I defined the Core Infrastructure Programme’s Testing Policy, Strategy and Plan collateral encompassing their flagship, greenfield Telco Cloud platform and integrated Vendor Virtualised (VV) platforms. I engaged and managed an expert test and automation team leading to 99% test case automation for the successful validation of the Telco Cloud platform and continue to grow and refine the regression pack whilst maintain a steady test hearbeat for the ongoing platform expansions. In parallel, I govern the vendor (Ericsson, Nokia & Mavenir) test activities in the VV estate and manage VMO2 ORT for the same.

I founded Cornell Consulting Ltd. to provide expert Testing Services consultancy to the Information Technology industry.To date, Cornell Consulting Ltd. has successfully delivered on 3 contract awards with major industry stakeholders such as CSC (now DXC) and Logicalis UK.

I provided Project & Test Management consultancy to transition and transform the Logicalis Cloud platforms to a new Data Centre. I delivered a robust project schedule, clearly defining interdependencies with the other projects within the programme and the wider BAU activities and processes. I successfully navigated the various Logicalis UK customers (internal and external) through the discovery, design, build, system test, migration, UAT and legacy platform decommissioning phases of the project and closed down project activities with a thorough lessons learnt exercise.

With no pre-existing Logicalis Test Policy, Test Collateral Templates or Test Tooling, I delivered expert Programme Test Management consultancy to Logicalis on the £10m+ NATS Foundation Services programme; a Multi-Tenant, Service Oriented Architecture. Core Infrastructure work-streams included a 5 site MPLS backbone with secure routing capability on Cisco ASR 9Ks, Virtual Compute, Storage and internetworks on Flexpod, Identity & Access Management via Net IQ integrated with AD 2016 and supporting utility services such as DNS, IPAM and NTP provided on Infoblox Grids.I collaborated with NATS through requirements workshops and produced the programme Requirements Traceability Matrix (RTM) showing traceability from the 2000+ source requirements, through design and down to an agreed set of Test Cases ensuring 100% coverage.In parallel I produced the programme Test Strategy, defining the governance model and test approach for the test campaign, the subordinate Test Plan document and managed the test team to produce an agreed set of Test Procedures underpinning the Test Cases defined in the RTM.I successfully navigated the Logicalis programme management team through various work-stream Test Readiness Reviews and the Test Team through the associated Test Stages in accordance with the Test Strategy and Plan. The platform successfully passed its Handover Gate having provided NATS assurance through the production and regular sharing of detailed Test Evidence and management of NATS witnessing, Logicalis Test Activity. I have delivered daily Defect Management, ensuring that issues raised are remediated, re-tested and regression tested appropriately. Throughout the Test Stages I have delivered detailed Management Information to both internal and external stakeholders, measuring Test Progress and Defect Resolution. I have produced the Test Documentation supporting contract Acceptance including the Test Completion Report and Requirements Compliance element of the RTM.

I delivered Programme Test Management consultancy to CSC on the Defence Business Services Account for a £35m Mid Term Technical Refresh. The programme was to deliver green field networks for the future Production, Disaster Recovery and Development environments on new IBM Hardware and AIX 7, Windows Server 2012 and Oracle Linux 7 Operating Systems providing the platform for the upgraded eBusiness Suite, OBIEE and OPA Application Stacks. I began supporting the programme team by delivering firm estimates and a resource profile for detailed scheduling. I reviewed the requirements and wrote test plan documentation covering the Infrastructure and Application deliverables. I also reviewed the high level technical design documentation and guided 3 test leads through the review of the low level designs during the Static Test phase. I built a team of 23 test analysts and 3 test leads and commenced them working on building test scripts for execution during the Dynamic Test phase. This included 3 Automation Test specialists and 3 Performance Test specialists working on upgrading the existing regression and performance test packs built in HP UFT and HP LoadRunner respectively as the test tooling and client desktops were being upgraded also. Throughout the Dynamic Test phase I delivered Management Information to show progress through the phase and liaised with the customer Test Assurance Managers to assist them with planning their UAT phase. The customer embarked on a 9 week UAT phase which I supported and it successfully completed on schedule. I produced Test Completion Reports covering the Dynamic Test phase and the customer’s UAT and at the final Business Readiness Review in August all the key stakeholders took a Go decision based on the content. I produced a lessons learnt document for the overall programme and conducted handover to the BAU Test Team.

