Founder

• Jun 2021 - Present

Product Manager

• Jul 2018 - May 2021

Rival Stars Horse RacingAgent InterceptKung Fu ClickerDungeon, Inc.Doomsday Clicker

Associate Producer

• Nov 2017 - Jun 2018

Dungeon, Inc.Doomsday ClickerRival Stars Horse Racing

LQA Manager

• Nov 2014 - Dec 2015

• Manage scheduling and assignment of LQA projects, optimize resource and staff allocation across floor space and shifts. • Lead and motivate Project Managers in planning and execution of projects. Involve them in department plans and initiatives. Advise them and develop their leadership and managerial skills. • Appraise staff performance and provide timely feedback. Manage employment based on productivity, behavior, and work demand. Focus recruitment targets with business forecasts and historical data; support training. • Balance department budgets by managing revenues, staff costs, and expenses. Assess financial goals and reach annual profit targets. • Liaise with clients to understand their requirements. Share results and request criticism. Anticipate and address their needs and concerns by deliberating solutions. • Scope all LQA titles, tailor proposals to each unique game, present successful sales pitches, assemble test teams, oversee quality of delivery, and chair post mortems. • Cooperate and negotiate with Finance, HR, and IT to supplement and organize the company infrastructure with processes that are based on relevance, simplicity, automation, and governance. Collaborate with operational departments on internal and external projects. • Research emerging markets to better provide QA for new platforms, services, and peripherals. Adapt our workflows to cater to projects with uncommon source languages, split platform deliveries, or while translation is ongoing. ✔ To promote a common understanding of job performance and to create a visible career path, I led the LQA leadership in building a behavioral expectations framework by leveraging job descriptions, performance reviews, and training materials. I directed the development of appraisal databases. ✔ Evaluated and compared many external training programs, selecting to have PMI training for Dublin PM. Moreover, I set up a pilot program that granted 220 of our global staff access to Lynda.com’s online courses. Show less

LQA Manager

• Aug 2010 - Oct 2014

Responsibilities in Montreal mirrored those in Dublin. The following are insights from my years as LQAM. ✔ I reorganized our communication channels and tools, enabling stakeholders to stay appropriately informed. Transparency over invisibility became the new communication culture. ✔ Analyzing my first peak season as LQAM, it became apparent that Test Leads could be asked to take on too much work at a time, hurting their capacity to perform. I implemented a Senior Tester role; quickly leading to stronger and more agile teams, capable of reacting to fast-paced productions with more consistency. The following year, I introduced the QA Supervisor role (now PM) to fulfill the LQA leadership structure's need for scalability and succession planning. ✔ The skills of LQA Testers are deep linguistic knowledge, gaming skills, methodical attention to detail, logical thinking, and teamwork. Our initial recruitment exam focused only on language. We redesigned the process to take all areas into account. This led to candidates with stronger skill sets and a passion for games. ✔ We joined clients in first party submissions; I successfully argued to waive flagged issues, collaborated with developers on design changes to comply with set standards, and filed submission forms. ✔ The acquisition of Babel by Keywords was unexpected. We had been competitors for years and now needed to quickly erase the “us vs. them” mentality. Keeping the team in good spirits and remaining positive, while spreading the strategic benefits of the acquisition, allowed us to prevent a loss of talent. Actively embracing the best practices of our new colleagues and sharing our tribal knowledge emphasized working together. ✔ During a 2-month leadership transition, I took on the responsibility of guiding the FQA and Compliance department. I supported the FQA PM by assigning new projects, arbitrating staff allocation, overseeing continued progress on long-term initiatives, and maintaining Test Lead meetings. Show less

Test Lead

• Feb 2008 - Aug 2010

• Led testing on over 15 games, with teams up to 50 Testers. Teams split across as many as 4 locations, including on-site within development studios.• Design test plans to obtain qualitative feedback or test the functional, localization, compliance, or compatibility.• Create test cases for smoke tests, soak tests, collision detection, asset sweeps, random customization, progress tracking, online game tracking, localization passes, audio sweeps, menu navigation, and more.• Carry out test strategies with daily briefings and productivity goals. Encourage the test teams to exceed their own expectations.• Report test results, end of day reports, end of week reports, and financial updates.• Communicate with clients in person, on the phone, by video conference, via email, and IM.• Manage relationships between external stakeholders and internal teams; including developers, producers, publishers, distributors, programmers, as well as all test teams.✔ Placed a high importance on team building and increasing awareness through frequent team meetings updating the big picture. Teams work more efficiently when they understand what the project vision is and what the outcomes of success and failure are.✔ Developed a daily goals system using an internal web share (like a Wiki), which we also used to store design documents and promote project knowledge.✔ Introduced performance reviews for Testers and Senior Testers. The workshops were designed to highlight successes, identify areas for improvement, set improvement aims, and offer support to attain them. With the positive reception from employees and management, the practice was later adopted by many colleagues.✔ A happy team is also a more dedicated one, often volunteering extra efforts or seeking leadership opportunities. I learned how to better support and delegate, thus improving team chemistry. Trusting our internal teams with more responsibilities has allowed the leaders to grow and inspired their work. Show less

Senior Tester

• Jun 2007 - Jan 2008

• Work with up to 32 Testers per project.• Define the order of the daily tasks, measure productivity, analyze the results, and improve the plans for the next day's work.• Report daily productivity and follow up on design questions with the development team.• Coach, develop, and motivate our Testers to reach their full potential.• Learn all the project procedures and teach the test team to follow them accurately.✔ Knowing all the best practices thoroughly allowed me to make adjustments to best suit the needs of the project.✔ Evolved my written communication language into a professional style. I tried many different approaches and took the time to evaluate the results, to ensure I was effective and understandable with my words.✔ Motivated and energized the teams to put in their greatest efforts. I led by example and excelled at organizational efficiency. It was my personal mission to get the team to work together in accomplishing goals as quickly and comprehensively as possible.✔ Became a walking encyclopedia, I knew how the games worked as well as anyone could and made sure to spread this knowledge within the team. Show less

Quality Assurance Tester

• Apr 2007 - May 2007

• Work on teams with up to 50 Testers per project.• Use logic, imagination, and experience to cause video game software to crash, hang, and to expose flaws.• Write detailed bug reports and communicate them to development team.✔ I noticed that many defects forced could be reproduced differently, whether in methods or locations. I began sharing my forced defects with the team so that we could cover specific problems within the game more efficiently.✔ I learned that when I knew what the game expected the player to do, it only took a little bit of thinking to get the game to react unexpectedly to counter-intuitive input.✔ My experience as an avid gamer allowed me to get a feel for where the problematic areas were.✔ I grew in terms of work ethic, understanding of the bigger picture, time management, and eagerness to do more. I saw great opportunities to grow with the company and wanted to share in the investment of growing VMC Montreal from its startup roots. Show less