A specialist Enterprise Release Manager with over 25 years of experience — and a career-long compulsion to automate, improve, and systematise. Process improvement and automation are not skills I apply occasionally; they are the lens through which I approach every engagement. That instinct started early: I identified the root cause of recurring production failures at Marks & Spencer, proposed and project-managed the build of a mirrored pre-production environment from scratch, and automated its regression testing suite using Mercury WinRunner. That pattern — find the manual effort, find the gap, fix it permanently — has run through every role since.
I am consistently engaged to build release governance where none exists, or to restore it where it has broken down. At AMP I established the enterprise release framework for the AXA merger. At Cubic I built the release framework for Transport for NSW's Opal Card programme. At Defence I identified and closed a critical gap in the Golden Thread methodology that was causing systemic compliance failures across Defence digital delivery. At the AEC I am building enterprise release governance from the ground up. The common thread across each of these engagements: building release governance from the ground up, not inheriting an established framework.
My experience spans government, defence, financial services, transport, and enterprise retail — across environments managing thousands of servers, hundreds of applications, and dozens of concurrent releases. Comfortable across Waterfall, Agile, SAFe, and the hybrid realities between them, I work at both the business and technical level, translating complexity into executable plans and taking stakeholders with me.
NV1 Security Clearance. ITIL V3 Expert, with active V4 development. Certified Scrum Master and Certified Scrum Product Owner. PRINCE2 Practitioner.
Engaged to establish and mature enterprise release management across the AEC's full ICT portfolio, within the IT Portfolio Management Office (ITPMO). Currently rolling out an MVP Proof-of-Concept Enterprise Release Framework, developed collaboratively with development and DevOps/production support teams through structured organisational change management including facilitated workshops.
Applied the Structured Comment Consolidation and Traceability (SCCT) methodology to govern a complex AI-assisted stakeholder feedback analysis programme — grouping related comments, simplifying them collectively for readability, and tracing every item to a verifiable disposition across three governance and operational documents.
The Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) provides Australians with an independent electoral service. Within the AEC, the IT Portfolio Management Office (ITPMO) provides governance, assurance, and strategic oversight across the IT portfolio, managing portfolio risks, dependencies, and integrated releases in shared environments and platforms.
Developed and applied the Structured Comment Consolidation and Traceability (SCCT) methodology to govern an AI-assisted stakeholder feedback analysis programme covering the Enterprise Release Framework, the Release Approval Board (RAB) Terms of Reference, and a parallel operational document created to capture feedback that fell outside governance scope.
Provided enterprise-level SELP governance for Cyber Operations at the Australian Department of Defence, working across Agile and Waterfall projects. Identified a critical process gap in the Defence Digital Delivery Group's Golden Thread methodology that was causing systemic engagement misalignment and compliance failures across Defence digital delivery.
Outcome: SELP formally integrated into the Golden Thread as a mandatory project step — reducing rework at CABs and strengthening compliance across Defence digital delivery programmes.
Provided enterprise-level governance and assurance for the planning, transition, and decommissioning of ICT services, protecting Production environments while ensuring Defence's service capability remained sustainable, secure, and fit for purpose. Applied ITIL-based expertise across Release, Change, and Demand Management to ensure readiness for Design, Transition, and Closure CABs.
Established and improved the Release and Deployment Management process for the Australian Taxation Office contract. Drove continuous improvement across a multi-vendor environment, managed change and risk associated with process execution and coordination, and expanded the Release Model Library.
Established the approach for Release and Deployment Management, leading the design, improvement, and integration of the Release and Deployment process, collaborating with the federal customer and service provider stakeholders while overseeing resources allocated for the execution of Release and Deployment processes.
Reviewed and improved FIX8's digital processes using a structured plan-do-check-act approach, covering digital inventory management and operational tooling. FIX8: Business and retail supply of cabling, suspension and display objects.
FIX8: Business and retail supply of cabling, suspension and display objects. Reviewed and improved the Digital process, inclusive of the digital inventory, using a plan-do-check-act approach.
Ran the release pipeline for Cubic's TfNSW Opal Card programme — a city-wide public transport contactless smart card ticketing system. Implemented and improved the Cubic Zero Deviation gateway framework and associated release management processes. Aligned vendor deliverables with the programme release plan across a complex multi-stakeholder, multi-vendor environment.
Cubic Transportation Systems: industry-leading integrator of payment and information solutions for intelligent travel applications, delivering rail, bus, light rail and ferry contactless smart card technology solutions. Technologies: ServiceNow, JIRA, Confluence, Network, Wintel, Oracle, Java, transport devices and associated software. Type: Waterfall and SAFe Agile projects.
