Experience
Managed a team of writers working on various Google Cloud products. Helped the team grow their careers, write stellar content, and set documentation strategies to best suit the needs of a diverse audience of developers and Cloud administrators. Teams included the Observability Suite (Cloud Monitoring, Cloud Logging, and so on) and foundational products such as Gemini Cloud Assist, Service Orchestration products, and a number of other products designed to help customers maximize the benefits of their Cloud services.
Esme Learning (no longer in business)
Created course material for the Oxford Cyber Security course and the Oxford Fintech Programme, bringing students from all over the business world online learning about blockchain, cryptocurrencies, fintech use of AI and big data, and cyber security technology.
Managed a team of writers in the US and Australia to begin bringing this mainframe software company's documentation processes and technology into cutting-edge deliverables for 21CS and its business partners, including IBM. Our team converted a number of Microsoft Word-based documentation sets into DITA XML and started automating the publishing and QA processes to ensure that the documentation was current and accurate. Applied current documentation standards to a large library of legacy documentation to create task-based, solution-oriented content, instead of heavy reference-based material.
April 2016-March 2019: Managed a global team of 12+ writers for Pega's applications, written on Pega Platform for out-of-the-box customer use, or for extension and customization to meet all business needs. Coordinated teams in India, Poland, and the United States in a scrum-driven Agile development environment. Coordinated the department-wide conversion from HTML-based documentation to DITA XML content and guided the move to new publishing methods.
February 2018: Became acting director for the 40+ person documentation department. Managed the department strategy, including assignments, technology and content, and project management. Started the department in purging dated content and improving customer SEO.
Guided the creation of a first-of-its-kind DITA-to-Drupal publishing pipeline to help eliminate the need for PDFs and improve customer access to articles, online help, and other content.
Managed a global department of four managers with 40+ writers to handle production of all customer-facing content for the Customer Engagement Solutions products in IBM Commerce. Coordinated teams in India, Canada, and the United States in an Agile development environment, moving content to more customer-oriented platforms and improving a continuous delivery method to ensure accurate, up-to-date information for all customers and for all products.
Retained and grew a team of writers producing high-quality documentation for the Unica Enterprise software suite, later known as the IBM EMM Cross-Channel Marketing suite, now owned by HCL. Produced docs for three major releases and numerous minor updates, rewrites, and conversions. Worked cross-department to ensure updated, corrected, and republished docs rapidly and with better accuracy and utility.
Additional roles included:
- Member of the infrastructure and tools team, helping to develop software for the hosted content server using Linux, Apache HTTPD, and PHP scripting, and helped to develop tools to reduce the time required for writers to perform standard tasks in DITA XML and with document production.
- Lead writer for IBM Campaign and IBM Interact.
Created documents for the Autonomous Operations Planner (AOP), a research self-guided air traffic control software project being developed by Engility, and for the Air Traffic Operation Simulator (ATOS), a simulation environment in which the AOP operates.
- For the AOP, read and analyzed C++ code as well as interviewed subject matter experts (SMEs) to document the architecture, algorithms, and implementation of the software.
- For ATOS, read and analyzed C++ code to create Interface Control Documents (ICD)s that describe the inputs and outputs of each subsystem (including the AOP) as it communicates with other subsystems in the simulation environment.