skills & education
Project Management
I have been managing website builds and other digital projects since 2002, traditionally producing functional specifications from business requirements, then planning and managing the delivery of the solution. Lately, I have been working in a Scrum framework, which requires a different set of skills; see below for more details.
I have worked in creative agency environments and, more recently, formal Prince2 project governance structures, and have successfully delivered solutions to complex requirements, such as content management systems, e-commerce, online collaboration, systems integration and GIS mapping.
As a Prince2 practioner, I can comfortably run projects; developing project briefs and business cases, product-based planning, success measurements, scheduling, managing risks, managing product delivery, and reporting to the board.
Within SCRUM, I have mainly operated as scrum master or, for projects I am managing, I have coached product owners and worked closely with them through the whole development process. I really enjoy the focussed communication of the SCRUM approach.
Other skills I have honed as project manager include requirements gathering, business process analysis and improvement, supplier management, budgeting, team leadership and people management.
User-centred Design
I began working on interface designs in 1994 and, since 2000, have taken a user-centred approach. This begins with reviewing statistics, conducting customer research, facilitating card sorts and user story workshops, developing use cases and selecting a group to involve in the design of paper prototypes for testing.
In many cases, websites have commercial goals, with a few specific outcomes desired from each user's visit. In other cases, the interface must support certain business processes. Either way, I've found involving users in the design extremely helpful.
Creative Team Management
I have many years experience leading small (4-10) design teams in agencies; delegating, coordinating, evaluating and mentoring. As a project manager in larger organisations, I have led project teams with diverse skill sets, sometimes in distributed locations, to produce excellent work. In both settings, I value inter-personal relationships very highly and aim to build trust and respect between team members.
Software Skills
I am highly literate in the usual project management software (MS Project, Visio, Office) as well as all web & media tools (Photoshop, Illustrator, XHTML, CSS, Flash, Premiere, Ableton Live etc.). I also have some development capability (ASP, PHP, CFM, Perl). I have experience with a range of online applications such as Basecamp, Jira, Google Analytics, Optimal Workshop Tools, online surveys etc.
1992-1994: University of the West of England, Bristol
BA (Hons) Time Based Media