IBM Rational (formerly Rational Software)
Advisory Software Engineer – ClearCase Level 3 (L3) Engineer 2006 – 2009

ClearCase is a high-end Source Code Management system.

Resolved customer-submitted defects for ClearCase; team expert in Unified Change Management (UCM) features. Duties included defect triage, problem analysis, debugging, coding and automated testing. Made final fix/no-fix decisions on customer issues, in collaboration with customers and support.

  • L3 Team reduced defect backlog by 58% over two yearsby researching and fixing customer and internal defects (in C and C++) to increase customer satisfaction
  • Automated tests (in Perl) to validate defect fixes
  • Conferred with support and directly with customers to refine requirements and set expectations to ensure satisfaction
  • Influenced development strategy by collecting voice of the customer data via Design Partner program from Cisco and Ericsson
Advisory Software Engineer – ClearCase UCM Developer 2006 – 2009

Unified Change Management (UCM) is a subset of ClearCase functions that provides activity-based source control. It was the spearhead in Rational’s strategy for lowering cost of ownership for ClearCase.

Developed enhancements (primarily performance improvements) for ClearCase UCM.

  • Implemented three performance improvements in ClearCase UCM through RPC call batching and caching. For a fully-labeled baseline, improvement was 44% reduction of network traffic over a changeset of 500 versions
  • Trained and mentored two engineers from IBM India Software Labs. We coordinated work to provide around-the-clock response on build problems
  • Worked with strategic customers to collect requirements, set priorities, and ensure satisfaction
  • Fixed a significant and long-standing customer problem (“Evil Twins”); previewed at 2007 Rational User Conference
Rational Software (formerly PureAtria)
Quality Engineering Lead – ClearCase UCM 2004 - 2005

Oversaw virtual team of quality engineers in test planning and test development for ClearCase UCM in version 7.0.

  • Led nine engineers from six teams, testing features spanning eleven development sub-projects
  • Coached team in estimating skills
Quality Engineering Technical Lead – ClearCase UCM 1998 – 2004

Supervised five quality engineers testing ClearCase UCM from inception; responsible for test planning, test development and test execution for new features and regression testing.

  • Automated test bed of more than 1,400 test points over four major ClearCase releases
  • Joined in cross-functional team including development, marketing, documentation, training, support and quality to successfully release products on schedule
  • Developed training materials in collaboration with training, support and marketing
  • Defined UCM requirements, based on reviews of customizations of ClearCase by major customers
  • Facilitated Customer Advisory Boards and Rational User Conferences (RUC)
  • Presented “Modeling Components with Composite Baselines,” at RUC 2003
Software Engineer – Automated Test Environment 3/1998 – 9/2006

Designed and developed the Automated Test Environment (ATE), Perl modules providing general and product specific convenience routines for environment setup and cleanup. The heart of ClearCase qualification, it provides functional verification on-demand through a validation language.

  • Developed validation module allowing tests to specify behaviors to validate and methods of validation
  • Wrote technical and user documentation
  • Provided extended support to users
  • Implemented product-specific library for ClearCase UCM and contributed to other ATE modules
  • Prepared and presented training materials on the ATE and Perl
  • Created general-purpose tools and tools for queries and metrics against a variety of defect tracking databases (DDTs, ClearTrack, and ClearQuest)
Pure Atria (formerly Atria)
Software Quality Engineer – ClearGuide 8/1995 – 2/1998

ClearGuide was an add-on product to ClearCase that provided software process management and activity-based source management. It featured a language for process definition.

Planned testing and created automated and manual tests for ClearGuide.

  • Headed team of three engineers creating ClearGuide test bed
  • Developed Perl CGI scripts for test journal check-in and status page updates through the web
  • Implemented test harness that executed Perl scripts and supplied routines for common operations, built-in and custom filters. This harness used “golden” file comparison
Marcam

Member of Technical Staff – Protean 1993 – 1995

Protean was a next generation of PRISM, an ERP system designed for process manufacturing.

Developed unit test framework for Protean, in C++ on Windows NT using MFC.

  • Joined in developing architecture for testing application and GUI classes, enabling inexpensive standardized unit tests. This strategy was presented at SQM ’94
  • Implemented test harness and unit test template generator in C++
  • Trained 17 developers, test engineers and interns to write effective unit tests and UI unit tests
  • Automated tests for UI components (QA Partner)
  • Administered defect tracking (DDTs)
Sun Microsystems
Project Test Leader, AnswerBook 1989 – 1993

AnswerBook collected Sun documentation on a CD-ROM; it was hypertext before the web and included full-text search. It was the basis of Sun’s documentation delivery strategy with an installed base of over 500,000.

Planned test activities, design test strategy and coordinated a bi-coastal testing effort, using volunteers (Engineers and Writers) to test 16,000 pages of documentation.

  • AnswerBook product was essentially bug-free; no customer defects were submitted during first six months of availability
  • Built test automation script to validate link targets (Perl)
  • Wrote tools in C++ and Perl to collect metrics against in-house bugtracking system
  • Participated in design of defect life-cycle
QE Engineer, Sun 386i project 1987 – 1989

Tested SunOS on Intel platform; specialized in testing OS administration including installation

Papers, Presentations, Patents and Awards

J. Tykal, D. Curreri, J. Aibel. 2004. “Whitepaper: Best Practices For Using Composite Baselines in UCM.” IBM DeveloperWorks, http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/rational [uncredited per IBM policy: only support engineers are named].

H. G. Reed, C. D. Turner, J. B. Aibel, J. T. Dalton. “Practical Object-Oriented State-Based Unit Testing,” Software Quality Management II, Vol. 2: Building Quality into Software. Ed. C. A. Brebbia. Computational Mechanics Publications (1994).

ISSUED: US Patent 5737609 / April 7, 1998. Method And Apparatus For Testing Object-Oriented Programming Constructs. Inventors: H. G. Reed, J. T. Dalton, J. B. Aibel, S. A. Sciandra.

IBM Bravo Award (2007)

13 IBM Thanks! Awards (2004-2009)