Responsible for the day to day operation and strategic direction of the Software Quality Assurance (SQA), User Acceptance Testing (UAT), Business System Analysts (BSA) and Release Management/DevOps teams for the Financial Institutions division. Established Quality policy, standards and processes to support an Agile SDLC. Portfolio covers Payments (CC and ACH), Collections, Insurance and Operational applications. Brought automation to SQA and UAT teams, directing web service, User Interface and batch (legacy) automation framework design and standards. Drove the development of functional, end-to-end, performance, load and Post Production Verification (PPV) tests, both manual and automated. Developed Continuous Testing strategy where all automation executes daily across multiple environments via Jenkins. Automation was developed in SoapUI and Selenium and executed on multiple browsers via an in-house Selenium Grid. Complimenting traditional UI automation; test programs and a production simulation environment were developed to ensure functional testing did not have an impact on production workloads. Achieved over a 90% automation coverage across the application regression suites. Established key metric of measuring production escapes, established a culture of continuous improvement through root cause analysis (RCA) of escapes. Through this process reduced production escapes by 10% year over year. In addition, brought Risk Based Testing techniques to the organization to prioritize our testing to address business risk and minimize exposure to the company.Also responsible for the Change Management and Release Management process driving it into a DevOps organization. Developing the strategic end state of CI/CD to support containers, Canary and Blue/Green deployments in the AWS cloud and dynamically creating test environments. Test automation integrated in to the build/deployment process via Azure DevOps and Jenkins.

Responsible for the strategic direction of Test Automation and Performance Testing across all Harland Clarke companies. Designed automation framework in Selenium, established best practices, rationalized tools, and architected Continuous Testing infrastructure. Introduced visual testing, service automation, A11Y automation and integration of automation into the release and deployment process (DevOPS) to the enterprise. Automation was also extended to develop tools such as data generators that reduced SQA data creation from 50 hours to 5 minutes. Enterprise Automation coverage increased from 38% to 79% and was executed daily on Saucelabs through Jenkins. Championed performance engineering and continuous performance testing. Developed performance testing guidelines.Established Robotic Process Automation COE. Developed charter, drove tool selection, POC, Pilot and production implementation. Managed RPA modelers and infrastructure, architected solutions, established best practices, change control, deployment and monitoring of deployed bots. Bots support business processes that integrate with SAP, Salesforce, Oracle financials, mainframe, web applications and spreadsheet.In addition to my duties above I am responsible for all SQA activities at Valassis. Transformed the SQA team from a manual to technical SQA team through the introduction of UI and service automation and performance engineering. Established best practices, Agile testing practices, introduced testing techniques and mentored team.

Responsible for the strategic direction and day to day operations of the Software Quality Assurance organization in support of our Financial Institutions line of business. Developed policies, procedures, and metrics to support both Agile and waterfall delivery to ensure applications (insurance, payments, asset recovery) across legacy and web were delivered with the highest quality. Worked with executives outside of the IT organization to understand their business and quality goals. Transformed an ineffective QA team into a high performing team. This was accomplished through mentoring, streamlining process, developing testing strategies, leading by example, collaboration and hiring (combination of seasoned professionals and college graduates) of more technical QA personnel. Introduced automation, risk based testing, exploratory testing, usability testing, API testing and regression testing to the team, Developed automation strategy in support of responsive web, mobile and legacy platforms. Automation went from zero to 40%. Automation included data creation and was incorporated into the nightly release cycle. It was also capable of being executed on demand. Collaborated with development peers to embrace Agile development and CI principles. Collaborated with the Business Analysts to engage QA earlier in the software development lifecycle. Worked closely with the UAT team to reduce duplication of effort and streamline the process. Worked with CISO to bring application security testing in house. Established a college hire program to bring new talent into the QA.

Responsible for the strategic direction of the Testing Domain across People, Process and Technology in support of an international organization of 900 QA professionals. The domain covers all aspects related to the Testing of Software throughout the entire SDLC including Application Security, Accessibility, Unit, Integration, Functional, System, Mobile, Automation, Test Data Management, Performance Testing, Call Center Testing, Production Validation and Environment Validation. Work closely with executive management to understand their business, advise on QA principles and processes, align strategy and defined reference architecture to meet their business goals. Advocate for continuous integration and continuous testing in support of our continuous delivery and DevOps goals. Developed automation strategy and increased automation from 4% to 50% which are executed daily and increased reuse of automation assets by 508%. Research and introduce new technologies moving the domain forward and setting the foundation for the strategic end state. Technologies introduced include Automation tools, Mobile, Accessibility, Quality Data Warehouse, Service Virtualization, Test Data Management, ETL and Voice testing tools. Strategic plan and execution on that plan led to USAA receiving the 2013 HP Software Customer Impact Award in the category of Application Transformation for our Mobile Testing strategy. Manage vendor relationships and developed strategic partnerships with key vendors. Industry speaker on Mobile Test Automation, Test Automation and was interviewed by Forrester for their Mobile Testing report. In addition I sit on several Customer Advisory Boards for HP and Cyara Solutions products and participate in Gartner research efforts supporting Gartner Magic Quadrants and Forrester Wave research. Vice Chair and founding member of a Disability Diversity Business Group that promotes awareness and inclusion of disabled employees.

