laura kischitz

Co-Founder of Sustainable Life Solutions, a company that offered education, consulting, program development and services. Launched and managed utility-sponsored energy efficiency programs to promote use of energy saving devices. Developed and delivered compelling employee engagement programs and training for companies, energy efficiency organizations and utilities. Provided development, training, and implementation of Energy Saving Home Consultations for MA team of consultants.

Working collaboratively with development and documentation teams, defined overall Quality System and Test strategy and led QA teams to thoroughly define, test plans, and automation strategy across all product teams spanning multiple geographical locations to produce higher quality products. Established & defined the Systems and Release Engineering strategy, improving productivity within Development, Doc, and QA teams by upgrading Release Configuration tool set, establishing standard configuration and release management practices and increasing automated regression tests.

Implemented Enterprise Quality System by leading global development, qa, program and project management, business analysts and product management, technical writing and production. Quality System included implementing multi-site development process using various methodologies (Waterfall, Agile, Hybrid). Provided strategic leadership for multi-site development and 70+ person test team, establishing best practices and maturing organization to successfully achieve ISO9001:2000 across all sites: Canada, WI, NY, MA, and India. Led Vendor Compliance Audits, responsible for corrective actions across Quality System, and Quality metrics demonstrating product and process improvements.

Responsible for improving product quality by implementing robust Quality Assurance and Development practices across organization. This included implementing Design Reviews, Unit Testing Standards, robust Test Strategies, creating automation strategy, increasing real world use cases, implementing beta program. Led all customer, FDA, and regulated compliance audits and corrective actions. Provided management with both process and product metrics.

Provided Software Development Life-cycle optimization and expertise by evaluating current practices and creating a roadmap for improved software development efficiency. Reduced waste in Agile Methodology, improved quality for Continuous Integration, optimized use of labs and virtual staging, release engineering, and configuration, more automation testing for Test/ Build/Release Processes Created strategic plan for high performance teams with improved communication, fewer silos between departments and project teams, resulting in improved product quality, reduction in defects, improved time to market, and reduction in staff turnover.

Helped define solutions for clients to improve their Requirements (BA), Development, Testing, Program and Project Management, and Quality Assurance activities for large scale development and IT organizations. Performed SDLC and testing evaluations for clients, delivering road maps for process improvements with analysis of current state practices against industry best practices. Provided industry expertise for clients and internal client services team.