Web Producer    Program Manager    Architect    Author    Developer

Summary

Mr. Spencer is a seasoned Web Producer, Program Manager, and Architect. He has broad experience in business analysis, requirements definition, user interaction design, user interface design, system architecture and design, graphic art, and software implementation & testing.  He is a proven leader, managing very large project teams through the complete software development life cycle. Mr. Spencer is especially experienced in networked, Internet, and embedded solutions.  He has co-written two books, including the Web Multimedia Tools section of the book on Microsoft’s flagship software development tool suite “Visual Studio”.

Mr. Spencer has special interest in sailing; transportation networks & graphs; geodesy, cartographic & geospatial systems; calendar & time theories and systems; navigation; communication of information; systems engineering; management and team processes; and graphic & fine arts.  He is a member of IEEE and ACM, and is a Microsoft Certified Professional.

Experience

Management

Managed large and small teams, large and small projects, and start-up and established companies, described further below.  Developed and implemented processes and practices in both software management and software development & test, including integration of program management principles into Internet projects.  Developed the staff and built teams.  Acted as a coach and mentor for other managers.

Internet / Intranet

Designed, specified, & tested the fastest growing sports statistic tracking site on the Internet.  Developed the user interaction scenarios and designed the user interfaces.  Managed implementation and deployment of various features and updates to the site.  Managed customer and end user interactions with the team.  Used paper and Visual InterDev as design tools.

Advised Internet startups regarding their site scope and plans; development processes, methods, and approaches; and achievable, incremental site releases; balancing site functionality with bottom-line payback, versus time.

Designed the architecture and planned the project to implement a 3-tier corporate Intranet, replacing the company’s entire line-of-business corporate backbone software for sales (customers, patients, prospects), asset management, and service planning, routing, delivery, & results.  The system was designed with database, business object server, and web server tiers serving both headquarters workstations and laptops roaming worldwide (Windows 2000 beta, SQL 7, IIS, IE).

Produced the website for a non-profit organization, and designed other business and personal web sites.  Used Visual InterDev, FrontPage, Navigator Gold, Notepad, and other tools for HTML writing and page design.  Created the graphic design and artwork, from photo shoot through file processing in Photoshop, Illustrator, Corel, and Microsoft tools, and created animations.

Client / Server Systems

As business analyst and architect, specified and designed a large, three-tiered Client-Server system to manage land & mineral holdings and pay the associated royalties.  The system was implemented on a Wide Area Network with Visual Basic clients, Microsoft Transaction Server-hosted COM objects, and an Oracle back end.  Designed the user interface and graphics, built the client-side mock-ups and prototype, and tested the system.  Developed and adapted geographic data for use as base maps under custom property layers in a general purpose Geographic Information Systems (GIS).  Designed a geographic navigator client for the same system, and developed mapping control implementations for the client-side prototype.

Led a small team in resolving performance problems in a large Visual Basic/SQL Server application allowing resumption of Beta testing.  Also, performed general debugging and re-architecting of the Visual Basic application.

Reviewed the architecture and development approach of another Visual Basic/SQL Server application, making project recommendations as part of its preliminary design review.  Devised performance and storage models for the system, and metrics for the management team to evaluate and manage the project risks.

Aerospace Industry

Managed development of aircraft embedded flight systems, including the cockpit displays, flight controls, and other systems. Managed aircraft software testing, a $100M project peaking at 105 engineers, for the entire suite of embedded applications.  We emphasized absolute quality (life-safety-critical), while still achieving schedule and budget goals.  The application contained 250 processors on 13 networks aboard each aircraft including both subcontracted products and in-house developments.  While accomplishing this development and testing, we organized, defined, and improved the corporate software development processes taking our Software Engineering Institute Capability Maturity Model from “initial” to “defined” over two years (thus meeting customer goals for additional contracts).  At the same time, we rehosted the development systems from VAX/VMS to Sun X-Windows.

Performed systems engineering for an aircraft flight control system including architecture, networks, functional partitioning, traffic analysis, and reliability.  Wrote the requirements specifications for the main flight control computer’s primary and backup software programs, the associated laboratory, and on-aircraft development/test equipment.

Developed the software reliability theory and analysis that allowed the removal of the backup flight control computer program and sole reliance on the primary program (requiring life-safety-critical reliability).

Lead the programming team for aircraft flight control computers.  Managed the subcontract for the backup software development and testing, as well as the in-house programming of the primary software.  Wrote the software in JOVIAL (similar to ALGOL or Pascal) on VAX/VMS.  Tested the software in custom lab stations (PC and custom x86).

Developed flight simulations of aircraft with terrain-following guidance systems, including modeling flight control & guidance systems, sensors, stored terrain databases, route selection, and 6-DOF aircraft dynamics.  Adapted these simulations to a real-time pilot-in-the-loop simulator.  Used the simulations as a tool in writing proposals for eight countries and the US Air Force.  (Sold one contract, at $45 billion.)

Wrote a program for computation of the reliability of complex systems with arbitrary interconnections.  Used binary trees to represent the logical equations of the system’s reliability and developed the heuristics for transforming the logical equations into their algebraic equivalents.

Digitized terrain data and worked with the Defense Mapping Agency to adapt their Digital Elevation Map data for use in airborne guidance systems.  Developed an aircraft routing system and a perspective terrain display program for depiction of stored terrain data on an aircraft Head-Up Display. 

Developed a least-time trip routing system and a database of Los Angeles streets and freeways.  The system provided trip planning considering the effects on typical traffic, time-of-day, sun angles, precipitation, and radio reports.

Manufacturing

Managed operations of a 45 person manufacturing company.  Bought & sold product lines.  Ran manufacturing, quality, safety, HR, IS, accounting, and finance.  Set up and operated the MRP II system and the accounting system from the design of the chart of accounts to closings and financial reports.

Managed a line closure, corporate shutdown, and dissolution of assets.  Successfully retained customers and employees and accelerated sales to maximize the conversion of inventory assets into receivables prior to the shutdown.

Employers

Education

Degrees