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Resume of Robert V. Binder

Master system architect and serial entrepreneur; hands-on visionary with exceptional results in many verticals

Proven business leadership in many verticals (financial, health care, IT, defense, energy, others) and all major IT stacks (mobile, cloud, open, proprietary). Intuitively recognizes disruptive opportunities and big solutions. Broad and deep grasp of value, architecture, and implementation of large, complex systems. Rare combination of business and technical skills—promoter, deal maker, closer, manager, financial analyst, as well as master system architect. Widely published, a sought-after speaker, and globally recognized as a software engineering thought leader. Engaging and flexible communicator who sells business plans to investors, shares technical nuances with academics, delivers practical techniques to programmers, and develops strategy and tactics with senior management.

CORE SKILLS

• Business Planning, Modeling, Forecasting
• Coherent Systems Architecture
• Impact-rich Marketing Campaigns
• Operations Startup, Turnaround
• Service Project Proposals, Sales, and Delivery
• Budget Management, Cost Controls
• Technology Product Family Production
• Advanced Automated Testing Solutions
• $MM Contract Negotiations, Sales
• Product R & D
• Operations Studies, Gap Analysis/Correction
• Performance and Quality Management

EDUCATION

MS, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science — University of Illinois at Chicago

MBA, Management Science and Finance — University of Chicago, Booth School of Business

BA, Political Science — University of Chicago, The College

BUSINESS PORTFOLIO

System Verification Associates LLC, Chicago.  2009 to present.

PRESIDENT. Deliver best-of-breed consultation services for mission-critical system assurance. Quickly established wins for marquee clients facing high-stakes regulatory challenges. Multi-national client base spans leading independent software vendors, manufacturers, and government agencies.

• At the request of Microsoft’s Principal SDET for its Open Protocols Initiative (OPI), recruited and led a team to assure acceptance of deliverables required by US Dept. of Justice. Reviewed hundreds of OPI specifications and model-based test artifacts, pinpointing many improvements. Served as process architect for a global contractor team located in China, India, and the Americas. Performed gap analysis using ISO 17025 (Test Lab quality standard).
• At the request of a leading provider of US FDA-regulated software responding to an FDA warning, led the verification and validation transformation project. Surveyed competitors to establish best practice benchmarks. Assessed development and assurance of six business units with off-shore development. Identified FDA class II compliance issues and process improvement opportunities. Delivered detailed recommendations and an action plan to improve processes and prevent future warnings. Facilitated senior management buy-in and supported plan implementation.

mVerify Corporation, Chicago. 2001 to 2009.

CEO. Took a unique solution for end-to-end mobile testing to market. Recruited corporate board, chaired meetings, and prepared quarterly reports. Identified and nurtured relations with key channel partners and suppliers. Negotiated shrewdly for all sales, development, and investment contracts. Sourced, established compensation models, and managed all technical, marketing, and operational staff. Managed counsel for all IP and employment matters. Defined and evolved product architecture and then followed through leading all design, programming and testing. Innovation rewarded by prototype being selected to premiere at DEMO.

• In ‘03, proposed the Advanced Mobile Application Testing Environment to the US National Institute of Standards and Technology’s Advanced Technology Program and was one of 40 selected from 472 submissions to receive a $1.9M award for R&D. Led development to successful completion in June ‘05. Raised $1.5M in subsequent funding from non-institutional investors. Guided development, marketing, and sales of five releases of MTS, mVerify’s commercial testing product for the Windows Mobile platform.
• Headed the full scope of business development functions. Prospected and pitched leading Sand Hill Road VCs, preparing all supporting business plans and decks. Developed bottom-up business forecast generating multi-year financial statements. Personally conducted hundreds of sales presentations and demos. Continuously monitored competitive status of all players/products in the test automation space. Defined “mobile testing nightmare” and “A million users in a box” branding strategy using several agencies to develop multi-media/viral campaigns.
• Built and sustained relations in vertical markets including the DoD, wireless infrastructure, network equipment, handheld devices, large and small independent software vendors, and global IT service providers.
• Prevailed in a 6-year application process with the US Patent Office.

RBSC Corporation, Chicago.  1990 to 2001.

PRESIDENT. Sold, planned, and headed hundreds of international software engineering service engagements focused on the synergy of tools, methodologies, and process. Composed 65-days of instructor-led seminars. Oversaw a remote team of globally dispersed instructors to deliver training to thousands of developers in North America, Europe, and Asia. Established an automated testing practice that yielded a 10-year run of assurance solutions for “failure is not an option” clients in aerospace, financial markets, and medical devices.

• Approached by the Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE) to conduct all integration and system testing of CBOE Direct—a screen-based trading system for the world’s leading options exchange. Pioneered a unique model-based testing system that ran daily in a multi-platform real-time test environment. This 4-year engagement resulted in zero-failure production releases and facilitated integration of new derivative products with other exchanges.
• Selected by Lucent to produce a 3-day object-oriented testing seminar for its Center of Excellence to train all 40,000 Software Developers.
• Lent critical insight to the management team at Pansophic Systems (now Computer Associates) as they repositioned their enterprise manufacturing solution. Created a software process and integrated tool suite product to slash time to market and trounce the competition with agile feature development.
• Contracted by a leading international petroleum company to design, test, and roll-out an integrated tool suite to support a complete re-write of its supercomputer geological simulation and visualization system.

