About Our Team

Linda Westfall is the President of The Westfall Team and one of their lead consultants/trainers. Her specialties include Software Quality Engineering, Metrics, Project and Risk Management, Software Engineering, Requirements Engineering, Peer Reviews, Testing, and Process Definition and Improvement.

Prior to starting her own business, Linda was Senior Manager of the Quality Metrics and Analysis at DSC Communications. Linda and her team designed and implemented a corporate wide metric program including software, hardware and system metrics to meet the needs of both internal and external customers (e.g., Regional Bell Operating Companies, Bellcore, Motorola, DDI). She interfaced with external customers, software management, engineering and quality personnel to define their information needs, select and implement metrics that met those needs including metrics necessary to obtain CSQP Eligibility and ISO 9000 Registration. Linda worked with internal customers to analyze and interpret measurement results and implement process improvement solutions. She worked with other DSC organizations in developing needed data capture tools and techniques and insuring the integrity of the data collected. Linda also interfaced with other software quality and metrics professionals in the industry to help establish standards and influence industry best practices (e.g., QuEST Forum TL9000 Software Metrics Working Group, Industry Interaction for RQMS GR-929-CORE, PQ Scoring, IPQM 1315 review).

Linda has more than 30 years of experience in real time software engineering, quality and metrics. She has also worked as the Manager of Production Software, a Software Process Engineer, a Senior Systems Analyst and a Software Engineer.

Very active professionally, Linda Westfall is the past Chair of the American Society for Quality (ASQ) Software Division. She has also served as the Software Division’s Program Chair and Certification Chair, and on the ASQ National Certification Board. Linda has chaired and co-chaired several of the Software Division's International Conferences on Software Quality. She was Co-Chair of the 6th Software Engineering Process Group National Meeting and past chair of the Association for Software Engineering Excellence. She has also chairs several international software quality conferences.

Linda Westfall is an ASQ Fellow, Certified Software Quality Engineer (CSQE), Certified Managers of Quality and Organizational Excellence (CMQ/OE) and an ASQ Certified Quality Auditor (CQA). She is an International Software Testing Qualification Board (ISTQB) Certified Tester, a Certified Scrum Master and has her certification in Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) Foundations. Linda is also a Professional Engineer (PE) in Software Engineering in the state of Texas. She has an MBA from the University of Texas at Dallas and BS in Mathematics from Carnegie-Mellon University. Linda regularly presents keynotes, papers and tutorials at conferences including the International Conference on Software Quality, the World Conference on Quality and Improvement and the Better Software Conference, and others. Linda also speaks regularly at professional development meetings around the USA.

Linda and her husband Rob also have an active fireworks hobby.

Yvonne Kish is an independent consultant that partners with The Westfall Team as a trainer and consultant. Yvonne has over nineteen years of experience in Software Quality Engineering, Process Definition and Improvement, Software Configuration Management, Quality Assurance and Test Management. In addition to working with The Westfall Team, Yvonne provides consulting in agile methods. She has worked with project teams to help them transition to the agile methodology and to help them achieve a more adaptive and productive work team.

Yvonne worked in quality assurance management and led the effort to produce a quality strategy across software development projects teams. The quality strategy encompassed the total cost of quality concept, and focused on eliminating process inefficiencies and worked towards process prevention. Yvonne has also worked in small companies and built quality teams for software development products from the ground up. The quality teams were tightly integrated with the development team to ensure that quality processes were defined early in the product lifecycle to ultimately achieve on-time product delivery, product quality goals and delight the customer.

Prior to management roles, Yvonne held various technical lead roles. Yvonne worked as a quality process definition and improvement lead. She partnered with the software development management team and produced a formally defined and documented quality framework and software development lifecycle processes. This streamlined and tailored process resulted in delivering a high quality product to the customer that exceeded competitive product market demands and competition. Yvonne has worked extensively as a software configuration management lead and designed software configuration and release methods that ultimately resulted in huge time savings for projects in releasing their product to the test team, and ultimately for market deployment.

Yvonne has facilitated, coordinated, participated in and hosted many different types of audits and SEI CMM assessments. The audits included in-house audits and Yvonne represented the host company at client-site audits for the quality system, to secure contracts and meet company’s regulatory requirements. Yvonne was also responsible for facilitating and conducting SEI CMM project self-assessments on world-wide projects of a division, and put a process in place for quarterly assessments to ultimately achieve the organizational process and CMM goals. The organization did obtain their goal of CMM level 3.

Yvonne has a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from Old Dominion University in Virginia. She is Senior Member of ASQ, a member of PMI, and a member of the Scrum Alliance, and holds an ASQ CSQE certification and is a Certified Scrum Master. She also served on the ASQ Software Division's Board for two years. In addition, Yvonne is very active in local ASQ section meetings, and agile APLN local chapter meetings and national summits. In addition, Yvonne has presented at various software national conferences on topics including quality process definition and improvement, requirements management, and software configuration management.

Tom Allen is an independent consultant that partners with The Westfall Team as a trainer. Tom has over eighteen years of experience in Software Quality Engineering, Metrics and Process Improvement in the Software industry. In addition to working with The Westfall Team, Tom provides consulting in Quality Management Systems development and ISO readiness for Global QA.

Tom was Senior Quality Analyst at Citizens Communications. At Citizens, Tom developed, implemented and maintained a complete suite of product and process metrics. He also led process improvement projects working to SEI CMM KPAs. He developed and implemented various process documents and authored a specifications document for metrics automation. He served on the division Change Control Board and the Configuration Management tool selection committee.

Prior to his work at Citizens, Tom served in several capacities at DSC Communications. As Manager of Planning and Process Management in the Transmission Products Division, he produced metrics for the process groups, managed process document production, revision and control and led numerous document peer reviews. Tom chaired the division’s Bellcore CSQP audit preparation/response team. As Process Improvement Champion for that division, he managed the problem reporting system and led multiple process improvement projects as Champion or Facilitator of Quality Action Teams and coordinator of the Quality Management Team. As Internal Metrics Engineer for the Corporate Quality division Tom produced process and product metrics for internal customers in all DSC divisions and developed metrics for external customers.

At Computerware Inc., Tom was Manager of Software Quality Control and Source Control. He performed all software test activities and managed the integrity of both the test and production software libraries for three different products.

Tom holds ASQ CSQE and CQA certifications as well as Provisional Auditor certification from RAB. Tom serves as Website chair for the International Conference on Software Quality.

Rob Westfall is Vice President of Operations for The Westfall Team. Rob handles all of the back office work for The Westfall Team including keeping our computer networks functioning at peak efficiency and handling all of our purchasing, production and shipping activities.

Rob has more than 30 years of experience in hardware, software and firmware engineering. Prior to joining The Westfall Team, Rob was a Senior Software Engineer at DSC Communications.

Ruth Domingos is the Office Manager for The Westfall Team. Along with her many other duties, Ruth handles all of the course logistics including hotel arrangement and course registration for all of our Public Courses. Ruth also proofreads and edits all of our course material as the first step in our continuous quality improvement process.

Prior to joining The Westfall Team, Ruth was the Administrative Assistant to the Vice President of New Technology at DSC Communications.

For more information about consulting and training services provided by The Westfall Team

Send an email to: lwestfall@westfallteam.com

Or call: 972-867-1172