Recreational Equipment, Inc. (REI)
Penny Allen is the Director, Enterprise Quality Assurance at Recreational Equipment, Inc. (REI) and started her technology career as a mission systems engineer for NASA and then decided to try something really challenging: quality assurance! Her fortuitous decision to attempt something new became a hallmark of her career as she explored the expanse of software development with Engineering Leadership roles at companies like Nike and Fiserv.
That passion for continually trying new things brought her to the forefront of the Quality Engineering movement in the age of Continuous Deployment, DevOps, and SAFe. No longer content to watch the same good intentions produce the same mediocre results, Penny dove head first into rebuilding the concept of QA. Telemetry instead of test plans; meaningful data instead of monotonous metrics – the list of opportunities is endless.
In her current role at REI, Penny is building a quality program centered on solid engineering, great people, and the desire to always do a little better than the day before. There is always something novel to try in the quest to build better experiences.
Papers/Presentations
- How to Get There From Here: REI’s Journey Toward the Right Data and Environments for Their Enterprise Testing Ecosystem - Bob Stuart, James Wilson, Penny Allen, 2018 Technical Presentation, Abstract, Paper, Slides
- Quality Engineering 2017: Trends, Tricks, and Traps - Penny Allen, 2017 Keynote, Abstract, Paper, Slides, Video.
