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Scrapbook
(DRAFT) |
| Software
lasts about 18 months. I thought I better start writing down some
of the applications I've worked on before I forget what they did.
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Microsoft
Office PerformancePoint Server 2007
Company: Microsoft
Role: Program Manager, Redmond, Washington, USA
The third generation of Microsoft scorecarding products (following
on Microsoft Office Business Scorecard Manager 2005 and the Microsoft
Office Business Scorecards Accelerator) will be integrated with
investments from the acquisition
of ProClarity and also with planning, budgeting, forecasting
and business modeling capabilities that have been under development
for several years.
While
details are not being publicly announced right now, a customer
preview program is available: http://cpminsider.com/next.aspx
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Microsoft
Office Business Scorecard Manager 2005
Company: Microsoft
Role: Program Manager, Redmond, Washington, USA
We
shipped Microsoft Office Business Scorecard Manager 2005 (code
named "Maestro") in September 2005, with the official
press announcement and availability around October to kick off
Microsoft's official entry into the commercial
business intelligence applications space.
My
role here was split among core project management, working with
customers and partners in the using pre-released versions of the
product and owning the product's functional specification. It
was quite an amazing experience for our team to take a product
from concept to commercial viability.
Below
are some screenshots of sample scorecards and dashboards created
in Business Scorecard Manager:
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Microsoft
Office Business Scorecards Accelerator
Company: Microsoft
Role: Program Manager, Redmond, Washington, USA
Microsoft's first foray into the performance management space
was a whitepaper in 2002 on how to build Balanced Scorecards using
different components in ASP.
The
idea continued two years later with the release of the Microsoft
Office Business Scorecards Accelerator ("BSA") which
was a download available at no additional cost for customers who
already owned SQL Server. The offering enabled compelling dashboarding
and scorecarding scenarios within Office and, though English-only,
BSA met worldwide success even before it was released.
My
focus was working with Microsoft partners and customers in our
Beta programs and growing the BSA ecosystem and case study base.
Along the way we were able to amass huge quantities of feature
requests and feedback that would later become the blueprint for
our follow-on commercial offering: Microsoft Office Business Scorecard
Manager 2005.
As
we approached the launch of BSA we lost our product manager who
moved over to SQL Server and I ended up managing the bill of materials
(BOM), i.e. producing the flash demo, site content, download surveys,
whitepapers, getting case studies, FAQs, etc.
Unfortunately, I didn't get around to building this scrapbook
site unti after Microsoft Office Business Scorecard Manager 2005
was announced, at which point we had already taken down all the
BSA BOM since we were selling the new version.
Fortunately,
Microsoft Japan
still had their localized materials available, so at least I was
able to capture and preserve some of that.
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Distributor
Management System (DMS)
Company: Trilogy, Financial Services Business Unit
Role: Interaction Designer, Austin, Texas, USA
Every so often I'll come across a two-page spread in Fortune
magazine from Trilogy and I'll think back to my time there. There
was a company motto: "Take the Hills". That meant finding
the most challenging, expensive, insurmountable problem in a customer's
business and turning it around with powerful technology and small
team of extraordinary people.
For
us in the financial services business unit, the hill was distributor
management. Insurance
products are delivered to customers via networks of people working
together: producers, agents and financial advisors.
So
(at a high level) imagine you wanted to design a compensation
system. That means you have to model products, people, authorization
(for certain people to sell certain products), commission rules,
transactions and relationships: all of which may change rapidly
over time. Also consider that you'll need the system to be sufficiently
trustworthy for financial and management reporting.
We
knew one companynot Penn Mutual, btw that, in
the state of Florida, had 47 different systems all trying to manage
portions of this problem and compliance issues alone were costing
them $17M a year. Multiply that number by fifty states, then by
eight major insurance companies (each with over $20B in market
cap) and you come up with around $6.8B in compliance costs per
year.
