SPECIALTIES

Software Quality Assurance

Software Test Automation tools expert
Application Performance Optimization (Load/Stress Planning, Testing,
Diagnostics, Mitigation, Benchmarking)
SDLC Tools, Methodologies and Life Cycle Processes
IT Technology Roadmaps
Project Management
Integrated Requirements, Configuration, Build, and Defect Management
Automated Regression Testing Beds
Requirements definition, analysis, traceability and full life-cycle
management
Application Development Methodologies
Industrial/ business process modeling automation
THOMAS J. POIRIER
SUMMARY
Seasoned IT professional with experience across the spectrum within
software development, with a specialty in Software Quality Assurance
and Test Automation. Executive experience includes founding/running a
number of organizations and/or divisions and teams. Delivery
experience ranges from serving as an Enterprise Architect of QA,
designing and building "best of need" multi-vendor, integrated SDLC
support automation frameworks from conceptual design through
implementation and support, to building IT Modernization Roadmaps to
move organizations from legacy systems to SOA/Cloud/Agile. Industry
experience in health care, financial services, insurance,
pharmaceuticals, and high tech.
Managed and contributed to projects that range from large-scale,
multi-vendor, multi-cultural global application development efforts
to reorganizing entire IT divisions to more efficiently and
effectively support IT goals and strategies. Background as a
programmer and software development manager, with deep experience in
integrating disparate (multi-vendor) tools through open or private
APIs down to the code level.
Strong leadership, managerial, communication, organizational,
interpersonal, writing, technical, and development skills and strong
knowledge of all aspects of software development, with an emphasis on
Quality Assurance, testing, and SDLC process streamlining with
automation.
EXPERIENCE
12/04 a" PRESENT PERSYSTENCE, INC. DURHAM, NH WWW.PERSYSTENCE.COM
 PRESIDENT
Founded an IT "boutique" services company providing best of need,
streamlined Software Development and Software Quality Solutions to
Fortune 1000, governmental, and international clients, helping to
achieve verifiable confidence in performance, scalability,
reliability, and functionality throughout the IT life cycle.
Primary business involved contracting self and teams of IT
professionals to meet clients at their point of need. Most activities
involved direct client support, and managing all engagements conducted
on behalf of Persystence.
HIGHLIGHTS OF MAJOR ASSIGNMENTS FOR CLIENTS:
ENTERPRISE ARCHITECT OF QUALITY ASSURANCE a" BLUECROSS BLUESHIELD
OF MASSACHUSETTS
Served as Enterprise Architect of QA for the largest health care
company in Massachusetts. Assisted team in consolidating 13 SDLCs
into 2: An Enterprise-Grade Waterfall model, and a "Feature-Driven
Iterative" model based on Agile UP to support enterprise
modernization activities (movement to SOA, Cloud, and Agile UP).
Worked with CIO, CTO, and Chief Architect to align designed
technology trajectory with short, medium, and long-term plans for IT,
as it moved from highly-stove-piped to SOA.
Researched, recommended, and guiding acquisition of a full suite of
tools to support the SDLC, including Rational Requirements Composer,
Rational Team Concert, Rational Build Forge, Rational Application
Framework for WebSphere, Rational Functional Tester, Rational Service
Tester (automated test of SOA components), Rational Performance
Tester, Rational System Architect, InfoSphere Discovery, InfoSphere
Data Architect, Optim Integrated Test Data Management & Privacy Tool,
and the integrations of these tools with existing HP/Mercury Quality
Center & PPM.
SOLUTION ARCHITECT OF QUALITY ASSURANCE a" FIDELITY BROKERAGE
TECHNOLOGY COMPANY
Served as solution architect of QA for an IT tools and process
consolidation project for a major division of the world's largest
Mutual Funds company. Worked with various bodies and SBUs within the
company to flesh out a technology roadmap designed to reduce costs,
consolidate vendor license management, streamline the SDLC processes,
and improve quality and consistency across approximately 350
applications with development centers across the US, the UK, Europe,
and India. Effort involved rolling out pilots in strategic areas and
leading a team of automation experts in modeling and automating much
of the processes.
