Software and solutions company DVT has appointed Nadine du Toit as its new Head of Software Quality Assurance in Gauteng.
With more than 14 years’ experience in business development, strategic software engineering and quality assurance consulting in the financial and telecommunications industries, Du Toit brings valuable experience to a critical role as the company extends its local software testing services to support its expansion to the UK and beyond.
“Software is becoming an increasingly strategic factor for companies in all industries, especially for companies that operate across more than one region, which is the case for many of clients – ourselves included,” says Du Toit.
“As such we’ve reached the point where we want to go beyond our current offering and extend our capabilities and the fantastic resource we’ve created with the Global Testing Centre (GTC) in Cape Town to make software testing, automation and performance a bona fide solution offering for both local and global clients.”
DVT CEO Jaco van der Merwe says Du Toit has the passion, skills and experience to realise the company’s ambition in a larger and more diverse software testing market.
“Nadine’s know-how in delivering software quality assurance across the entire software development lifecycle, from a strategic and operational perspective, makes her the perfect candidate as we expand our services to meet the needs of a much larger global client base,” says Van der Merwe.
Du Toit spent three years at software quality assurance specialist iLAB as Software Engineering Manager and Quality Assurance Consultant. Her responsibilities included defining and implementing a test strategy and approach, developing and maintaining a quality framework and methodology, and implementing managed services, TCOE and test competency at client sites. She was also responsible for staffing, resourcing, training and mentoring.
Prior to iLAB she held several strategic roles within the industry, including Business Acquisition Manager at Micro to Mainframe and Business Development Manager for Enterprise Mobility at Grapevine.
“My first goal with DVT is to build a platform from which we can give our clients far more than a value-add service and become strategic partners in their businesses,” she says.
“Clients typically engage with us when they want to bring a new product to market or test their current product with new features to maintain performance or ensure legacy compatibility. Ideally, we’d like to see them engaging with us much earlier to make testing and QA an integral part of the development process from day one,” she adds.
“That will take a degree of education to demonstrate how an early engagement is beneficial to the project, but will also require an evolution of our service offering to ensure we have the capacity and skillset to deliver.”
Du Toit holds a BSc in IT Information and Knowledge Systems from the University of Pretoria and an Honors degree in BSc IT Information Systems from The University of South Africa. She also completed the South African Software Testing Qualifications Board ISTQB Foundation Level Certification in 2016.
Based in Johannesburg, Du Toit takes a break from the frenetic pace of city life with regular trips to the bush – the Kruger National Park in particular – and her “love for the outdoors” keeps her grounded in an otherwise competitive and challenging industry.