Helping Small & Large businesses meet their IT needs & resolve problems

Working with the IS technology group, I delivered and managed a Programme wide test strategy to drive all QA activity across multiple workstreams involved in bringing all Bus Services across GM into Public control through a Franchising Model which according to Andy Burnham, is "the single biggest change to public transport in 40 years".Directed full functional and non-functional test activities for;* MS Dynamics based Complaints & 'Breaches' solution (Agile Delivery)* MS Dynamics & PowerApps Pages based Lost Property solution, including internal contact-centre access, and external facing Operator/Franchisee access (Agile Delivery)* AWS/Azure based CIAM solution to manage all Authentication / Authorization of external user access into TfGM (Agile Delivery)* Implementation of TransExchange file toolset (to exchange Bus-service data with Franchisees & government transport departments)* Implementation of all ITS on board equipment across all bus profiles (Vehicle Location, Audio-Visual, Comms Gateways, integration into Ticket Machine, Driver Standards telematics, Asset management)* Complex AWS based Payment Calculator to manage all aspects of the Franchisee payment structure, in accordance with multiple contractual schedules, including invoicing and payments (via SAP). (Agile Delivery)* AWS based TfGM Strategic Integration platform to manage data-movements across all components (Agile Delivery)All of which are direct dependencies of the "Bee Network" delivery and roll out across 3 Tranches.

As part of the team working to deliver the Greater Manchester Clean Air Plan, I managed all aspects of QA across the delivery of a greenfield integrated platform to allow Small to Medium Business owners apply for Grants / Funding from £120m Clean Air Fund, to upgrade the most polluting of business vehicles and mitigate charges under the "Clean Air Zone" scheme and reduce local pollution levels.Managed the full end to end activities of all testing across the multi-faceted solution involving an application portal for vehicle owners, automated eligibility checks (from multiple data sources) and award of financial support, integrated with multiple legacy TfGM applications, accounting systems and payment gateways, as well as creating new Vehicle Dealer portals allowing a consumer "voucher" creation and Vehicle dealer redemption purchase flow.

Managed the full stack QA processes and activities across the creation & iteration of a new Azure based B2B Wholesaling platform allowing Sainsburys to enter the Wholesaling market; it’s biggest market growth in 2019.Managed the formation and implementation of an automation framework (Robot & Python Framework) to ultimately support a DevOps, Agile delivery approach.Acting as an Agility coach: leveraging my experience in migrating teams from Waterfall to Agile ways of working, I was key in enabling the programme to smoothly adopt and continue to mature a scalable Agile approach from a legacy waterfall approach.A key influencer in co-defining an Azure Dev-Ops, Agile-SSDLC delivery approach and pipelines for the programme, enabling efficient delivery of code to production, with high assurance levels and zero end user impact.Worked with Solution Architect’s day to day to build quality & testability into solution design at source.Work with Product Lead / Owners day to day to ensure epics, stories and tasks are written in a clear, understandable way that allow the engineering teams to easily take these through the Agile ceremonies easily.Modernised the legacy service transition (waterfall) process to remove administrative work to support frequent deployments to production.Managed a programme level forum of technical & process improvements to ensure the programme can technically and efficiently deliver the product increments planned short, mid and long term.

• Managed the delivery of functional and non-functional testing across a mixed pipeline of programme delivery, balancing changes to legacy digital platforms, in parallel with the delivery of a major website platform replacement.• Managed the estimation and prioritisation of test effort for all digital pipeline work to ensure accurate forecasting of resource demand and ensure cost estimates fall in line with project’s delivery path and IP funding.• Through working closely with Digital Product Owners, defined non-functional requirements that in turn informed and underpinned the Digital programme test strategy.• Overarching 4 / 5 scrum teams, helped deliver an Agile transformation that saw the Digital department make a fundamental shift from Waterfall ways of working / tools, to Scrum / Kanban agile methodologies; maintaining a focus on high quality standards and guiding the test community (20+ testers) throughout the transition phase.• Defined and embedded the digital test strategy; subsequently adapting this to cater for the shift to agile ways of working and a new tool-set (Inc. Jira, Confluence, Selenium, Appium, Jenkins, Octopus Deploy, Git).• Owned / Managed multiple complex test environments comprising 12+ Web-servers, multiple Oracle DB’s, stubs, drivers and externally dependent applications and services, to ensure suitable test environments were appropriately provisioned to cater for the programme delivery.• Provided test consultancy during both ideation and delivery of new technologies (consolidated API gateway / Micro-services, Push Notifications, Amazon Alexa Skill, Facebook app, Virtual Assistant ‘Chatbot’). • Managed a team of 4 automation testers; acting as continual improvements lead, focussing on continually evolving the automation framework to leverage new innovations (Jenkins, Selenium, Appium, Browserstack) and deliver best business value and assurance levels.

