Dawn Jardine

"It is my experience that designing digital processes and products that put people first can only lead to successful results."

I am a proven leader with over 20 years of experience inspiring, influencing and leading cross-functional teams in a diverse set of industries, from small software development firms, medium-sized digital agencies, to large Canadian and global organizations.

My belief that everyone owns quality has given me amazing opportunities to be involved in the day-to-day development processes of engineering, operations, and product. I’ve designed and implemented delivery strategies in eCommerce, regulatory, financial, educational, and marketing projects. I’ve been accountable for departmental and organizational OKRs, budgets, and proposals, as well as client engagement and account support.

I am passionate about the digital experience, and diverse genders in technology, and remain actively involved in the global tech community, participating in industry panel discussions, global conferences, and virtual webinars. I recently had the honour of sharing the stage with 6 other women in the Quality Leadership space as one of the 7 powerful QA leaders across the globe

Leading diverse teams requires a leader to connect at the individual level, creating relationships of trust and respect. I’ve been fortunate to serve and support inclusive teams of all sizes and skill levels in my professional career, and have created long-lasting relationships with former and current team members, continuing to mentor those that have moved on to leadership roles elsewhere.

What I do

I help implement and support Agile quality processes

Every digital product is different but I'm able to facilitate agility by:

Creating a culture of creativity and critical thinking for the Quality role within an Agile delivery team
Supporting, strategizing and implementing an holistic quality approach
Advising teams and businesses on methods and tools that they can use to improve their operational efficiency and quality processes essential for continuous deployment and delivery

I’ve acquired a broad skillset over the years and apply my expertise in all of the following areas:

Build high-performing cross-functional teams
Design Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery approaches
Support Lean Agile/Scrum/KanBan frameworks
Utilize exploratory testing, BDD and TDD
Organize test case management,defect tracking for QMS processes
Promote Quality and DevOps better practices
Create Organizational Quality strategies
Assess automation tooling

Work I'm proud of

I’ve grown my career in a variety of roles and industries. The best way to show you what I do is through examples of some of the exceptional work that I’ve participated in.

Walmart Canada

I’m particularly proud of having been a part of the Walmart ecommerce team at SapientRazorfish/Publicis for over 5 years. In my role as Associate Quality Manager, I guided and supported the test effort of a 10+ member Agile QA team for leading online retailer Walmart Canada

I oversaw the quality approach within 6 project streams, working with near-shore and distributed teams in an Agile development application life cycle. We ensured business and technical requirements were met and delivered with quality.

American Express ^®International Membership Rewards

As a QA Lead at Novator ECommerce Systems, our delivery team successfully released and launched American Express® International Membership Rewards in several markets – Canada (English and French), UK, Australia, Germany and Japan

The project moved from waterfall project life cycle to an interation-based delivery process. I coordinated testing coverage of deliverables with our on-site and off-shore QA team. I was fortunate to work with a great team and have stayed in contact with them over the years.

Canadian Tire University

I was a member of the technology team developing e-learning modules for the Canadian Tire University employee training portal and transitioned into a QA technical specialist. I provided testing coverage in English and French for the IBM LMS web-based application. My years spent working for Canadian Tire gave me the foundation required to champion quality processes.

The Quality Yardstick Blog

The Quality Yardstick is the space where I've written articles devoted to relevant quality topics, newer testing approaches and skill boosters for QA and delivery teams.

See All Posts

QA Testing and the Continuous Delivery Model

Agile approaches to software development, along with continuous integration and delivery, have changed the speed of the software life cycle. More and more companies have adopted shorter sprint cycles and have been deploying to production as frequently as several times a day.

Exploratory Testing: Quality Assurance with an Agile Approach

A growing number of web and mobile technology projects are adopting an agile approach to development. One of the benefits of following the agile method of delivery is a faster time to market.

The Changing Role of the QA Analyst

Over 50 years ago, Bob Dylan sang “For the times they are a-changin’”. Technology is no exception. In our daily dose of online tech bytes, we read multiple declarations of technical innovation that promise to impact our lives now or in the future.