SUMMARY:

Accomplished and results - oriented senior level manager proficient in directing Quality Assurance operations. Adept at enhancing and promoting QA professionals through cutting edge QA practices and engagement with other functional areas of the business. Quality Assurance expertise within the Healthcare, Insurance, Pharmaceutical, Financial, Security and Retail arenas. An eloquent presenter astute at explaining technical information in a clear and concise manner to various levels of the business, with exceptional interpersonal skills.

CORE COMPETENCIES:

• Implemented a Quality Assurance Governance and Competency Framework including people, processes, and tooling that fostered better collaboration between clients and project teams and resulted in improved product quality and reduced client escalations by 89%.
• Reactive Quality Assurance resource planning resulted in resource over-commitments, missed deadlines, cost overruns and ultimately lower profits.
• Implemented best practices via the Software Testing Roadmap to effectively plan project activities, resource requirements, and timelines throughout the testing lifecycle. On-time deliveries improved by 92% and profits rose 93% within a 12-month period.
• Lack of shared repositories and hard-coded test data limited reusability and prevented the Automation team from reaching their goals.
• Library structure set up to support various testing approaches, test-driven development, and the Agile practice of continuous integration. The upgraded Automation framework increased productivity by 75% in one year and simplified future development.
• Implemented the ‘Shift Left’ approach: a faster, more pre-emptive and predictive approach to testing, therefore allowing QA to focus on Key Performance Indicators, Defect Removal Efficiency, and Business Acceptance Testing.

TECHNICAL SKILLS:

Technical/Testing Environments: HP Quality Center/ALM QTP HP Sprinter Rational Jazz Suite SaaS/ Cloud Java ETL BPCA Good Laboratory Practices Standards (GLPS) FDA requirements and the CFR, including 21 CFR Part 11 MS - SQL XML HTML5 C++ MQ-Series Service virtualization SOAP UI Six Sigma Excel CSS Microsoft .NET J2EE technologies Selenium Jira

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE:

Confidential, Skokie, IL

Quality Assurance Manager

Responsibilities:

• Establish a quality framework that fosters quality practices such as scalable regression tests and the extension of the role of the quality assurance team in Test Driven Development
• Develop, execute and maintain the Shift Left concept that focuses on defect prevention instead of detection; reduction of rework by integrating the quality assurance team with writing the Agile user story process to implementation
• Work with the Agile Scrum Master to define, develop and execute continuous improvement initiatives
• Increase the Quality Assurance Engineer team’s engagement through coaching for estimation of product backlog with Planning Poker
• Implement a Defect Decision Matrix as part of the defect management process that provides a clear indicator of defect risks to the quality of a product
• Employ a defect Classification and Resolution Schema that describes the manifestation of the defect and describes the point at which the defect was injected as well as resolution to the fix
• Ensure that appropriate processes are implemented to fully satisfy customer needs and expectations and Company objectives
• Define and create the Quality Management System educational documents outlining the procedures, responsibility, authority and interrelation of key personnel to enable an effective and efficient quality framework
• Establish a strong relationship with key stakeholders to ensure a proactive understanding of technical capabilities, while effectively supporting enterprising QA needs
• Participate in the design discussions and reviews to analyze usability, error/exception handling and evaluate the goals of design (reliability, flexibility, maintainability and performance)
• Prepare and execute test cases

Confidential, Indianapolis, IN

Test Manager

Responsibilities:

• Imparted dynamic leadership in outlining a roadmap for Health Check Assessment for each discipline in the testing life-cycle
• Introduced the metrics that measured the test efficiency and the accuracy of test coverage
• Collaborated with key decision makers by sharing observations which presented new quality objectives and transparency to the testing process
• Delivered quality metrics to the State of Indiana that increased the software testing IQ level by introduction of key performance indicators; included was a test case development process and defect removal
• Provided leadership and fostered relationships with stakeholders, DDI vendors, DevOps and QA teams to ensure risk items were assigned and resolved; complied with the State of Indiana regulations
• Worked with the State of Indiana DDI vendors in developing their test automation strategy

Confidential, Chicago, IL

Manager of Quality Assurance

Responsibilities:

• Employed Six Sigma techniques to establish strategic KPIs for requirement stability, project performance and the test efficiency that involves verification and validation procedures
• Provided leadership to the activities of QA team members in multiple locations. Promote consistency in execution and results through the process maturity of the QA function
• Led the implementation of the Quality Assurance Governance framework (TCoE) that increased test efficiency by 30% and increased resource utilization by 27% through centralizing and standardizing the testing practices within the Quality Assurance team
• Oversaw and provided leadership of the Quality functions regarding human resources by determining the strategic staffing plan, interviewing and selection, organizational development, employee recognition, managing resources, mentoring/coaching, counseling/performance management and compensation
• Implemented and maintained Capacity Planning for forecasting testing workloads to provide transparency into the Quality Assurance team’s initiative which included expected delivery date, dependencies, impediments and managing staffing levels
• Established a competency framework streamlining the on-boarding process, thereby increasing new hire utilization 50% within fifteen days, resulting in building credibility of the Quality Professional and influencing skill development
• Provided leadership in the business analysis and quality assurance functions to ensure that all products and procedures were in full in compliance with approved requirements
• Provided leadership in effective risk monitoring and risk management strategies; reviewed the impacts of different approaches to risk allocation; brought attention and awareness to unstated quality requirements through application for comprehensive test coverage
• Ensured project plans for validated environments included health check assessments to ensure the testing process and results complied to their security guidelines and regulations
• Provided leadership to the Quality Assurance Group by acting as the primary contact in areas of significant Quality decisions and issues, such as escalations
• Fostered relationships with the DevOps team to define optimal solutions for testing each application platform, and the Sales Force Team on how to address customer concerns regarding testing approaches and strategies

