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copyright 2007-2010, Project Management Consulting

 

PROJECT DETAILS

Here is a list of projects that Dan managed or led:

• Customizable Promotional Products E-Commerce Site

• Casual Social Games Site

•  Multi-player Internet Poker

•  Extranet for Classified Ad Submission   

•  Intranet Fax Image Management System

•  Internet Marketing Firm Y2K Readiness

•  Cell Phone Billing Firm Y2K Readiness

•  Backbone Provider Alliance with Baby Bell

•  Backbone Provider's First Complex Web Hosting Planning 

•  TCPware - TCP/IP for OpenVMS Development Manager

•  UCX - DEC TCP/IP for OpenVMS Development Manager

•  ASD/SEE - Software Engineering Environment Project Leader

 

Project Name:  Green Monster Promotions (http://www.greenmonsterbags.com)

Employer (Client):  D2M Consulting, LLC

Project Description:  Create and launch an e-commerce site selling customizable promotional products.

Technical Environment:  Magento e-commerce on Linux  

Lifecycle Involvement:   Complete lifecycle from inception to launch (June 2010)

My Role(s):  Partner in 3 person team funding and launching a customizable promotional products e-commerce website built on the Magento platform.  Project management, testing, usability, launch planning, SEO, SEM, budgeting, vendor relationships, payment processing evaluation and selection, and site content authoring.

 

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Project Name:  Casual Social Games Site

Employer (Client):  SBL Ventures, Inc.

Project Description:  Build out and operate website offering a variety of single and multiplayer social games.

Technical Environment:  Flash games hosted on Linux.  

Lifecycle Involvement:   Complete lifecycle involvement overseeing outsourced development vendors.

My Role(s):  Managing all aspects of new casual games site (www.RoyalFelt.com) including technical, marketing, and support for start up company, white-labeling Internet games marketed through playing card distribution channel. Responsible for vendor / product selection, technical infrastructure, and oversight of third party technical development and games operations. Specified game platform requirements for development. Corporate strategic planning. Drove site launch, built cost and revenue models, drafted contracts and licenses, and evaluated technical and business proposals. Created brand name. Designed and wrote initial portal site structure and content.  Game operations and games marketing.

 

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Project Name:  Multi-player Internet Poker 

Employer (Client):  Tribeca Tables Europe, Ltd.

Project Description:  On-line poker room 

Technical Environment:  Linux Servers on distributed architecture model running Java and Perl with MySQL database.  C++ client on most Windows platforms.  

Lifecycle Involvement:   Complete lifecycle involvement through multiple upgrades.

My Role(s):  In the start-up phase of the business, I was the development project manager (CTO) taking a prototype and leading the development team through the initial product development and release to revenue production.  I continued managing and growing the development team through an expansion of the application and rapid revenue growth over a total of three years before becoming the Director of Product Development.  In that role I continued to own responsibility for the strategic and tactical product development. 

 

In the earlier years, I also was the operations manager, directed customer support functions, wrote and maintained web site content, managed customer accounts, ...

 

As Director of Product Development, I owned customer account management, and coordinated technical and business organizations to ensure business and strategic goals were consistently achieved.

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Project Name:  Extranet for Classified Ad Submission   

Employer (Client):  Zedak Corp (Prominent nationally available newspaper)

Project Description:  Extranet Classified Ad Submission System

Technical Environment:  Thick browser client on Windows embedded in IE with AIX web server, MS SQL Server (7.0) database on the AIX box, and a legacy mainframe backend.  The application consisted primarily of Java servlets, C++ COM components, and XML, along with SQL queries to DB2 on AIX.

Lifecycle Involvement:  Requirements change control, development phase, testing phase, delivery phase, and post-delivery support phase.

My Role(s):  Project and client manager.  I took over both management of ongoing development and client interface of an existing development effort.  The project had released one beta version when I assumed responsibility.  I was responsible for multiple beta update releases, as well as the first production release.  The client had been unhappy with Zedak until my involvement.  Through open communications, prompt problem report prioritization, and disposition, I restored the client’s faith successfully moved the project through acceptance.  The developer responsible for the application reported directly to me.  I co-authored the regression test plan, and I introduced a formal release process.  I performed half of the release testing, including determining minimum functional browser version.

