Alan Riley

The challenge was to redesign and upgrade the World Vision Australia (WVA) website. The site won the 2015 Sitefinity Website of the Year Award in the non-profit category.

https://www.progress.com/sitefinity-cms/website-of-the-year/2015

This project required attention to detail, as it was scientifically complex, technically demanding, and had very high data volume, security, and performance requirements.

It comprised several components:

1. Installation of the standard workflow engine for orchestrating cycling systems.
2. Multiple levels of security assessments and penetration testing to determine compliance with BOM’s extremely high security requirements. Security gaps were identified and organized as product upgrades and security patches.
3. Development of bespoke enhancements to meet BOM’s operational support, reporting, and analysis requirements not met by standard functionality.

While managing a consortium of developers and third-party vendors spread across four countries to deliver the project as expected, I developed an extremely secure software release and upgrade process to ensure the security of the supercomputer.

Numeric weather prediction modeling produces terabytes of data per day. This data requires considerable post-processing before it can be used by weather forecasting systems. The UK MetOffice developed the next generation of post-processing systems, and I performed a POC on the suitability of these systems for the Australian BOM. The POC was completed under budget, two weeks early, and the recommendations were accepted by senior management.

ACHIEVEMENTS

• Developed a business case to win funding and approval for the work.
• Negotiated licensing and collaboration arrangements with the UK MetOffice for the provision and future development of the systems.
• Orchestred security assessments of the MetOffice software to ensure it met BOM security requirements.
• Set up an appropriate test environment with suitable test data at the BOM.
• Performed testing on the post-processing software.
• Analyzed gaps between the MetOffice software and BOM requirements.
• Ensured scientific verification of test outputs.
• Assessed and produced a report on the suitability of the MetOffice software for use at BOM, including recommendations for moving forward.

At the Bureau of Meteorology (BOM), I took over a project to analyze more than 70 legacy post-processing systems, including many critical emergency services systems, and developed a strategy for their future. The analysis also investigated the platform running the applications and uncovered a number of issues, including critical problems with the disk storage. This necessitated a storage upgrade that had to be carried out during Australia’s 2020 bushfire crisis.

ACHIEVEMENTS

• Assessed all 70 applications and developed a strategy for migration, mitigation, or replacement of all applications. The report was presented to and accepted by senior IT management.
• Fast-tracked the engagement of the storage vendor via government procurement processes, then worked with the vendor to develop a storage upgrade strategy. This was not easy because of incompatibility issues due to the age of the software and hardware.
• Negotiated with many system owners for an outage period and upgrade process that minimized impacts to emergency services during the bushfire crisis.
• Achieved seamless delivery of the storage upgrade.
• Upgraded all third-party support and maintenance agreements related to the platform.

In 2014, World Vision Australia (WVA) decided to build a new website to run the annual 40 Hour Famine (40HF) fundraising campaign. The 40HF website was developed and hosted on a third-party, peer-to-peer fundraising platform. The majority of the project was integrating the 40HF website with the WVA CRM and finance systems.

This was a major piece of B2B integration work that necessitated working closely with the vendor to develop screens that provided the best user experience possible, far exceeding what had been done in previous years. It was completed on time and on budget. And it allowed WVA to raise more than $7 million that year.

Took over the management of The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) compliance project at WVA. The project had been running on and off for nearly six years with a variety of project managers and little success. Within nine months, I delivered the PCI DSS compliance certification within the project budget.

ACHIEVEMENTS

• Analyzed and redefined the cardholder data environment, both internal and for a multitude of third-party service providers.
• Identified all key departments managing credit card information and developed a corporate team comprising PCI champions from each area and a new chief security officer.
• Set up PCI DSS project governance structures and recruited a strong project sponsor.
• Identified and hired a suitable quality security assessor.
• Performed a PCI security gap assessment and documented all vulnerabilities.
• Remediated all vulnerabilities and updated business policies and procedures where necessary.
• Performed a contractual and compliance review of third-party service providers.
• Trained staff in new security policies and operational changes.
• Developed and tested an incident response plan.
• Set up vulnerability scanning.
• Validated compliance with WVA’s bank.

Developed most of the $3 million business case for this work. Since most of the migration expenses were infrastructure-related, an infrastructure project manager was appointed to run the project with my assistance. This project was delivered on budget and ahead of schedule.

