Recent Projects

• I have worked on applications for the oil and gas industry, primarily used to evaluate well viability and to design oil and gas wells. My duties have included maintaining legacy applications, with a view to making them more maintainable. This has meant everything from refactoring to redoing application architecture. I have also developed new applications, frameworks and libraries, evaluated new technologies and frameworks and made recommendations for their use, and mentored junior staff, especially with regards to TDD, software design and software quality. I have used my experience to assist team leaders with the introduction of more advanced processes like Unit Testing and TDD, continuous integration and Scrum, and the use of software metrics, which were new to the department.
• Migrating Visual Studio 2003 source code to Visual Studio 2005, and in writing an XML Schema parsing component for an aerospace company. The migration involved both C++ and C#, with both .NET 1.1 and .NET 2 frameworks, mainly on WinForms applications. The XML Schema manipulation was all .NET 2 and C#.
• I was a senior architect on the BBC’s iPlayer project. This was a complex project involving several companies. I acted as technical design authority for one of those companies, signing off on requirements and designs, and liaising with my opposite numbers in the other organisations. I worked with technical leads to select appropriate Java frameworks and technologies, and ensure the architecture was sufficiently scalable and robust. I managed an agile development process (using SCRUM) with a team of up to 8, and promoted the introduction of new agile techniques. I was involved in requirements elicitation and analysis, specification development, high-level design, project estimation, and liaising with management and client. I was also involved in the planning of a suite of products based on the same technology, with a particular focus on establishing a core suite of reusable software components. I was also heavily involved with recruiting developers to build my and other teams, drawing on my experience as an employment officer to evaluate CVs, and to conduct phone screening and face-to-face interviews.
  
• Team leader on a high profile project in Singapore, providing urgent fixes to the new trading system intended for use in all stockbrokers’ offices. I lead a team of overseas consultants and local staff, planned work, implemented some changes and reported to management and government authorities, both verbally and in writing.
• Code review of a travel wholesaler's booking system. Provided assessment of code, guidance for migration and staffing, and technical advice on refactoring, unit testing etc. to extend the viable lifetime of the code base.
• Created a user interface framework to deal with lifetime and memory management issues in a suite of applications making heavy use of embedded forms. Provided advice and troubleshooting on the existing code base.
• Working on an “proof of concept” application to allow viewers and listeners to download TV and radio content from BBC channels and stations and watch or listen to them offline for up to a week after broadcast. This was investigation work that eventually lead to the creation of the BBC’s iPlayer. My experience on this trial project lead to my stint as senior architect on the real application.
• Consulting with a payroll processing bureau with advice on choosing a new database and migrating their application. Also provided advice on implementing unit testing, refactoring, and object oriented design with design patterns.
• Palm application and conduit for an allotment monitoring system used by local authorities.
• PocketPC application for supervisors at sheltered workshops to track time keeping and work performance data. The project included synchronisation of data with the main server database via ActiveSync.
• PDA consultancy for a mobile telecommunications firm that provides software and support for setting up new networks. I gave general advice given to management and IT staff, and we then related that to their specific business needs.
• Wrote new .NET applications to run a hotel and scuba diving school in Sharm-el-Sheik on the Red Sea. i was brought in to provide analysis and object-oriented design expertise, as well as coding support using Visual Studio .NET in C# to write both WinForms and ASP.NET applications and web services. It also involved using support tools such as Together for modelling and StarTeam for source code control and configuration management. There was also a certain amount of management of two other developers, ensuring the day to day focus was appropriate, doing informal code reviews and providing design advice.
• Provided analysis and design expertise on a sophisticated video presentation system written in Delphi. The system is highly multi-threaded, makes extensive use of DirectX calls, and uses Borland’s Bold technology to map objects to relational storage. I also assisted with testing and debugging the system, before moving on to mentor a new hire in object-oriented design, refactoring, and unit testing.
• Performed a code review for an insurance company in the City of London. Their system was written by an external firm, and they required an assessment of the code’s suitability for future development, and an analysis of performance bottlenecks.
• For two years I acted as Technical Manager at Sports Technology Group, who write software to track the performance of elite athletes. I was the architect of a series of applications used by the England and Wales Cricket Board, the Rugby Football League and the Rugby Football Union. The applications used an object persistence framework of my design that mapped objects to a relational database, and a framework to make the development of the systems quicker and easier for other developers. I also provided support and training for clients, including a trip to Adelaide to install software and train the coaching staff of the ECB Cricket Academy while they were using the facilities at the Australian Institute of Sport.