• Evaluate the effectiveness of Automated Test Tools and other new technologies

During my three years at Entranet, I worked on a number of projects, including The Cooperative Bank Internet Bank, Standard Life Bank Online and AccuCard Credit Card application and servicing.

The role of Lead Test Analyst was a natural progression from the role of Test Analyst. Main duties included

• Analysis of requirements to develop Test Conditions, Scenarios and Scripts
• Negotiation with clients the level of testing to be performed, and defining the acceptance criteria for the software to go live
• Develop and enhancement of the cross browser test laboratory
• Leadership of a small team of Test Analysts in the development of test assets
• Assist in the recruitment of Test Analysts.
• Deputise for the Test Manager

My time in this role saw me promoted from 'Test Analyst'

Student Placement Year