Nick Vale Email & Phone Number

A hands-on security cleared ISEB qualified testing expert who has performed test execution, analysis, management, governance and business development for clients including HP, Steria, Centrica, McKesson, W S Atkins, Siemens and IBM, as well as small software houses. Comfortable managing and performing all types of testing, (functional, non-functional, integration, end to end, UAT etc.), with 20+ years of experience Nick has directly managed teams from two to 20 people, had oversight of outsourced supplier testing and has led a testing organisation of more than 150 staff responsible for the applications and infrastructure testing of a $500 million IT delivery business. A highly effective, delivery focused manager, cool under pressure who leads by example, building, mentoring and motivating teams to meet demanding schedule, cost and quality goals.

• Test analysis, planning, design and execution for Agile projects managed by Detica for a large government client• CRM requirements analysis and specification plus copywriting for a national road safety charity's local group• Website design, build and test for a small architectural practice and a classic motorcycle dealer• Logistics and marketing support for a local organic produce supplier.

• Sales and technical support and on- and off-shore test team management for critical testing accounts, including Boots and SAP testing for the Royal Mail Group• Establish, direct and line manage the Steria UK Defence Testing Service• Testing Service sales development in the UK Defence and Security market.

• Formal testing risk assessment for a high profile, politically sensitive multi vendor project• Draft NPIA Testing Architecture Framework for the Office of the CTO.

• Meet $14m revenue target for my 150 fte organisation • Drive productivity savings through the organisation, effecting in year savings of around $250,000• Add value throughout the delivery lifecycle by bringing testing skills and knowledge to formal programme governance and structured informal project mentoring.

• Specify and establish processes, procedures, collateral and deliverables for all testing across EDS Defence sector. After rollout no Defence project failed to deliver due to inadequate testing and the processes were adopted by the global EDS testing capability• Monitor performance of all testing projects (up to 40 at any one time) against processes, schedules and budget, providing mentoring as necessary• Critically review project lifecycle collateral (requirements, designs, risks, budgets, schedules etc), both formally as part of EDS Defence Governance boards and informally as part of a small, multi-skilled team• Perform as Defence 'Red Team' member, responsible for assistance in rescuing failing projects by redirecting and reorganising test teams as required and providing hands on testing management if necessary• Review and contribute to third party suppliers' testing regimes to improve delivered system and software quality• Assess and specify the training, motivation and performance improvement needs for all EDS Defence Test Managers and Senior Test Analysts.

• Recruit and directly manage fifteen Test Analysts and three DBAs across two sites (Hampshire and Swansea)• Define effective testing processes and procedures, aligned to EDS, MoD and industry standards • Plan, manage and perform functional, integration, interface and end to end testing to agreed programme and customer witnessing schedules, helping achieve programme’s lowest number of help calls in 10 years• Analyse help calls to identify testing and other organisational weaknesses• Plan and manage test rig (client server and Web based) re-baselining around an on-going release schedule• Manage the migration of test collateral from an ad-hoc structure into Borland StarTeam• Perform demonstrations of new functionality to the customer.

• Manage six full time test analysts and eight user testing representatives, testing changes to seven legacy systems • Plan and manage system, regression, interface, end to end, performance, recovery and operability testing• Formally represent Centrica in the regular industry partners’ testing forum• Assess, agree, co-ordinate and sign-off third party suppliers’ test plans, execution, deliverables and results• Testing effort formally audited by Ofgem: no issues found.

McKesson was lead partner in a consortium delivering a £325m Oracle 11i HRMS and Payroll solution to the National Health Service, aiming to save the UK taxpayer some £75m over 10 years. The project required an automated regression test suite and my role was Oracle 11i HRMS/Payroll technical lead for the team that made this happen. Test sets created by the team took two - three man days to run, manual equivalents took in excess of eight man weeks

Flare was formed to assess the market for and viability of SMEs substituting their Microsoft desktop software for Open Source (O/S) equivalents. I was Co-Director responsible for platform and application testing

W S Atkins centralised their HR function by implementing an Oracle 11i HRMS and Payroll system integrated with a JDE financial system. This was a high profile, high pressure position as for technical reasons the new Payroll system had to go live for the start of the tax year. Managing three acceptance test teams and their test beds (15 staff, including Oracle payroll specialists, functional test specialists and W S Atkins HR staff) I delivered the Oracle system fully tested on time and to budget.

Inmarsat set up Setfair.com as a subsidiary in March 2000 to establish a global web-based B2B platform enabling ship management companies to streamline their requisition and purchasing activities. Reporting to the IT Director my prime responsibility was to specify, implement and govern testing best practice across the Setfair IT activities.