I joined Atos as the Programme Test Manager on the Dept. of Health Account, responsible for managing a team of 8 system test analysts executing tests against a new client infrastructure designed to integrate disparate bodies of the overarching Dept. of Health on a single, shared service. The programme was in a critical state regarding the number of defects raised by the customer in UAT. I established a refined approach to testing and instilled best practices for the management of our test environments, the test accounts and devices used during both internal testing and in support of the ongoing customer UAT phase. This dramatically reduced the number of rogue defects being raised internally and in UAT enabling engineering resources to focus on fixes for the highest priority defects. I fostered an extremely good working relationship with the customer at all levels and was seen by them as a trusted professional. Following the successful transition I was retained on the Account to manage test activities for BAU and new projects such as the onboarding of new client bodies. I reworked the account test strategy having introduced process improvements such as test automation using HP QTP for regression testing.

Promoted to the role of test manager, I ran a 7 strong team tasked with testing numerous enterprise scale applications, including a mixed grade messaging solution with new associated PKI, Quest Active Roles and a bespoke Provisioning system using XML files for batch processing. Following numerous successfully tested deliveries in the first 6 months I was asked to take on another 7 man test team who were struggling to effectively test Enterprise Search and Asynchronous Collaboration software built on MOSS 2007 including integration with HP Autonomy's Meridio Records Management System, under very tight timescales with demanding project expectations. I successfully reorganised the team and restructured their approach to ensure that we were ultimately able to deliver a quality assured solution on-time to the client. My responsibilities include the production of formal test collateral (test plans, reports, scripts, execution schedules and defects) for client delivery and internal use, daily reporting of test activities to the programme board, defect tracking and management and constant liaison with all project stakeholders. I am currently revising the Test Strategy and Plans for the delivery of a similar solution to a higher security domain for the client, reviewing the resource allocation and skills matrix to ensure that we are able to deliver another quality product to an even more aggressive schedule.

Working in the Core Infrastructure team of the ATLAS consortium on a key MoD infrastructure project, I was responsible for the production of Test Plans, Scripts and Suites in Mercury Test Director, preparation of the testing environment, static review of high and low level design documentation, validation of media content, formal manual functional verification testing of the complete range of infrastructure components in a pre-production environment, raising of defects where appropriate, validation of fixes to existing defects and finally the production of detailed Test Reports. Additional tasks encompassed the production of internal codes of practice to help refine and improve the productivity of the team and ensure a consistent approach was adopted across testing and release practices including closer liaison with designers and integration teams whilst tracking the life-cycle of in-flight projects and configuration items using Borland StarTeam.

Seconded to work on a key refresh project for the DWP using the specialist skills developed in my previous role. My main input was the bespoke design, test and implementation of a distributed Micromeasure infrastructure built on Solaris 9 servers with agents spread across a wide range of OS server platforms including Windows 2000/2003, RHEL 3/4, AIX 5.x and Solaris 9/10 on both virtualised and standalone instances. This involved the production of High Level Architecture Designs (HLAD), Detailed System Designs, Bills of Materials (BoM), Sub-System Test Plans/Scripts, Implementation Guides and Support Guides. My time with this client also included a number of consultancy and engineering sessions with the platform teams to help bring the Windows Server 2003 systems based on VMWare ESX architecture back on schedule and improve their quality by producing and instigating the use of a structured test approach.

Promoted to a specialist team and responsible for proof of concept design projects using virtualisation technologies such as VMWare's ESX platforms and Cisco's Multi-Fabric I/O in order to define EDS product portfolios for early cloud offerings. I worked strongly with US counterparts and closely with the key hardware and technology vendors to establish a number of pay for use models based on CPU consumption utilising Symantec's Micromeasure metering package, for which I became the European Subject Matter Expert (SME). My work with these technologies also played a key role in the vendor's product development due to my early involvement in their emergence and the Beta testing I performed.

My role saw me providing specialist 3rd line support of a mixed Windows 2000/2003 Server Active Directory enterprise for the Department of Constitutional Affairs. I was responsible for all infrastructure and non-code based software incidents under EDS control for this client, including user/group management, security and system clamps via GPOs, backup scheduling and maintenance with Symantec's Backup Exec and application delivery using Group Policy. The role also included project based work such as new site design, test and implementation work. Additional areas that I specialised in throughout this period include DNS, DHCP, TCP/IP networking, Antivirus solutions, Security patching using WSUS, MS Office application and end-user support.

My role involved a combination of asset management and implementation of a wide range of secure systems for global distribution. Build projects varied from static rack based server farms for centralised messaging and bespoke information packages to mobile rugged racks and workstations for strategic deployments capable of standalone and managed activity.