Experience

  • Virgin Australia

    Role:Quality Project Manager

    Time in Role: September 2024 - Current


    Virgin Australia is one of Australia's most trusted Airlines. I am working between Sydney and Brisbane to oversee an internal software upgrade of their Aircraft Maintenance, Repair and Overhaul systems. This is cloud migration project to migrate their on-premise hosted solution to the upgraded vendor hosted cloud solution.


    Responsibilities and Achievements

    1. Defining the test plan and strategy.
    2. Training Engineering staff in testing and quality practices.
    3. Providing pre-signed vendor contract support to ensure the business is being adequately protected during acceptance phases of the project.
    4. Working with the business to build project and post project BAU testing frameworks.

  • Corporate Travel Management

    Role: QA Manager

    Time in Role: April 2015 - June 2024

    Website: http://travelctm.com


    Corporate Travel Management (CTM) is a Travel Agency which specializes in managing travel and expenses for business. As part of the client package, CTM have their own proprietary booking platform, reporting and customer portal to assist their client's book and manage their travel. The web based platform is built in .net, and connects to Serko, Sabre, Jetstar, Expedia, Qantas, Tramada and Concur though various database replications and web-service methods in the Azure cloud.


    I joined CTM as the sole testing resource to help establish a testing function within an established software development environment. During my time at CTM, I have successfully launched 3 major products (Lightning, Lightning Mobile, and flybuysTravel) both in the domestic and international market whilst also growing the team from just myself, to support eighteen functional and automation test resources resource to develop and maintain a functional testing team and maintained automation platform for the business.


    In October 2020 CTM acquired Tramada, it’s mid-office ware provider and the two QA teams combined under my leadership.



    Responsibilities and Achievements

    1. Day-to-day testing of change requests and defect fixes.
    2. Test Planning and Estimation.
    3. Regression Testing and Maintenance of the Regression Suite.
    4. Governance of QA Standards and Process - putting in place the tools and process to perform testing, as well as software development best practice (such as code reviews, development kpis, scrum master). This role includes ownership of the SDLC - workflow management for the Product Owners, Business Analysts, Developers and QA.
    5. JIRA administration and configuration - Configuring JIRA from the ground up to build best practice into it's issue workflow, as well to enable management to query JIRA for reporting and performance management. This also includes the introduction and management of software versioning, sprint planning and release management.
    6. Leading Business/Software development process initiatives - Such as, but not limited to the creation of testing infrastructure, tooling, risk management, IP control, resourcing and planning.
    7. Hiring and Recruiting, on shore permanent and contract positions. Growing the team from a sole testing resource to a team of 18.
    8. Release Management - including the scoping of sprints, planning and working towards versioned releases, managing dependencies, regression testing, known issue reviews and sign-off.
    9. Management of the Test Environments - Planning and maintaining required environments, data, and versions.
    10. Creation and Management of a mobile device lab. Comprising of iOS (9.x-15.x) and Android phones and tablets (4.3-12.x).
    11. Introduction of test tooling to assist with manual testing effort (Fiddler, Ghostlab, Connectify, Microsoft IE VM's and Microsoft Network Emulation Toolkit, iTools, Android Development Studio).
    11. Testing compliance to AA accessibility standards.
    12. Measurement of developer quality pre and post release - through the analysis of defects, re-open rates and hot-fix's.
    13. Established and Managed the support process for customer raised issues via JIRA Service Desk.
    14. Team building and management, managing a team of 7 functional test analysts and 2 automation specialists over 5 product streams and 30 deployable products.
    15. Establishing the automation solution, including hiring, framework (Cypress) and assertion, coverage guidance and strategy across all product streams. The solution is integrated with the CI/CD pipeline, pushing results into TestRail for the manual testers to review and complete the scope of testing for the non-covered cases.
    16. Ensuring the initial and continued success of the platforms as they roll out domestically and internationally, including assisting offshore teams understand and establish our local process.
    16. Assisting the development environment in moving to a "shift left" modal, to support reducing the growing test requirements through better requirement definitions, upfront test plans and automation.

  • Red Book Connect

    Role: Senior Test Analyst

    Time in Role: April 2014 - April 2015


    RedBookConnect was an Australian based software vendor which is dedicated to providing back of house restaurant management solutions to global fast food restaurant brands. The platform boasts a wide scope of Labour Management, Time and Attendance, Inventory, Sales Management, Reporting and POS integration. It is divided into a windows server/SQL/OLAP Cube/ and .net back-end with a HTML/Telerick front end.


