Almost every company today is struggling to translate the digital advancements that improve our standard of living in our home lives to digital value in our business lives. I have developed skillsets capable of delivering digital business value and often get asked what work experiences have lead to the development of these skills. The digital world changes faster than most can comprehend and we are constantly learning to keep up, but as of 2019 these are some of the skills and experiences that help me bring value in the modern digital business era:
Data is the foundation to any business so data analysis skills are the most critical to delivering on any digital innovation.
Data analysis – Developed data analysis skills filling project roles including:
Commissioning lead – Lead integration and analysis of multiple data sets from multiple sources regarding construction and commissioning progress to communicate readiness of systems to transition from construction stewardship to commissioning custody with energization of electrical or piping systems. Visibility and accuracy of data was vital to ensure systems were transitioned safely and efficiently between project disciplines avoiding rework, loss of productivity and additional safety risks associated with energy introduction to construction work area.
Project Manager – Developed analytics and forecasting tools for regional project with ability to extrapolate trending data for early forecasting and highlight areas or disciplines that were outside previous norms or estimate and required further evaluation or action to avoid negative project impacts.
Modern project delivery in the digital space has transitioned from the traditional stage gated waterfall project management method to a continuous Agile method delivering products of continuous improvement rather than projects to be deployed and forgotten.
Agile Project Management - Product owner in Agile project management for custom software solution developed with AWS and one of their premier partners, Pariveda. Evaluated market, bid evaluated and awarded contract. Led requirements gathering with project team members as customers. Managed user story development, and prioritization. Coordinated User Acceptance Testing (UAT) and deployment. Continuing to deploy to active project teams and continuing to develop, and refine feedback and prioritize for ongoing product development and advancement of capabilities and value delivery.
You can develop the best applications, tools, or systems but without winning the hearts and minds of your team members you can't deliver any value. Without changing the way people work and engage with technology we will always revert to what is comfortable and familiar. Change management and cultural adoption takes time, effort and considerable forethought and planning to be effective often requiring over 7 touch points before people start to transition and change and truly engage.
Change Management –
Regional Projects SharePoint deployment – Led development and deployment of Regional Projects standard SharePoint environment. Facilitated change management of technical engineering function transitioning from LAN based file storage and email based collaboration to web-based SharePoint site.
Digital Project Home deployment – Led coordination with business team to plan and implement program to transition from existing work process and systems to new system integration and user interface. Plan included early, pre-go-live, in-person engagement, user feedback to features and prioritization, and early training sessions in sandbox environment and participation in User Acceptance Testing and system web-site for marketing, additional information and self-directed training materials. Post go-live focused on continued user engagements, adoption metrics gathering and scaling efforts to additional projects and continued feature identification and prioritization.
One of the risks of digital innovation is that we take the easy path and just digitize the existing processes and potential cement any inherent inefficiency in the processes and not realizing the true value of a transition to digital. Modern business applications or solutions offer simple opportunities for programmatic automation but we must first fully understand the 'as is' process before we can better design the 'to be'.
Business Workflow Design –
I am experienced working with teams to understand the details of their workprocess and
workflows, map out the workflows for visualization, identification of inefficiencies and proposed improvements. Mapping of 'as is' processes conducted via interviews and study of existing systems, applications, forms and documents then translated to visualizations for
communication.
Programming language knowledge – it has been a while but I have history learning programming languages and enjoy the problem solving opportunities programming allows.
Visual Basic: I have a history creating applications on the Excel platform to enable workflows and form development and data automations.
LabView: I won a game development competition of Engineering Leadership interns including mostly computer science and computer engineers at National Instruments during summer of 2007. Very proud of this accomplishment as a Mechanical Engineer! The game was like the helicopter game on addictinggames.com but with added cool factor for lasers . Built home use executable file for managing and maintaining home wine cellar and retaining personal reviews and tastings notes.
C++: I cut my teeth learning coding in college with C++. After learning the language immediately developed business use applications for family printing businesses to accurately estimate amount of paper remaining on large format paper roll.
Webpage Development: Developed ability to create webpages and user interfaces on sites such as this.
Marketplace Influence and Leadership – I have gained an influencing position on the pathway of digital innovation within the global major capital projects industries via interactions or participation with the following organizations or initiatives:
Construction Industry Institute (CII) - Digital Innovation Research Committee.
Operating System 2.0 – Leading company participation and support of UT / CII research efforts.