IT Manager
2020 - PRESENTVolunteer- Participated with stakeholders and a PR company in a "catalyst" process to identify the organization's current voice and personality.
- Worked with the internal team and a PR firm to create a new logo. Gathered input from stakeholders and worked collaboratively with the PR firm to create options. Presented survey to the members for selection of the winner.
- Worked with the PR firm and internal team to approve the design and write content for the new website concurrent with the logo design. Managed testing in prep for rollout. Launched the new site.
- Collaborated with a PR firm to develop initial rounds of Facebook posts; identified members to take over writing and publishing posts and documented the process.
- Worked with a PR firm on identifying and optimizing Google search terms to drive traffic to the website.
- Managed vendor migration of users to new Microsoft 365 account. Selected and engaged a different vendor for ongoing support.
- Analyzed usage and migrated files from a local server to the cloud.
- Researched tools to meet various needs and acquired nonprofit licenses if available.
Project Owner and Project Manager
2020 - PRESENTSaasman Solutions, Inc.- Joined this "friends-and-family" startup as a part-time project manager to complete a SaaS application whose prototype was initially built by the client for his use in his law practice. The client's first estimate to launch was four to six weeks.
- Assessed the part-time development team, the development process, the state of requirements for incomplete and not-yet-started "must-have" features, and the application UI/UX. Made recommendations in all areas and was converted to full-time.
- Hired a full-time skilled team, including two full-stack developers, a QA engineer, a front-end developer, and a UI/UX designer. Implemented the release process and engaged a DevOps engineer to set up IaC (Terraform) for all environments.
- Functioned as a business analyst, product owner, and scrum master. Implemented Shortcut (Clubhouse) for project management. Wrote stories, maintained the backlog, and led all Scrum ceremonies for the development team.
- Met with the founder to elicit the undefined requirements for incomplete features and quantify new features considered essential for a launch. Facilitated design meetings with the founder and designer, resulting in an intuitive, modern design.
- Defined business rules for Stripe integration and documented configuration rules for business owners.
- Tasked the development team with identifying and correcting technical debt during the initial design phase, including database design. Thirty-two items with a high impact on maintainability were identified and corrected.
- Participated in the leadership team throughout the engagement. Provided thought leadership related to process, software and startups. Set up a Kanban board in Shortcut for the marketing, executive, and support teams to better structure their work.
Expert Consultant | Project Manager, Product Owner, Business Analyst, Change Agent
2016 - 2018US Small Business Administration- Led the transition of the development team within OCIO from Waterfall to Agile and introduced the use of Jira. Mentored the contractor scrum master, developers, and junior business analysts. Educated career Federal IT employees on Agile practices.
- Mentored junior business analysts to work with internal customers to capture the workflow behind a work request and to think through the process from a user perspective. This resulted in less wasted developer time and increased customer satisfaction.
- Participated in writing the RFP for the subsequent development services contract to specify Agile instead of Waterfall as the project management methodology, reviewed all proposals, and participated in the selection process.
- Drove the project to move all SharePoint team sites from local SharePoint 2007 to SharePoint Online. Engaged stakeholders from each department to clean up their sites. Completed the project in seven months (a previous failed attempt took 15 months).
- Spearheaded the project to upgrade and migrate all custom SharePoint applications from SharePoint 2010 on local servers to SharePoint 2016 in Azure (IaaS). This was SBA's first success in moving all locally hosted applications to Azure.
- Functioned as the product owner to rewrite and launch two legacy ColdFusion applications into SharePoint. Gathered requirements, created wireframes, worked with developers and stakeholders, and performed UAT.
Consultant
2015 - 2015Self-employed- Performed discovery for a small nonprofit in preparation for building a new online store. Documented the as-is condition for all internal processes and proposed the to-be-desired end state.
- Formulated recommendations on integrating the new store (WordPress/WooCommerce) with the accounting system (Sage) and other manual internal legacy processes.
- Researched and recommended plug-ins to support various desired new features.
