Microsoft Corporation

Program Manager - Windows Networking Ecosystem
Responsible for gathering requirements for the project from a variety of customer segments, including Consumer, Enterprise, OEM, ISP, ISV, and internal cross-functional teams, etc. Monitored the current market, and made educated judgments on the future market landscape, and from all the information created the overall vision and scope of the project. Managed the entire life cycle of the project; from inception and team building (hiring) to development and delivery, and finally to analysis of success metrics and post-mortem evaluation. Lead a cross-functional team in all phases of the project, including Project Management and Change Management. Designed and wrote functional specifications for three key networking features in Windows 7. Identified the specific needs of the customer from a variety of channels including client instrumentation (SQM, Watson), MVP's, private and public newsgroups, MS Support, and collected feedback by working directly with key external partners; as well as direct contact with a number of key customer segments (OEM's, ISV's, ISP's, etc.). Using the information gained from these sources, contributed to planning meetings; including definition of key networking scenarios for Windows 7, creating and managing complex schedules, prioritization of feature investments, factoring Development and Test team costing into the overall project plan, and scheduling features into appropriate development milestones. Identified the scope and objectives of projects, wrote detailed specifications, successfully navigated complex cross-team communications, collected feedback, conducted feature reviews, evaluated deliverables, identified risks in the schedule and worked to mitigate them. Created an automated Scorecard to allow executives and team members to review all areas of Vista Networking customer pain with the Networking VP. Lead this review. Identified top challenges from a variety of channels, including SQM, Support (Consumer and Enterprise), OEM, OCA, and Newsgroups. Worked with technology teams to identify appropriate response plans. Communicated status up, down, and across the wider team. Identified the difficult trade-offs -- decisions which have direct impact on the P&L and the customer -- analyzed the available data, and made smart decisions. Worked closely with all customer segments.

August, 2006: Moved from Redmond, WA to Winder, GA; changed to contract status and worked remotely.

Lead Program Manager - Windows Consumer Networking (Network Experience Team, "NetXP")
Member of planning team defining the key Consumer Networking scenarios for upcoming Windows releases, refreshes, service packs, and standalone applications. Developed the customer input and validation channel for post-Vista planning. Area Leader owning the Manageable Network scenario. Developed complex prioritized feature lists, feature descriptions, timelines, development and test costing, and identified dependencies - both internally and externally. Devised and implemented a process and channels to drive actionable feedback on plans back into the team. Technology expert on Software Quality Metrics (SQM) and data analysis for all of Networking in Vista. Ensured that key features have appropriate instrumentation to improve understanding of customer pain, and drive improvements to the product pre- and post-release. Team Leader and educator to team about how to better understand customer pain and future needs for improved products. Developed deep customer insight by collecting and synthesizing feedback from multiple feedback channels (newsgroups, blogs, chat rooms, direct feedback, SQM, WER, MVP's, etc.); resulting in recognition as "voice of the customer" expert and consulted by product team, and the wider MS org.

Senior Program Manager - MSN Messenger
Responsible for a variety of features and areas in the MSN Messenger client, including all Quality-of-Service (QoS) features such as the Connection Troubleshooter and Survey, as well as Privacy, Setup, Performance, QoS Scorecard, and creation of a connection diagnostic platform. Served as SCRUM Master (a variant of Xtreme Programming) for the Aug05 release of two development teams: Setup/Configuration Server; and Quality of Service. Conducted an in-depth packet-level analysis on Messenger's connectivity to the service to investigate lost IMs. This technical report also included a detailed analysis of our key competitors' connection complexity, identifying reasons for rogue client's 'faster' connection to our service. My work here resulted in the cancellation of an entire project which was intended to identify the cause of the Messenger network/connection performance problems world-wide, allowing MSN to repurpose the servers and the people elsewhere. This report also spurred design improvements to the Messenger client/server communication model.

Lead Program Manager - MSN Core
Brought in to a) evaluate and define a strategy for a diagnostics platform for all of MSN; and b) improve page-load time across MSN properties. Served as Project Manager and key contributor to a cross-MSN engineering excellence project to gather, identify, and review division-wide requirements in the areas of service monitoring, configuration management, deployment, and live-site debugging from all teams across MSN. This included performing a gap analysis on these tools, disseminating our findings and recommendations to MSN executives as well as the division in general. Recipient of a Gold Star Award for my design paper on an agile last-mile instrumentation model, as well as my contributions to and work on the Engineering Excellence Shared Infrastructure Team. For diagnostics, lead an incubation project to analyze and recommend to division executives where the right set of investments needed to be made in order to produce actionable diagnostic data around quality-of-service data from the client layer. Provided strategic leadership, detailed tactical planning, requirements collection and analysis, schedule management, process analysis and engineering, and provided an overall vision for this project. Wrote a series of white papers on a variety of subjects, including privacy, spyware, and on the competitive landscape around client monitoring. Wrote technical implementation specs, and operational specs. Helped design and manage the pipeline, backend, and reporting site. Managed an offshore development and test team, and shipped v1 of a new instrumentation technology in MSN 9. For performance, our work resulted in an overall 23% reduction in page-load times across the entire network by the next release. Hosted a popular series of company-wide educational talks on performance.

*April 2000 - March 2003: Took two years off to work on a personal project. Contracting at present.

Lead Program Manager
Windows Division. Worked on Internet Explorer v3.5 through to v5.5, and including Mars v1. Owned Setup, Release Management, Installer technologies, IE Administration Kit, Patching, and both internal and external Partner Management. Managed a team of Program Managers. Redesigned Setup for IE. Successfully reduced wizard complexity and screen proliferation. Set the vision, studied competitors' setup experience, analyzed requirements, improved internal processes, and worked with the Design and Usability teams. The new design was praised by industry reviewers; and the abandonment rate was successfully lowered. Worked to eliminate the negative impact installing IE was having on our customers' system (we installed/updated core OS components). Designed and delivered the first automatic updating and service-based patching solution for IE. This involved complex and multi-cross-team organization. Working with other team leads, established, defined, and drove the overall product vision through to all members of the product team, as well as through the division and across the entire company. This included defining the product feature set, determining the appropriate ship quality and release criteria, establishing a ship date, and running the daily war-team meetings. Defined key strategies with Development, Testing, and Marketing. Responsible for ensuring the effectiveness of numerous critical cross-team relationships, including Office and Windows.

Test Lead - Windows Division
Worked on the International SBCS team, including the Pilot German Test Team, the SBCS Pilot Globalization Team, Merchant Server - International, and the International Tools Team. Drove the test effort of over 17 testers and test developers, planned resources and schedules for future releases, wrote and reviewed test plans, reviewed design specs, technical specs, and coordinated and approved product sign-offs between our group and in-country testing efforts, such as the German Microsoft sub, and MSKK. Evangelized globalization testing within various Microsoft product groups.

Test Lead in Personal Systems Division and Internet Platforms and Tools Division
Responsible for leading the testing effort (of over 12 testers) on the Middle East versions of Windows ‘95, including both Hebrew and Arabic platforms; responsible also for the Pan-European versions of IE 2.0, IE 3.0., IE 4.0, and Win'95's OSR releases.

[ Return to the Previous Page ]