The project was challenging because several of the required layered products used by the systems were not available on Itanium. Implementation was also complex because Coles warehouses operate 24/7, and the legacy system was a distributed database, thus requiring separate implementations for each state of Australia.

The IT consulting firm had gained much of its revenue from governmental and semi-governmental bodies by participating in government vendor panels. Conducting this business required ISO 9001 certification for the firm’s project management methodology.

When I took on the role, the firm had already received two non-compliance warnings and was due for another audit soon. A third non-compliance warning would have resulted in losing the ISO 9001 certification and, therefore, a major loss in business revenue.

ACHIEVEMENTS

• Earned an internal auditing certification for ISO 9001.
• Performed root cause analysis for non-compliances and discovered the main problem was lack of senior management focus.
• Secured a delay for the next audit from SAI Global (the auditors and certification body).
• Raised the issue to the CEO and convened an ISO 9001 governance body comprising the CEO and senior managers.
• Reviewed and revised the firm’s project management methodology, including remediating non-compliances, with appropriate support and authority from the governance body.
• Retrained staff in the use of the methodology.
• Achieved compliance at the next audit!

This project began with developing a business case that secured a $650,000 investment from the CIO. Once the funding was approved, I engaged 15 technical staff from different functional teams and vendors and more than 15 representatives from different areas of the business, and I established a steering committee.

The project required extensive systems integration work as business-critical data flows were rerouted seamlessly from the legacy systems to a new central merchandising system. The rollout affected all 750+ stores in the chain. The work was particularly challenging because of the need to solve several problems previously attempted by other projects but descoped because of their difficulty. The retirement of these systems allowed the company to downsize the applications support team, saving Coles approximately $1 million per year.

As the end of support for Windows Server 2003 approached, the company had 31 Windows 2003 Servers running a large variety of applications. Some of these applications were mission-critical. The business risk of running applications on an unsupported platform was unacceptable, so a decision was made to upgrade to Windows Server 2008R2 or Windows 2012 before Microsoft extended support ended in July 2015.

I led the project and collaborated with the infrastructure and business systems owners to complete the transitions. The project was completed on time and within budget.

ACHIEVEMENTS

• Identified all servers running Windows Server 2003.
• Audited each server to understand what it was used for, what applications ran on it, and the criticality of each server and each application.
• Prioritized an upgrade or replacement path for each server and each application running on the server.
• Actioned each server and application plan in consultation with the business owners to ensure minimal business disruption.

World Vision Australia (WVA) wanted to replace the paper-based systems they were using on shopping center stands and for door-to-door neighborhood marketing with a cloud-based B2B POS system running on iPads. Unfortunately, the solution decision had been made without adequate consultation with the IT department. IT could not support the chosen solution and refused to be involved in implementing or supporting it once it was live.

Serving as a PM consultant, I was asked to assist the marketing department with a pilot implementation. The marketing area did not have adequate IT knowledge to complete the pilot, and I was instrumental in its success.

ACHIEVEMENTS

• Developed project plans, including a workable schedule.
• Managed the software vendor to deliver the customizations required by WVA.
• Provided interfaces with the WVA back-end systems.
• Led the marketing department to develop procedures for managing the iPads before and after deployments (e.g., recharging and securing them onsite).
• Advised marketing on managing iPads once they were deployed. This led to the introduction of mobile device management software to lock down and manage the usage of each device.

This project was commissioned to replace WVA’s aging Sun v4 finance system with Sun v6.

ACHIEVEMENTS

• Engaged and managed the vendor to perform the technical components of the upgrade and user training.
• Led the finance department to plan and perform pre-upgrade activities (e.g., cleansing and preparation of business rules and data), define acceptance criteria, prepare for UAT, update business procedures, and report to the project steering committee.
• Managed WVA’s IT department in the provision of suitable hardware infrastructure and organized IT support for the finance department both during and after the project.

Led the project to upgrade the accounting software (Microsoft Dynamics Great Plains and WennSoft Job Cost) at Tenix Solutions Ltd. This COTS package implementation was important, as it was the first project at a new client account for my employer. To the delight of the Tenix CFO, the implementation was completed under budget and on time to meet end-of-period accounting constraints. The excellent work and relationships built resulted in being engaged for further work at Tenix.