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Project Name::  Faxcility

Employer (Client):  Zedak Corp (brokerage division of major NY based financial services company)

Project Description:  Intranet Fax Management System allowing processing of options exercise requests to be processed from fax images while recording all processing to a database while ensuring all data secured against loss due to system outages.

Technical Environment:  Distributed, redundant system with IIS servers, MS SQL Server database (with secondary fail-over instance), C++ NT Service running in a Windows NT environment (also with fail-over instance), UNIX based optical storage (two), mainframe database update feed, and Windows NT based third party fax send/receive application.  Coded in C++, SQL, and some Java.  NT Service built with ATL COM component in Visual C++.  Web application using ASP (Visual Interdev, MS SQL Server 6.5/7.0).

Lifecycle Involvement:  Requirements change control, development phase, testing phase, delivery phase, technical documentation, and post-delivery support phase.

My Role(s):  I was asked to take a nearly completed development effort and work with the client to deploy it.  I found an application that had been built without clear agreement with the client on deployment responsibilities or testing.  I worked with the client’s team to define the production and disaster recovery environments, and managed the modifications to the system.  I wrote the system management guide, identified numerous functional and deployment issues, and managed their correction through multiple beta releases.   I worked with client staff from IT, the business sponsors, the disaster recovery data center, the end-user team, and with the third party fax vendor to resolve issues.  I wrote the system and acceptance testing programs and scripts.  I identified and managed the correction to numerous usability problems.  I oversaw the validation of the application for dual CPU, auto-fail-over systems when the production environment requirements were changed.

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Project Name:  Year 2000 Readiness

Employer (Client):  Project Management Consulting (Modem Media)

Project Description:  Prepare International Internet Consulting Corporation for Year 2000

Technical Environment:  IT organization supporting multiple Microsoft operating systems and Macintosh, with Exchange based communications, and financials converting to Oracle on UNIX.

Lifecycle Involvement:  Full project from kick-off through calendar roll-over to delivery of final reports and supporting documentation.

My Role(s):  I was responsible for leading the major corporate departments including Finance, Accounting, IT, Creative, Development, Sales, Marketing, Production, and Facilities, as well as the International sites in assessing and where necessary the remediation of systems, vendors, and service providers.  At my recommendation, the company installed a mail sweeper package, and took all systems off-line for the calendar transition.  No Y2K problems were experienced by Modem Media.

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Project Name:  Year 2000 Readiness

Employer (Client):  Project Management Consulting (ITDS-AmDocs)

Project Description:  Prepare Corporate Headquarters for Year 2000

Technical Environment:  Win 3.1 client and UNIX (HP) backend server providing cell phone billing services.

Lifecycle Involvement:  From kick-off through significant portions of testing.

My Role(s):  I was responsible for all Y2K readiness activities at the corporate headquarters, focusing on the primary revenue generating cell phone billing application.  In-house developers and an outsourced remediation vendor were jointly modifying the system, with in-house testing.  I provided detailed guidance to the testing organization on how to ensure all Y2K issues were tested both on the client side and the server side.

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Project Name:  ANS-Bell Atlantic Alliance Management

Employer (Client):  ANS – now WorldCom (Bell Atlantic)

Project Description:  Bell Atlantic procured backbone, hosting, and VPN services from ANS as part of broader directory oriented offerings

Technical Environment:  Internet Backbone, Network Operations Center (NOC).

Lifecycle Involvement:  Requirements phase, process definition phase, support definition phase, and deployment phase.

My Role(s):  I was the ANS point person for all business and technical interactions with Bell Atlantic Internet and Multimedia Services (BAIMS).  My responsibilities included supporting BAIMS in presenting ANS services, and ensuring that what BAIMS sold was within ANS’ capabilities for delivery.  I worked with BAIMS clients in support of deployments of VPN services.  I was on the BAIMS team defining service and support processes, contributing generally and focusing on defining the escalation processes from BAIMS primary support to ANS for second level support where ANS services were involved.  This included defining the necessary steps prior to escalation.  Within ANS, I worked with ANS’ Network Operations Center (NOC) management to modify and expand their technical model to support key BAIMS customer VPN requirements.  I chaired a meeting between BAIMS staff and the ANS NOC management to resolve key obstacles, explaining to the ANS technical staff the issues and potential alternative working models, and to the BAIMS staff the limitations on what could be accomplished.  A viable operational model was adopted.