PERFORMANCE, LOAD/STRESS, CAPACITY TEST PROJECTS a" NUMEROUS
ENGAGEMENTS FOR NUMEROUS CLIENTS INCLUDING: SIEMENS MEDICAL, NEW YORK
METROPOLITAN TRANSPORTATION AUTHORITY (MTA), PANALPINA (WORLDWIDE
SHIPPING COMPANY), TIMEWARNER/SOUTHERN LIVING AT HOME, FIDELITY
INVESTMENTS, UNIVERSITY OF ROCHESTER, NY
Delivered projects to test performance, scalability, load and stress
testing for numerous clients across the US ranging from IT performance
optimization to IT bottleneck determination and system re-engineering.
Assisted a large transit authority in locating critical scalability
and performance problems in its IT infrastructure. Assisted a large
magazine publisher in tuning and proving the scalability and
performance of its on-line offering. Assisted a large international
shipping company in evaluating a targeted IT acquisition. Managed and
delivered all of the load and stress testing activities for one of the
largest medical equipment suppliers in the world.
10/02 a" 12/04 DARWIN PARTNERS, INC, WAKEFIELD, MA (NOW
WWW.DEXTRYS.COM)
VICE PRESIDENT, SOFTWARE QUALITY AUTOMATION
Successfully negotiated the sales of the services division within
Cogentric, Inc. to Darwin Partners, Inc., and lead the SQA team
within the acquiring company. Responsibilities included working with
the sales team to bid on new contracts, meet prospective clients to
understand needs and formulate plans, close and deliver contracts.
Led numerous projects for Darwin Partners in the areas of
Application Performance Optimization (with Load Testing tools
including Mercury's LoadRunner and Compuware's QA Load), Disaster
Recovery, and Quality Organization Assessment & IT Division
re-alignment.
HIGHLIGHTS OF MAJOR ASSIGNMENTS FOR CLIENTS:
ORGANIZATIONAL TRANSFORMATION PROJECT MANAGER a" CIGNA HEALTHCARE
Led a group of 24 people across a range of disciplines to transform
the IT claims-processing division of a large health insurance company
from a software acceptance organization to a software development
organization, with the development being moved to India. Project
concluding by saving 40% of the divisional cost per year, ($2
million/year), reducing defects per release from an average of 250 to
an average of 10, and reducing cost overruns per release to nearly
zero. Client was able to recoup cost of project in just over 1 year.
DISASTER RECOVERY/BUSINESS CONTINUITY TEAM LEAD a" CAPITAL ONE
Engaged as one of a number of vendors into one of the largest
Disaster Recovery/Business Continuity projects in the private
industry for the largest credit card company in the world. PWC acted
as the prime. Project involved a DR exercise for an entire data
center housing approximately 350 applications across a spectrum of
technologies. Recovery site was in a secure bunker in an undisclosed
location several hundred miles away. As a team, we had to determine
how to recover disparate systems and find common verifiable links to
preserve data staffing, training, and mentoring the QA team for the
Pilot Project. SQA Process had to be congruent with culture, critical
success factors of organization, demonstrable ROI, and emerging SDLC
process. The SQA Process was designed in terms of "value sets" that
were implemented with a cadence that integrated with the project
milestones such that each construct was designed to demonstrate as
much value as possible to build momentum in implementing the next
value set. Evaluated and selected suites of automated process and
test tools, and integrated such tools according to the schedule. The
full implementation of automation included Requirements Management,
Defect Tracking and reporting, integration with two Configuration
Management Systems and a Test Management System.
 Automated the Functional Regression Test System, Load and Stress
Test System, Nightly Build and Baseline Migration System, and created
a "Project Central" Website that was automatically populated with
critical project information, build statistics, defect logs, and test
statistics with drill-down capabilities.