Director, Process and Technology | Project Manager, Product Owner, Business Analyst
2007 - 2015LegalZoom, Inc.- Conceived and delivered a year-long project to rebuild the ordering system in a way that complied with GAAP revenue recognition requirements and provided auditable financials to support an S-1 filing.
- Served as business process owner for Operations and Finance during prototyping and development of subscription products. Subscription products accounted for 50% of the revenue growth that supported a $5 billion valuation at IPO.
- Successfully delivered two major new internal .NET applications supporting Customer Care and Finance. Wrote requirements and provided wireframes for an internal rules engine that would enable API interaction with the website.
- Championed the transition from Waterfall to Agile and functioned as product owner for the internal applications team. Tools included Jira and Confluence.
- Transformed engineering processes by setting up development, testing, and staging environments, enforcing the use of source control, creating a QA team, and implementing a formal release process.
- Functioned as a technical project manager on the Salesforce implementation for Customer Care, including API development, object architecture, interface design, and data migration from RightNow to Salesforce.
- Instituted an intake process to provide a single channel for triaging new work requests.
- Drove to completion a stalled project to automate fulfillment in the FileNet workflow system for all products still being fulfilled manually.
- Developed trusted relationships with stakeholders in Operations, all business lines, and corporate departments. They were willing partners in the multiple UAT rounds necessary for major initiatives.
- Worked closely with an offshore team in Thailand for the internal application and back-end development.
Program Manager, Software Development | Project Manager, Business Analyst, Technical Writer, Tester
1999 - 2007Universal Music Group/Napster- Facilitated all requirements, design, status, and launch-readiness meetings for four iterations of digital music services that eventually became the legal version of Napster. Created data maps, process flow diagrams, and other documentation.
- Performed ad hoc testing on the desktop application, ensuring all business and usability requirements were met.
- Managed major releases, including coordinating resources from geographically distributed groups.
- Researched and selected internationalization and localization vendor, completed projects to prepare the database and web app to handle double-byte character sets, and localized the service for launch in Germany and Japan.
- Managed the integration of XM Radio Online into Napster and the integration of Napster with Sonos.
- Filed as a joint patent holder for the silent-license delivery and renewal system (Microsoft Digital Rights Management) used before the company moved to unencrypted MP3s.
- Directly supported the CTO by monitoring and assessing progress and risk on all tech team efforts and managing exploratory projects, such as prototyping a new content search provider.
Technical Writer
1998 - 1998Americast- Supervised technical writing consultants, including screening, interviewing, and hiring.
- Interviewed engineers for each system module. Asked in-depth questions that required them to think about the interfaces with other modules that they had not considered. Created diagrams to help visualize the missing pieces.
- Wrote interface control documents, architecture documents, functional and design specifications, release notes, and installation guides for headend components and subsystems for an early effort to launch an interactive TV system.
- Remained fully engaged after extensive layoffs to stay and complete the documentation for all subsystems for handoff to a vendor to complete the project. Received a double bonus for diligence to complete the project.
ILS Project Leader | Project Leader, Technical Writer
1989 - 1998LItton Data Systems- Led department modernization from DOS-based word processors to the Unix-based Interleaf publishing system.
- Proposed and implemented a conditional text system that significantly reduced errors and cut the time required to incorporate review comments by 45%.
- Proposed and led the delivery of "just enough" documentation set for two prototype projects for the US Marine Corps.
- Led project to document all operating procedures for a client Information services group.
Engineering Writer Specialist | Technical Writer, Project Leader
1985 - 1989Northrop Aircraft, Ventura Division- Collaborated/iterated with IBM Script/VS developers to create a conditional text system that significantly decreased errors and reduced by 75% the time required to incorporate changes into test and maintenance procedures.
- Worked with Script/VS developers to create an automated text formatting system that used embed tags to correctly apply the rules for multiple Mil-Specs to the same set of files, significantly reducing errors and time for incorporating changes.
- Managed all customer reviews and post-review cycles to incorporate and verify review comments.
- Received commendations from field engineering, flight operations, and customers for the caliber of work and attention to detail.