What I do


In response to being tagged by Jason!:

These are one of the few questions I hate to answer because I don’t like talking about myself.  In fact if I met you on the street and it was a casual gathering, I would just tell you I work on computers and lead the conversation else where.

On well here it goes, I am the Assistant Vice President of the Internet Loan Origination Systems here at where Jason mentioned.  Big title, looks nice on resume (more on that later).

I am responsible for the development effort and over all system integrity for several web based applications that are utilized by our back office and field personnel.  I am equally responsible for insuring that our Agile methodology adheres to corporate, government regulatory and compliance oversight.  This is a full time job in an of itself as the corporate organisms bureaucratic blinders tend to want to stifle productivity and innovation as a result of trying to control risk and the illusion of predictive planning.

I am very proud of our team as I have seen our solution grow over the past 3 years into the massive conglomeration it is today.  With over 6,000 unit test and growing the integrity of system is unmatched by other systems of similar size.

I can honestly say that the only reason we are so good at what we do is because we have made tons of mistakes to get to where we are at.  And I do mean tons!  We have taken Agile apart and put it together again several times before we arrived at the right mixture of practices that compliment our arena of development.

We bare the luxury of interfacing not only with our customers but also a systems analyst group that function as QA.  My responsibilities is insuring the development group and the QA group play nice with one another and get the projects done on time and on budget.

Since I am in a management  and due to company regulations that have a clear delineation of separation of roles, I can not touch production code (I know, I tear up every time I say that). BUT!!!  What I can do is create all sort of neat little tools that support the overall development effort.  This also allow me to explore new ways of approaching software development such as BDD and other pragmatic practices.  As I learn these new concepts I introduce them to the development group and together we figure out how to implement these practices into our day to day activities.

When I am not focusing on work, I am also the president of the AlamoCoders.Net association.  It is my responsibility to my community to try to work with the other directors of the association to come up with new and innovative ways on how to bring .Net to the masses.  Not only that but how to enrich the San Antonio programming community on all aspects of software development. 

In addition to the tools already outlined in Jason’s post we (I) also utilize:

  • Urban codes AntHillPro (think CI and Automated deployment bundled as one)
  • Mercury Load Runner
  • Mercury Quality Center
  • Mercury Quick Test Professional
  • FitNesse
  • XPlanner
  • Microsoft Project
  • A kitchen sink
  • And a whole lot of note cards!

Well that is about it in a nutshell.  As I mentioned before that while I am appreciative of my title I do not use it as badge giving me authority to enact and do anything I want.  All the title gives me is responsibility, not power.  My power comes from my team and my team is my reason for being, I am nothing without my team.  I will do anything and everything to enable and help them to deliver better software. That is my promise and that is my mission.  From that flows prosperity for everyone else involved.

Now I shall tag:

Chris Patterson

Evan Hoff

Colin Ramsay

Chad Myers

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