That
was the hill, and Distributor Management System (DMS) was the
software to go up it. I ended up the lone interaction designer
amid ten developers on the core product team and split my time
between working with the customers and account team on requirements
gathering and designing the UI framework for the 250+ screens
in the product (most of which involved sifting through esoteric
regulations issued by the National Association of Securities Dealers).
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SpaceWorks
MobileManager
Company: SpaceWorks (now Manugistics)
Role: Lead Developer, Washington D.C., USA
Accessing product data, gauging availability and reserving inventory
are essential activities in every sales cycle. Acting on out-of-date
data can cripple your credibility, embarrass your customer, and
occassionally result in legal action.
Around
the turn of the millennium, I moved to Washington D.C. to lead
a development team bringing 24x7, realtime order management capabilities
to wireless devices.
At
the time, the most advanced wireless handheld was the Palm VII;
Palm III and Palm V models had add-on modules to make them wireless
web-ready. WAP phones were just emerging and each seemed to have
its own interpretation of the WML "standard".
My
team built atop an existing pre-J2EE engine designed with its
own markup language and an internal architecture focused on letting
consultants customize the daylights out of the product with near-zero
changes to the core codebase. In theory, their changes could be
reverse integrated into the next version (though complexity here
grows geometrically as the client base and customization requirements
increase).
SpaceWorks
started in 1993 with a consulting practice that DotCom-era funding
turned into a "business-to-business sell-side Web commerce
company". Forbes had us on their B2B list, we were getting
written up in BusinessWeek, and the marquee customer list swelled
with names like GE, Maytag, ViewSonic, BF Goodrich, New Balance
and Leviton. In eight months we went from 70 to 140 people, four
months later we were over 200 and rocketing towards IPO.
Then
came a bump in the bubble. Customers went into a holding pattern,
the market sold off, and investors had a panic attack. While the
market did recover to some extent, the IPO momentum was lost and
our burn rate (aka "R&D Investment") was too steep
to wait out a trough. Then came bankruptcy proceedings and Manugistics
picked up the IP, server assets and customers for $8.3M. |
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Linx
and BOAR
Company: ETrade Canada
Role: Application Developer/Analyst, Toronto, Canada
It was the late 90s, ETrade was growing aggressively and ETrade
Canada was starting a private exchange known as a "call market"
as a competitive differentiator.
When
a client wants to sell or buy a large block of shares they don't
like going through the regular exchange since it could wildly
affect the trading price. Often they'll use an "upstairs
market", a private networks of major brokerage firms and
institutional investors that basically talk to each other and
agree on a deal off the exchange (known as a "cross trade").
The
problem is that even in the upstairs market, if someone hears
you're trying to buy a particular stock (regardless of whether
you get it), they'll charge more for it when you call them.
ETrade
Canada's private call market, codenamed "Linx", allowed
customers to place annonymous bids and asks into a system that
would automatically match them with corresponding bids at different
points during the day. In this system you trade market visibility
for annonymity.
My
job was to build out an application, codenamed "BOAR",
that could allocate trades made across Linx, the Toronto Stock
Exchange and a number of American exchanges to different portfolios
and client accounts, factoring in things like commission calculations,
settlement dates, holds, ticketing and other data.
While
working as developer, I completed my CSC (the pre-requisite to
become a securities dealer in Canada, similar to the NASD series
7 in the USA). |
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College
Drop-out / Cartoonist
Company: Various
Role: Penciler, inker, graphic artist, storyboard artist
Dropping out of the University of Toronto to pursue a career as
an independent comic book artist seemed like a good idea at the
time.
I
ran an independent press shipping on a semi-predictable basis
and got to hang out at conventions every once in a while in little
"meet the artist" booths with folks like Terry Moore,
Mike Mignola and Chris Bachalo. I also freelanced doing storyboarding
for television commercials, worked in indie film and had other
net cash flow negative experiences.
Eventually,
I got so used to the negative cash flow lifestyle that I went
into a work-study program at the University of Waterloo, where
I ended up with degrees in cognitive science and computer engineering
(then later to Cornell University where I picked up a a masters
in computer science). |
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