I was recruited into this permanent position after several decades as a contractor to head up the introduction of Agile into the Visualsoft development process by someone who had previously employed me as a contractor for a similar successful role.I was responsible for: * Recruiting Delivery and Release managers to implement the process.* Examining the existing delivery systems in detail and devising an incremental plan to move development into a more effective model.* Coaching and mentoring at all levels, including discussing the use of Agile concepts in non-IT departments.* Overseeing the collection and presentation of relevant metrics to enable effective C-suite decision-making, realistic goal-setting and estimation for use by the wider business.* Working with the development teams, QA and Dev Ops to make all relevant outputs from the delivery process visible and understood. * Adopting a pragmatic approach to improving delivery. Experimenting with variations on the approach until the best one for the Visualsoft environment and culture was found.* Instigating "Scrum of Scrums" to make visible and discuss cross-team/department dependanciesDuring this period, I also designed and implemented code to extract and process "custom" cross-project statistics using the Jira, Confluence and GitHub APIs.Key achievements and business outcomes include:* The creation an implementation of an effective cross-team development “way of working”.* Mechanisms to visualise and radiate cross-team and cross-department dependencies.* An identification and escalation mechanism to ensure “blockers” are dealt with as quickly as possible.* In conjunction with the teams, developed a common understanding of how to refine and size work.* Ensured teams understand how to plan based on historic capacity so they adopt realistic goals.* Gave the teams a voice to help them become self-organising an have an influence on cross-team working practices.

This short-term contract was accepted during Covid lockdown to allow time to re-locate back to the North East until the post-lockdown "work landscape" could be determined.* Developed cross-team "ways of working"* Coached and mentored Agility* Taught effective estimation and planning techniques* Introduced goal-setting and decomposition.* Created effective stakeholder/development communication channels.* Coached Product Managers* Automated the Jira process to help re-enforce effective development methods.* Gave talks on Inter-Process Communications as part of the development of junior technical staff.

As part of my passion for all things IOT, I decided to take some time to develop some ideas I've had for prototyping microcontroller hosted sensors, with data capture and reporting on Raspberry Pis.It's great to be coding C again.The prototypes uses LoRa low-powered radio to periodically send sensor information to a central hub for processing and triggering of irrigation, lights, ventilation etc.The remote areas have no access to electricity, so this required solar power and minimum power consumption within the systems. Skills:C build toolchain, PHP, data capture and processing, JQuery, AJAX, microcontrollers, electronics, sensors, building physical prototypes, Raspberry Pi. LoRa radio communication, low-power techniques.

Responsible for the introduction of Agility across a large, international financial institution* Oversaw selection of Agile Leaders and Scrum Masters , developing core team members* Coached Agility at all levels across multiple work streams for both onshore and offshore teams* Drove the adoption of “visualisation” of work throughout the bank, resulting in its widespread use throughout several departments (several of which are not “IT related”)* In collaboration with the teams, stakeholders and management, adapted Agile frameworks to come up with a “best fit” for the culture and operating environment at the bank* Produced and delivered metrics and project updates to senior management at regular “SteerCo” meetings* Instigated and facilitated “Scrum of Scrums” to identify cross-team and cross-project issues* Designed and configured monitoring solutions for various environments* Arbitrated and facilitated to resolve conflicts between teams, stakeholders and external vendorsKey achievements and business outcomes include:* Introduced Agility to the bank and was involved in setting up the development teams and delivery capability* Successfully coached Agility at all levels. Previously the bank had no development capability at all.* Devised and facilitated workshops to aid senior managers and SMEs to identify opportunities for Agile adoption* Drove the successful adoption of “work visualisation” throughout the bank.Mentored Product Owners, Scrum Masters and Team Members to help maximise effectiveness* Introduced Agility to the Dev Ops teams* Used “inspect and adapt” to encourage the identification of waste and the maximisation of throughput* Facilitated “project wash-ups” and “lessons learned” sessions to help various projects to capture valuable “learns” for future work* Helped management to construct and effectively use Product Roadmaps* * Held workshops on effective estimating

