TESTING AND QUALITY ASSURANCE

I specialize in medical and government projects that have formal quality standards, but have become impressed with the goals of the Lean movement.  Doing test better is one of them most productive way to increase the speed and quality of any development project.

Test Design – No single philosophy works out of the box, but Six Sigma, Waterfall models, Agile, Lean and ISO 9000 all have something useful to offer.  For each client, I attempt to synthesize a mixture that matches the needs of product, the team and the customer.  I have found test automation to be extremely productive.
•    Used bottom-up unit testing for hardware intensive project at MCT.
•    Used Automated test for pacemaker programmer at Medtronic.
•    Developed hardware simulators at Wavecrest with Monte Carlo analysis.
•    Used real-time debugging kernel at Control Data to expose internal data structures.

Test Plans – For any kind of agency certification, the test plan is the key document.
•    Fully automated the test development process at Secure Computing using Ruby on Rails.
•    Developed medical device testing for Nellcor Puritan Bennett.
•    Wrote pacemaker programmer test plans to satisfy FDA certification for Medtronic.

Traceability – You don’t know that you have tested all of the (constantly changing) requirements unless you can dynamically trace requirements to test plans and test results.
•    Traced specifications to requirements for high-security project at Secure Computing.
•    Developed a meta-text extractor to strip requirements from Specs at Nellcor.

Formal methodologies –
•    Implemented a formal testing program for Nellcor Puritan Bennett,
•    Used FAA required specification at Honeywell Avionics.
•    Attempted Proof of Correctness at Secure Computing.

Team Development – As companies evolve through merger and acquisition, test and QA departments often end up in little bits scattered around the world.  I have had good results developing custom tracking software and using video technology to glue the team together.  I have also show excellent results from integrating tool builders into the test teams.  
•    Glued teams from four companies (including one in Germany) together for Secure Computing.

Ergonomics - I have also spent years doing committee work with ergonomic researchers, and have learned to design and evaluate user interfaces to make them much easier to use.
•    Performed and ergonomic analysis on a new product at Data Key
•    Improved user interface for a machine that could fill several milk cartons a second.
•    Digital X-ray scanning and archiving system with three UIs for Mindax.
•    Designed an advanced motion control system UI for Hybritech.
•    Patented technology the can measure time in picoseconds for Wavecrest.
•    Portable disk testing systems using a custom test language for Control Data.