    Responsibilities and Achievements

    1. Day-to-day testing of change requests and defect fixes.
    2. Test Planning and Estimation
    3. Regression Testing and Maintenance of the Regression Suite
    4. Self-Governance of QA Standards and Process
    5. Internal documentation of testing practices, tools and product knowledge.
    6. Created the structure and tooling configuration/guidance for the companies' regression testing efforts.

  • Engagis

    Role: Test Lead / Manager

    Time in Role: February 2013 - March 2014

    Website: http://engagis.com


    Engagis is an Australian based technology house which is dedicated to providing digital retail customer engagement solutions to retailers. Solutions range from in-store digital signage to self ordering kiosks and solution finders. Engagis operates with a small on-shore development team and a maintains a sizeable team off shore in Russia and India.  Many of the solutions are based in HTML5 and .Net with an expanding presence into Java for Android and iOS platforms.


    Responsibilities and Achievements

    1. Redesigned and fully customized JIRA to not only reflect proper software development methodologies but also to capture and report on project and personal KPIs.
    2. Introduced reporting, project management dashboards and wallboards to keep developers, testers and project managers informed at all times.
    3. Introduced automated builds and environment control, including the separation of development and test environments using Bamboo continuous integration.
    4. Introduced Test Management software (TestRail), upgrading the team from shared google doc spreadsheets to a professional test management tool.
    5. Introduced internal documentation with Confluence, where there was previously none or in isolated Google Doc's.
    6. Introduced a release calendar which was available via the wallboards and confluence which was based and managed from the version list within JIRA.
    7. Introduced Development and Test peer reviews.
    8. Introduced asset management and tracking for our mobile test devices.
    9. Introduced Hipchat as a collaboration tool to further help our off-shore and in house teams communicate more effectively as we were able to integrate this with JIRA, Bamboo and BitBucket.
    10. Introduced release planning, scoping and issue triage where previously developers where left on their own to add issues into sprints/versions with little to no oversight.
    11. Introduced weekly resource planning to help track available onshore resources and to better assist manage the demand of the offshore teams.
    12. Represents the test team for Business Process Improvement efforts and actively authors and promotes process improvement within the software development teams for furthering our quality assurance efforts.
    13. Administration of JIRA, Confluence, Test Rail, Virtual Host and File Server.
    14. Hands on Testing, planning and estimation, defect reporting and requirement analysis (80% utilization).
    15. Defining and implementing software development goals and KPI measurement and reviews.
    16. Creation of release notifications and release notes.
    17. End-to-end testing of software and hardware solution design, as many of the projects involve mobile and embedded devices.

  • TekInsure

    Role: Test and Support Manager

    Time in Role: April 2012 - October 2012


    TekInsure was a small Australian company who developed business insurance solutions to insurance brokers, primarily AIG insurance. It was acquired by eBaoTech in October 2012. It's platform was based on web technologies, such as HTML, CSS, AJAX, with SQL and XML database structures.


    Responsibilities and Achievements

    1. Developed JIRA workflows to better represent and manage the flow of work. I introduced a bucket system whereby test team members could pull issues freely from a list of resolved issues without needing to wait for issues to be individually assigned. This reduced a lot of management overhead and allowed testers to work more freely, and assisted with cross-training the team.
    2. Introduced release retrospectives and release candidate analytics. This introduction allowed the company to begin tracking the quality of their releases and allowed us to measure changes to the process against real quality metrics, such as failure rates and introduced issues.
    3. Developed and implemented estimation worksheets for recording and tracking estimates which were previously just written on a whiteboard and lost.
    4. Content and source control over watch, including reconciliation of SVN to JIRA which helped uncover instances where process was not correctly followed.
    5. Introduced developer-based documentation (root-cause and issue resolution) to allowed greater information to flow to the testers and assist with the transfer of knowedge without the need to interrupt developers.
    6. Introduced a JIRA best practice framework.
    7. Introduced developer peer-reviews, to cut down on re-open rates.
    8. Introduced Support best practice to help support document and manage their outstanding issues along with implementing initial troubleshooting and analysis to assist the development team in resolving support issues.
    9. Introduced Testing best practice such as minimum documentation and testing standards.
    10. Introduced development and test environment control in an effort to reduce developer interaction on 'hot-fixes' on test environments.
    11. Introduced a test automation framework based on a headless test harness.
    12. Introduced weekly support reviews to maintain and monitor SLAs.
    13. Introduced release check lists to ensure proper process was always followed, such as all JIRA issues being closed and the creation of release notes.
    14. Hands-on testing, planning and estimation, defect reporting and requirement analysis (90% utilization).
    15. Daily reporting of QA and Support activities and progress.
    16. Introduced JIRA dashboards to the company to help managers and team members get a better overview of the teams, their progress and activities.
    17. Introduced performance reviews, KPI setting and tracking.
    18. Training and mentoring of the team, moving them from black to white box testing strategies.

