So you want to know more about the person behind the website huh? Then read on!
Who am I?
I am Stuart Thomas, a 30-something year old retro-gaming enthusiast, car lover, and problem-solver based in Shropshire with my wife and our two Dalmatians. I have a real passion for high quality software development and helping others to be the best they can be. To help me do more of this, I’ve also offer mentoring to anyone and everyone interested in Engineering, Quality, and Leadership.
What do I do?
Up until recently I worked for Zoopla (Now Houseful) as an Engineering Manager. I worked at Zoopla for 9 years, starting my career in software there. Since my start there I became a real life success story of how Zoopla’s Career Frameworks can help individuals to reach their goals.
In my day to day activities I worked with the teams that build Estate Agency CRM offerings, leading the Quality and Platform teams. More broadly, I worked across the various business units that make up Zoopla as part of our Communities of Practices for Quality and Risk, Performance, and DORA metrics.
During my time working for Zoopla I have had the opportunity to help re-imagine and shape Quality and ways of working across the Transact Domain. Some of these successes include:
Created the Zoopla Holistic Testing Model – As part of creating the Quality Strategy for the Business to Business products at Zoopla, I created the Zoopla Holistic Testing Model. The model is intended to demonstrate how Quality and testing forms an integral part of our Software Development Life Cycle, and in doing so, it also acts as a quick reference for What, How, When and Where to test.
Shift Left – Creating a quality first culture with shift left approach that is embraced by all engineers across the domain.
Reduced duration of regression testing by over 95% – Implemented automated UI and API testing to cover our regression testing needs. Reducing man hours testing takes from 30 to less than 1.
Reduced delivery time by 480 hours – Lead a series of work that improved development and deployment strategies. Ultimately reduced time to deploy changes from 493 hours to less than 12.
Re-imagined Customer Support – Reviewed and overhauled the way the customer support teams worked with the engineering teams. Resulted in a more empowered support team, a less interrupted engineering team and happier customers.
More recently I have joined Nominet as Engineering Manager for Quality. I’ll be update this page more about my time here once I have settled in.
Why a blog?
I started this blog in May 2022 as a way to contribute to the wider software and quality engineering community. I hope you find the content useful. If you enjoy what you read here please let me know! Comments are always welcome, or contact me via the contact page.
