Resume of Robert V. Binder

Serial Entrepreneur, High Assurance Thought-leader, System and Process Architect

Rare combination of business and technical skills—promoter, dealmaker, closer, manager, financial analyst;  master innovator and system architect. Widely published, a sought-after speaker, and globally recognized as a software engineering thought leader. Intuitively recognizes disruptive opportunities and big solutions. Broad and deep grasp of value, architecture, and implementation of large, complex systems. 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. Proven effectiveness in many verticals—financial, healthcare, IT, defense, energy, others—and all major IT stacks—mobile, cloud, open, proprietary.

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CORE SKILLS

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.

• Conducted in-depth process assessment for a leading provider of integrated healthcare information technology seeking to achieve world class results in quality, development practices, and customer value. Reviewed Agile and phased development practices of hundreds of managers, architects, and developers. Evaluated system architecture comprised of client/server, Oracle DBMS with thousands of tables, Hadoop/MapReduce clusters, multi-tier REST/JSON servers, and dozens of iPhone and Android apps. Assessed practices, development environment, a complex devops tool chain, and data center using TMMi and related criteria. Developed 65 detailed recommendations achieving a net cost-benefit of $5 million.
• 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.

Internet Assurance Lab, University of Illinois at Chicago, 2012 to Present.

Co-Director.  Applying protocol verification expertise and coordinating with industrial partners on research and development to improve robustness and usability of Internet and other network technologies.

X9 D14 Working Group, Quality Management Standard for Automated Trading, 2012 to Present

Working Group Chair. Leader of document drafting process and serving as liaison to ISO for a management system standard for the automated trading industry. Based on ISO 9000, this standard will define best practices for developers and operators of automated and high frequency trading systems.

Olenick & Associates, Chicago, 2012 to 2013.

Director of Innovation. Ideated and launched marketing for an IT testing service firm. Created twenty entirely new service offerings. Established alliances with startup and market leading ISVs.

• Established a complete marketing program for a fragmented service/market mix with no existing marketing strategy, staff, or resources. Working with a total budget under $10,000, designed and lead development of total marketing platform including content management, client relationship management, and applicant tracking. Ideated Deployment Assured re-branding campaign; wrote three white papers and many data sheets. Launched social media campaign and process. Developed marketing and campaign process, launched webinar series. Personally designed and implemented an entirely new web site using WordPress Multi-Site and facilitated internal team of contributors.
• Created business plans and technology for two dozen innovative service offerings, including Assured Windows Migration. Developed completely new advanced assurance offerings for cloud, mobile, and DevOps. 

mVerify Corporation, Chicago. 2001 to 2009.

CEO. Founded a software startup to bring a unique solution for end-to-end mobile app testing to market. Pitched over 100 venture capital firms; raised over $3 million from agencies and angel investors. Negotiated shrewdly for all sales, development, and investment contracts. Identified and cultivated relations with key channel partners and suppliers. Sourced, established compensation models, and managed all technical, marketing, and operational staff. Defined and evolved product architecture and then followed through leading all design, programming, and testing. Recruited corporate board, chaired meetings, and prepared quarterly reports. Managed counsel for all IP and employment matters.

• Developed a mobile app testing prototype that premiered at DEMO, proving innovation leadership. Proposed the Advanced Mobile Application Testing Environment to the US National Institute of Standards and Technology’s Advanced Technology Program. Was one of 40 selected from 472 submissions to receive a $1.9M award for R&D. Led two-year development to successful completion with a demonstration at the International Conference on Software Engineering, May 2005.
• System architect for MTS, mVerify’s commercial testing product, supporting Windows Mobile and all leading server stacks. Established roadmap then led high-assurance agile development, marketing, and sales of five releases.
• Headed the full scope of business development functions. Prospected and pitched Venture Capital firms from Sand Hill Road to Route 128, preparing all supporting business plans and decks. Raised $1.5M from non-institutional investors. 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; selected and supervised 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.
• Selected by Exxon Production Research to design, implement, and roll out an integrated tool suite to support a complete re-write of its geological simulation and visualization system running on a supercomputer network.

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 Co-Chair: 2016 IEEE International Conference on Software Testing (ICST), 2004 IEEE International Symposium on Software Reliability Engineering (ISSRE)

Conference Keynoter and Presenter: WOPR-20, MBTUC, CREST, ISSTA, Juniper Ignite, ISSRE, AMOST, ETAPS, Google TAC, Chicago SPIN, TestComm, Software-QS-Tag, QuoMBaT, STAR, Quality Week, ROOTS, TOOLS, CQAA, PNSQC

Signatory: Software Engineering and Method and Theory group

Senior Member: IEEE

Certified Software Development Professional: IEEE CSDP

Lead Judge: IEEExtreme Programming Competition

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

Technical Advisory Board: Agitar Software

Working Group Member: IEEE 1633, Recommended Practice on Software Reliability

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

Industry Track Co-Chair: ICST ‘09

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

Books

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.

Courseware

• Designed and developed Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) How to Test Mobile Apps, hosted at Udemy.com, the world’s largest destination for online courses.
• Developed 3-day instructor-led course, Testing Object-oriented Software, offered to 40,000 Lucent (Bell Labs) software developers through its Software Engineering Center of Excellence.
• Designed and developed over sixty days of instructor-led training in software engineering and management.

 Fifty-eight 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: Cloud: REST, JSON, SOAP, XML. 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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