Neil Saunders Email & Phone Number

London

York, United Kingdom

Through Monster Quality Ltd I offer consultant services in the software testing industry as an ISEB qualified professional as a Test Manager/Program Test Manager. I am also steeped in Agile methodologies and also provide Agile Scrum Master, Coach, Agile Delivery skills. Specialities and Key Strengths; knowledge and experience of Agile Scrum and Kanban methodologies, reviewing and improving business test strategies or creating where they do not yet exist, designing and writing test plans, resource allocation, test coaching and training, test estimation and scheduling, requirements gathering and analysis, test environment management, test case generation, test scripting, review and improve business defect management strategy both in the SDLC and Live environment, design and implementation of test metrics, defining business specific quality gates, team leadership and mentoring, test case execution and defect logging.

Programme Test Manager and quickly taking on Release and Environments management responsibilities as well as operating as an Agile coach/Scrum Master role for the Acorn program, a large digital transformation program to bring Salesforce CRM, CPQ, and ancillary projects to Clear Channel International.

Working as the Test Lead in an Agile Scrum Team within the larger “Future@Lloyds” (FAL) program, Agile processes and tools (JIRA, X-ray, Azure Dev-Ops, bitbucket) were well established and I was comfortable stepping into the team’s cadence. Working with other Scrum Teams to understand how their work directly impacted our solution meant collaborative working was essential.I worked with the team as an Agile Coach to continue to improve our velocity and adherence to the scrum framework, setting up and facilitating ceremonies, removing impediments for the team, and working with the Product Owner to support their backlog refinement and priority decisions.

Leeds, England, United Kingdom

Contacted by a previous Project Manager I was invited to join the programme team at Redmayne Bentley as Programme Test Manager and Workstream Lead.Working with an offshore 3rd party delivery team providing a SaaS solution and full ETL data migration, I lead a team of over 50 SMEs and Superusers through the program's complete System Test and UAT phases as Test Manager, Trainer, Mentor, and Coach.Produced a Test Strategy and Test Plan that would be used for this project, with the intent also to be used as the framework for Redmayne to follow on future projects. This included Defect Management, Release Management, and Fundamental Test Process training documentsMy biggest achievement was the mentoring and development of one individual who showed great aptitude and went from being a testing novice to a qualified test analyst and well-prepared for test lead roles in the 2 years we worked together.

Re-contacted by CPP and asked to be test lead for their large data migration project for a three month term which was extended to over twelve months.Leading the ETL system test efforts and being hands-on with the test design and execution as well as planning and co-ordinating the UAT effort with business resources within the already existing strategy.This project coincided with a change to the working methodology to Agile Scrum where I was asked to help set-up the newly formed teams in Agile ways of working (ceremonies, estimation techniques, new processes and terminology) as well as guide management on the necessary mindset change as well as how to seamlessly integrate into the established processes that were not changing (yet!), identifying several high impact risks and mitigating them accordingly.The project was ongoing and I was offered a one-year extension to complete the project but budget re-assignment due to Covid-19 caused the contract to end.

Manchester, United Kingdom

Harrogate, United Kingdom

York

After 15 months with Blenheim group as System Test Lead it had been identified that there was a need to continue to improve and manage the newly implemented system test and release management processes and the subsequent identified risks. As such in April 2013 I was promoted to Test and Release Manager and given authority, responsibility and accountability over the System Test function and the Release Management process.

York

Blenheim Group consists of two companies, Phoenix Software and License Dashboard which produce, in house, licencing and Software Asset Management software. As the system test lead for the group my responsibility has been to implement a best practice (ISO and IEEE) test approach and to continually work improve the test function with a formal, structured test strategy.

Betfred

An ISEB certified test analyst with over 4 years experience of testing across multiple business areas including e-commerce, payments, mobile and VB applications. Looking for a new, challenging testing role.