Alex Shepherd Email & Phone Number

London, Gb

Bromley, England, United Kingdom

Osterley

I headed up and co-ordinated with multiple workstreams and territories globally, being responsible for the release testing of Sky Glass and Sky Live and the various syndicated products. Liaised with people and teams within the test space in Europe, the USA and India and enjoyed establishing and growing working relationships. I’m a passionate believer in sharing approaches and tooling and have been very successful in introducing smarter ways of working across Sky and Comcast. My attitude is to ‘never sit still’ – due to the proliferation of products we have and our expanding portfolio we always need to adapt our approach. My key responsibilities were as follows:• As a key stakeholder for test, making recommendations regarding deployment decisions based on test data• Directly managing a team of senior managers and a wider team of over 100 people• Managing my direct reports and ensuring that they are expanding their capabilities, by setting them clear and achievable objectives• Evaluating and sizing each release and understanding and making recommendations to cover off new products and workstreams• Managing the relationship between the UK and Italy/Germany/USA/India test teams, ensuring that we remain aligned and that we share work to empower these territories and drive efficiency• Working closely with the Automation team to identify opportunities to maximise effectiveness of both the manual and automation teams• Continually driving test improvement, by employing a mixture of experience and risk-based techniques• Refining and identifying opportunities to leverage our test data to better understand where we can drive improvements• Improving and inspiring individuals to enhance the performance of the team. Ensuring that all individuals in team feel challenged, empowered, and valued.• Fostering an atmosphere of transparency, ensuring feedback is taken seriously, and responded to accordingly• Responsibly ensuring we have a diverse and inclusive workforce.

Osterley

I was responsible for all of UK Q Test, and additionally worked closely with other territories to ensure alignment. The Sky Q product is now very much the staple of Sky and has transitioned from an emerging product to a BAU stream. The last few years have seen test adjust its profile and processes in response and to align and converge the test activities over three territories.

Osterley

I ran a test team which was embedded into the Sky Q program, the remit of which was to create a complete STB UAT solution working against aggressive timescales. In addition to this I implemented structure into test as a whole - and ensured that our reporting and defect management would enable us to make a recommendation to the program regarding deployment. We successfully provided rigorous testing while still adhering to agile principles. Whilst ensuring we could support Q pre and post-launch, I also had a number of direct reports who I was responsible for. I ensured that they had regular meetings with me, and that we actively developed their career paths. One individual on my team was promoted to this role when I moved onto my current position.

Osterley

I was a Test Manager and Team lead at Sky where I was tasked to provide testing solutions for forthcoming Set-Top-Box development projects. I have overseen several successful releases which have been integral to Sky's continued growth and reputation as a leading provider of entertainment, telephony and broadband services.I also ran an enthusiastic and driven team who I managed on a daily basis, being well-versed with PDP processes and procedures, as well as other personal development methodologies. I was directly responsible for allocating work to a much larger team, whose output is driven by the needs of the business.

Osterley

Previously I worked as a Test Lead which comprised of overseeing the testing of forthcoming releases, from early planning through to implementation. This involved working with a large team of individuals from Sky and also external companies. Releases I was charged with bringing to launch include:- 3D - This release enabled us to offer High Definition 3D content to those with compatible Television sets.- Anytime+ (subsequently renamed to 'On Demand') - this was the release which allowed customers to access content on their STB via Ethernet for the first time.- Anytime (subsequently renamed to 'On Demand') - this allowed us to push High-quality HD and SD programming to customers, allowing them to enjoy content on demand.- HD - This release involved brand new hardware and infrastructure to broadcast to our customers in HD - we were the first providers in the UK

My career at Sky began as a tester - It was my first introduction to the television sector. I was instrumental in our initial forays into automation, as well as rationalising the stress testing pack, I also wrote scripts which utilised OCR to enable validation without the need of human interaction. I also assisted in the transition of scripts and defects into Quality Center, and created the various user profiles and permissions required.

Greenford/Regent Street/Kensington

When I joined Shazam the priority was to build a large database of music, I initially worked in Greenford where my role was to encode music and input all necessary metadata. Within 6 months I was shift managing a team of 16 encoders, as well as liaising with Sys Admins and senior management.Once the initial database was complete we were moved to central London where I was tasked with identifying additional channels and methodologies to accrue and encode music. This required me to become profficient in music editing software, and liaise with third parties.

Slough, United Kingdom

I tested videogames which were launched on PC and consoles, including Sony PlayStation 2 and Gameboy Advance. I was also Test Lead on a project which required me to scrub and verify all defects being input to Bugzilla, as well as assign and design test plans.

London, United Kingdom

Freeloader.com took existing PC games and split them, to make downloading 'episodes' over 56k modems possible. I was responsible for testing the games and making sure that when the episodes were unpacked they worked as expected and did not introduce new bugs into the software, as well as assuring compatibility over a large range of minimum spec Operating systems and hardware. I also extensively tested the website from a usability perspective.