  • NASDAQ OMX

    Role: Product Quality Team Leader

    Time in Role: 2007-2012

    Website: http://nasdaqomx.com


    NASDAQ OMX is the world leaders in Market and Exchange technology, providing the technology for the majority of exchanges around the world whilst also operating the worlds largest exchange. My work with NASDAQ OMX was within their surveillance offering (SMARTS Market Compliance). I started with SMARTS Group in 2007 as a Test Analyst, when NASDAQ OMX acquired SMARTS Group in 2010 I was promoted to be a Senior Tester / Coordinator, and again further promoted again to be a Team Lead for their internal product development team in 2010 where I managed a small team of four.


    Responsibilities and Achievements

    1. Development of exploratory test strategy for times where comprehensive manual test cases were not available based on real-time monitoring of code-coverage analysis created with Bullseye.
    2. Development of feature and interface map using mind-mapping software to assist in risk assessment, training and delegation of testing activities.
    3. Replaced and expensive Quality Center test management platform with a cheaper more effective solution (Zephyr).
    4. Development of internal testing tools for data creation, processing and analysis written in HTML, PHP and C++.
    5. Creation of training materials, operating and leading a training program for new hires.
    6. Creation and authoring of release notes.
    7. Represented the test teams for regular business improvement meetings.
    8. Introduced and developed practical interview exercises for assessing potential hires, which covered requirement gathering, analysis, test case creation and testing.
    9. Sprint planning and prioritization.
    10. Resource planning and scheduling.
    11. Performing interviews of potential new hires.
    12. High Performing Tester, even after moving to a leadership role I maintained my issue statistics.
    13. Responsible for 28% of all issues raised (team of 15).
    14. Highest discovery of issues per release (15%) (between 30 developers and testers).
    15. Highest throughput of issues (20% of all issues tested; team of 15).
    16. Setting and Tracking yearly goals which contributed to salary and bonus schemes.
    17. Designing, Reviewing and overseeing development of continuous integration efforts within the team.
    18. Setting and Documenting testing best practice and standards.
    19. Creation of test plans, cases, reports and specifications.
    20. Working on-site with the ASX and ASIC to perform UAT and production issue analysis.
    21. Providing sign-off and reporting on releases.

  • AusPCMarket

    Role: Returns Manager

    Time in Role: 2006 - 2007

    Website: http://auspcmarket.com.au


    AusPCMarket is one of Australia’s leading online PC hardware retailers.


    Responsibilities and Achievements

    1. Handled the return process for customers with faulty items.
    2. Online and phone technical support and troubleshooting to remotely confirm faults.
    3. Hardware testing, using either software or hardware to confirm reported issues (such as memtest, HDD Diagnostic utilities, PSU voltage meters, etc.).
    4. Implemented a system for keeping track of, and handling abandoned items in accordance to the Unclaimed Goods Act.

  • SwordPlay

    Role: Proprietor

    Time in Role: 2005 - 2007

    Website: http://swordplay.com.au (now defunct)


    SwordPlay was a small business I operated for several years which imported and resold decorative weapons (swords) and martial arts equipment within Australia.


    Responsibilities and Achievements

    1. Dealing with overseas exporters and wholesalers (US and China).
    2. Operating within state (Prohibited Weapons Act) and federal import laws (Customs Prohibited Imports Regulations) and liaising with state and federal authorities (NSW Firearms Registry and Customs).
    3. Construction and management of e-commerce site (osCommerce foundation).
    4. Inventory management and invoicing.

  • Sydney Singles

    Role: Developer / Administrator

    Time in Role: 2003 - 2017


    Sydney Singles was a long running and established singles events provider. Sydney Singles operates dance parties around the Sydney region and maintains a small on-line presence to provide details to customers.

    Responsibilities and Achievements

    1. Built the current and last two iterations of the company website. The site is primarily built on HTML/CSS with integration to various PHP and JavaScript packages (Image Galleries, Event Listing CMS, Shout Box and Chat rooms with SQL backends).
    2. Successfully managed multiple web hosting migration projects to deal with continually increasing demand and services.
    3. Administration and moderation of online services – such as chat room / shout box moderation where it was required to screen and remove advertising from competitors.
    4. Built the in-office PC and Network infrastructure to share printing and internet resources between multiple PCs.
    5. Designed the programs for the computer controlled disco lighting system and operated them on the event nights.
    6. Updates the content of the site, and implementation of a lightweight CMS to aid non-technical users in updating site content.
    7. Statistic tracking / monitoring and search optimizations (Meta Tags).