Ryan How

I took over development of the project after the existing developer left and the project had gone over time and budget.

I worked closely with the client and advised on how best to proceed from here. In an ideal world, it would have involved starting again with a more suitable technology stack, but the ideal is rarely the case, so I proceeded to fix some long-standing bugs and streamline the deployment process so there were fewer regressions on deployment and so updated could be delivered quickly and reliably.

I worked with the client to create some new features and improve existing features and user experience (UX).

The client's limited budget meant that development efforts needed to be prioritized, so it was very important to determine what issues to tackle and which issues were better to leave.

The other challenge was fixing the issues that were deeply embedded into a production system, while not disrupting clients. For this particular project, it was used on a 24x7 basis, that meant making all changes in a backward-compatible way.

Technologies: Ionic 1, AngularJS, PHP Laravel, Full-stack

Successes:
• Lowering production costs by 100x
• Radically increasing reliability
• Rapidly prototyping and testing new features in an Agile method while maintaining production stability
• Designing an architecting the system to be scalable with handling large GIS datasets in an innovative way
• Working creatively on innovative solutions to meet challenging requirements

I initially consulted with Builders' E-commerce as a front-end developer to theme the application with CSS.

Shortly after, the lead developer left and I was approached to take over the role.

I immediately made several critical changes to the system to lower production server costs that were spiraling out of control. This involved changes to the build process, fixing some critical bugs, and automating a deployment pipeline. I lowered monthly fees by 100 times and increased application performance and reliability.

I continued on the Builders' E-commerce project for several years, implementing and testing new features with the Agile methodology, working as part of a team under a product manager, and maintaining the performance and stability of the product.

Technologies: CSS, JavaScript, Vaadin, JPA, Java, PostgreSQL, Flowable, Alfresco

The Aurum Catering RDMS was a system designed to streamline the process of recording residents dietary requirements and preferences, ordering ingredients, preparing meals in the kitchen, then delivering the correct meals to residents.

This project came with a full requirements spec, so my role was to estimate, develop, and deliver.

The project was to be implemented on a .NET MVC stack with Microsoft SQL Server and SQL Server Reporting Services.

I put together a small team to deliver the project, which I managed and performed the role of a technical lead.

I additionally advised on tablet PCs to be used on the ground, having prior experience in the use of web applications on tablet PCs and the inherent problems.

It was a fairly standard project with no big surprises, innovation, or changing requirements.

A robust and reliable solution was delivered within time and budget and to the client's satisfaction. Unfortunately, shortly afterward, the company was purchased by another and closed down.

The client won a contract for a large mining company to handle their dust monitoring.

They only had two weeks notification to get their systems in place. The previous contractor was not cooperative in transferring their IP, so there was only a very narrow window to develop software. Furthermore, it was considered essential to have software in place to streamline the data collection and analysis and ensure that errors were minimal.

I developed an MVP desktop application using .NET MVC on top of a SQL Server database in the two-week timeframe and stayed onsite with the client for the first day to fix any issues that arose immediately. My role was critical in delivering a smooth transition.

Further development continued over the next few months to add new features and add a companion field logger application to run on tablet PCs, plus automated reporting. The system has been running 24x7 for years since.

I was approached by a residential builder to replace their existing system(s) that had grown into a "monster."

The systems they had were not scaling, had a lot of bugs and quirks, and a lot of technical debt, so any further development was creating more problems. They felt they lacked the expertise and wanted to "do it right" this time.

For this project, after evaluating a few frameworks, I selected Vaadin, which is a web framework that has a development model more like a desktop application.

I put together a small team, created a high-level requirements document, then worked with the client using an Agile methodology to deliver features of value to the client as early as possible.

Part of the project scope was a migration from the existing system to the new system. So the system was developed in a way that allowed for a smooth changeover, with migration happening on a per feature basis, and jobs running through both systems in parallel.

The resulting system covered a wide range of business requirements from sales to workflow to contracts to reporting.

The project centered around an environmental data management system geared towards sample collection, processing, analyzing, and reporting. This system was developed as standards LIMS (Lab Information Management Systems) were not suitable. They focused on the analysis of samples rather than the collection, tracking, and reporting of samples.

The system evolved to include companion field loggers running on ruggedized touch screen tablets with offline maps and GPS capabilities, on-site data validation, and integration with instruments via COM ports and USB.

This system was required to be accessed remotely and on-site, so it was implemented as a web application using Apache Tapestry running on a high speed embedded H2 database. The field loggers were an extension of the same system running as an embedded web application with a full copy of the database (allowing for offline support) and syncing using a transaction based syncing mechanism for pushing data, and a snapshot for pulling data.

The embedded web application pattern later became more mainstream using tools like Electron, but this was implemented in an early version of Firefox using XULRunner.

The project is used daily has been running reliably in production for years on end.