January 31, 2017

Professional Year in Review (2016)

DPRA, Inc.

JFAST

  • Implemented multiple features and fixed several bugs for Release 7 of JFAST, a system that allows military planners to perform transportation and logistics feasibility analyses for selecting the best course of action
  • Became a team lead; this involved taking more ownership of task creation and estimation, assignment of work, knowledge acquisition from subject matter experts, sharing information with the development team, improving inter-department communication through shared documentation, focusing on smaller work break-down
  • Assimilated knowledge of military logistics, functionality of the legacy version of JFAST, and the architecture of the existing software solution
  • Acted primarily as a full-stack developer for one of three cross-functional teams; this work involved integrating XAML from a UI/UX designer, developing core logic, unit testing, and prototyping database requirements (i.e., table design, stored procedures)
  • Communicated frequently with the QC team to improve the quality of acceptance criteria and minimize the introduction of new bugs
  • Broke down large features and product backlog items on my team into manageable and estimable tasks
  • Encouraged and participated in team code reviews
  • Paired with junior developers to help them learn the development tools and processes
  • Led Scrum-related meetings (standups, retrospectives) as well as weekly in-depth technical and functional discussions with our customers
  • Helped with branch-merging and deploying to test nodes for the team
  • Represented our team during end-of-sprint functional reviews; such reviews involved most people on the project ranging from other developers, to product owners, to the CTO and CEO
  • Fostered an environment for development practices such as code reviews, pair/mob programming, unit testing, and frequent bug triage with the QC team

CMMI Initiative

  • Software development representative member of the Software Engineering Process Group; this is the tactical body for managing the process and is comprised of members who represent various functions within the company
  • Participated in a 13-week special interest group (SIG) to develop the process improvement workflows, Agile values, work environment standards, and metrics repository
  • Took part in a 2-day workshop on process metrics; this involved designing metrics as well as one-on-one discussions with executive management about how these metrics help measure progress toward company goals

Professional development

Training proficiency

  • Cyber Awareness (Department of Defense version)
  • Basic life support
  • Workplace Harassment Training
  • Les Mills RPM Advanced Instructor Module 2 Training