Technical Release and Deployment Manager on PwC's FMT project for NSW Treasury — a bespoke Oracle-based financial management system enabling end-to-end budget management. Managed multi-environment deployments across test, training, support, and production, continuously developing and improving the release management process to meet customer quality expectations.
A bespoke financial management system enabling end-to-end management of the NSW budget. Technologies: Oracle, SQL, Linux, ADF, BPM, SOA, LDAP, Hyperion, Jira, Subversion. Type: Waterfall morphing into Agile projects.
Reviewed and improved the business-prioritised Product Backlog, Release Planning, and Release processes at EquiGroup. Set up Retrospective Sprint meetings to identify Sprint failings and drive continuous improvement of the sprint process.
EquiGroup: giving complete visibility and management across all hardware technology assets, 24/7. External supplier: Cognizant. Technologies: Jira, SQL, Visual Studio, .NET. Type: Agile projects.
Built the release management framework from the ground up for Cubic Transportation Systems' TfNSW programme — Brenton's first Cubic engagement. Established internal gating procedures, protected production environment integrity through change control, and applied process improvement across all release and testing activities. Foundation work that was built upon in the 2017–18 engagement.
Industry-leading integrator of payment and information solutions for intelligent travel applications, delivering rail, bus, light rail and ferry contactless smart card technology solutions. Technologies: Network, Wintel, Oracle, Java, transport devices and associated software, ServiceNow. Type: Waterfall and SAFe Agile projects.
Consulted as Release Management SME in a 12-participant workshop with Westpac and GT-X, analysing Release Management roles in collaboration with both organisations. Delivered horizontal and vertical role analysis, current-vs-future comparison, and segmentation alignment to the Westpac Workforce Optimisation team.
GT-X Professional Services supports technology and business executives with meeting the demands of scaling up IT and business projects with delivery assurance.
Release-managed the complex SAP solution cutover for TAFE NSW's payroll and HR system replacement. Protected production environment integrity through LMBR and ITD Change Advisory Boards. Achievement: Quality-assured the successful technical cutover into the live production environment.
Replaced human resources and payroll systems for TAFE colleges with SAP. Team size: 2 core. Technologies: Network, SAP, Mainframe, Citrix, AD, Wintel, SQL, IIS, Oracle, Unix, TIBCO, Remedy. Type: Waterfall projects.
Held overall responsibility for quarterly Enterprise Releases comprising AMP, AXA and NZ integration projects. Set up the Release Framework from scratch and quality-managed Enterprise Releases including Warranty across a 3,000+ physical-server, 400+ system environment. Managed a team of 4 core, with 12 Portfolio and Program Release Managers reporting up to Enterprise Release Managers.
AMP AXA Integration project. Team size: 4 core, plus 12 Portfolio and Program Release Managers reporting up to Enterprise Release Managers. Technologies: Network, Mainframe, Wintel, SQL, IIS, Oracle, Unix, TIBCO, WebSphere, MQ, Remedy. Environment: 3,000+ physical-server applications, 400+ systems. Type: Waterfall projects.
Release-managed a critical performance-driven scale-up of the PCMS Beanstore POS system — a change that, if mishandled, would have prevented M&S stores from trading online or offline. Delivered on time with immediate performance improvements to the live environment.
Environment: VM Hosts 300–400 · Physical servers 4,000–5,000 · Applications 1,000–2,000 · Systems 2,000–3,000 · 6 external suppliers · 10 teams / 50 people · Pilot: 60 stores → rollout to remaining 600.
Integrated Point of Sale Programme: implementation of the Beanstore point-of-sale application from IBM Business Partner PCMS. Team size: 6 core, matrix-managing development, infrastructure, vendor and support teams (10 teams / 50 people); impact on thousands of people across all M&S stores. Technologies: Network, Wintel, SQL, IIS, WebSphere, MQ, PCMS Beanstore, HP Quality Centre, Remedy. External suppliers: PCMS, Fujitsu, Cognizant, Cable & Wireless, Logicalis, Tata Consultancy Services, EMC.
Environment: VM Hosts 300–400 · Physical servers 4,000–5,000 · Applications 1,000–2,000 · Systems 2,000–3,000.
Brought in after the original supplier failed to deliver on time — and delivered the system on time despite aggressive timelines. Held overall Program Release Management responsibility across a 15-person core team, 12 teams, 60 people, and 6 external suppliers. Released the IPOS pilot to 60 M&S stores and was instrumental in the mass rollout to the remaining 600.