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Project Name:  First Complex Web Hosting Planning Project

Employer (Client):  ANS – now WorldCom

Project Description:  Planning project for ANS’ first complex web hosting effort

Technical Environment:  UNIX and Windows NT in ANS hosting facilities on ANS backbone. 

Lifecycle Involvement:  Requirements phase, specification phase, and early development phase.

My Role(s):  I was responsible for coordinating across all segments of ANS for the planning of the first complex web hosting project.  Previously ANS had only provided basic template hosting models.  I had to work with Software Development, Network Engineering, the Network Operations Center (NOC), the Sales team, Marketing, and Senior Management, as well as with the initial customer (Standard and Poors).  The planning phase included ascertaining the cost side of the project, and defining scalable business models to reduce the cost of future complex hosting projects, and simplify planning and deployment.  The web site included multiple front and back end servers, multiple firewalls with round-robin server loading, dual backbone connections, an internal management network with its own firewall, and multiple commercial software packages, along with some custom management code.

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Project Name:  TCPware

Employer (Client):  Process Software Corp.

Project Description: Internal Commercial Product; TCP/IP stack for OpenVMS systems

Technical Environment:  OpenVMS servers with Windows NT development clients.  Coded in C and assembly language.  X-Motif GUI.

Lifecycle Involvement:  Full lifecycle, from requirements through post-release support.

My Role(s):  I managed a team of software developers, growing the team from 6 to 22 developers and testers reporting directly to me (also see the UCX project that follows).  Technical writing was matrixed to my team.  I started as a supervisor and was promoted to manager in under a year.  I introduced formal processes and drove significant quality improvements.  I worked with all other organizations in the company, leading the product team during a prolonged vacancy in product management.  The product generated over $9 million in revenue in 1996.  My team had a turnover rate significantly below industry averages.  In my first six months, I healed a fracture between development and Sales/Marketing, leading to a significantly improved working relationship between the groups.  My team also ported the company’s NT Webserver (Purveyor) from NT to OpenVMS and Netware.  I proposed an IPv6 testing product and led the analysis of the market and development costs. 

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Project Name:  UCX

Employer (Client):  Process Software Corp. (Digital Equipment Corp.)

Project Description:  Outsource development team for DEC’s TCP/IP for VMS product

Technical Environment:  OpenVMS servers with Windows NT development clients.  Coded in C and assembly language.

Lifecycle Involvement:  Development and testing phases.

My Role(s):  I was the software engineering representative to corporate negotiations on two separate contracts.  Digital outsourced development of this key networking protocol in recognition of my team’s superior ability to get the job done.  I managed the development team, allocating resources to this project as well as the TCPware project, as dictated by priorities.  I was the Software Engineering representative to the joint corporate project oversight team, charged with monitoring contract progress.

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Project Name:  Aerospace and Defense Software Engineering Environment (ASD/SEE)

Employer (Client):  Digital Equipment Corp.

Project Description:  Integration of software development tools spanning the full lifecycle targeted at Aerospace and Defense sectors.

Technical Environment:  Using X-Motif on OpenVMS, integration of then best-in-class tools for:  requirements management, project planning and tracking, configuration control, documentation management, source code control, testing, problem tracking, bulletin board communications, and build management.  Coded in C.  Database was DEC RDB.

Lifecycle Involvement:  Full lifecycle, from requirements through post-release support.

My Role(s):  I was the project leader, starting out as the original developer on the project.  I wrote the functional specifications for a sizeable portion of the first version, developed scripts for the internal bulletin board, and engineering contact to the client.  I spent three months evaluating a commercially available integration framework.  As the team grew, I was responsible for scheduling, monitoring developer progress, getting management assistance when schedules were jeopardized, coordinating with technical documentation and training teams, and working with quality assurance to schedule testing and ensure all testing was complete and identified issues resolved.

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