Notable Projects

Learn more about projects that have shaped my career.

Amazon Project Prioritization Framework

Established prioritization framework to create and maintain a stack-ranked backlog among hundreds of competing launches across multiple product lines and releases.

Accomplishments

• Met all commitments as total launch projects grew by more than 50% year-over-year and resourcing remained flat
• Established escalation process for partners who didn't agree with the prioritization
• Developed post-launch strategy for low priority projects, including triage criteria and fast-response plan for any customer issues as a result of de-prioritization
• Implemented communication strategies with key partners to gain support for initiative and to ensure ongoing visibility into team priorities
• The calculation-based approach was leveraged across multiple teams in Digital, Device, and Alexa Customer Service, which had previously not used formal prioritization

Visual Studio Web Site

I joined the site management team for the VisualStudio.com, a web site with over 3 million unique users a month.

Accomplishments

• Worked with PMs to fill content gaps, helping to highlight key product features
• Worked with partner teams to develop analytics backlog, primarily to configure Google Analytics to integrate with our service and product telemetry
• Operationalized data-driven engineering practices including standard reporting and A/B testing program
• Developed SEO strategy that contributed to 432 place jump in page rank in six month period (source: Alexa 2/17)

Compliance Content Management System

Developed a content management system that was used to create and configure the policy content that drove our internal compliance tool and its associated web sites. I took over as the program manager on this project in the critical nine months before the release.

Accomplishments

• All high priority bugs resolved prior to release (other teams had substantial bug backlogs)
• When I inherited the project, there were no specifications and the team was typically making their best guess about design, with predictable results. Within 3 months, I had a large backlog of completed specs, regular pre-sprint specification reviews, and a prioritized backlog for the team 
• In additional to major updates, made small improvements that greatly enhanced usability

NHS National Programme for IT

I served as the documentation project leader for IDX (now GE Healthcare) for the "UK project."  The UK project was a multi-billion dollar project to provide clinical software to two regions in the United Kingdom. This was a critical, high-profile project that required extensive overtime, decisive action, and substantial project management.

Accomplishments

• Led project team that included 15 writers on two continents at its peak
• Team met every deadline and still introduced substantial documentation improvements as we were documenting a rapidly changing product 
• Expanded existing styles, standards, and build methodology to manage multiple software versions and locales
• Negotiated documentation strategy for each release to support customers effectively within the constraints of our tools and resource availability 

Build Automation and Optimization

Our documentation set consisted of over 100 separate modules and nearly 25,000 topics in a single, integrated documentation set. Production required a twice-daily build. To manually generate 100+ projects twice a day was a fulltime job.

Accomplishments

• Reduced overall build time by approximate 75% from its peak of 1500+ hours per release
• Developed technical specifications for multi-project WebHelp build tools
• Developed writer checklists and instructions for production testing and content consistency
• Changed format for release notes to PDF, improving customer satisfaction and reducing production time by more than 25%

Linux Journal

My first real job was at Linux Journal, where I started as a customer service representative and eventually ended as Associate Publisher. It was a great learning experience.

Accomplishments

• When the LJ editor quit with no articles in the queue, I filled in for several months, building a steady stream of good content
• Edited a monthly column, "The Best of Tech Support"
• Co-interviewed Linus Torvalds