Chief Executive Officer

• Aug 2008 - Present

Kinetic Skunk was started as a research and development based Test Automation Solutions Provider. Overtime, KineticSkunk evolved into a DevOps (CI and CD) and Digital Testing organization. Two strategic goals of Kinetic Skunk are: 1. Pioneer bleeding and cutting edge DevOps and Digital Testing Solutions to drive research, particularly in Agile Test Automation 2. Implement practical, efficient and cost effective DevOps and Digital Testing Solutions. Kinetic Skunk’s approach to DevOps and Digital Testing is enabled by end to end automation. Thus enabling our clients to quickly realize strategic business goals and measure DevOps KPIs. Kinetic Skunk’s DevOps and Digital Testing Solutions are platform, technology, application and industry agnostic.

Software Quality Assurance Consultant

• Oct 2015 - Nov 2019

There are several highlights on this project. Three of which are: 1. Building their entire test department from the ground up. This included recruiting and training seven interns to fulfill the roles of test leads, testers and test automation engineers. 2. Building, supporting and the maintenance of the test automation framework (Functional & API) and their Continuous Testing solution. These solutions were built using GIT, Jenkins, Maven (custom repository), Java TestNG, Rest-Assured and MongoDB. 3. Load Testing on three high profile projects: MTN Zakhele, MTN Futhi and Vodacom Yeboyethu BEE Trading Platforms. Tools used to accomplish this were Jenkins, JMeter, Java, Maven and Microsofts Azure Platform to generate the required load using Ubuntu Servers.

Senior SQA Consultant

• Jan 2013 - Aug 2015

As Kinetic Skunk my first goal was to develop a Agile Test Automation Strategy. This strategy became known as a ‘One Sprint Behind’ test automation strategy. At a high level, this meant in a current sprint, all tests of accepted functionality developed in the previous sprint would be automated. This meant that by the end of a current sprint existing functionality would be tested using a automated regression testing pack and new functionality would be tested using exploratory testing methods. As Kinetic Skunk my first goal was to develop a Agile Test Automation Strategy. This strategy became known as a ‘One Sprint Behind’ test automation strategy. At a high level, this meant in a current sprint, all tests of accepted functionality developed in the previous sprint would be automated. This meant that by the end of a current sprint existing functionality would be tested using a automated regression testing pack and new functionality would be tested using exploratory testing methods.

Software Testing Consultant

• 2013 - 2013

Senior Software Quality Assurance Engineer

• Oct 2012 - Dec 2012

Senior Software Quality Assurance Engineer

• Nov 2011 - Sep 2012

Senior Test Automation Engineer

• Jun 2009 - Nov 2011

Donovan built a test competency that provided and still provides software testing services to various projects internal to SunGard. The team has all the skills required to grow and to provide high end software testing services which includes performance and functional (manual and automated) testing as well as environment building and application support. In this competency Donovan and his colleagues proved that software testing services based on open source tools can be successfully employed in a multi-national enterprise. This was proved on several concurrent projects in both the functional and performance sphere. Donovan planned and managed the implementation a continuous integration solution which included a smoke testing cycle. This solution was based on the Atlassian tool set. Donovan also conducted a POC to select a performance and load testing tool which is currently being successfully used on several high profile projects within the SunGard enterprise. The chosen tool is a open source tool. This has proved successful enough to facilitate the movement away from propriety test tools to open source test tools. Donovan pioneered the a test design methodology based on three tier data driven testing. This afforded the OO capability in the test design phase. Using this one test case could be many test cases where the execution path is determined by input data. A high level of reusability was achieved at the test design level. Thus increasing efficiency of testing and reducing the cost of maintenance of test suites.

Test Automation Strategist

• Oct 2008 - Jun 2009

Donovan provided software testing as well as business analysis services to a major insurer. Donovan also provider software testing services on a high profile Oracle data warehouse implementation at a major retailer. Donovan provided software testing as well as business analysis services to a major insurer. Donovan also provider software testing services on a high profile Oracle data warehouse implementation at a major retailer.

Senior Test Automation Engineer

• Oct 2007 - Sep 2008

Donovan successfully designed and implemented an automated testing solution based on the 3 tier data (test plan) driven method that is cost effective and yielded a much higher return on investment than what one could expect from an automated testing solution based on arcane methodologies such as record and playback. Further cost saving was realized by being environment (test, UAT, production) and application independent, supporting the reuse of test assets between framework components and tests even if the tests were of completely different applications. This reuse of test assets yielded lower maintenance costs of tests and the automated testing solution itself. As this framework provided a consistent and standardized approach to test design it became easy to achieve extremely high quality and dependable testing through greater test coverage and lowered test cycle time which resulted in much earlier detection of defects. Tests that took up to 1 hour to execute manually could now be executed in less than 5 minutes. Since this framework has a Test Development Interface independent of a test tool it supports the reuse of test tool licenses in the test development space by means of a test lab shared among projects and even departments. Which if applied correctly with careful planning and great strategy could easily become an enterprise wide automated testing solution which will yield even greater cost savings and ROI for the entire enterprise.

Senior Test Automation Engineer

• Apr 2007 - Sep 2007

Based at IntecBilling, I designed and implemented a test automation solution based on 3-tier data driven architecture that was product agnostic. It is still in use today. The test automation tool used was Quick Test Pro. Based at IntecBilling, I designed and implemented a test automation solution based on 3-tier data driven architecture that was product agnostic. It is still in use today. The test automation tool used was Quick Test Pro.

Lead Test Automation Engineer

• 2005 - 2007

I successfully designed and imlemented two automated testing frameworks based on the functional decomposition and test plan driven architecture. In order for this three challenges had to be overcome. The first of which was that there was no exclusive test database available to the automated testing drive. This meant that fresh baselines had to be created for every test run. To overcome this I developed a dynamic baseline generation engine which adhered to business rules in order to simulate data being sent from peer systems into the base system. This engine afforded the ability given certain static data to generate snap shots of the system under test for all configured verification points. The solution was scalable and easy to perpetuate. This minimized maintenance overhead however it did add a layer of complexity to the automated testing solution. The next challenge was to develop an automated testing framework that supported multiple programming technologies which had to be environment and application independent. This challenge was overcome by applying a centralized model using a keyword or test plan driven method. This approach resulted in a framework that yielded dependable results, was easy to maintain, perpetuate, insulated most testers from the complexities of the automated testing solution. The next challenge was to automate the ten core Woolworth's business scenarios. This entailed a massive effort in data flow analysis and test data creation. This was overcome through careful and thorough planning. During this phase of the project (automated testing solution) I worked as data and test analyst. These end-to-end system tests on average comprised of over 2000 transactions representing up to seven peer systems. The system test cycle was brought down from 4 weeks to 4 to 6 hours depending on system performance.

Senior Test Automation Engineer

• 2002 - 2004

Senior Test Automation Engineer

• Jan 2001 - Apr 2001

Test Automation Engineer

• May 2000 - Aug 2000

Test Automation Engineer

• Jan 1997 - Apr 2000