Jazel, LLC – Irvine, CA
A commercial software firm providing Internet-based B2B and B2C solutions, primarily for the automotive industry. Jazel also acts as an ISP and portal developer for numerous auto dealers.
- Brought in to turn around a large-scale software development project gone awry. At the time of my hire, the development team operated in a chaotic manner, due primarily to lack of planning. Feature creep and developer goldplating were also common problems. In the first few months, I instituted a number of industry standard rapid development practices such as automated nightly builds, automated unit testing, proper design and development documentation, and more. The result has been vastly improved product reliability, much better visibility into the development process by senior management, increased customer satisfaction, and much tighter adherence to the development schedule.
- Managed the development of numerous client-facing portals, including approximately 50 dealer websites. Directly responsible for the hardware and network infrastructure to host all of these sites.
- Conceived several new software product offerings and managed their successful construction and rollout. One of these products (a large-scale, Java-based CRM solution) was directly responsible for growing the company’s install base by 25% in less than two months.
- Managed all aspects of software development, including hiring and firing, hardware purchases, and some offshore outsourcing.