Confidential, Hillsboro, OR

Senior Test Automation Manager

Responsibilities:

• Partnered with third party vendors and leadership teams implementing the concept of Behavior-Driven Development to reduce known security risks. This include the develop mitigation plans
• Led the implementation of the approach and design for the test automation framework using Quality Center (QTP) for Service Virtualization
• Facilitated meetings with Test Leads to review TBOM runs of all changed business processes for estimating testing efforts
• Worked with Test Leads to determine test scope for risk-based test planning and execution using Process Change Analyzer (BPCA)
• Conducted Defect Triages for defect created by the test automation team
• Provided leadership to the Test Data Management Team in implementing the standardization of the request for data in different formats for different types of testing and the design that eliminated the need for sanitizing, synchronizing and managing test data for testing cycles
• Facilitated the hands-on implementation of standards for the test automation tool Sprinter
• Proposed the roadmap for identifying the creation of the testing environments and data creation process

Confidential, Baltimore, Maryland

Senior Quality Assurance Strategic / Test Automation Manager

Responsibilities:

• Established and implemented metrics for testing effectiveness to expose requirement defects and reveal design flows earlier within the development life cycle; clarification defects were reduced by 79%
• Provided leadership to business and developers throughout the life cycle of the project to ensure the business requirements are understood and met by utilizing the best practice of Behavior-Driven Development
• Provided leadership to drive continuous improvement and efficiency through requirement analysis, process enhancement and automation, including efficient use of contract QA resources
• Provided leadership in the recalls of a deployed application by implementing root cause investigations to assure all complaints involving product quality were thoroughly investigated and effectively addressed by corrective and preventive actions as deemed appropriate; thorough examination involved collaborating with the Director of Application Support, the Director of Application Development and the Director of Business Analysis
• Connected the Senior Leadership team with the Quality Assurance process to influence collaboration with project teams; liaison assured that the cross-functional teams worked closely with the Quality Assurance activities and were coordinated appropriately throughout projects; also worked with the business units
• Provided leadership to the implementation of a Test Scenario Table for the traceability between test data to test cases to business requirements and thus reduced the issues relating to test coverage
• Organized and implemented a Test Data Management approach to the data mining activities that lowered data-related issues by 62%
• Led and managed personnel activities of the Quality Assurance staff such as hiring, termination, training, appraising, rewarding, motivating and performing disciplinary actions as necessary
• Implemented Test Function Point Analysis for estimating automation development work to bring transparency to the Offshore team; increased code delivery by 26%
• Facilitated the project of the conversion of the automation framework to meet the initiative to accelerate the creation of automated test scripts (QTP) from manual test cases using HP Quality Center; results were an increased productivity of 75% and the ability to support the Agile practice of continuous integration and test-driven development
• Implemented a decision matrix to convert software requirements into test automation scripts
• Initiated an in-house tool that facilitated uncovering the number of test scenarios associated to a user story and further identified data requirements to satisfy the user story; test accuracy increased by 32% and reduced defect leakage into UAT

Confidential, New Chester, Pennsylvania

Senior QA Project Manager

Responsibilities:

• Evaluated testing procedures of offshore team, and smoke tested data delivered to ensure accuracy.
• Developed technical documentation for projects and provided framework for managing/measuring testing process.
• Created and maintained a resource plan for the testing team to align resources to support all project initiatives. Escalated conflicts and issues to leadership.
• Identified, confirmed, and obtained participation from required cross-functional teams. Ensured team clearly understands roles/responsibilities for the duration of the projects.

Confidential, Owing Mills, Maryland

Senior QA Project Manager

Responsibilities:

• Formalized software test scenarios, test plan recommendations, and software test status measurements.
• Prepared final reporting of Software Integration Testing (SIT) results.
• Trained/directed 5 software testers in requirements analysis and testing methodologies using Rational Robot.
• Achieved zero critical defects during user acceptance and post-release by leading design and implementation of context-driven testing approach emphasizing identification of critical defects early in testing process.

Confidential, Indianapolis, Indiana

Manager of Quality Assurance

Responsibilities:

• Partnered with the web/UI Design, Product Owner and Database Mangers to uncover business to constrains through Behavior Driven Development
• Reduced defect deployment rate by more than 80% in 12 months by involving QA earlier in development life cycle and creating software validation framework that reduced work effort while increasing test validity. Along with use of automation scripts (white box & functional), yielded zero bug calls in first 90 days post-release (all were for user interface/usability).
• Saved ~$147,000 annually and increased staff retention nearly 98% by introducing employee development program to address identified weaknesses in technical skill sets and restructuring team based on skill sets and interests.
• Decreased pre-test defects by 37% within 4 months through utilization of use cases to uncover fault data and predict reliability, deviation from requirements, and expected behaviors for engineering efforts.