Short Answer
Web & database analyst-developer / Scrum Master with a focus on Microsoft technologies and 25+ years experience in the field. Not interested in purely coding all day, every day. Variety is the spice of life.
Longer Answer
Up until recently I worked as a part-time, remote Scrum Master / Team Leader for what was effectively a .NET software house focussed on an Azure hosted SaaS product. I was recruited as a lead developer but it quickly
became apparent that this was not the best use of my skills for this company. I also continue supporting existing clients of my company, Propona.
Up until about 5 years I primarily spent my working time capturing requirements for, architecting, developing and supporting software solutions on behalf of clients via Propona.
10+ years ago Propona was a software house with a team of upwards of 10 but Propona operations dwindled as the Directors identified that it was easier to make money elsewhere. I stuck at it for the longest and this
had one key benefit - it enabled me to do more purely technical work rather than spending time on other company matters, from managing the team of developers to writing tenders that mostly went nowhere (I blame the deficiencies of public sector procurement)!
I was involved with almost all of Propona's projects to a variety of degrees and in a variety of capacities, from UX design to project management. See the portfolio
for examples of Propona's projects over the years. On the technology front I'm still basically a 'web guy' on the Microsoft stack (ASP.NET/ SQLServer) though have worked with related technologies along the way, as you'd expect.
Thus I have been serving the needs of a dwindling number of existing Propona clients in the form of providing support of previously delivered web solutions. Some of these clients I've had a working relationship with
for 15 years now. In addition, I've won Propona/ myself more work over the more recent period, working as a part-time, remote working freelancer/contractor on various projects. This working pattern has fitted well around my
family commitments and I'd like to see this pattern continue at least for a few more years. It also seems to work pretty well for the right types of work, projects & clients. Covid19 lockdown made little-no difference to me!
In fact, with a couple of the 15+ year client relationships we've never met in person but we must be doing something right between us.
A few work related facts:
- I used to enjoy writing technical articles - I haven't made the time to continue this activity in recent years but would be something I would be interested in resurrecting.
- I used to make the effort to jump through the Microsoft certification hoops so have done *lots* of exams but am not overly bothered about catching up now I've got a little behind.
- I've been told I'm pretty good at requirements analysis, which remains the most important part of the project lifecycle, so that's good.
- With the relatively recent widescale interest in big data, data science and machine learning, which is largely remarketing of old concepts, I feel I should probably be doing more with the skills and knowledge developed through my Ph.D, which was in these areas.
- Recent/current projects have been a mix of ASP.NET (web forms and MVC), SQL Server with Azure as the platform, so a fair bit of devops as well. I've been mostly working in business & data layers rather than with too much front end code, but I've covered such ground in the past.
- I'm also interested in employment options away from IT that overlap with my interests and experience as long as they are reasonably well paid - I've done enough work for free in the past! For example, work where I have the opportunity to extend my Welsh language skills.
So if you have some work that might be up my alley I would strongly suggest you get in touch. To re-iterate, I'm not interested in working 9-5.30 in an office. Depending on the type of work you'll need to be happy with x working days of
my time per month, working remotely or with the occasional onsite visit in Cardiff. Or perhaps a short stint of consultancy work. Try me.