Richard Donovan Email & Phone Number

Norwich, England, United Kingdom

As the director of RD Coached Ltd, I provide mindset workshops and talks to software development teams and I provide 1-2-1 coaching to software developers and software development leaders.Delivered a 2-hour workshop and delivered a talk on the main track at the C3 Dev Festival 2024 held in Amsterdam and the TechLead Conference 2024.I also provide software development consultancy services via outside IR35 Contracts.As part of my role, I continue to build automation systems to streamline my business, including integrating Notion and LinkedIn to save time scheduling and posting social media content.I've also built a wellbeing hub for software developers and leaders with tools to help with mental and physical wellbeing. One of my tools integrates with the OpenAI Api.Key technical skills:C# Net 7, .Net Core, EF, ASP.NET, MVC, WebAPI, Microservices, HTML, CSS, Javascript, JQuery, OO design, SOLID principals, Design patterns, Azure DevOps, Azure Services, Docker, SCRUM, Agile, Apps Script, SQL Server, coaching, training, speaking

As a Peak Performance Mindset Coach, I delivered Talks, Workshops and 1-2-1 coaching based on Mindspan's Peak Performance Mind Programme.

During my time with BEIS, I wrote a support application in React to streamline queries from the Government's Help To Grow programme, often reducing the effort from hours to minutes.I saved the department nearly £20k by reviewing their caching strategy of the main Help to Grow system and providing feedback.I later moved to the initial stages of the government's Energy Support scheme, in which I communicated with cross-functional teams to solidify the team's understanding of requirements as well as guided those less technical teams on the art of the possible, given the requirements and the time pressures we were under.I onboarded and mentored new team members and took an active role in ensuring everyone had a voice in our meetings.

Norwich, United Kingdom

Technical:As part of a small team of software architects, I was responsible for overseeing the work of up to 200 developers who delivered our suite of digital online applications globally. I introduced consistent patterns and practices to ensure efficient and consistent development across our teams. I defined and implemented coding standards, peer reviews and integrated new technologies into the ecosystem.Key projects include:Migration to .NET Core and a containerized, cloud-based architecture.Migration of our source control and build system from Atlassian Stash and Jenkins to Microsoft Azure DevOps, introducing comprehensive CI/CD processesDeveloped and maintained a microservice-based API layer using .Net Core 3.1/Net 5.Full re-write of a legacy payment application into .NET Core 3.1.Key Skills:C# Net 5, .Net Core, ASP.NET, MVC, HTML, CSS, Accessibility, Javascript, JQuery, OO design, SOLID principals, Design patterns, Azure DevOps, Docker, SCRUM, AgileThoughts:I recognised the struggles I'd had during my career, in the developers I worked with, and started to think in terms of positively impacting those around me.I realised that mindset and mental health were being overlooked, and companies didn't seem to be aware of the specific challenges developers face on a daily basis. I wanted to change this. It started with the impact that technical decisions could have and later moved into a focus on mindset, wellbeing and engineering excellence.

Norwich, United Kingdom

Technical:Many developers and BAs were just starting an agile transformation and struggled to grasp the benefits. By building trust and showing rather than telling, I brought them along on our agile journey.A big turning point was gaining the trust of the Product Owner, who had been very sceptical under the previous leadership. The team was growing fast, which meant I had to improve at delegating and trusting my team, too.With so many engineering teams across the organisation, communication was a struggle. To improve the situation, I arranged a bi-weekly meeting for team leads to discuss upcoming work and share technical best practices or concerns.The result was improved communication and collaboration across teams, better reuse of code and designs, a more consistent code base, and improved knowledge sharing.Key skillsC#, ASP.NET MVC, JQuery, HTML, CSS, Accessibility, SQL Server 2012, OO design, SOLID principals, Design patterns, TDD, Moq, LINQ, Structure Map, BDD, Selenium, SCRUM, Agile, Javascript, Knockout, CSSThoughts:Having recently been made redundant, I struggled with my self-belief and confidence when I started this role. I felt like I bundled my way through the interview, and when I actually started my role, I had massive feelings of imposter syndrome. I doubled down on areas of mindset and mental health to improve self-belief and confidence. Very quickly I was leading by example and driving the team to the successful completion of two major projects.

