Ian R. McDonaldHND Bsc Dip PGCE

MBCS CITP CSci MInstP CPhys EurPhys MIET IEng ISEB Test Practitioner

Improved Quality Delivery for Less £A Description of ITC Services Offered

uk.linkedin.com/in/islandSystems/Test and System Integration Architect, Global Project Management, Full Project Life Cycle, QA and Testing Specialistwith hands-on professional experience across the full digital landscape. Areas of expertise include Complete TestArchitecture Design & Development, Full Programme Management, Strategy Development, Process Improvement andBusiness Analysis. Experienced with Test Driven Development and early mitigation of faults through analysis.

KEY SKILLS:

Testing

Selection/design of tooling and design of test frameworks;Developed testing strategies and QA frameworks across diverse applications to minimise risk;Risk based testing and responding to delivery problems;Test Driven Development (TDD).

Bid Support

Significantly contributed to winning contracts with NATO, MoD, BT and NHS.

Business Analysis

Ensuring good business analysis (functional and non-functional);Adequate business requirement coverage including full end to end business process coverage;Metric collection reporting to improve lessons learned and judge when a product is ready for release.

Management:

Held key strategic roles in major blue chip organisations such as BAE Systems and Symbian/Nokia;Managing large scale projects across the UK, USA, EMEA and Far East Regions;Managing web and mobile technology projects;Early mitigation of defects across the full product life cycle to reduce costs and speed delivery.

MAJOR ACHIEVEMENTS:

Revised QA process at Ecclesiastical Insurance, achieving buy-in to the new process;Devised QA agile process at BAE Systems Detica and became agile process champion;Rescuing projects that are behind schedule to become world leaders;Working across teams in the UK, India, China and North America cut the defect leakage by 42% across a blue chipcompany within 16 months - rising to 63% in 24 months. This accelerated licences sold by 19.6 million in just onequarter, allowing the company to exceed its target;Improvement in defect fix time by 20% - more defects fixed sooner, cutting the defect verification time, whileimproving quality;Improvement in efficiency by 99% for automated script maintenance for a FTSE 100 company;Improvement in efficiency by 99% for test data creation at a global communications company;Defect leak cut by 30% at a FTSE 100 blue chip company for black box functional testing and introduced a systemof functional test analysis that cut test effort by several man years;Unit testing improved for dynamic & static analysis - allowing defects to be found sooner and so reducingproduction costs;Delivered to time and budget a law enforcement agency system with 60 virtual servers and over 2Tb of audit datawith millions of transactions per year in under half of the normal development time, overcoming significantdelivery problems.

What Ian does do:

Troubleshooter - Able to identify issues for failing projects and put in place actions to turn projects around.Identify requirement problems early in the product lifecycle, so saving development time and money.Provides approaches and methods for companies to produce software faster, cheaper and with fewer defectsdelivered to their customers.

Works with new technologies e.g. Tested one of Europe’s first ever WAP sites. Provide general supervision and technical guidance to staff in the analysis, design, testing, and deployment of

software and hardware products. Experienced across the full Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) for testing methodologies, quality control,

and quality assurance.Work across all the standard life cycles types including: V-Model, Waterfall and Agile.Advises on improvement to functional and non-functional business requirements.Engages with Business Analysts in reviewing requirements and ensuring defects are reduced at source, savingdevelopment time and project budget, while identifying and mitigating project risks.Assure that software is defect free and compliant with technical specifications.

Manages teams in a matrix from 1 to 600, direct reports up to 20+.Work with distributed team members. Supervise off-shore teams through target setting, advice, guidance andperformance metrics.Manages team and overall expectations pertaining to setting accurate schedules, costs and resources.Works with Project Managers to develop project schedules and resource allocation models for softwaredeployment, customer integration, and professional services validation.Supervises Team Leads including mentoring, preparation and delivery of staff performance evaluations andother career development activities.

Sets up training programmes and Apprentice schemes.Runs projects as either Test Manager or Project Manager.Provide guidance and hands-on support for failing projects to get them back on track.Ensures delivery against team goals and objectives i.e. meeting commitments and coordinating overall qualityassurance schedule.

Creates test strategies and test plans.Devises strategies for testing complex mathematical models.Anticipates risks and issues and takes mitigating action.Orchestrates the delivery of software to customer-visible environments.Creating tasks and checklists for software deployment.Manages the planning and execution of software testing effort, to meet delivery dates.

Provide guidance and support for process improvement up to the highest CMMI levels.Implements ongoing quality improvement processes working with inter-departmental teams.Maintains software standards throughout the development lifecycle, including the design, definition and buildphases via quality checkpoints and software testing.Create the definition, development and deployment of the software quality assurance strategy across all phasesof the project development.Manages quality assurance metrics for performance improvement of all teams.Manages quality gates across project.