Responsible for transformational technology, using Agile* Championed the total integration of Agile practices* Established successful communication channels between stakeholders, external vendors, staff and executives* Built monitoring and feedback system using Raspberry Pis and New Relic to enable tracking of key systems. Wrote bespoke code to support this.* Oversaw selection process for Agile Leaders and Scrum Masters* Effectively coached Product Owners, Scrum Masters and Teams* Collated relevant metrics and presented to senior stakeholders* Wrote code to access Jira via RESTful API to extract project metrics in the most useful format Key achievements and business outcomes include:* Drove performance optimisation of existing models, facilitating pre-and post-deployment reviews* Created an understanding amongst staff (at all levels) what Agile is ,and how it can be used for effective development.* Focused Product Owners and stakeholders to prioritise the largest business value “wins” the bank would benefit from* Instilled a sense of controlled urgency in the teams* Presented metrics at board level* Introduced “hackathons” as part of team-building and product-idea generation.

Responsible for Agile programme engagement and leadership, driving change and transformation* Introduced work visualisation techniques* Coached Project Managers on how their role is likely to change due to the adoption of Agile* Coached and mentored Agile across different projects (teams local and offshore)* Recruited Scrum Masters and Delivery Managers (due to my technical experience was involved with defining the delivery process)* Facilitated several “project initiation” and “lessons learned” sessions. Ran “big room” planning sessions where multiple teams, Product Owners and stakeholders were involved* Introduced Raspberry Pi monitoring networks for “business critical” systems* Instigated and facilitated “Scrum of Scrums” to address cross-team dependencies and other issuesKey achievements and business outcomes include:* Created a comprehensive “Agile Operations guide” that was distributed across all Ladbrokes Coral development teams* Create a comprehensive “Product Roadmap and Delivery guide” that was also distributed to all areasChampioned collaborative pre-and-post deployment reviews to enhance effectiveness and learn from any past mistakes* Improved the flexibility of extracting reports for various tools (Jira, Confluence etc.) by extracting via RESTful API and combining into a custom format

Responsible for all aspects of Scrum delivery, team leadership & collaborative stakeholder engagement• Drove a major Waterfall to Agile migration initiative, assisting core teams and optimising procedures• Enhanced project and staff outputs, formulating Kanban teams to deliver critical product functionality• Devised and developed reporting monitoring artefacts for new projects, undertaking further reviews• Spearheaded the establishment of regular technical meetings to assess penetration testing strategies• Enabled cross-functional communication, managing stakeholder relationships and approving deadlines. Adapted SAFe framework to suit operational environment.

Initially recruited to this role to be the technical authority on a large anti-virus project, and also move the team from Waterfall to AgileResponsible for all technical aspects of the project and introducing agility* Interviewed and selected all team members* Set technical direction and defined deployment processes* Responsible for checking Intel McAfee systems for vulnerabilities, patching, or mitigating any risks* Created and maintained environments used by the teams. * Designed and deployed monitoring of critical systems* Technical sign-off authority

Responsible for all aspects of Scrum team leadership and delivery, engaging with senior stakeholders• Formed and directed a team to execute large-scale data cleansing project, utilising data analysis tools• Adopted a new cloud-based Oracle suite to assimilate new feeds into previously developed MDM hub• Streamlining and matching data to produce a ‘single view’ of customer information within ETL toolset• Established technology review protocols, building test harnesses and designed web service interfaces• Co-ordinated various data sources across diverse databases, XML and flat files, controlling data feeds• Identified requirements for UK and non-UK data sets, configuring address and name parsing collection

Responsible for technical direction and focus for large website re-branding and technical evaluation of existing frameworks* Re-skinned and re-coded several web sites using PHP, ASP and Java. Coded support applications for data validation, storage and retrieval. Instructed staff on development techniques using PHP and Perl. * Developed backup and data cleansing routines for databases. Embedded applications within existing web sites. * Created Dev and Test environments using Virtual Machines. Perl, Bash, PHP, Oracle, Virtualisation, MySql, XSLT/XSD, Java, ASP, IIS and Apache.

