Allen J. Atkins
Norfolk, MA ***56
**********@*****.***
PROFILE
Solid background in the software industry, with over 15 years of experience.
Ten (10) years of Director level management experience of onshore/offshore IT teams.
Skilled in developing and implementing program management plans and ensuring schedules are met without sacrificing quality.
Ability to effectively communicate project status, risk and issues escalation to a wide technical, as well as business audience.
Experience in defining Testing Procedures, designing Test plans and Test cases based on standards for Agile, as well as waterfall Software development methodologies.
Sharp, innovative, organized and a quick learner with the proven ability to adapt quickly to a challenge, and an excellent ability to quickly master new environments and be able to make positive change.
Background in developing and maintaining client relationships with key business drivers within the
customer account.
Technical Skills:
Operating Systems: Unix/Solaris/HP-UX/IBM-AX, Windows 7/2008/2012
Languages: C, Perl, SQL, PL/SQL, XML
Software: Oracle Tools: SQL*Plus, SQL*Net, MS SQL Server Management Studio
Microsoft Project, HP Quality Center, SOAP UI, Jira, Microsoft Office (Excel, Word, PowerPoint, Project, Visio), Remedy, Vantive.
Databases: Oracle 7/8i/9i/10g/11i, Microsoft SQL Server 2008/2012,
Automation Tools: Rational Robot, WinRunner, Selenium
PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE
November 2014 to
Present Technical Client Services Consultant
SS&C Technologies, Boston, MA
Responsible for the management of onsite/remote Investment management software implementations from planning through delivery for 5 large client accounts, which generated $60K in consulting revenue in 2015. In-depth knowledge of MS SQL-Server (2008, 2012). An understanding of core infrastructure technologies (Active Directory, Group Policy DNS, TCP/IP, DHCP, IIS)
Build relationships with key client technical contacts for assigned accounts.
Liaise with the client and Professional Services team to identify and document high-level business and technical requirements to develop the statements of work.
Plan and coordinate implementation timelines with the client. Collaborate with Professional Services colleagues
to create and share the project plan.
Update time and planning systems, and the project plan, to provide ongoing visibility to management on project
progress and ongoing work allocation.
Analyze client’s environment to ensure that their supporting systems are in line with the system pre-
requisites.
Prepare and configure client environments with required software and system/user settings needed to support the
use of the application, including ADFS, MS SQL Server,IIS, Active Directory, Group Policy, Windows
Certificates, MS Silverlight and Message Queuing.
Perform client and remote site product installation/upgrades for clients in their test and production environments.
Provide direct phone support to clients when required, log and classify all issues and requests in the call tracking
Database. Investigate and resolves all issues raised during project implementation or upgrade.
Contribute feedback on documentation and knowledge base articles to help improve our software deployment
process.
January 2011 to
September 2014 Director- Software Quality Assurance
Thomson Reuters (formerly Thomson Financial), Boston, MA
Responsible for the management of 10+ onshore/offshore Senior and Mid-level QA engineers.
Planned, develop and implement agile testing methods and processes for Thomson’s Ivestment Management Suite of products.
Directed and mentored staff, including skill training and career development.
Provided coaching and guidance to the Quality Assurance Team on “best practices”.
Reviewed project plans, task lists, and priorities to ensure resource allocation effectively meets project objectives.
Planned, organized, and monitored the execution of the work assignments for the Quality Assurance Team.
Managed automation team in the implementation of smoke/regression level automation for our web applications and web services features using Selenium IDE and SoapUI, which helped achieve a significant increase in automation from zero percent quarterly test execution to 60% of all quarterly execution.
Tracked QA/Development projects tasks and issues via JIRA for each sprint cycle.
Oversaw development of company-wide JIRA quality dashboard for senior management.
Attended daily/weekly scrum calls to analyze and prioritize internal and production issues.
Coordinated and participated in the hiring effort for new team members, as well as conduct performance reviews of the existing QA staff.
Built offshore team from two team members to 10 within two years.
November 2006 to
December 2010 Manager - Software Quality Assurance
Thomson Reuters (formerly Thomson Financial), Boston, MA
Provided technical direction and supervision to 5 Junior and Senior level Software QA Engineers, located both onshore and offshore.
Led the test effort on multiple and concurrent projects for client and web based financial products.
Worked closely with Business Analysts and Development Team in reviewing and understanding business and technical requirements to identify gaps in the specifications and to define testing scope and test strategies for complex, multi-tier systems.
