Larry Backman Email & Phone Number

Framingham, Ma

Led planning, definition and execution of a transformation of a 1200 person product engineering organization from a waterfall model to an agile methodology based on the Scrum Alliance model. This encompassed 3 strategic initiatives to improve the business’s ability to more quickly create and deliver quality software and to increase customer interest and revenue. They were: Agile transformation – Defined, designed, and delivered a plan to move the 1,300 person organization from a 30… Show more Led planning, definition and execution of a transformation of a 1200 person product engineering organization from a waterfall model to an agile methodology based on the Scrum Alliance model. This encompassed 3 strategic initiatives to improve the business’s ability to more quickly create and deliver quality software and to increase customer interest and revenue. They were: Agile transformation – Defined, designed, and delivered a plan to move the 1,300 person organization from a 30 year old waterfall methodology to an agile product development model. The plan focused on cultural and collaborative aspects as well as agile artifacts, ceremonies and mechanics. This included a multiyear, global agile training and education plan, formation of role based communities of interest, jumpstarting an agile coaching circle and working with management on both agile role and responsibilities as well as metrics and measures for success.Quality Automation Initiative – Assessed automation across the 120 scrum team organization and developed and led a multiplatform, multi tool automation strategy spanning mainframe, web and distributed platforms. Product owner for a team of 5 engineers. Consolidated, stabilized and sustained internal frameworks while providing a service desk model to the rest of the organization on problems with automation tools from internally developed frameworks to external open source.Engineering efficiency initiative – Worked with engineering managers and coaches to assess engineering maturity and efficiency within the organization, identified operational gaps and came up with a model for improvement that teams used for self-improvement over time. This was one of the key execution measurements associated with the agile transformation. In some teams key engineering cycle times were reduced from months to days as a result of this model. Show less

Framingham, Ma

Responsible for day to day engineering operations of a 1,500 person R&D division. Role was both technical and operational and focused internally. Supported an Executive VP and 10 Product VP’s, each of whom had a single product line. Division wide visibility, responsibility and accountability for:• Engineering budget of 175M$• Cross site hiring and geographic alignment• Project/portfolio monitoring, review and governance• Software tooling, lab and hardware… Show more Responsible for day to day engineering operations of a 1,500 person R&D division. Role was both technical and operational and focused internally. Supported an Executive VP and 10 Product VP’s, each of whom had a single product line. Division wide visibility, responsibility and accountability for:• Engineering budget of 175M$• Cross site hiring and geographic alignment• Project/portfolio monitoring, review and governance• Software tooling, lab and hardware infrastructure• Software processes and procedures – coached Product VPs and teams on the need for nightly builds and quality automation across all product lines, set up measures on these operations.• Global Associate engineer hiring program including training, knowledge capture and transfer – over a 6 year period this program hired over 400 ASE’s and provided risk mitigation and business continuity to a rapidly aging organization. Show less

Framingham, Ma

Oversee product quality for 5 major security products with over 400M$ in annual revenue. Responsibility for 200 QA resources spread across 5 locations in the US, UK, India, Israel and Australia. Voice of Quality for the customer. Strategic initiatives included:• Work with other senior quality peers at CA in defining a corporate Total Product Quality initiative which spanned the entire product lifecycle. Improved both product quality as well as quality processes and operations within all… Show more Oversee product quality for 5 major security products with over 400M$ in annual revenue. Responsibility for 200 QA resources spread across 5 locations in the US, UK, India, Israel and Australia. Voice of Quality for the customer. Strategic initiatives included:• Work with other senior quality peers at CA in defining a corporate Total Product Quality initiative which spanned the entire product lifecycle. Improved both product quality as well as quality processes and operations within all product lines of the business unit• Directly managed a small independent automation team focused on test frameworks and drove continuously improving nightly automation into each product line. • Worked with corporate IT engineers to define and implement “Labs on Demand” – a set of shared systems both virtual and physical which were automatically provisioned with a user driven selection of operating system, 3rd party components and multiple CA products.• Coached teams on consistent quality processes in sustaining engineering across the BU. Instill a quality driven release mentality to all sustaining releases which was based on a Selenium Test Driven Development model• Drove cross product testing strategies and operations within the BU as well as cross BU. Show less