Responsible for creating large data feed into data lake for new European customer* Created data warehouse feed for a chain of European supermarkets. Collected, processed and formatted very large scale sales data for trend analysis. Solely responsible for the development of the new feed and supporting report structure. Perl, Bash, Korn, WX2 and Oracle

Responsible for data cleansing operation and design and teaching developers principles of "intelligent data parsing"* Using data analysis tools (Datanomic / dn:Director) to create an MDM hub. Cleaning, de-duping and matching data to produce a single view of customer data. Interfacing to multiple data sources via different databases, XML and flat files. * Writing test harnesses and documenting ‘as-is’ systems. Configured address and name parsing to enhance UK and non-UK data sets. dn:Director, XML/XSD, Oracle, Perl, shell scripting.

Responsible for technical direction for data extraction using interfaces between remote systems* Working on the Fire Control project to deliver a nationwide integrated Fire and Rescue system. * Responsible for all the end-to-end test data generation. This involved the use of Oracle and Oracle Warehouse Builder to create/store/retrieve XML data sets and route them to the sub-systems web service interfaces. The test harness was created using Perl. XSD was used to validate the XML and XSLT/XPath used for transformations. Wrote web services and clients to consume services (PHP, Perl) for loading data into components of the Fire Control system. * Used Perl and C to integrate system components via APIs. Tested/exercised web services with soapUI. Wrote shell scripts (Bash) to automate delivery on new test data sets to remote environments.

Responsible for giving teams technical direction and guidance on large-scale banks sanctions screening projects* Working on Sanctions and PEP (Politically Exposed Persons) lists for very large international banks. * Using Datanomics dnDirector toolsets to ensure organisation protected from undesirable individuals and organisations. Analysed data to gain understanding of underlying structure and prepared for matching against lists supplied by regulatory bodies (United Nations, World Check, European Union, FBI etc). Built feeds as required and tailored as necessary. Visited banks in Geneva and Monaco to work with very sensitive customer data. Simultaneously working on business and storage layers for web site. * Developed SMS text messaging interface. Linux, Apache, PHP and Perl. Used C to develop code to interface to MySQL API.Trained staff to implement Sanction Screening solutions for international private banks. Scripted backup routines for development and training environments (Bash)

Developing new functionality for insurance products suite. Developed 'credit scoring' functionality for online assessment of risk for insurance applications. Extended legacy application to meet FSA (Financial Services Authority) compliance regulations. Developed test harnesses and enhanced audit trail. Perl, PHP, Zend Framework, Template toolkit, Smarty, Shell scripting (Bash), jQuery, AJAX, MySql, C++

Very large migration project. Used Kognitio toolset to map and transfer legacy data to new systems. Wrote code to tie auto-generated code via mapping rules to target where complexity too great for toolset. Wrote PLSQL and shell scripts to transfer schemas from legacy to new systems. C (extensive gdb), PLSQL, shell scripting, Perl DBI. Profiled transfer executables (using gprof) and amended code for optimisation. Wrote Perl utilities to aid build, version control and deployment of code. Also involved in data analysis for construction of mapping rules. C, Perl, PL/SQL, WX2, Shell Scripting (Bash).

Developed various applications to facilitate seamless management /monitoring/delivery of software to the nationwide Post Office system. Wrote load balanced delivery gateways to install and upgrade applications for Linux, Solaris and Windows servers. Perl , C, C++, Oracle, PL/SQL, rpm package management, Shell scripting (Bash), WSH, Tivoli suite, VMWare.

