Joel Aufrecht

Experience

2009 - present

Office of Personnel Management

• Presidential Management Fellow, Automated Systems Management Branch, Product Development team for USA Staffing, an HR automation system for federal agencies. Train team in adopting software development best practices, including formal requirements authoring, task management, usability testing and user-centered design. Project Manager for new Entrance on Duty System development.

Washington, DC

2002 –

Owner, Upright Consulting

• Project Management consulting for Willow Garage, an open-source robotics company. Managing ERP/MRP needs assessment. Feb 2008 – present.

• Project Manager for Metascopic, a start-up company developing visual-oriented consumer electronics. Aug 2008 – Jan 2009.

Menlo Park, CA

• Project Manager for 211 of Los Angeles County’s Inquiry and Referral software project. Responsible for all aspects of $2 million software development project: writing RFP; vendor selection; contract development; requirements authoring; overseeing vendor schedule, development methodology, testing, release process, documentation, and training; liaison between vendors and users. Product is Linux/Apache/PHP/PostgreSQL with AJAX. 2004 – 2007.

Los Angeles, CA

• Release Manager for .LRN, an open-source learning management system used by universities including MIT Sloan School of Management. .LRN is a university-oriented extension of OpenACS, a TCL/PostgreSQL/Oracle platform for database-backed web sites. Release tools included DocBook, CVS, and bug tracking. 2005.

• Documentation and training for Greenpeace International's content management system for greenpeace.org international and regional sites. Documentation tools included DocBook and GIMP. 2005.

Amsterdam, Netherlands

• Design and run usability tests for BEA Weblogic Java software, including recruiting testers, conducting tests, and reporting results. Built and documented a tapeless usability lab using Camtasia and Windows Media. 2002 – 2003.

Seattle, WA

• OpenACS volunteer, including release manager, lead documenter, coordinator of automated testing and localization, elected member of Core Team; free software project. 2002 – 2006.

2003 – 2004

Project Manager, Collaboraid ApS

Copenhagen, Denmark

• Managed custom web application development and web sites, including requirements, design, implementation, and maintenance, for clients, primarily universities and non-profits. Managed local and virtual teams of three to twenty people around the world. Clients include Greenpeace International and Greenpeace Germany, Heidelberg University, California Charter Schools Association, and Rechten Online (a consortium of Dutch law schools). All systems developed with OpenACS.

2001 – 2002

Foreign Teacher, Guilin Institute of Electronic Technology

Guilin, China

• Taught college and high school English

2000 – 2001

Program Manager, Westside Corporation (acquired by BEA)

Seattle, WA

• Designed and managed UI features for Westside Web, a web application for building database-backed websites, running on Windows 2000, MS IIS, Apache, and MS SQL Server 7. Wrote and maintained requirements and design specifications, worked with 15 developers and testers to implement features, triaged bugs.

• Ran the usability program, including conducting over fifty usability lab test sessions. Identified usability problems and oversaw development efforts to implement solutions.

1999 – 2000

Product Manager, eSociety

Bellevue, WA

• As technical member of the Product Marketing team, designed, built mock-ups, and coded proof of concept web pages (TCL, HTML). Product was a Vignette-based Internet B2B platform for trade associations such as National Housewares Manufacturer's Association and National Truck Equipment Association.

• Project Manager for two of eSociety's five customers, including scheduling, determining requirements, and writing project specifications.

• With management team, defined and documented eSociety's customer engagement process. Later refined the process to cut duration by 50%.

• Managed IS department; served as corporate webmaster.

1997 – 1999

Project Manager, Partes. (acquired by EDGAROnline)

Kirkland, WA

• Managed development of Partes' key product, a data feed written in C++ on MS IIS with MS SQL Server. Managed the complete release cycle, including requirements, design, coding, testing, delivery, and marketing. The product, a $3M/yr data service with customers including Reuters and Thomson, was delivered on time and under budget and exceeded sales projections.

• Worked on product line planning, competitive analysis, VC presentations, and strategic planning. Developed project budgets (over $100,000) for the management team.

• Led SQL Server database development, managed IS, and acted as release manager for the web site and several C++ desktop applications.

1995 – 1997

Design Specialist, Treasury Services Corp. (acquired by Oracle)

Santa Monica, CA

• Designed client/server decision support systems using Oracle, TSER (now Oracle Financial Services Applications), COBOL, and custom tools, for Bank of Hawaii and Republic National Bank of New York.

• Converted client business requirements into detailed system processes including Oracle and Teradata database design, transfer pricing, cost allocations, activity-based costing, and reporting.

• Prepared materials for and participated in the successful sale of a multi-million dollar software and service package.

Education

2007 – 2008

Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore

Singapore

• Master of Public Administration, July 2008

1991 – 1995

Pomona College

Claremont, CA

• Bachelor of Arts, Physics and Astronomy, May 1995

• Thesis: "Measurements of the Coefficient of Restitution of a Baseball at Varying Velocities."

• Co-author: "Photometric and Spectroscopic Observations of a Diffuse Interstellar Filament in the Foreground of the Magellanic Clouds." Astrophysical Journal 492 (1998 January 10) 617-34.

Skills

• Functional Skills: Needs assessment; software requirements, estimation and scheduling; release management, defect tracking and triage; automated testing; usability.

• Web: BEA Weblogic, OpenACS, Storyserver, HTML and CSS, PHP

• Database: Oracle, PostgreSQL, MS SQL Server, MySQL

• OS: Linux, FreeBSD, Win NT/2000/XP

• Industry experience: Web applications, banking and financial data, data warehousing, learning management systems, social services, call center, internationalization and localization

• Certifications: Project Management Professional (PMP)

Personal Interests

• Asia, Corgis, the movie business, open-source software, post-scarcity economics, writing