RICHARD COUCH

richard@richardcouch.com

San Jose, CA

OBJECTIVE

Guide teams to successfully deliver their projects in the most effective manner given the constraints at hand.

STRENGTHS

Results-driven project-management professional with significant, progressive experience and expertise. 

Creative and strategic visionary with the savvy to ensure that project deliverables are quickly brought to market. 

Strong team leader with the proven managerial experience & skills to lead multidisciplinary teams and ensure productivity and morale in high-pressure situations. 

Deep-rooted experience in the Software Development Life Cycle & processes. 

Skilled problem-solver with exceptional commitment to quality, communication, negotiation, and persuasion skills.

SUMMARY

Over 30 years’ experience in Project Management and Software QA/Testing Management, from 3 person Build and Server Test teams to 30+ member teams in multiple countries including outsourcing. My teams have launched or shipped over 130 projects/products.  

I accomplished this by being excellent at: Communications – Process Execution – Solid KPI’s – Documentation – Forecasting, Budgeting & Budget Tracking – Change Control – Flexible & Adaptive – Team Building – Exceptional People Skills 

From Project Kickoff to Close-Out, I present the team with the big picture and keep them focused on the details.

EXPERIENCE

 

DECEMBER/2010 – PRESENT– DNA GUIDE – AGILE PROJECT MANAGER

• Project Manager for distributed Development Team using Scrum and the Scrum Framework
• Under heavy NDA for most of this work

  JULY/2010 – DECEMBER/2010 – ONEROOF, INC., SAN FRANCISCO AGILE PROJECT MANAGER

• Start-up in the Cyber Cafe space, with the mission of bridging the digital divide in the 3rd world
• Focusing on Ad’s and Google Ad Sense as revenue model allowing company to give away the software
• Executive Referee for CEO and VP of Engineering
• Brought Agile (via SCRUM) processes to OneRoof
• Took team from ad-hock product delivery schedule (sometimes weeks sometimes months) to once a week
• OneRoof has a mixture of Web based and Desktop based products utilizing many different technologies from Visual Basic to J2EE
• Production deployments are all on VMWare instances

 2007-2010 – STOCK OPTIONS TRADER & WEB DESIGNER-DEVELOPER

• Trading Stock Options
• Web Design and Development
• Mentoring former employees
• Member of distributed Lean Start-up Evaluation Team

1996-2007 – AUTODESK; SAN RAFAEL, CALIFORNIA 
2002-2007 – IT PROJECT MANAGER

• Worked with every Group, Division and over 50 of the 110 world-wide locations of Autodesk’s Back Office, Development and IT groups to help identify, define, specify, purchase, setup and manage their software & hardware projects
• Typical project load was 10-15 active projects in 5-10 countries
• Wrote or Facilitated the creation of Project Plans and Schedules
• Lead meetings, tracked budgets, produced reports and communicated status up and down the food chain
• Scrum Master for Agile based projects

2000-2002 – ENGINEERING MANAGER LOCATION BASED SERVICES

• Manager of Build & Release, Development & Deployment Tools & Server Test Farms
• Agile Evangelist within the Location Services division. Focusing on Scrum and served as Scrum Master on many projects.
• Team developed J2EE wireless projects for service providers like Verizon, Sprint and AT&T. 
• Project managed all internal LBS Build & Server projects for the Engineering Team. 
• Created my 3rd and largest Server Testing and Client compatibility lab at Autodesk. 
• Wrote Build Plans and Schedules.

1997-2000 – SENIOR QA MANAGER GIS DIVISION

• I managed 30+ people in QA and Build & Release teams in South Africa, Canada and California 
• working on AutoCAD based applications and the web/server suite of applications, “Map Guide”
• Created my 2nd testing and compatibility lab at Autodesk
• I inherited a large flat team and spent my first 2 months evaluating the team members and them put in a management structure that held until the company split the division into 2 groups in 2000

1996-1997 – QA MANAGER AEC DIVISION

• Created, staffed and trained the first Quality and Testing Team and Test Lab for the Autodesk AEC Division
• Successful testing of the first Faceted Modeler to be included in AutoCAD 
• Shipped the first AutoCAD based product for the AEC (AutoCAD AEC)
• I then successfully transferred the entire team and myself to the GIS Division when a major acquisition was completed
• Wrote Test Plans, Cases and Schedules

1991-1996 – SYMANTEC – QA MANAGER; NOVATO, CALIFORNIA

• Managed Quality Assurance Engineers on key projects for the Project Management division (TimeLine) of Symantec. Wrote Test Plans, Cases and Schedules
• Quality Assurance Analyst and Engineer on multiple releases of TimeLine and TimeLine related products
• Created, staffed and trained first Technical and Customer Support Team for the new Symantec spin-off company TimeLine
• Spent 5-1/2 years immersed in Project Management Software, Process and Methodology

1979-1991 – PEMKO MFG. – IT MANAGER, VENTURA, CALIFORNIA

• Lead a major technology upgrade from old PICK OS based system to DEC VAX & Alpha based systems
• Wrote Test Plan, Test Cases and User Acceptance Test Plan & Cases. 
• Selected and managed vendor for new Accounting, Manufacturing and Distribution software and did end user training including a 4GL that was used for Ad-Hoc reporting. 
• Introduced accuracy and productivity tools, like bar-code readers and terminals on the shop floor

TOOLS

Scrum, Microsoft Project, OmniPlan, BaseCamp, TeamBox, Pivotal Tracker, personal GTD tools, Hardware Platforms: many, Operating Systems: many, Windows, Linux, BSD & Mac Development Environments, Windows/Linux/Unix/Solaris/BSD CLI Tools, Many types of PM & QA Documentation, PM Methodologies, Development Methodologies, Web Load Tools, Mind Mapping, Swim-Lane Charts, White-board with Post-it Notes, 3×5 Story Cards…