dave's resume

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David Ball
8717 Bowdoin Way
Edmonds, WA 98026
(425) 774-8567

dave@gracevideo.com

Summary

A seasoned software management veteran of fortune 100 companies, such as Starbucks and Microsoft, seeking an opportunity to influence an organization through the selection and application of valuable practices, strong mentorship, and leadership by example. Believes that strong relationships, combined with clear vision casting, creates a powerful team.

Areas of Expertise

•   Cross-Discipline Mentorship and Team Development
•   Project Management, New Product Software Development, and Software Testing
•   Product Sustainment and Support
•   Context Sensitive Technology Solutions
•   Fiscal Forecasting and Tracking

Technical Expertise

•   Tools: Mercury Quick Test Professional, Microsoft Visual Studio, home grown
•   Languages: C, C#, Visual Basic (beginning with v1), Win32 API, HTML, PHP
•   Databases: MS SQL, My SQL, plus other systems back to dBaseII
•   Operating Systems: Windows 3.1 and above, Unix, DOS 1.1 and above
•   Content Management Systems: SharePoint, Drupal

Experience

Web Application Manager, Windows Systems Group
2005-2008
Starbucks Coffee Company, Seattle WA

Oversaw business critical system enhancements from design through delivery, including business relations, design, development, testing, and deployment.
•   Delivered new version of the top visited web site page – Store Locator, resulting in a richer customer experience and easier maintenance for the business.
•   Delivered customer facing Customized Value Card through the coordination of multiple external vendors, internal groups, and coordination with Marketing under a highly compressed schedule to meet holiday release requirements.
•   Worked with business partners in the definition, prioritization, and implementation of web systems. Continually reviewed existing practices to determine enhancements within the given engineering and cultural contexts. Enabled senior management to make informed decisions based on metered resource metrics and consistent reporting.
•   Combined a group of dissimilar disciplines (functional analysts, web evangelism, quality assurance) into a team to support the development, delivery, and maintenance of IT production systems using web, n-tier, batch, and database technologies.
•   Motivated, mentored, and enabled team members to become more than their individual efforts providing increased effectiveness, higher quality, greater customer satisfaction, and improved morale. Noted result – team members report that they “feel like family,” rather than employees.
•   Technologies: C#, ASP.NET, JS, and SQL.

Director of Software Quality Assurance / Program Management
2002-2005
Liberty Healthcare Group, Port Saint Lucie FL

Defined and matured the Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC) within an organization that previously had no Testing group and no Program Management group, then oversaw the full project lifecycle for numerous internal enterprise projects improving the quality of products for the enterprise.
•   Created and implemented Program Management and Quality Assurance departments then recruited, trained, and mentored employees to fulfill the new functions.
•   Selected and introduced value-adding practices into the existing culture to move the development process from “cowboy” development so that it passed Sarbanes-Oxley annual audits by Price Waterhouse Coopers.
•   Dramatically improved stability and updates to the primary enterprise system, a telephony-integrated customer information system, improving call volumes and business satisfaction.
•   Worked with Legal and Compliance departments to insure satisfaction of SOX, HIPAA, Medicare, and Medicaid requirements.
•   Technologies: Mercury’s Quick Test Professional, web-based applications, VB6, VB.Net, MS SQL, ADO

Director of Quality Assurance
1999-2002
HBS International, Bellevue WA

Strongly influenced the release of simultaneous projects – both internally and externally facing – through the adoption of new value-adding practices, corporative communications, and team building.
•   Selected key practices to grow Testing from a “necessary evil” to a valuable component of the SDLC by carefully evaluating available tools and personnel, then instituting new practices as they added value to the culture without derailing major initiatives.
•   Practices introduced included consistent test case engineering, bug tracking, test automation, release procedures, and load testing.
•   Grew existing team from 3 engineers to 10.
•   Technologies: VB, Oracle, IIS, ASP, SQL, OLAP, Visual Test

Product Unit Director
1997-1999
Midisoft, Issaquah WA

Orchestrated the delivery of consumer products through design, scheduling, development, testing, and delivery.
•   Delivered technically advanced products such as Midisoft Studio, Windows Internet Media Player, and Play Piano.
•   Grew employee strength through consistent mentorship resulting in one employee completing his BS in Computer Science at the University of Washington.
•   Organized the testing effort through training and value-added practices to become a key element in the software development lifecycle.
•   Technologies: C++, VB, ActiveX, MIDI

Test Manager
1990-1997
Microsoft, Redmond WA

MANAGER, SOFTWARE TESTING
•   Delivered numerous versions of Microsoft Money – all with very high stability.
•   Participated in the delivery of various supporting tools for Microsoft Windows.
•   Developed such a family-like team that no team members elected to leave the Money testing team for other opportunities for five years.
•   Selected practices to grow team in size and complexity to support on-line services and Internet based banking.
•   Oversaw activities such as test plan standardization, test case creation, project specification reviews, automated testing design, ship / no ship decisions, and post mortem evaluations.
•   Tested Windows Help, the Help Compiler, and the Segmented Hypergraphics Editor (SHED) for Windows 3.1 and Windows NT using manual test strategies and pre-public versions of Visual Basic (Thunder 1) and Microsoft Test to challenge the system using Windows APIs.

Developer
1988-1990
Boeing, Everett WA

•   Developed and reviewed C applications written for UNIX. These applications were used to perform automated functional testing of the 747-400 avionics, flight control, propulsion, and other sub-systems.
•  Developed sub-systems for the internal Human Resources system.

Education

Boeing Computer Services
Seattle, WA

•   Certification, Business Programming
•   Accreditation via Seattle Pacific University
•   1987

Publication

Software Testing, Ron Patton, Sams, 2000 – Collaborated on chapters concerning defect tracking and the associated metrics.