How do you know?
This is great! You want a player/coach right now! What could possibly go wrong?
You’re in good hands though.
I have successfully completed many high-impact software development projects by myself, including the rollout of the second major production-level corporate Linux application ever.
But this here is a teamwork offer. You bring the great developers and testers and analysts; I’ll bring the long-term experience, the fresh set of eyes, the longer view. In that vein, here’s a subset of the eighty organizations I’ve worked with so far in my career:
- Ford
- FedEx Logistics
- Days Inn & related hotel chains
- The 24 small shops at the Detroit Metro Airport
- Xerox Global Services
- Arhaus Furniture
- Sherwin-Williams
- Nine Inch Nails’s merchandising company
- University Hospitals
- Ohio Savings Bank
- KeyBank
Every one of these has been a different challenge, and not all of them even went that well, but consistently each organization has had a better development team because of my collaboration and teaching in place.
The chops.
For completeness, you’re going to want to know that I’ve been doing solid work on .NET systems, basically the full stack but light on front end, for the last several years. A lot of SQL Server (including light admin, writing stored procedures, stuff like that) and Oracle. Really a lot of developing REST-like APIs, often from very vague specifications.
I do keep my hand in open source platforms too, currently less LAMP and more MEAN. I’m enjoying NodeJS and Angular especially.
I recently did a very significant IoT implementation on Azure for the R&D division of a big manufacturer, and the IT people immediately said “Yeah, we’re going to make that the corporate standard.” (Which meant taking the project out of my hands after I did all the hard parts, sigh.) And I’m implementing new web applications by default on AWS.
My tech resume is literally, I am not exaggerating, ten whole pages in 11-point type. You do not want to read it all. The point is that if your tech stack is reasonably current, I probably already understand it; and if it’s some weird legacy stuff, there’s a good chance I get how it works.
This is what people say.
As if the rotating testimonials on the side of this page weren’t enough?
Here’s what one colleague said after we completed a big website upgrade that started out ugly:
Mark worked with me on a big .NET/Sitecore project. Despite working with vague requirements and specifications, Mark dove in, asked insightful questions so he could get going. He also regularly improved code that other team members had written while he was in there fixing a bug—added input validation, error handing, etc. He was a trusted and reliable member of the team, who will keep things on track. I welcome working with him in the future.
And ultimately no risk.
You and I will review progress and accomplishment every week with a structured checkin. At every one of those checkins you’re free to say “Yeah, we’re good here,” and call it done. We’ll declare victory and write that final report for upper management. That report will match, bullet for bullet, the objectives we documented up front, along with quantified success metrics. (Bosses love metrics.)
Remember back up front where I said I make your existing team better? That’s real. We’ll create metrics to demonstrate that too, front and back.
Bottom line: this program is easy to try, it’s wildly beneficial, your costs are perfectly predictable, and it’s self-justifying. In the short term your project goes a lot more smoothly; in the long term your entire development team becomes sharper and more effective.
And here’s how to get started.