Created and maintained software test plans, test cases, and test sets in HP Quality Center based on the established test specifications. Reviewed test plans, test cases, and test sets created by other QA Engineers.
Analyzed and investigated web page/service issues by utilizing tools and technologies such as HTTP Analyzer and Fiddler.
Responsible for resource allocation, test effort estimation, the definition and prioritization of testing tasks using JIRA.
Evaluated, prioritized, and managed software defects in Team Track Defect Tracking System, and worked closely with the development team to fix and close defects as assigned.
Performed various types of testing based on test plan such as black box testing, white box testing, functional testing, integration testing, system testing and data validation testing with positive and negative scenarios.
Created weekly and monthly reports articulating the status of the project, assumptions, dependencies, test progress, defects and blocking issues, risks, and recommendations.
Participated in the hiring effort for new team members and in performance reviews of the QA staff.
September 2004 to
October 2006 Lead - Software Quality Assurance Engineer
Thomson Reuters (formerly Thomson Financial), Boston, MA
QA Lead for PORTIA’s Portfolio Investment Desktop, as well as Advanced Security Projects;
1.Established detailed QA SWAGs/estimates for overall project plan.
2.Acted as a resource for team members to help resolve issues and ensure deadlines are being met.
3.Provided weekly updates to project and team leads on progress of testing tasks including estimated vs. actual time, to tie into project metrics.
4.Participated in review of QA test approaches/test plans, as well as Product Requirements and Technical Specifications.
5.Responsible for developing test plans, detailed test cases and automation for each project.
6.Execution of outlined test cases via manual process, as well as automated procedures.
7.Produced thorough defect reports.
Created/Executed SQL queries for test data manipulation/verification against Sybase and MS SQL databases.
Additional:
1. Created detailed Test Approach, as well as Test Plan Outline template utilized by QA group.
2.Developed new automated functions in SQA Robot to accommodate the testing of new .NET screens.
3.Participated in the development of two new API Test harnesses written in VB and VB .NET.
4.Lent my expertise in UNIX to help resolve testing/configuration issues on the UNIX platform.
June 2000 to
August 2004 Senior Software Quality Assurance Engineer
Concord Communications, Marlborough, MA
Project leader
Created and managed the testing schedules for multiple Integration Module projects.
Collaborated with development, program management to ensure quality goals are
appropriate for business/functional requirements.
Installation and Configuration of 3rd party software (specific to each module).
Developed test processes, internal test plans and beta tests for each area.
Executed detailed test plans across multiple platforms (Windows/Unix)
Developed thorough bug reports for issues found during testing.
Analyzed incoming customer issues and identified new tests cases to improve test coverage.
Provided technical support to other engineers involved in the testing.
Solved customer beta support issues via phone/email interaction, as well as on site visits.
Additional
Driving force behind the standardization of the developmental functional specification.
Helped to establish guidelines for the creation of test plans and test cases.
Developed and implemented an Excel based QA test log.
May 1999 to
May 2000 Software Quality Assurance Engineer
Informix Software, Westborough, MA
Developed testing processes, and worked with other technical groups to drive and implement them.
Designed Test Plan and Test Case templates.
Developed and conducted Test Plan/Test Case Reviews.
Executed Testing for the extraction and loading data for data warehousing construction against
the following DBs: Informix 7.3, Informix 8.0, SQL Server 7 and SAP.
Conducted installation and configuration of the following testing databases on NT: Informix 7.3,
Informix 8.0 (beta version), SQL Server 7, Oracle 8.0.
Created SQL scripts to establish and populate tables within the testing databases.
Responsible for the Administration of the UNIX-based QA Source Code Control database.
Reviewed design specifications for each Plugin’s functionality with Software Engineering.
Reported defects and verified fixes with development for those reported problems and changes.
Performed installation, upgrade, functional, performance, as well as regression testing
January 1999 to
May 1999 Software Quality Assurance Engineer
NewRiver Investor Communications, Inc., Watertown, MA
Improved the integrity of all NewRiver products and components by managing all system testing on Windows NT, Windows 95, and Windows 3.11 platforms.
January 1998 to
January 1999 Software Quality Assurance Engineer
Fidelity Investment Company, Boston, MA
Instilled organization-wide pride in the quality of software performance that gained the recognition of QA management.
EDUCATION
Certificate in Client/ Server Applications Development
Boston University, Boston, MA March 1998
Bachelor of Science in Finance
Bentley College, Waltham, MA May 1992