Earlier assignments include Application Programmer, Account Manager and Project Manager. Honed ability to develop systems for a wide range of applications, using cost effective software engineering techniques for high quality. Worked extensively with proposal planning, job estimation, and sales. Achieved a blemish-free track record for on-time, in-budget completion of complex multi-year software projects with fixed-price contracts.

INDUSTRY LEADERSHIP

Conference Keynoter and Presenter: Juniper Ignite!, ISSRE, AMOST, ETAPS, Google TAC, Chicago SPIN, TestCom, Software-QS-Tag, QuoMBaT, DEMO, Quality Week, Pacific Northwest Quality Conf., ROOTS, TOOLS, Chicago Quality Assurance Assn.

Signatory: Software Engineering and Method and Theory group

Senior Member: IEEE

Certified Software Development Professional: IEEE CSDP

Editorial Board: Journal of Software Testing, Verification, and Review

Technical Advisory Board: Agitar Software

Program Committee Member: 2011 MBT User Conference, ICST ‘08, AMOST ‘06 to ’11, and OOPSLA ‘01

Industry Track Co-Chair: ICST ‘09

Conference Chair: ‘04 IEEE International Symposium on Software Reliability Engineering

Founder and 5-term President: Structured Techniques Association

PATENTS

US Patent 7,339,891: Method and System for Evaluating Wireless Applications.

US Patent Pending: System and Method For Distributed Certification Testing.

PUBLICATIONS

Testing Object-Oriented Systems: Models, Patterns, and Tools. Addison-Wesley, 1999. Recognized as a definitive reference, this 1,024 page book has sold over 10,600 copies, been translated to Polish and Chinese, and was recently re-released in paperback. It is the first and only book about test design patterns and patterns for test oracles. It provides a practical yet complete explanation of state-based testing. Examples in Java, C++, Ada 95, Objective-C, Eiffel, and Smalltalk. Recommended study reference for the IEEE CSDP (Certified Software Development Professional) exam. Textbook for dozens of university courses.

Application Debugging. Prentice-Hall, 1985. Recognized as a definitive reference for IBM mainframe programmers. Shows how to analyze runtime errors for programs written in Cobol, Assembly, PL/I, and Fortran. Featured selection of the Library of Computer and Information Sciences Book Club.

58 articles in leading professional and refereed journals, cited over 2,100 times. Selected titles:

• Global, Model-based Protocol Verification, ACM Queue.
• Model-based Testing Update, IEEE Reliability Society 2010 Annual Technical Report.
• The Percolation Pattern, C++ Report.
• Monthly column ’95 to ‘98, Object Magazine.
• Can a Manufacturing Quality Model Work for Software? IEEE Software.
• Testing Object-Oriented Programs: a Survey, Journal of Software Testing, Verification and Reviews. This comprehensive survey of the state of the art was serialized using all pages of two issues of an archival journal.
• Design for Testability with Object-Oriented Systems, Communications of the ACM.
• KB/RMS: An Intelligent Assistant for Requirement Definition, International Journal of Artificial Intelligence Tools.
• Trends in CASE Users and CASE Usage, American Programmer.

Open Source Projects

• Test Automation ROI Calculator. A tool to analyze cost/benefit of test automation, with tutorial white paper. GPL.
• Reliability Demo Chart. Tool to make release decisions using reliability analysis. GPL.

TECHNOLOGY OVERVIEW

Designed, programmed, and tested many production systems for a wide range of application domains and technology stacks.

Methodologies: Model-driven development, UML 2.0, Hatley-Pirbhai, Structured Analysis/Design, Data Modeling, N-squared charts, others.

Languages: C#, Java, C++, Tcl, Prolog, Objective-C, Cobol, TAL, Fortran, PL/I, various assembly; HTML, CSS, JavaScript, XML. CORBA IDL, Microsoft IDL.

Databases: SQL Server, MySQL, Postgres, IMS.

Tools: Visual Studio, Bugzilla, Trac, Source Depot, Subversion, GSOAP, RoboDoc, CPPunit, Junit, ActiveState Tcl. Netmon, Wireshark. SilkTest, QTP, Quality Center, Expect, Spec Explorer, Visual Studio Team System/Test Edition; others. WordPress, Microsoft Office, Microsoft Sharepoint.

Operating Systems: All Windows clients, Windows Server 2K, 2K8; Windows Mobile/CE, Linux (Red Hat, Debian, Cent OS), BSD, Solaris, NeXT, OS/400, IRIX, Guardian, RTOS, MVS.

Networks: Microsoft protocols: DCOM, Remote Desktop, Distributed Authorization, etc.; RFC protocols: HTTP, HTTPS, FTP, SMTP, DHCP, BEEP, SIP, TCP/IP, etc.; W3C protocols: SOAP, WSDL, XML, etc.; IEEE Protocols: WiFi, WiMax, Firewire, etc.

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