Lightsome Management

7.2009 - Present, Charlottesville, VA

An entity I started for consultant work, Lightsome Management provides Agile Project Management and Consulting Services for web and mobile software development. During its first year, Lightsome launched 4 websites and 17 iPhone applications for companies across the US and in India.

Project Management & Consultant Work
Perform Agile Project Management Services:

• Managed distributed development teams (both foreign & domestic) through all stages of the software development lifecycle;
• Lead daily standup meetings (daily SCRUM) with designers, developers and project stakeholders;
• Documented and owned project requirements, schedule, and scope for complex software development projects.

Document project requirements, user stories, sprint backlog, and QA documentation for a wide variety of application development projects:

• Developed user stories, sprint backlogs, and test documentation for complex iPhone and web software development projects;
• Documented and maintained burndown charts, daily SCRUM notes, project velocity, and Sprint retrospective documentation for multiple cross-discipline projects
• Worked with various project tracking software such as Jira, Unfuddle, Basecamp, and Microsoft Project;
• Recently completed test case documentation consisting of over 400 test cases ranging from regression testing, through I&T testing, to User Acceptance testing resulting in a 75% reduction in defects compared to previous projects.

Maintain timely thorough communication with clients and stakeholders throughout project lifecycle:

• Meet with clients prior to project inception to identify goals, establish requirements, and develop information design documentation;
• Lead project kickoff meetings with project stakeholders and developers to “put a face” on the project and identify and mediate potential hurdles for the project;
• Maintain regular communication of project status with project; stakeholders ranging from daily updates to milestone based updates;
• Develop final documentation for project stakeholders that is easily understood by non-technical personnel.

VibeAgent Inc. / hotelicopter.com

8.2008 - 7.2009, Charlottesville, VA | www.hotelicopter.com

Founded by 2 graduates of the Darden Business School of the University of Virginia, www. hotelicopter.com is a hotel meta-search engine that provides rates and availability from over 30 travel sites for over 160,000 hotels worldwide.

Product Manager
Transitioned development team from waterfall to agile development method:

• Provided group and individual instruction on the Agile process;
• Worked closely with business owners on documentation and product specifications to improve communication of business objectives;
• Instituted measurement of performance on an individual and project basis;
• Maintained 4-week development/QA/release iterations.

On a daily basis, maintained priorities across multiple business initiatives:

• Directed workflow of development team;
• Led daily SCRUM meetings with development team and regular meetings with product owners to maintain project specification and schedule;
• Documented and analyzed key site marketing metrics.

Managed and integrated overseas development and QA resources:

• Overcame language and cultural barriers when communicating project specifications and objectives to overseas developers;
• Integrated QA cycle in to internal development process using the 10 hour time difference to our advantage by overlapping development and daily testing;
• Successfully managed all stages of the first project run solely in the overseas development environment including integration with the main codebase.

Managed a successful viral marketing campaign for site re-launch resulting in over 13,000 visits/hour to the site and the #5 most-watched YouTube video on April 1st:

• Selected by CEO to lead all aspects of the viral campaign;
• Coordinated outsourced multimedia relationships;
• Developed and managed all resources for the viral campaign (http://aprilfools.hotelicopter.com);
• Managed foreign and domestic media relations throughout campaign

Category 4 Design

11.2005 - 8.2008, Charlottesville, VA | www.category4.com

Over the course of almost ten years in business Category 4 has created highly integrated web sites that combine elegant designs with powerful yet easy to use custom applications embracing new technologies as they become available.

Senior Project Manager

On a daily basis, managed the work flow of a multi-disciplinary team of designers, developers, and Project Managers through all life cycle phases of web development projects:

• Managed subordinate Project Managers;
• Managed Development Teams of up to 13 people;
• Collected and organized design and technical materials and specifications for web design projects;
• Managed development schedules and budgets for web development projects;
• Performed Quality Assurance checks and debugged custom programming.

Led meetings with development teams and clients:

• Led Internal development and priority meetings;
• Led kickoff meetings with clients and development team;
• Presented site designs to all levels of organization decision makers including company owners, C.E.O.s, and County Board of Supervisors.

Performed Information Design and User Interface Design:

• Led client meetings to determine web development specifications and requirements;
• Based on client and internal meetings developed database specifications and programming requirements for programming team;
• Extensive graphic user interface design work with Adobe Photoshop and Microsoft Visio;
• Led meetings with development team and project contacts at regular intervals to maintain project specification, budget, and schedule.

Fresh Brewed Media

12.2003 - 11.2005, Charlottesville, VA | www.freshbrewedmedia.com

Fresh Brewed Media maintains several websites that cover a broad range of subjects of interest to investors of all types.  A team of financial experts blends with a top-flight design team to ensure that Fresh Brewed Media’s content is always hot, rich, and bold.

Director of R & D
On a daily basis managed the operation of three websites www.investorsobserver.com, www.wallstreetsecretsplus.com, and www.marketintelligencecenter.com, published 2 semiweekly email newsletters, and performed statistical analysis of website metrics to judge the effectiveness of marketing campaigns.

Relevant Experience
• Managed 2 back-end programmers (asp & asp.net);
• Managed an editor that maintained a list of rotating contributing authors for the websites;Performed routine maintenance on multiple web servers, and co-located servers;
• Maintained DNS, MX, and registrar information for all FBM Administered all internal email accounts for all FBM websites.
• Extensive graphic design work with Adobe Photoshop;
• Developed, published, and updated HTML newsletters;
• Maintained opt-in mailing lists with less than 5% bounce rate, greater than 90% successful deliveries, and less than 0.01% complaints;
• Maintained relationships with all newsletter advertisers resulting in a $20,000 - $30,000 per month revenue stream;
• Configured and managed 3 remote email servers for delivery of the newsletters.
• Maintained real time stats on clickthroughs and conversions during marketing campaigns;
• Monitored site traffic with Awstats reporting software.

FirstNET of Virginia

09.2002 - 10.2003, Charlottesville, VA | www.firstnetva.com

FirstNET Corporation is a combination of web design and hosting, network installation and administration, and Internet Service Provider.  FirstNET has been doing business in Virginia for over seven years.  The FirstNET employees are experts in technology, with over 27 years of combined technological experience.

Internet Service Consultant: On a daily basis developed new relationships with potential customers.

Relevant Experience
• Contacted new businesses, and identified technological needs;
• Developed customized solutions based on client needs;
• Incorporated information uncovered in Client Needs Analysis into a concise business plan for potential advertisers.

Web Developer: Developed websites for clients.

Relevant Experience
• Extensive graphic design work with Adobe Photoshop;
• Developed, published, and updated HTML Web Pages;
• Wrote and implemented JavaScript, and PHP;
• Registered, configured, and published Domain Names for customers;
• Set up and managed email services for clients.

Technical Support: Performed diagnostic analysis and trouble shooting for clients experiencing technical difficulty.

Relevant Experience
• Fixed connectivity issues;
• Repaired hardware;
• Diagnosed DNS issues, and mail server problems;
• Performed a variety of updates, installations, and virus removal.