Responsible for setting the strategic direction and day to day operations of the QA organization in support of our Supply Chain, BI and Healthcare lines of business. Led the QA organization through the transition from a waterfall to Agile development process. Established standards and best practices for metrics, automation and performance testing. Developed automation strategy, road map and set automation goals for each product. Implemented automation framework use across all projects. Moved performance testing from benchmarking to load and stress testing. Brought Acceptance Test Driven Development principles to the Application Development team. Partnered with the Business Analysts to drive quality earlier in the requirements process. Process improvements led to identification of defects early in the lifecycle and reduced production defects by 50%. Championed automation, performance testing, security testing, configuration management, continuous build environment and automated unit testing. Transformed QA organization into a high performance technical staff from a 100% manual testing approach. Partner with Portfolio Management, Business Analysts, PMO and Development to deliver high quality Supply Chain, Contracts, Spend Data Warehouse and Business Intelligence, Enterprise Web Applications, CRM (Siebel) and Clinical applications. Recruit, hire, coach and mentor team. Responsible for $8M budget. Organization consists of 4 managers and 54 individual contributors.

Responsible for the QA architecture and SQA team for the DB2 Utility and Recovery products. Developed QA strategy and processes. Founding member of QA Technical Architecture team responsible for improving quality across the BU. Drove automation strategy. Architected the BU nearshore strategy and implementation. Managed business relationship with nearshore partner. Managed all aspects of the product development lifecycle, drove schedules, managed risks and change. Worked on multiple projects and releases concurrently. Mentored team to improve SQA process and Agile techniques resulting in improved delivery schedules and quality. Worked closely with other product line managers to deliver integrated product solutions. Managed the schedule interlock and dependencies between products. Organization consisted of 2 managers and 24 individual contributors.

Second line manager responsible for all aspects of Quality Assurance for DSM LOB products, including Database Backup/Recovery, Performance, SQL Analysis, Space Management and DBA activities across multiple database platforms. Responsible for leading the SQA organization setting direction, goals and processes. Transformed organization from waterfall to a high performance Agile team . Agile advocate for development organization. SQA performed by global teams in multiple US locations and India. Defined iterative and Agile methods for SQA, automation strategies, coverage strategies, performance strategies, build acceptance testing, white box/black box strategies, and 508 compliance testing. Implemented source control for QA test suites. Worked with PMO to define QA deliverables throughout SDLC. Successfully led multiple concurrent product releases and teams. Organization consisted of 5 managers and 59 individual contributors. Led the transfer of development and SQA activities to team in India. Worked with Product Marketing to define the future strategy and product roadmap for the product suites being transferred.

Held multiple SQA management positions responsible for managing the SQA activities for Space Management, SQL Analysis, infrastructure, product interoperability and automation teams. Sought out by senior management to address quality concerns and team productivity. Brought GUI, automation, white box, I18N and repeatable testing techniques to the teams. Architected, designed and implemented product interoperability testing methodology and built the interoperability team. Improved team productivity through mentoring, automation, test case management, estimation and project management techniques.

SQA Manager responsible for all aspects of the System Verification and Acceptance Testing of a satellite Transmission Broadcast System. Built the team, established test strategy and test processes. Developed and executed tests to verify hardware and software installation, configuration, filing, scheduling, and playback. This system is a Client/Server Windows and Sun Solaris based platform which integrated RAID based video server technologies with existing tape based devices to deliver 540 broadcast channels. Established test procedures and processes, and was responsible for project planning, plant startup, metrics, Defect Tracking and customer briefings. Worked closely with the customer to ensure requirements were met.

Quality Assurance Lead responsible for the development and execution of functional and system verification tests for the MultiMedia Server application on the RS/6000. This application serves multimedia content from an AIX server to PC, MAC and other UNIX clients across FDDI, Ethernet, Token Ring or ATM networks. As Beta coordinator served as key interface to our customers to ensure product quality and directions meet customer needs. Managed 1500 square foot test lab. Managed subcontractors on the development and test team.

First line development manager responsible for the software development, SQA, customer support and manufacturing support for the IBM Xstation product line. Brought in to focus on improving product quality and customer satisfaction. Customer satisfaction was increased by 25% due to providing faster response time to customer problems and implementing repeatable and automated testing techniques. This along with enhanced diagnostic features improved overall product quality. Managed multiple product deliverables while concurrently providing customer support, maintaining schedules, quality and budget considerations.