QA AUTOMATION TECHNICAL LEAD a" MORGAN STANLEY DEAN WITTER ONLINE
Served as QA Automation Lead Architect for a very large on-line
trading company in San Francisco using Silk and Silk Performer to
incorporate streamlined methodologies and risk-mitigation processes
to achieve our "Quality On Time" objectives. Results were to: a) have
a documented, repeatable, flexible process for automating new Web
release candidates to achieve a 24-hour test execution cycle
(development work is still underway); b) improve metrics and controls
on internal software development processes; and c) produce more
predictable builds by automatically performing a build audit and
smoke test on new release candidates.
NUMEROUS QA AUTOMATION TECHNICAL LEAD ASSIGNMENTS a" JOHN HANCOCK,
LIBERTY MUTUAL, FIDELITY INVESTMENTS, VANGUARD, BOSTON TECHNOLOGY
(COMVERSE NETWORK SYSTEMS)
Served as QA Automation Lead Architect and Project Manager for
several large financial service and insurance companies along the
eastern seaboard. For example, engaged a large Boston-based insurance
firm to automate the testing of a new client/server project with Web
interfaces using the Mercury Interactive suite of test tools
(LoadRunner, TestDirector, and WinRunner). Achieved goal of reducing
test cycle from 7 days to 24 hours with more controls and metrics for
root cause analysis of defects. Designed and built an automated test
architecture that: a) extended the class support for many custom
objects that were previously unrecognizable (Far Point grids, tabs,
calendars, etc.); b) provided a State Navigation component that
allowed an average of 40% reduction in coding necessary to build a
test case, saving enormous time in building and maintenance of these
scripts; c) provided error-trapping and recovery to allow scripts to
be more robust and run overnight; d) provided mechanisms for data
independence between scripts such that the tests could be distributed
on many machines for execution; and e) designed a relational database
schema and built connections between test tool and database for a
common repository of all test data (input and results).
2/99-3/01 CONDUCIV, INC., NASHUA, NH (ACQUIRED BY COGENTRIC, INC.)
FOUNDER/CEO
Founded a consulting organization focused on automated testing
services, SDLC process automation, and performance
tuning/optimization serving Fortune 1000 clients across the US.
Negotiated successful acquisition of Conduciv in March, 2001 to
Cogentric, Inc. of Portsmouth, NH. Story can be found at this link:
http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Cogentric+Completes+Acquisition+of+Conduciv.-a0745
14977
Oversaw all projects engaged by Conduciv, with 12 employees and up
to 45 contractors. Delivered 22 projects in 25 months to various
industries.
 2/98-2/99 WORKSOFT, INC., DALLAS, TX WWW.WORKSOFT.COM
CO-FOUNDER/DIRECTOR OF CLIENT SERVICES
Interface with clients in defining strategies and resolving
technical issues in implementing Certify, a proprietary automated
test solution developed by Worksoft, Inc. Certify is a
comprehensive environment for approaching, developing, executing and
results reporting of automated tests across multiple applications and
multiple environments (Host-based and Client/Server). It features
"build acceptance time" automated acquisition of an application's
windows and objects, requirements traceability, and test coverage
tracking of requirements and windows/objects.
DESIGNER/DEVELOPER
Designed, coded and implemented major components of the Certify
product including "Build Import", "Impact Analysis", and "Resolve
Build Discrepancies" in Visual Basic 6.0 with an ODBC interface to an
RDBMS. Build Import interrogated either source code (Host-based
systems) or executables and DLLs (Client/Server systems) to
automatically acquire the windows, objects, and their dependencies
within an application. Impact Analysis determined the impact of
changes to windows and objects on the current crop of test cases.
Resolved Build Discrepancies walks the user through each potential
problem of a new build's impact on existing test cases to resolve
them.
1990-1998 SOFTWARE QUALITY PARTNERS, INC., BURLINGTON, MA (ACQUIRED
BY AJILON)
CHIEF TECHNOLOGIST/SENIOR CONSULTANT
Served in a variety of roles including: Developer (C/C++, VB,
Embedded SQL, UNIX Shell Scripting, Win NT, Win 95/98, OS/2, Unix,
telephony, and proprietary platforms), QA Staff, QA Manager, QA
Automation Technical Lead, and a supporting technical resource for
other groups for a firm specializing in Software Quality Assurance
Consulting engagements were nationwide across a broad spectrum of
industries.
