Senior Manager – Release & Deployment
May 2015 - Present
SS&C Technologies
(formerly International Financial Data Services Inc.) Toronto ON
· Deliver client-wide releases representing up to $20 million billable effort; through the management of risk and coordination of progress and deployment
· Monitor and guide multiple project and IT delivery teams to ensure successful delivery.
· Design and maintain dashboards and reports for all levels of management
· Propose and contribute to process improvements in agile development, code management, change and release management processes
IT Leader – Release Management (AVP)
May 1996 – May 2015
IGM Financial Inc. Toronto ON
· Managed, coordinated and directed eight cross company releases per year
· Established and maintained a multi-instance functional and integrated test environment
· Supervised application code management and deployment across multiple application platforms
· Orchestrated and deployed a workflow based SDLC process which scaled to multiple systems and organizations
Manager of Quality Assurance & Security
Aug 1989 – May 1996
CIBC Wood Gundy Securities Inc. Toronto ON
· Started as Internal Auditor with a focus on IT governance and moved over to Application functional testing
· Supervised teams supporting Functional testing and security profile administration
· Established and supported QA practice and Security administration database
BA Accounting and Finance
University of Lancaster Sep 1977 - Jun 1980
Lancaster, United Kingdom
Associate Chartered Accountant
Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales
United Kingdom
Qualified: 1982 - Resigned in good standing: 2010
✅✅✅✅✅ Release Management
✅✅✅✅✅ Change Management
✅✅✅✅ Process Improvement & Automation (inc. Solutions Business Mgr; ServiceNow; Jira)
✅✅✅ Project Management
✅✅✅✅ Test Environment Management
✅✅✅✅✅ Defect Tracking & Management
✅✅✅✅✅ Systems Development Lifecycle (Waterfall and Agile)
✅✅✅✅ ITIL (Change; Incident; Problem; Release Mgmt)
✅✅✅✅ Staff Management – Recruiting, Development & Appraisal
✅✅✅✅✅ MS Office tools (including OneNote and Visio)
I am not normally an enthusiast for 'personality' tests, but the idea of being able to articulate and leverage my strengths as proposed by Marcus Buckingham resonated with me. I took the tests a few years ago and they have been updated by Gallop. The following are my strengths:
Deliberative - People exceptionally talented in the Deliberative theme are best described by the serious care they take in making decisions or choices. They anticipate obstacles.
Intellection - People exceptionally talented in the Intellection theme are characterized by their intellectual activity. They are introspective and appreciate intellectual discussions.
Relator - People exceptionally talented in the Relator theme enjoy close relationships with others. They find deep satisfaction in working hard with friends to achieve a goal.
Pragmatic – focus on the practical, “how do we get this done,” side of any task, initiative or goal. They can erroneously be viewed as negative in their approach when in fact they simply view the entire picture (roadblocks included) to get to the end result.
Responsibility - People exceptionally talented in the Responsibility theme take psychological ownership of what they say they will do. They are committed to stable values such as honesty and loyalty.
Learner - People exceptionally talented in the Learner theme have a great desire to learn and want to continuously improve. The process of learning, rather than the outcome, excites them.