Jason Barr Email & Phone Number

Cape Town Area, South Africa

Responsible for a wide range of QA/testing related activities, from manual testing of deliverables to the creation and maintenance of automated tests.

Cape Town Area, South Africa

As Praekelt’s QA Engineer, responsible for implementing and sustaining a best-practice quality assurance and testing framework that can be applied to all projects and products at Praekelt, with the ultimate goal of ensuring that all our projects and products meet client expectations.• Develop or specify standards, methods, or procedures to determine product quality or release readiness.• Evaluate and recommend software which can enhance QA related activities and metrics.• Constant review of the processes involved, recommending changes and improvements where appropriate• Responsible for regression testing of the system• Setting up and managing client-testing environments, and interacting with clients where external client testing is required• Test automation of a Django based CMS system and accompanying front-end site.• Make recommendations to improve CI, regression/performance and automated testing• Growing the existing testing team• Coaching and mentoring new team members

Cape Town Area, South Africa

• Plan test schedules or strategies in accordance with project scope or delivery dates.• Participate in product design reviews to provide input on functional requirements, product designs, schedules, or potential problems.• Design and execute test plans, scenarios, scripts, or procedures and ensure that they are repeatable and comply with standards.• Provide feedback and recommendations to developers on software usability and functionality.• Develop or specify standards, methods, or procedures to determine product quality or release readiness.• Develop testing programs that address areas such as database impacts, software scenarios, regression testing, negative testing, error or bug retests, or usability.• Identify, analyze, and document problems with program function, output, online screen, or content.• Document software defects, using a bug tracking system, and report defects to software developers.• Monitor bug resolution efforts and track successes.• Create or maintain databases of known test defects.• Investigate customer problems referred by technical support.• Create and update automated test scripts to ensure currency.• Evaluate or recommend software for testing or bug tracking.• Provide training sessions on test procedures and best practice to BA's DEVs and Sysops.

Cape Town Area, South Africa

• Worked closely with Mercury consultants to create OM specific testing processes and naming conventions.• Responsible for rollout of HP Quality Centre to key internal clients, and performed various test management functions for teams using HP Quality Centre.• Assisted the IT Engineering team in rectifying defects caused as a result of deviating from the established organisational processes, standards and procedures.• Successfully implemented various measures to ensure that measurable metrics could be tracked and reported upon.• Assisted with various process improvement initiatives, e.g. streamlining/improvement of change control and configuration management processes.• Monthly reporting of incidents affecting the Old Mutual production environment, and responsible for ensuring problem management process addressed concerns raised by the findings of the report.• Facilitate operational readiness reviews with project teams to ensure that non-functional requirements are adequately documented prior to implementation. Establish "fit-for-purpose" view of solution being developed by following ITIL service mgmt. guidelines.• HP QualityCentre administration and customisation.• Responsible for HP QualityCentre support and escalation to vendor where required.

• Formalisation of QA environment and change management process.• Created and maintained a suite of automated tests used for regression and new feature testing.• Worked closely with cross-functional and international teams to deliver high quality web applications.• Worked closely with Engineers to identify and isolate defects in products/systems.• Worked on multiple localisation/internationalisation projects aimed at ensuring that the thawte website could be viewed in various international languages.• Responsible for creating automated regression testing suites.• Maintained TD/QC instance.• Created simple performance tests using LoadRunner.

Responsible for ensuring that the technical team was prepared for all product introductions, enhancements and upgrades. Key responsibility involved developing and maintaining positive relationships with key technology vendors, e.g. Oracle, MicroSoft, SyBase as well as technical assessment and testing of vendor technologies, and services, for thawte operations.• Responsible for advanced troubleshooting and research of complex issues requiring further research.• Performed technical assessment and testing of incoming technologies prior to deployment.• Worked closely with 3rd party consultants to drive the development of a variety of manual and automated test suites, formalise business requirements and capture business process flows.• Assisted Engineering team in testing of new website/platform. This lead to the creation of a formal QA role to which I was later assigned.

Responsible for handling all advanced technical queries, training of new TS employees and worked with key software vendors to ensure a thawte presence within software documentation, help manuals and other technical documentation.• Represented technical support in website design and website copy meetings.• Provided technical support with tools and resources on supported products to make them aware of any software related issues.• Submitted system related specification documents aimed to enhance thawte product offerings.• Assumed greater responsibility for testing and quality of newly developed products and systems – contributing factor to quality competencies.• Participated in interdepartmental, cross-functional knowledge sharing meetings with colleagues at VeriSign HQ aimed at ensuring technical support was kept up to date with the latest strategic initiatives, product updates and technical issues affecting key software vendors and clients.

In this role assumed responsibility for 2nd level queries and escalated issues and continued to provide technical Support with relevant product information necessary to ensure quality customer support experience.• Maintained close relationship with target market through newsgroup postings, forums and mailing list participation.• Researched complex technical issues and contacted vendor is further support required.• Support specialist for all thawte products.• Proposed and evaluated viability of new products or systems with marketing, engineering and corporate management.

Within this role I was responsible for handling all technical queries received by Technical Support from a predominantly international client base. Setup process improvements and infrastructure which could assist in making thawte technical support information more relevant and informative.• IRC chat room implemented to provide real-time support.• Created testing database to show interoperability between thawte products and 3rd party products and systems.• Responsible for updating website with support related information, e.g. FAQs, how-to’s and anything else which could facilitate a more efficient support process for thawte clients.• Provided technical assistance to internal thawte clients on a wide range of issues.