Contracting to finish up a major strategic project

Leading teams and engineering initiatives with an eye towards answering the question "how do you build an engineering department that is healthy and worth working at?"Managed 12 developers and testers across three delivery teams, including 1managerCreated a world class QA team by hiring and training test engineersMentored and grew developers, testers, managers, and team members outside ofthe engineering departmentFormed several delivery teams by hiring and selecting team members form existingstaff to create teams that could norm and begin delivering software quicklyDeveloped a company-wide automation strategy that reduced the time spent onregression tests by halfIntroduced a test case management system that unified our test cases and improvedour ability to provide updates on testing and deliver mobile software more quicklyOversaw several projects to reduce the company’s reliance on manual interventions,buggy software, and reduced tech debt significantly while empowering the teams tomake technical decisions.One of these projects reduced on-call duties from 35 hours a week to 5 hours aweek. The team was given a time box and allowed to select features from a listthat they felt would best improve the software. In addition to the time saved,the team felt empowered by their role in decision making.Two other projects targeted software that had been partially replaced. I wasable to leverage my knowledge of the systems and good will with stakeholdersto define exactly what additional features needed to be ported over in order forthe old software to be finally depreciated. This increased the efficiency of theOperations team and allowed us to begin tracking the work they were doing inorder to find places where inefficiencies lingered.Developed and nurtured client and vendor relationshipsCreated several training programs to increase the knowledge and expertise of ourteams including onboarding, leadership, giving feedback, and holistic testing

2017Triagile 2017 – Risk Based TestingTestBash Philly 2017 – Risk Based Testing Because You Can’t Do EVERYTHING 2018TISQA 2018 – Riske Based Testing: What Happens When You Can’t Test EverythingQuality Jam 2018 – Communicating Risk Because You Can’t Test Everything (Top 5 Talk)Heartifacts 2018 – Creating a Language Around Risk CAST 2018 – Risk Based Testing: Communicating WHY You Can’t Test Everything STARWest 2018 – Communicating Risk Because You Can’t Test Everything PNSQC 2018 – Communicating Risk Because You Can’t Test Everything – talk rated as second favorite overall!2019Triagile 2019 – The Only Good Quality Metric is Morale Saucecon 2019 – Building Automation Engineers from ScratchAgile Testing Days USA 2019 – The Deal (co-presented with Adrian P. Dunston)Agile Testing Days USA 2019 – Risk Assessments for Teams and IndividualsCAST 2019 – Building Automation Engineers from ScratchPNSQC 2019 – The Only Good Quality Metric is MoralePNSQC 2019 – Building Automation Engineers from ScratchPNSQC 2019 – Testing in the Golden Age of Quality panelPNSQC 2019 – Communicating Risk. Voted third best presenter overall at PNSQCRed Hat QECamp – Keynote: Testers Are the Connectors of Our Agile Teams

Managed a small team of testers as team leadWorked through complex client concerns from a variety of client contacts including management, engineers, testers, and product. Designed test plans and automation suites to satisfy client and internal expectations Directed client meetingsCreated a weekly learning session with the global QA team including bringing in external experts and mentoring internal talents

Mentored junior QA team membersAttended meetings as QA representative to advocate for quality Scrum master for a delivery team, running all ceremoniesFormulated and enacted test plans for interconnected product ecosystemHelped implement new test case management system with Xray for JiraDid significant production troubleshooting when issues came inCreated and delivered training on testing methodologiesRefined manual regression test suite including updating older testsOwned RCA process for all delivery teams from creation of RCA to meetingsExtensive use of MySQL to audit data Logs and production monitoringHelped facilitate production deploys

--Manual testing of ReverbNation's “software as a service” music-based website on most modern desktop browsers and operating systems as well as iOS and Android mobile devices--Creation and execution of test plans for large scale products--Filing defects and improvements against the product --Triage and escalation of defects as requiredWorked in and with Agile teams to better implement Agile methodology--Helped foster a culture of quality in the company and team--Designing, maintaining, and executing ad hoc MySQL queries--Managed several QA and general interns including creating and directing summer projects and providing mentorship--Trained support and other teams on proper ticket filing and troubleshooting

Technical and customer support on the WebAssign product line.--Answering phone calls--Taking and resolving tickets submitted over the web

System administration and technical support for website hosting.Also managed payroll and designed scripts to run audits of the webservers, determining which accounts were valid and which were no longer in use

* Provided individual and team metrics * Assisted with process and policy implementation and improvement * Preformed services as a 'go-between' for support and engineering * Created weekend schedules and managed PTO and group events * Contact point for India-based night shift supervisor, supplementing the work of the supervisor when needed * Contact point for Sales Engineering team, providing summaries of tickets, list of tickets, and informing the technicians on the tickets of the customer's desires as communicated by the Sales Engineering team * Contact point for Australia-based department, Customer Service, and outside management into the team ; * Acted as first management escalation point for customer issues ; * Presented new projects, progress, and metrics to management ; * Participated in conference calls between technicians and customers ; * Ran performance reviews ; * Interviewed candidates for positions ; * Ran training for new hires and outside customers and assisted with the development of new training plans

Worked with HR/IT to improve internal website, processes, and mold existing project plan templates into RACI -base models

Tech support for the College of Engineering. In addition to helping the general populace over the phone, also provided hands-on support to the 150 users within the CoE who were running CoE builds. Also checked labs on a daily basis, trained new hires.