Mark brings a wealth of experience in Software Testing, Quality Assurance and Project Management to help deliver related practice and research to engagements in a way that will bring the most benefit to the client's business.

For over twelve years he has built a reputation for providing pragmatic and professional solutions to exceed operational and commercial expectations.

Prior to founding Test Hats, Mark has been a senior consultant at several London test consultancies, has headed testing and QA teams with a number of global companies including AOL (UK) Ltd, EA Inc and lastminute.com. In various roles clients have included BBC, Ogilvy, Microsoft, Zurich Financial, BP, London Stock Exchange, Barclays and Lloyds.

Mark's areas of expertise include:

• Establishing and executing agile testing with a focus on Exploratory techniques and Test Heuristics
• Pre-sales and post-sales consultancy covering assessment of testing needs and development of test solutions
• Hiring, Establishing and Developing the Test Team
• Defining the Test Function and Strategy, maturing delivery of testing services
• Integrating and aligning Quality and Testing strategy with the business and technical functions
• Improving ROI from testing and quality with a focus on lean and efficient test processes
• A focus on achieving commercial and operational objectives through leadership and collaboration
• Training, teaching and mentoring team members at all levels and teams within organisations

Earlier in his career Mark focused on Quality Assurance and qualified as a Lead Assessor for ISO9000 systems. Undertaking training with organisations such as CQI to gain a solid academic grounding in Quality.

Later gaining professional development and formal accreditation in software testing and IT Service Management with organisations such as ISEB and BCS. These areas of domain knowledge rounded off by training and experience in Project Management through the PMI.

Today Mark focuses on running Test Hats, an independent software testing and quality assurance consultancy, with offices in the UK and Spain. Having engaged on-site consultants in the UK and established a near-shore Test Lab, Mark helps clients by delivering unique, lean and pragmatic approaches to ensure best-in-class software testing and quality assurance solutions.

As with most professionals with a passion for testing Mark continues to be involved hands-on during development; testing, writing Test Specifications, Test Cases and performing execution and reporting. He has a special interest in Security Testing and leads this area of practice within Test Hats. Mark is active in the software testing community, he presents, writes many papers on testing published here and on sites such as Stickyminds, is the author of several Training Courses and is a regular attendee at industry conventions.

To discuss any areas of Software Testing and Quality Assurance get in touch via email, call on +44 (0)20 3239 8254 or Skype: TestHats.

Why not read the blog and make comment on the papers here and other topics discussed?

Examples of other work:

• Article published in the Testing Planet on The growing Cyber threat and the tester’s call to arms. November 2011
• Sponsored and spoke at the London Tester Gathering on Getting into Security Testing. November 2011.
• Design and Facilitated a Weeknight Testing session on Black Box Security Testing. September 2011.
• Spoke at the 29th UK TMF. The talk was entitled 'Moving from traditional to agile testing, without tears or lactic acid'. April 2011.
• Presented to the Agile Testing UK User Group in London on Specification by Example. December 2010.
• Recorded a TWiST podcast with Matt Heusser where we talk about all things testing. December 2010.
• Keynote at the Yorkshire Mafia agile test and development group in Leeds, discussing agile documentation. November 2010.
• Spoke at the SolutionIT invitation only conference in Denmark, on Behaviour Driven Testing. 24th - 25th August 2009.
• Spoke at SIGIST in London on 'Pragmatic Testing - the Middle Way'. June 2009.
• Article published on Stickyminds 'Making Requests for Additional Staff'. September 2008.