Waltham, Ma

Netegrity builds Access Control and Identity Management products for global enterprises. Web sites and underlying software applications are securely protected through a Policy Server. User’s identities and profiles are managed via Identity Management Services. Single sign on to enterprise environments is achieved by a combination of Access Control and Identity Management.• Initiated an offshore quality organization which has grown from 8 to 29 people in 3 years. • Worked as part of… Show more Netegrity builds Access Control and Identity Management products for global enterprises. Web sites and underlying software applications are securely protected through a Policy Server. User’s identities and profiles are managed via Identity Management Services. Single sign on to enterprise environments is achieved by a combination of Access Control and Identity Management.• Initiated an offshore quality organization which has grown from 8 to 29 people in 3 years. • Worked as part of quality management team to define a quality strategy focused on improving defect removal efficiency, increasing automation and test coverage while holding to level costs.• Managed to level cost goal while increasing team size and productivity by utilizing offshore personnel• Reorganized 15 on site and 29 offsite personnel into 4 product oriented test teams each led by a project leader responsible for total quality of all releases of a single product.• Defined and implemented QA lifecycle and process for 4 product line, multiple release test environment. • Delivered on time test results for all major releases of 4 products on 5 platforms over 2 years• Defined architecture and implementation plan for 3 automated nightly regression harnesses; one Perl based; one Ant/Junit based, and the third a Perl wrapper for an existing Silktest automation suite. Implementation delivered on 4 operating systems.• Achieved Defect Removal efficiency of 94% as measured by external consultant• Ongoing ability to comprehensive new technology as needed to support product line needs. Show less

Davox builds a 24 by 7 Call Center based on a complex mix of platforms and technologies. Unix, NT, PBX’s, CTI, SQL databases; Java components and Powerbuilder clients are all melded together to create a highly available, mission critical application with a Solaris server at the core.• Took control of a drifting 2 year old development project spanning 4 development sites; 2 internal, 2 external and after 9 months shipped the 1st salable version of the product.• Led and shipped a… Show more Davox builds a 24 by 7 Call Center based on a complex mix of platforms and technologies. Unix, NT, PBX’s, CTI, SQL databases; Java components and Powerbuilder clients are all melded together to create a highly available, mission critical application with a Solaris server at the core.• Took control of a drifting 2 year old development project spanning 4 development sites; 2 internal, 2 external and after 9 months shipped the 1st salable version of the product.• Led and shipped a maintenance release of the same product 5 months later. This version is currently active at 15 customer sites. Wrote requirements and product definition specifications for both versions of this product,• As part of a development management team introduced a series of processes and procedures to bring order to chaos. These included a development lifecycle, specification repositories, product source control, and defect escalation and response procedures.• Worked cross functionally with product marketing and service to define a one year, multi-product, multi-release product roadmap.• Hands on involvement in critical customer problems. These included a Powerbuilder/Winsock interface problem, a SQL/TCP performance problem and localization of client software to BIG-5 Chinese character set.• Show less

Waltham, Ma

Epicon developed a web based software distribution system for Windows clients. Based on the promise of this technology Epicon was acquired by Nortel, Inc in Q32000 as part of their application service provider strategy. My responsibilities including engineering management as well as product definition and leadership.• Staffed up a 20 person development team from an original 10 person group• Helped architect complete HTTP based software distribution product out of 3 individual… Show more Epicon developed a web based software distribution system for Windows clients. Based on the promise of this technology Epicon was acquired by Nortel, Inc in Q32000 as part of their application service provider strategy. My responsibilities including engineering management as well as product definition and leadership.• Staffed up a 20 person development team from an original 10 person group• Helped architect complete HTTP based software distribution product out of 3 individual pieces of technology by centering product on Microsoft IIS 3.0 using a COM/ASP backend and an HTML/Javascript front end.• Wrote product requirements and definition documents for this product.• Organized, executed, and delivered a web based Windows software distribution product.• Show less

North Andover, Ma

FTP provided a TCP/IP protocol stack and application suite for Microsoft operating systems. In this role I was responsible for the TCP/IP stack as well as research into then new TCP/IP technologies like IPV6, Secure IP, Mobile IP and Voice over IP.• Initiated research and development efforts in Mobile IP, IP Security, RSVP, and Voice over IP using RTP and RTCP.• Led initial research into FTP’s Virtual IP program, an attempt to transform the company from a TCP/IP stack vendor into a… Show more FTP provided a TCP/IP protocol stack and application suite for Microsoft operating systems. In this role I was responsible for the TCP/IP stack as well as research into then new TCP/IP technologies like IPV6, Secure IP, Mobile IP and Voice over IP.• Initiated research and development efforts in Mobile IP, IP Security, RSVP, and Voice over IP using RTP and RTCP.• Led initial research into FTP’s Virtual IP program, an attempt to transform the company from a TCP/IP stack vendor into a VPN vendor.Chief Architect• Provided technical expertise to the management team that took FTP from a $20M private company to a $130M public company . Contributed to TCP technology strategy that was the foundation of this growth. Provided technical support with analysts during IPO process.• Built a series of technical teams that created leading edge, high quality subsystems for the PCTCP and OnNet product lines. This included the TCP, NFS, Remote Access, Install and SDK teams. Architectural and hands on technical involvement with each of these teams.• Drove requirements, design, delivery and release of a new Windows 3.x/Windows 95 VxD based product suite and initiated port of this product to NT 4.0.• Technically led, supervised, and managed a series of more than 10 PC/TCP and OnNet product releases over a 4 year period. Project size ranged from 30 to over 100 people.• Implemented NFS file systems on OS/2, Windows and Windows 95. Implemented print redirectors on DOS, Windows, Windows95 and OS/2.• Show less

Boxborough, Ma