Environment: VM Hosts 300–400 · Physical servers 4,000–5,000 · Applications 1,000–2,000 · Systems 2,000–3,000 · 6 external suppliers · 12 teams / 60 people.
Integrated Point of Sale Programme: implementation of the Beanstore point-of-sale application from IBM Business Partner PCMS. Team size: 15 core, matrix-managing development, infrastructure, vendor and support teams (12 teams / 60 people). Technologies: Network, Infrastructure, Mainframe, Unix AIX, AD, SQL, IIS, WebSphere, MQ, PCMS Beanstore, HP Quality Centre, Remedy. External suppliers: PCMS, Fujitsu, Cognizant, Cable & Wireless, Logicalis, Tata Consultancy Services, CapGemini, EMC. Type: Hybrid Waterfall/Agile POS project.
Environment: VM Hosts 300–400 · Physical servers 4,000–5,000 · Applications 1,000–2,000 · Systems 2,000–3,000.
Oversaw mainframe application releases ensuring timely implementation and test infrastructure built to production specification. Trained new development team in release management principles and managed/trained new offshore supplier mainframe release managers within the Summit methodology.
Oversaw the delivery and release management of servers and application software for the IPOS programme, ensuring applications were built to production specification for integration testing. Introduced scrums, quality control checks, defect tracking, and change and configuration controls.
Release and Environment Manager responsible for migrating the M&S website and all associated systems from internal infrastructure to Amazon — upgrading interfaces to handle the expected surge in ecommerce traffic. A major strategic programme requiring coordinated release management across multiple systems, teams, and technical dependencies.
Implemented a production-like change process in the pre-production environment to risk-mitigate the large volume of changes across all systems, with associated risk and impact controls throughout the migration.
Following the Year 2000 project, identified a systemic root cause behind recurring production release failures at M&S: test environments did not mirror production, invalidating all pre-release testing. Had to insist on working directly in production to guarantee a clean go-live — and used that experience to make the case for a permanent fix.
Proposed, project-managed, and built a pre-production environment that mirrored the live M&S production environment. Created and supported the automated HP WinRunner regression testing scripts — eliminating manual regression effort and establishing repeatable, reliable test execution as standard practice. This was the founding act of a career-long automation instinct.
Environment: VM Hosts 300–400 · Physical servers 4,000–5,000 · Applications 1,000–2,000 · Systems 2,000–3,000.
Environment: VM Hosts 300–400 · Physical servers 4,000–5,000 · Applications 1,000–2,000 · Systems 2,000–3,000.
Details available on request.
Details available on request.
Led the application team making Year 2000 changes for the Integrated Customer Ordering System (ICOS) at M&S London. Responsible for test and production environments, releases, and release cutover. Observations made during this role directly led to identifying the systemic pre-production environment problem and proposing the solution built in the following role.
Led the application team making Year 2000 changes for the Integrated Customer Ordering System (ICOS) at M&S London. Responsible for test and production environments, releases, and release cutover. Observations made during this role directly led to identifying the systemic pre-production environment problem and proposing the solution built in the following role.
Details available on request.
Details available on request.
Details available on request.
Details available on request.
A seven-year progression at Old Mutual (Africa's largest financial multinational) from Programmer through Network Installer, Network Controller, Methodologies Analyst, Developer, and Design Consultant — including the Huron Implementation (Individual Business Unit Developer and Objectstar Consultant). Built deep foundations in application design, structured delivery methodology, and the disciplines that underpin release management.
Legacy replacement of COBOL with Objectstar 4GL across Old Mutual's COBOL applications. A seven-year progression from Programmer through Network Installer, Network Controller, Methodologies Analyst, Developer (Individual Marketing and Agency Systems), Design Consultant, and Developer (contract) — building deep foundations in application design, release, and structured delivery methodology. Included the Huron Implementation programme as Individual Business Unit Developer and Objectstar Consultant.
Conducted beach patrols and operated Inflatable Rescue Boats (IRB) to ensure public safety.
Supported event operations across VIP guest services, venue fan operations, and transport driving — contributing to the successful delivery of the largest FIFA Women's World Cup™ in history.
I have had Brenton work directly for me and have worked with Brenton on several occasions over a number of years. His commitment to Release Management and drive would benefit any organisation needing help, guidance and management of this functionality. Brenton is dedicated to the role, skilful in his knowledge and highly capable of bringing change to an organisation which requires a higher level of Release Management.
