Since its formation in 1998, Thompson information Systems Consulting Ltd has successfully fulfilled contracts for:

• a major retail and financial services organisation (several assignments);
• an international UK-based banking group (on four separate occasions);
• the professional services consultancy of leading RDBMS-based technology vendor;
• a leading pharmaceuticals company; and
• an international fund management & life assurance company.

Most recently, Neil Thompson has been working on consultancy and training assignments for:

• a large telecommunications company;
• an international bank;
• central government; and
• the investment management arm of a major banking group.

• Part-time consultancy to a testing review and improvement assignment team. Also co-delivery of tailored training courses in Unified Modelling Language (UML), testing risk analysis & strategy, and acceptance testing.

• Enhancement and co-delivery of a training course in performance engineering and performance testing.

• Advised on testing plans and risks for an initiative involving several government websites.

• Input into a review of the software testing capabilities involved in a merger of a wealth management company with a major banking group.
• This led to Neil being asked back to write the testing strategy for the programme.

• He recently finished a very successful assignment as testing strategy and QA manager for a large programme which merged the European operations of a leading international on-line stockbroker into the existing systems of the private bank within a major banking group. The programme completed on schedule and is very highly regarded by senior management. Neil's main roles were...
• revision of the testing strategy to strengthen the use of risk-based principles, and assistance with steering the revised document and other aspects of programme testing through a group internal audit;
• improvement of programme test progress reporting to incorporate trend graphs and other innovations (this included chairing some of the anomaly management meetings);
• planning of test environment usage, in particular to fit dependencies around the programme such as business-as-usual, maintenance, and subsequent projects;
• direct reporting to the programme director on progress and quality, including wider testing matters such as methods and morale; and
• introduction of a scheme of testing review boards which brought together all main stakeholders, including senior management, to assess risk-benefit balance and examine in detail the residual risk from any considered compromises in test coverage and anomaly resolution. Neil chaired the initial meetings, produced materials for all the meetings, and handed over a working and highly-regarded scheme.

• Neil Thompson advised on supplier selection for corporate testing services. He was retained following a series of earlier assignments, primarily...
• leading the authorship of a testing strategy for the migration of hundreds of applications to a new IT infrastructure (including some redevelopments, for example to a strategic web architecture), and facilitating the supplier selection process.
• He then refined the justification of the proposed organisation structure for this testing and beyond, and brokered consensus on planning for the development environments, followed by the transitions to a tactical then a strategic shift in roles and responsibilities.
• He also facilitated workshops and wrote briefing papers on metrics and policy in the new corporate testing environments.

• For over 18 months, Neil was overall testing manager of the Business Internet Banking programme. The assignment began with an invitation to write a testing strategy, then developed into master test planning, negotiating with the development partner (a prominent global "solutions provider") the respective testing responsibilities, and integration of the two similar testing approaches. Next steps were recruiting teams for the systems integration and acceptance levels of testing, setting standards for all testing activities, and monitoring preparations for development testing and system testing. Neil was also involved in preparing the programme’s testing approach for assimilation into the client's corporate process improvement initiative, and shared ideas with the consultants involved.
• The role included reviewing and approving all testing documentation, being the only external consultant on the programme management team, and liaison on behalf of the programme with related credit card and Identrus public key infrastructure implementations. Neil initiated a cross-workstream testing managers’ liaison meeting, and chaired this weekly. The minutes were seen by programme management as a key indicator of progress and prospects, and the test progress metrics (which Neil designed) were passed upwards to senior management.
• The first release successfully went live into a pilot mode, and a "testing lessons learned" questionnaire and workshop were completed and documented as part of preparations for Release 2 testing.

• Neil reviewed testing of a telecommunications billing and customer care application, as part of providing wider advice on testing techniques and best practice. Invited to write paper on the opportunities for modifying the testing components of the in-house methodology to approach best practice whilst also fitting the object-oriented Unified Software Development Process (from which the Rational Unified Process was developed). This paper was presented by the methodology’s UK champion at the company’s worldwide best practice conference.
• Retained to co-author, with a client expert from the USA, a testing guidelines section to add to the company’s new methodology for developing and testing enterprise portals, and to provide hooks into the overall methodology. The result was enthusiastically adopted by the international practice.

• Key role in managing site user acceptance testing of a SAP R/3 manufacturing resource planning implementation. Neil's initial responsibilities were risk analysis of prior testing and other readiness factors, and definition & execution of a method and criteria for accepting the outcome of systems testing. Alongside this, he worked as the testing expert within business readiness proving, helping to define a method for business risk management and successfully executing that method via risk assessment, test planning and prioritisation. He defined the test management and execution procedures and managed the technical side of the team, including an intranet site of management information.
• The system went successfully live on schedule, and Neil was retained for a period to help define and run incident handling mechanisms and metrics.

• Acted as testing manager for a programme to implement EMU enhancements to systems which provide electronic banking facilities to large and medium-sized corporate customers. The assignment began as consultancy in testing organisation and methods, with a key objective to help the bank manage the risk of the Euro implementations interleaved with year 2000 upgrades. The systems went live before the Euro implementation date with no major problems.
• After initial review of, and assistance to, system and acceptance testing, he was retained to help plan, design and execute end-to-end testing across multiple systems and platforms bank-wide, and to drive the decision-making and acceptance process. His involvement was further extended to make and agree recommendations for future improvements to the organisation’s testing function.
• Neil later returned to help planning of testing for an internet banking project.

• Neil led a team producing test scripts for EMU and year 2000 upgrades to a complex back-office investment administration package, having laid the foundations by writing and agreeing a testing approach, testing plan and test design.
• He was then retained to define and implement test execution and management procedures and to ensure a successful start to the test execution work. The system went successfully live on schedule.

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