• Recruited and managed a mix of Permanent and Contractor staff to create SIT and UAT teams to successfully deliver all phases of testing across a multi-million pound, highly complex infrastructure solution; comprising multiple bespoke developed new applications, 3rd party supplied applications and SaaS services, integrated via hundreds of REST API’s and ultimately customer-faced by two Native Mobile-Apps (iOS / Android) and contact centre Web-UI.• Defined the Programme Test Strategy and a test-driven development approach to deliver all facets of testing to aggressive timescales; balancing infrastructure, application, integration and Mobile-App development activities across multiple suppliers and 3rd party development groups.• Defined digital test approach to efficiently validate native mobile app developments and Web UI's.• Implemented an iterative code delivery approach that delivered functionality in distinct functional tranches; enabling efficient delivery through end to end testing of groups of functionality, allowing the parallel delivery of several elements without conflict.• Defined and managed a defect triage process to ensure efficient allocation and resolution of ~2000 defect tickets via HP-ALM to the appropriate supplier for efficient resolution.• Co-ordinated the delivery of code with each of the 3rd party suppliers & developers which included 3rd party Mobile App developers, Cognizant provided development teams, Experian’s CCMP product, 3rd party supplied SDK/Cloud based Geo-location capabilities, IBM supplied Analytics SDK / Package, IBM supplied Push notification services, TSYS supplied account management & ‘Push’ Alert triggering system.• Managed multiple test environments, setup with a complex configuration of components (individual and shared), middleware, stubs, drivers, harnesses and monitoring tools.• Provided weekly reporting to Snr level stakeholder group via weekly Steering Co. meetings.

• Managed a mixed team of test resources to successfully complete testing of a major sanctions remediation project; delivered to a fixed date (agreed with the FED), tasked with mitigating repeat regulatory fines of $300mm for non-compliance of US sanctions policies.• Maintained project plan, test strategy, environment configuration and code delivery schedule throughout an incremental design and delivery approach; delivering modular components of a reconciliation, reporting & remediation solution (Multi-streamed data transfer & transform, warehousing, interrogation, reporting & business process).• Worked & co-ordinated with 3rd party system suppliers to ensure delivery of 3rd party owned code development work synchronised with test activities across multiple work-streams.• Worked with the project Business Analysts to maintain a centralised artefact list of all relevant project documentation; critical on account of the modular design being developed incrementally in parallel with development work.

• Managed a team of 6-8 Senior test leads & analysts to deliver the quality assurance (SIT / UAT / Implementation phases) of Barclaycard’s #1 strategic $250mm project for 2013 (Bespoke Offers products - bespokeoffers.co.uk) for all consumer facing functionality across multiple delivery streams (Mobile Application, Mobile Web & Desktop Web), utilising an Agile development methodology.• Managed all actions from daily defect calls & check-point calls taken twice daily to bridge offshore time-zones spanning both ends of the UK working day to ensure expedient defect fix delivery.• Delivered daily summary reporting to ensure offshore developers received timely feedback on daily code releases into multiple environments for differing work-streams.• Managed daily rounds of regression and consistency testing, to ensure solution stability and the customer experience across the solution was consistent whilst developed separately and iterated daily.• Lead the Triage process to handle feedback and observations reported via multiple inputs during a soft-launch ‘Live trial’ phase for an audience of 400+ internal colleagues.• Built strong relationships with offshore 3rd party developers and key business stakeholders (product owners) to foster the ‘One team’ development approach of the Agile methodology.

• Managed portfolio of (10+) concurrent projects within the innovative Digital Consumer Payments business unit, delivering a first-to-market Contactless Mobile NFC Payment proposition.• Managed, and helped recruit, a team of 11 analysts and test leads to deliver a series of core projects and enhancements, within exceptionally challenging, commercially driven timelines in the fast paced mobile technology market.• Managed resource plans and cross party run plans, with internal and external development teams based onshore and off; European based 3rd party suppliers, UK based Mobile Network Operator and internal PMO.• Managed daily defect and incident resolution meetings – driving forward a strict prioritised agenda to optimise execution progression, whilst ensuring confidence was maintained by the business stakeholders.• Working closely with the technical implementation manager, delivered and executed a complex implementation validation (Live proving) phase; managing critical post-live incident resolution efforts across onshore and offshore support staff, including 3rd party suppliers and contributors to ensure the successful transition of all new architecture into the Production environment ahead of customer enablement.• Delivered an enhanced dashboard reporting suite to automate daily KPI’s across the portfolio, cutting reporting effort significantly.• Delivered several process changes to environment management and planning – to enable better scheduling and execution forecasting, avoiding unforeseen outages.• Implemented process consolidation changes across the core test groups (CIT, SIT, UAT and Security), to gain economies of scale and streamline demands on 3rd party suppliers whilst resulting in better inventoried stock management of core test assets and hardware.

• Managed Data migration work stream of major card portfolio acquisition (~1.4mm accounts) from rival credit card issuer to deliver acceptance testing scope.• Managed multiple business stakeholder groups through joint Integration and Acceptance test approach; delivered via a complex multi-cycle & dual phase delivery approach spread across multiple test environments.• Delivered ongoing daily stakeholder group detailed reporting thought execution phase & weekly reporting of work stream status throughout all project phases.

Responsible for delivering Quality of project solutions against Business requirements on behalf of UK consumer group for Citigroup.Managed testing effort (UAT) for core domain within multi-million $ project to migrate from in house suite of account management systems to new consolidated collections application, Oracle pre-decision engine profiling model, Decision engine and workflow tool on a shared world-wide platform. (CACS – ITO).Managed a team of junior analysts to successfully deliver core website architecture migration projects for Egg.com.

Responsible for the Quality management & delivery pipeline of all monthly BAU changes and additions to the UK Card application decisioning engine against Marketing & Risk requirements.Designed and built several Visual Basic (VBA) based automated testing tools to both increase testing process efficiencies and reduce requisition errors prior to testing handover, through validation of business requests.Responsible for the proactive monitoring of the suite of card aquistion systems to ensure correct data flow through key systemic integration points (including bureau data).Designed, built and implemented an automated suite of reporting & monitoring tools, saving the business £5M revenue; Recognised with an international award for excellence at a US Awards ceremony.