Highlights of Major Assignments:
Conceived, designed, and lead the development of a workflow-based,
multiple-platform, multiple-database issue-tracking system.
Implemented in C++ on Windows 3.1 platform utilizing a Sybase SQL
Server back end in a distributed database configuration. Tool was
later purchased by a large Boston-based financial institution for
world-wide implementation.
Tool Developer for a telephony product manufacturer to automatically
test telephony systems. Designed and implemented a tool in Visual
Basic with a TAPI (Telephony API), and a host interface to coordinate
actions within the System Admin function with telephony traffic. Also
interfaced with an Amertitec Call Load Generator (to place large
volumes of calls on the system) to simulate load conditions.
Implemented configuration management (CCC/Manager), and negotiated
with development and internal customer base to define the baselines,
migration policies (entrance/exit criteria, ownership, reporting
responsibilities, etc.).
Automation Lead Architect for the automated testing a large,
multi-platform CASE tool utilizing Mercury Interactive suite of
automated test tools. Supervised team of 9 automated test script
developers. Weekly conference calls with Mercury's VP of Client
Services, as we were the first Mercury developer to write tests
across all of the platforms they supported.
QA and Release Manager for a Client/Server project in the Financial
Services industry. Project was written in an object-oriented CASE
tool that produced C++ code, and utilized a variety of servers
include RDBMS (Sybase SQL Server), Image Processing, and Workflow
Processing. Developed and implemented a QA Strategy document intended
to enforce the proper disciplines for the size of the project.
QA Consultant to a telephony product manufacturer servicing the
Regional Bell Operating Companies. Systems were highly reliable with
redundancy throughout a" downtime measured in minutes per year.
Wrote Test Approach Document outlining strategic and tactical
approach to testing. Co-wrote, reviewed, and implemented Test Plan.
Extensive amounts of stress, load and failure/restart/recovery
testing. Designed and implemented automated Unix scripts which could
be automatically kicked off at any time of day to perform specific
stresses and call profiles on the system.
QA System Architect for a large telephony company in Kansas City.
Wrote a QA approach plan and implemented Pure/Atria's PureTestExpert
(test planning and execution tool) while supervising two contractors
and two full-time employees to continue to support the methodology.
Developer and technical consultant for an interactive TV system.
Implemented in SCO/Unix with a TCP/IP backbone. Developed in Progress
Software's 4GL. Wrote the command interpreter/parser to communicate
with the firmware.
1989-1990 ANDERSEN CONSULTING, LOS ANGELES, CA (NOW
WWW.ACCENTURE.COM)
CONSULTING STAFF
Extensive schooling in formal systems development methods including
Andersen's Foundation methodology.
System Administrator and developer for a joint project between
Andersen Consulting and Hewlett Packard to port an Andersen
Consulting proprietary automated factory management system/MRP system
from 3290/Cobol to X-Windows/Unix/RDBMS. Member of the prototype and
development team in bringing project to fruition.
Member of the development team in implementing a factory
cell-control system for Boeing Aerospace and Electronics Division in
Seattle, WA. System interfaced with an MRP (MACPAC) to automate
factory floor operations in a paperless work environment. System was
written in C/ESQL and hosted on a Unix platform.
Performed market research on potential target markets resulting in
an internally published report used to assess the viability of
starting a new industry group using Dialogue and BRS database
services. Used information from Computer Intelligence, IEEE, Derwent
and Predicast databases for supporting information.
1980-1989 VALLEY HOMES, AMHERST, MA
FOUNDER High Honors; President, Phi Theta Kappa National Honor
Society
Persystence, Inc. a 246 Durham Point Road a Durham, NH 03824 a
Phone 603.674.3656 a Fax 617.208.2942
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