Designed/coded/tested/implemented gateways to enable secure financial debit and credit card transactions via web sites. System facilitates direct debit and payout mechanisms. Supplies services to merchants and banks to ensure rapid transfers and avoid fraudulent activity. Potential fraud risk calculated via IP address, geographical location etc. Integrations written for all major credit/debit cards and European banks. Created reconciliation/reporting mechanisms, regression test harnesses. Wrote Perl .xs interfaces and test regression suite for third party C libraries of bank/direct debit validation routines. Perl, MySql, C, Shell scripting (Bash, Korn), mod_perl, Linux.

Created ‘Project Engines’ application that trawls very large data warehouse and collates complex data and calculates lead times for procurement of parts for new engine development/fulfilment of existing orders. Tracks hundreds of thousands of different parts and assemblies through various production life cycles. Produces comprehensive reports and generates ordering schedules to ensure that parts and assemblies are available when required for large-scale engine production runs. Perl, DBI::DBD, Oracle, PL/SQL, shell scripting, C. Designed, coded and implemented ‘Process Metrics’ application that tracks and reports on efficiency of engine development process in a large manufacturing facility. This enables the identification of choke-points in the production process. Interfaces with several legacy engineering systems to track entire life-cycle of each part from design to fitting to engine. Perl, Oracle PL/SQL, C, Sockets, shell scripting (Bash), C.Developed mechanism to automatically route and distribute diesel engine firmware files to build stations on a series of production lines. Tracks parts and routes firmware to correct location automatically. Perl (multi-threaded), DBI::DBD, Oracle, Tk GUI front-end, XML driven.

Developed two nationwide large-scale pension application/management systems for Government departments. eCRM Web-based. Involved in specification of the technical environment. Designed, coded and tested large-volume print mechanism and data transfer using threaded Perl on Linux and Solaris. Lead developer on both print evolutions. Several million claims printed successfully to date. Oracle access via Perl DBD/DBI. Integration of MQ into system. Wrote queue checking/switching/ failover utilities. Wrote test harnesses using C/Perl/Shell scripts (Bash). Applications configured via XML parsed by Perl. Both projects delivered successfully on time and under budget.Created intranet site. Apache, PHP and MySql on Linux. Session based, with full browser-based admin tools and security. Graphics manipulation via PHP.Developed data feeds for large Governmental data mart. Sixteen separate feeds designed, coded and tested. Environment - Perl/Oracle/MQ. Developed a remote user management system. Using Java and EJBs to administer an LDAP directory structure of users, devices and sites. Front-end JSPs.Developed a CRM system for an international satellite TV Company. Interfacing Chordiant to ArbourBP billing system via 'C' API interface. Used Forte Fusion to interface distributed systems via Conductor using XML/XSLT as communication mechanisms.Developed commercial web site. Database driven (MySql), with JavaScript client validation and PHP for dynamic page generation and database access. Designed and constructed security and administration functions for secure catalogue maintenance.Used C/C++ to develop a Win32 socket comms, multi-threaded, event driven data server interface to a high-speed search application. Linux IPC/sockets test harness constructed. Designed, coded and tested entire application.

Developed UI Domain for Smart card pre-payment gas meter using OOA/OOD methods (Shlear/Mellor, Kennedy Carter tool set,‘C’, Action Specification language).Used ‘C’ to develop program suite used by British Gas Trading within the Quantum gas point of sale system.Developed new version of Utility Token Programmer using ‘C’ (Smart card Point of Sale polling engine).Designed, coded and tested mechanisms to process external cash dumps and messages entering point of sale systems using ‘C’.Developed multi-port, interrupt-driven PC comms library and protocol using ‘C’.

I served in the Army for 13 years (2 of them as a boy soldier). I travelled all over the world - arctic, desert, jungle, large parts of Central America and Africa. I spent 5 years in 3 Commando Brigade, based in Plymouth and travelling extensively.