Resume - Nov. 2004

Paul A. Avard

228 Bogue Rd. * Weare, New Hampshire 03261

http://www.oocities.org/p_avard/index.html

Software Quality Assurance Management

Product Lifecycle Refinement - Project Scoping & Planning - Team Building

Skilled professional with over 14 years experience in optimizing understaffed teams and achieving increasingly improved quality within aggressive schedules. Experienced in integrating QA process throughout the product lifecycle. Strong leadership skills and organizational skills. Proven ability to develop and implement systems, assess project scopes, manage projects and provide comprehensive risk analysis, resulting in cost reductions and shorter project cycles . Provide real-time progress reporting and project trajectory metrics. Systematically and consistently increase corporate profitability by optimizing use of available resources. Excellent at identifying core competencies of individuals and leveraging them to provide job satisfaction and productivity. Building synergy across functional teams to provide common vision between QA, Development, Product Management, Project Management, Technical Support, Sales Engineers and Business Development and peripheral teams. Able to identify areas of testing that are remiss as well as testing redundancies and optimizing QA efforts for maximum return.

Professional Experience

2/2000-8/2004 First Virtual Communications Nashua, NH (formerly CUseeMe Networks, Inc.> formerly White Pine Software).

QA Manager for Click to Meet Conference Server rich-media software. This product includes a multi-point conference unit (MCU) * VoIP (client/server) application for H.323, T.120, SIP, CU protocols. This technology includes transcoding between codecs, server linking, RTP audio mixing and video switching. In this role, I was also responsible for all Project Management duties. I was hired at FVC to introduce software quality assurance processes and project lifecycle SOP’s.

► Assembled a team of high-performance QA Engineers, thus reducing project cycle time from 9 months to 9-12 weeks, thus decreasing the defect persistence rate of shipping products by 62-66%

► Interviewed and hired QA staff for my team as well as a spawn-off team

► Developed standards for test plans development to provide traceability from marketing requirements, engineering requirements, problem tickets, use cases and specifications.

► Introduce test automation process via Perl scripts and XML for web-based applications.

► Introduced white box testing practices and tools, including packet tracers and spectrum analyzers and API-level testing.

► Introduced new AQL planning process involving based on milestones based on measurable criteria.

► Introduced a central repository for lab resource allocation.

► Introduced project scoping and scheduling by use of MS Project and Excel.

► Introduced defect trend analysis and project trajectory tracking, presenting metrics graphically and in pivot tables.

► Provided comprehensive Risk Analysis reports and Defect Trend Analysis.

► Mentored team towards setting and pursuing career goals.

► Corporate DBA for defects, RFE and Requirements databases.

2/1990-2/2000 Autodesk BDE Division Manchester NH (Formerly Softdesk> Formerly DCA Software) Quality Assurance Team Leader for Architectural Desktop 1.0 & 2.0. Highly successfully projects.

► Distinguished member and contributor of a core team which developed a detailed Product Lifecycle system at Autodesk.

► Simultaneously managed an automation team in India, black box testing teams in Sweden and interoperability testing in Boulder, CO. while managing on-site application engineers. This project was successful, producing a demonstrably ready-to-ship product on time and under budget. No subsequent patch-releases were ever required for mainstream use case anomalies.

► Devised strategies for testing automation and directed automation team using QA Partner and AutoCAD script (.scr) language as well as Autolisp.

► Developed streamline practices for reconciling test cases against feature specifications.

► Mastered network license server technologies (IPX and TCP/IP protocols)

► Developed process for defect trend analysis.

► Managed resources for black box testing, white box testing code coverage analysis and testing automation.

► Successfully met and exceeded all personal performance goals for duration of employment at Autodesk.

► Senior Technical Support * Team Leader / QA Analyst for all architectural, structural and mechanical product lines.

► Supported platforms included DOS, Windows 3.1, Solaris, Novell, Win95, NT 3.51 and NT 4.0.

5/1990-8/1990 NH Vocational Technical College Manchester, NH Associate Professor in AutoCad R10.

► Instructed two classes in AutoCAD R10.

Education and Professional Development

2002 National Safety Council * OSHA * Basics of Safety Performance for Small Business

2001 New Horizons, Nashua, NH * Microsoft Project

1999 MS Certified Training Programs, Bedford, NH - Introduction to Visual Basic

1998 Autodesk, Henniker, NH * AutoCAD Level II (Proprietary product/certification)

1998 NH Technical Institute, Concord, NH * Intro. To C++

1995 Employee Leadership Certificate, (Proprietary Management Training) Autodesk, Santa Clara CA

1994 Sun Microsystems, Nashua NH * Solaris 2.x System Administrator II

1989 Polytechnic Institute of NE, Nashua, NH * Certificates in CADD, drafting and technical math.

1988 NH Vocational Technical College, Manchester, NH * Commercial Layout and Design Graphics.

1978 UNH, Manchester, NH * 2 year study in Behavioral Psychology.