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The development process lacked a design stage, any time for rapid prototyping, a fixed quarterly release,
and team members who were called
on to do both engineering requirements and development. This means that it is hard to keep the process moving when resources are
tasked with multiple functions that are contingent on their own completion of a previous step. The quarterly
release schedule could leave as little as 3 to 4 weeks for development, with no detailed design stage.
The process also needed improvements in build cycle time, detailed requirements, customer feedback, and browser testing.
In order to keep products shipping on time, we focused on the most important goals first. Although these items might not reap
benefits immediately, they were done with the big picture in mind.
Richard's Contributions to Improving the Design and Engineering Process
- Started release presentations to inform marketing and sales of forthcoming features and gui enhancements (if they can't see it, it ain't there!)
- Gave training and education seminars on product releases to company (outside of engineering)
- Led installer team to improve build cycle time from days/week to days, then hours, with the final step being automated with automated GUI testing
- Moved design cycle into previous cycles system test phase to free up resources and improve process flow
- Designed and sometimes led discount usability tests to define features, develop gui designs and to validate conceptual models
- Process for HTML validation
- Followed a template model for web pages, naming conventions and focused on a consistent and modular use of components
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