Jack Alves

Jack Alves 510.604.3609 [email protected] www.tigerlight.com/jack

(photo)

478 Vermont Ave, Berkeley, CA, 94707

My experience includes many years as a hands-on manager of projects and groups related to software and website development. I have great judgment to bridge business and technical objectives. I contributed to projects at every phase from product definition through implementation, test, and post-release evaluation. I've had responsibilities that ranged from hands-on technical work to high level oversight. Typically, management responsibilities included: • • • • • •

negotiating and managing requirements creating and improving processes managing project clients recruiting, managing and evaluating staff forecasting and tracking budgets and schedules writing reports, functional specifications and user documentation

I worked 5 years as a software engineer at the beginning of my career. Now I do a little coding for my own projects, mostly using Javascript/AJAX, HTML, CSS, PHP, and Python. I am comfortable working in a Windows, Mac, or UNIX environment as necessary.

Project Management Consulting 2007- 2009 I provided project management consulting for two clients, and worked on a few of my own projects. Applied Minds, Inc / Star Wide Web I was hired by my former employer (Applied Minds, Inc) to get a troubled project on track and prepare to spin-off a company. My contributions included high level strategic planning and project management of a web site, popstra.com for exploring celebrity relationships. Components of the project included a website built on Wordpress, an embeddable Flash application, a Facebook quiz application, and integration with a graph database. This was a very low budget project with team members in different locations. I prepared functional specifications, budgets, and schedules. I coordinated activity of team members and pitched in with testing, and data grooming. I wrote a few Javascript tools for data exploration. I contributed to business strategy and participated in presentations to venture capital firms. University of California, Mathematics / Institute of Mathematical Statistics I worked with a mathematics professor who leads a variety of technical projects related to bibliographic information. I provided strategic insight, helped focus plans, and wrote project 1

management plans. I contributed to writing a $2 million grant which he subsequently received to build the Bibliographic Knowledge Network. Personal Projects I built a demo website wiggleback.com that displays things that happened on a given day in history. I built a website for my wife's business. I experimented with building a simple robot. I also wrote a screenplay and did some drawing.

Metaweb Technologies and Applied Minds, Inc 2002 - 2007 Metaweb was spun-off from Applied Minds in 2005 to develop technology for the next generation of the web. What some people call Semantic Web or Web 3.0. I transitioned from Project Manager with Applied Minds to Director of Engineering at Metaweb. Director of Engineering (Metaweb, 2005-2007) At Metaweb I managed development and launch of freebase.com which is a website for collaborative creation of data and data structure. I managed 14 people split into four groups (back, middle, front, QA). The technology includes a proprietary graph database (C++/Python), an API (Python/Javascript), and the freebase.com website (AJAX). My responsibilities included prioritizing development, managing people, recruiting, budgeting, establishing processes, and managing releases. I also pitched in to help with builds, data loads, and testing. We used Selenium and Python for automated testing. Project Manager (Applied Minds, 2002-2005) At Applied Minds I worked with the software group that designed and built working prototypes (Java, Flash, Javascript) for government intelligence agencies and large corporations. Several projects had budgets over a million dollars, no project was smaller than $300k. The work focused on building user interfaces for very large graph databases. My core responsibilities included requirements setting, budgeting, scheduling, and reporting. I contributed to writing proposals, user documentation, testing, and design. The twelve person project team included designers, scientists, developers, and a quality assurance engineer. These projects had no tolerance for late or over budget delivery. A key to success was my ability to prioritize development based on client expectations.

Project Management Consulting 1998 - 2002 Quality Assurance Specialist (Teleias, 2001-2002) Project Manager (GarmentTrade.com, 2000-2001) Business Management Consultant (Circle24.com, 2000) Project Manager (DoughNET.com, 1999) During this period I took one full year off then did short-term work on a variety of projects at the dot com startups and a systems configuration management company listed above. 2

Responsibilities included planning and tracking feature development, testing, reporting, and coordinating development with other groups. In some cases I contributed to business strategy. I am happy to provide details related to this work. I am leaving out details too keep my resume to a reasonable number of pages.

Scopus Technology and Viewstar 1989 - 1997 Scopus and Viewstar are two distinct companies. I combine them here because my role was the same. I built quality assurance teams in fast growing companies. I owned responsibility for quality assurance testing, development processes, build management, release management, system configuration, and software packaging. I managed people and established processes for recruiting, performance evaluations, test automation, test tracking, bug tracking, and software builds. I interacted with developers, managers, the technical support team, and other groups. I was the overall manager of the software releases, triaging final features and fixes to deliver products. Director of Engineering Services and Quality Assurance (Scopus, 1995-1997) Scopus primarily built customer relationship management (CRM) software (C++, Java, TCL). I grew a group of 3 quality assurance engineers to a Release Engineering group of 26 staff including four managers and two temps. I directed creation of processes for bug tracking, building software, packaging, testing (WinRunner), tracking product releases, customer support team interactions, and requesting purchases. During this period I managed 8 major and over 20 minor software releases. Director of Engineering Services and Quality Assurance (Viewstar, 1989-1995) ViewStar built workflow software (C++, LISP) for scanning and processing documents. I formed the quality assurance group starting with no staff and grew the group to 21 staff including two managers and six temps. At Viewstar I engineered processes for all aspects of the product life cycle and cross department interactions. We used SILK for automated testing. During this period I managed at least 5 major product releases concurrent with quarterly minor releases. I also managed a previously troubled IT group during a period when the company relocated 200 employees. The relocation project included redesign of the corporate network, hardware and software modifications to every computer (300+) in the span of a weekend with a handful of technical staff. We were 100% operational by Monday morning. I joined Viewstar as a software engineer; I was promoted 3 times: to supervisor, to manager, then to director; at each stage I accumulated responsibility for new groups; I was voted MVP of 1994 by employees and received several other awards during my six year tenure. EDUCATION New York University, Computer Science, B.A.

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