Devises Test Strategies.Advise on appropriate test tooling.Creates Test Plan.Recruits test teams.Sets up project standards and controls (quality gates).Devise test automation policies.Creates phase test plans: Unit, Integration, Factory/Functional Acceptance Testing, System Integration Testing,Load and Performance Testing, Security Testing, System Acceptance Testing, Site Acceptance Testing,Operational acceptance Testing.Generates test reports.Create Test Defects and run defect control efficiently to reduce defect fix time and costs.

Manages the regression test processWrite and review test scripts.Manage acceptance testing for FAT, UAT, SAT and OAT (i.e. across the full system integration life cycle).Provides feedback regarding issues, objectives, initiatives and performance to plan.Advises on the selection of tooling and adoption of processes.

What Ian no longer does do as normal everyday tasks: While Ian will advise on test tooling and describe how it is to be set up, as a manager Ian no longer sets up

tooling. Reason: These days it is usually far cheaper to give to a graduate to do, allow them the experience,while allowing Ian time to fix bigger problems.

Ian will set the test automation policy and will design test tooling at a system and pseudo code level. Ian nolonger gets involved in coding tools. Reason: These days it is usually far cheaper to give to a graduate to do,allow them the experience, while allowing Ian time to fix bigger problems.

While specifying test frameworks, Ian will usually get a developer to implement the code. Reason: As amanager it is usually quicker and faster to allow a developer to do this. It is also important to ensure that withframeworks there is sufficient knowledge within a company to maintain an important part of the softwaredevelopment process.Ian will mitigate risk early from security and [performance issues. Ian will create test policies for performanceand security testing. He is happy at managing performance and security testing and interpret results.However both these fields are very specialised and tools are changing every week, so Ian does not operateas a specialist in performance or security testing.

References

LinkedIn Profile (including recommendations): http://uk.linkedin.com/in/islandsystemsEngineering Manager - Symbian Software - "Ian introduced a new Test Analysis process which enabled abalanced approach to target setting leading to a confirmed, measured, 42% defect reduction of which 30% weredirectly attributable to improved functional testing. Ian's work directly enabled the company to have its best yearfor delivered quality of our product to our customers leading to faster time to market and potential profitability.This is particularly impressive as it required leadership across 4 continents in 5 locations with a total of 750engineers. Ian achieved this change through team work and positive reinforcement even convincing the mostsceptical managers and engineers."Chief Technology Officer - Computer Science Corporation - "Ian is a strong technologist and educated thinker heis a real asset for the company and clients"."Ian had led the team by example and actively driven the account strategy. He has built the test team andmentored and coached staff, Project managers and C Level Executives in his vision and approach."MD for IT - HelpHire Ltd - “Ian successfully took on the difficult role of coordinating both in-house testing staffand testing contractors to try to achieve a consistently high quality of testing on a major project using bothautomated and manual approaches. He improved our approach, and developed metrics to demonstrate this. Hehas a good eye for detail, and clear ideas about what he wants to achieve.”Project Manager – Police IT Organisation (National Police Improvement Agency) – “Ian has shown himself to bea very capable leader and has demonstrated sound judgement in the manner in which he has managed his role. Iwould have no hesitation in working with him again on any of my projects.”Head of Test Practice - BAE Systems Detica "Ian has a great depth of testing experience, particularly in the field ofdefect analysis and this greatly aided the creation and development of the practice. He is also a highlyenthusiastic mentor for more junior members of staff and has a great passion for testing which he conveys tothose around him. Ian is diligent in his work and I would not hesitate to work with him again."HR Manager - Symbian Software - "While at Symbian, Ian has introduced a number of successful initiatives thathave dramatically reduced our defect leakage to customers... During 2008, Symbian saw its lowest ever defectcount delivery to customers and moved to becoming world class with one of the lowest defect counts delivered."Senior Test Leader – Nortel Networks - “Ian’s work was always extremely thorough and he was happy to interactnot only with other members of the system test team but development as well. His test cases were of a highquality as were his problem reports. Ian picked up the products very quickly and was happy to find outinformation on his own. I would definitely employ Ian again.”Software Development Manager – HelpHire Ltd – “I am happy to provide a personal reference for Ian McDonald.Ian has proved to be a highly experienced and professional individual.”QA Manager – Eircell – Dublin - “Quick and tactful to persuade others in the merit of his ideas. Once people wereon board, he was able to organise the work to be executed and assign people to those tasks. However Ian did notleave the execution of the tests to others. He took an active role and led from the front. This was a keyingredient in his success in this project. Ian was a pleasure to work with. He kept me informed of all-importantissues and was always positive in outlook. Always on time, honest and calm he was a model team player.”