As Technical Release Manager, Brenton was responsible for managing releases of a business-critical solution across multiple environments and geographies. He applied tremendous rigour to the release process and took the initiative to ensure the development and operations team improved their process compliance over time. Brenton also successfully managed competing priorities from a diverse set of stakeholders and consistently demonstrated his ability to collaborate and build strong working relationships with peers and senior executives alike.
I had the pleasure of working with Brenton on a very large complex Financial Transformation engagement. Brenton was always highly professional, hardworking, flexible and adaptable. He was an excellent team player and showed great passion to ensure that results were delivered on time and to the required levels of quality. He always made himself available to help others even when he had a substantial workload himself. Brenton has a great sense of humour and has a lot of integrity. I enjoyed working with Brenton and would highly recommend him.
Brenton joined Cubic to drive significant change to release management across the business. Brenton was able to work closely with our internal and external stakeholders to make a significant difference to the way software releases were planned and managed. Brenton is an energetic and passionate professional who takes great pride in his work making him a valuable employee to any organisation.
Brenton is a thoroughly professional individual. His ability to adapt to situations and his pragmatic approach using his extensive experience delivers exceptional results. I look forward to the opportunity to work together again.
Brenton was an excellent resource, knowledgeable and personable, whose expertise was utilised during our client's Release Management programme.
Brenton was a delight to have on my team and his methodical and practical approach to challenging tasks has been refreshing. This was most probably one of the most challenging environments for someone who came into the project 10 weeks before a major software implementation of a mission critical system. Brenton successfully put together and coordinated the contributions to the Cutover strategies, plans and schedules and managed through the handover to post go live support for multiple projects.
I know Brenton to be a highly competent, professional Enterprise Release Manager. His broad experience and knowledge of the vast number of components in the IT industry help him effectively manage complex releases. On the interpersonal level, Brenton builds relationships quickly and easily and this helps him achieve results sooner. I look forward to an opportunity to work with him again.
Whilst working with Brenton at AMP, I found him to be very proactive, approachable, and always willing to assist in any situation. Brenton was able to quickly establish and build working relationships with peers and stakeholders, across both IT and the Business. This was a key enabler for Brenton leading the successful delivery of a Major Enterprise Release. Brenton will be an asset to any team and I would gladly work with him again in the future.
During the short time that I have worked with Brenton, I have observed him to be a level-headed professional, personable and genuinely focused on ensuring that the task at hand is completed on time and successfully. It was immediately apparent to me that Brenton builds good working relationships with his fellow team members with ease. He actively provides support to those around him, helping them to learn and to achieve their goals. I sincerely hope that I have another opportunity to work with Brenton and would not hesitate to recommend him to any future employer.
I have worked with Brenton in various roles (in different organisations) for over 15 years. I have no hesitation in recommending Brenton. He delivers consistently in challenging complex integrated environments. He takes initiative, offering pragmatic and practical solutions under pressure. Brenton is confident, well organised and communicates effectively with customers and technical teams alike.
Brenton has contributed to a number of projects I have managed over the past 6 years. He is a very conscientious individual who is dedicated to completing a quality deliverable. He is trustworthy and hardworking which makes him an excellent team member on a project.
Brenton is an extremely reliable technical expert who worked above and beyond expectations on a very challenging technology refresh programme at M&S. He comes with my unreserved recommendation.
Brenton is a reliable, trustworthy team player and delivers high quality work.
I worked closely with Brenton in his role of Environment Manager on the Seattle project. Brenton provided the environments and migration of applications to facilitate the smooth running of the project. Brenton always goes the extra mile, in terms of helping projects to progress and also in terms of understanding the larger picture and helping evolve the whole environment, processes and technologies. Brenton is one of those people it is great to work with. He has strategy and vision, tempered with the pragmatism to ensure things get done. I would definitely recommend Brenton and would be very happy to work alongside him again.
Brenton is very conscientious, hardworking and will always get the job done.
Brenton was part of my project team, as part of a series of large Mainframe/UNIX infrastructure and application upgrade programmes through 2008–2009. As a Technical Project Manager, he was highly organised and efficient, but his real strength lay in his innovative ability to manage new offshore application release teams and to integrate them into the Marks and Spencer structure. Brenton was of immense value to the respective programmes he worked on and I would gladly have him as part of any project team in the future.
I worked with Brenton on a high profile, high pressure project at M&S. My team had a huge and unprecedented demand on testing hardware and software services in order to facilitate high volume testing of multiple Microsoft BizTalk farms. Brenton was our conduit into the Test Environment Team and was instrumental in helping us to overcome multiple hurdles whilst maintaining the integrity of his domain. His persistence, enthusiasm and sense of humour really paid dividends in helping us, and ultimately the programme to achieve our goals.