Norwich, United Kingdom

Technical:As a Senior Software Engineer at BGO Studios, I was the lead server developer on the Remote Gaming Server (RGS) project. The team: 3 server-side developers, 2 mathematicians and 4 front end developers based in London. My responsibilities:• Design and implement the Remote Gaming Server roadmap• Report project status to senior management • Distribution of development tasks • Interpret complex math models and create server-side implementation• Integrate with an admin system to view spin data• Create simulation programs to spin the slot machine up to 500 million times to generate statistics • Liaise with internal and external QA teams• Expose a REST API to be consumed by Flash/HTML5 client• Consume REST services of gambling platform to provide user account and wallet facilities.Games released to live::• Jurassic Island • Jungle Trouble • Satsumos Revenge • Murder Mystery • Aladdin and The Wild Genie• Jekyll & Hyde * Slots engine was subsequently sold.Key skillsHTML, CSS, C#, ASP.NET MVC, SQL Server 2014, OO design, SOLID principals, Design patterns, DDD, SOA, WCF Services (REST/Soap), Test Driven Development, Rhino Mocks, LINQ, Structure MapThoughts:In this role, I was once again tested from a mental strength and mindset perspective. It was both very stressful and extremely technical. I key part of dealing with the pressure and stress of this role was prioritising my physical health and really leaning on my mindset.This helped me massively in dealing with what started out as some quite challenging relationships. I gained a great appreciation for the importance of relationships in work and also in my personal life.

Norwich, United Kingdom

Technical:I was responsible for delivering the product road map, defining product architecture and the functional design of new product capabilities. I produced technical specifications, development estimates and participated in implementation, overseeing the work of the team. Key skills included object-oriented design, asynchronous programming, design patterns and database design. I also got involved in pre-sales by providing product demonstrations to potential new clients.Key skillsC#, ASP.NET Webforms/MVC, JQuery, SQL Server 2012, OO design, SOLID principals, Design patterns, SOA, WCF Services (REST/Soap), Entity Framework, LINQ, Bing Maps/Virtual Earth, Active Reports.NET, Telerik controls and reporting, Silverlight, MVVM, JavaScriptThoughts:I was the Team Lead/Architect of the Proteo product development team. This was the first time I had led a team and I really started to see the importance of patience, support and the massive significance of mindset and mental health. This was both from my own perspective and from the perspective of my team members too. Leaning on my mentors, I started to develop my leadership style but more importantly, I started to develop my self-belief, confidence and communication skills.

Technical:Tournament.com was an online gaming site where customers paid to compete and potentially win money based on their performance in the game. As a software engineer, I was responsible for the full development life cycle of the Tournament.com client, a downloadable windows forms application. The purpose of the application was to register and launch third party games. It also provided a wealth of information to customers about services available including promotions, offers and tournaments. It allowed users to chat and join scheduled tournaments for their chosen game. My key responsibilities were:Producing technical specifications for the Tournament.com client.Designing and implementing a multi-threaded application.Usage of design patterns.Usage of object oriented design to streamline the application code and ensure that it was concise and maintainable.Release management.Key skills C#, Winforms, ASP.NET, SQL Server, OO design, SOLID principals, Design patterns, Multi-threadingThoughts:This role turned out to be a technically challenging and high pressure job. I learnt a lot about how not to achieve work/life balance. Luckily, the work was really interesting and the people were good fun.

Norwich, United Kingdom

Reward Scheme projectKey skills VB.NET, Winforms, ASP.NET, SQL Server, OO design, SOLID principals, Design patternsThe aim of this project was to motivate engineers to reduce remedial call outs by awarding\deducting points which translated into a regular bonus. This saved the company significant costs and increased productivity in 75% of the depots up and down the country. Key aspects of my role were:Object orientated programming, n-tier architecture.Adhering to strict coding standards, participating in peer code reviews.Transformation of functional requirement documents into technical specifications and designs.Accurate time keeping as all time was logged to monitor costs of different projects.Communicating effectively with depot users, other developers and senior management.To provide regular statistical analysis of the performance of all aspects of the job tracking system.

Northampton, United Kingdom

Technical:My role at Kelworth was to write the next generation of holiday booking software for the leisure industry. The existing product was a FoxPro 2.5 application. I worked on my own to redesign and re-write the application while the rest of my team were engaged in support of the existing version. Key aspects of my role were:C#.NET, SQL Server 2000.Requirements analysis involving a mix of investigation and analysis of the existing system, end-user interviews and knowledge sharing with existing system developers.Using object-oriented principles and design patterns.Database design, general database maintenance, stored procedures, n-tier architecture, design of windows forms.Thoughts:As my first role with major responsibility, this was the first time I encountered imposter syndrome - although I didn't know what it was at the time and found it really difficult to deal with. I had a newly formed family too which also added to the self-doubt and confidence issues I was already having.

Grantham, United Kingdom

I started work at Mountain Software as a software tester. I soon took on a role as a Junior Software Developer. It was here that I first noticed the powerful role of a mentor as I was guided on my programming path.Then, as part of a team of 5, I helped redesign and rewrite the company’s existing suite of Visual Fox Pro applications using C#. NET and SQL Server 2000 (windows forms). Key aspects of this role were:Database design, DTS (Data Transformation Services), performance tuning and full text indexing.Creating user controls and fixing defects identified during testing. Making enhancements to the existing Visual FoxPro Case Management Software.Adhering to strict coding standards.