Work experience
Development Manager Playing Mantis Scrabble Franchise, Development Manager
June 2012 - Present, Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Manage the coordination and schedule of platforms within the Scrabble Franchise Team, planning for Engineering, Design, Art, UI and QA capacity and delivery on time. Specifically the Face Book Platform.
•Assisting partners with deliverables and development efforts related to day-to-day production tasks within an Agile environment.
•Maintain status reports weekly for the internal team as well as external partners and Stakeholders.
•Manage development work flow through the development team on the ground - Introduction and coaching of Agile/Scrum philosophies and best practices.
•Supporting the Development Director by taking ownership of specific initiatives and departmental objectives such as annual objective planning for both the Franchise and Team Members.
WW Catalogue operations at EA Mobile, Development Manager
November 2011 - June 2012, Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Collaborate with multiple internal and remote game teams to develop and plan schedules based on project goals within an Agile Environment.
•Anticipate bottlenecks, provide management escalation, project prioritization, make trade-offs, balance the business needs versus technical constraints, and drive initial partner deployments.
•Communicate priorities and project status with team members and Stakeholders providing feedback.
•Ensure smooth Product Launches within the Android Market and Mobile Carriers.
• Analyzing and championing Agile frameworks and pipelines that serve the Team.
Lightning Fish Games, International Co-ordinator/Producer
September 2010 - September 2011, Banbury, United Kingdom
Manage multiple development teams on multiple projects while introducing and scaling up to Scrum and Agile methodologies.
•Create schedule and resource plan and ensure that it is maintained through life of project across 2 Studio locations – The UK and India.
•Communicate status of projects to key stakeholders on regular basis and ensure excellent communication within the teams within an Agile environment.
•Ensure efficiency and focus of the teams.
•Identify project risk and recommend potential solutions early.
•Enforce and constantly improve Agile best practices throughout development environment across multiple studio locations.
Outso/Lockwood Publishing, Senior Producer
January 2009 - July 2010, Nottingham, United Kingdom
Act as point of contact for external clients.
•Manage multiple development teams on multiple projects within an Agile environment.
•Successfully implemented Scrum and Agile thinking and work processes.
•Communicate status of projects to key stakeholders and ensure excellent communication within the teams.
•Ensuring that Client Briefs are clearly understood by the Team and is executed beyond the client’s expectations while maintaining client expectations.
•Working in conjunction with Team Leads to ensure that all Project Milestones are met on time.
•Identify project risk and recommend potential solutions.
•Create schedule and resource plan and ensure that it is maintained through life of project.
•Chair all project meetings as well as post-mortem reviews after completion of each project and provide recommendation for improvements for future and existing projects.
•Enforce and constantly improve best practices throughout development environment.
•Ensure efficiency and focus of the teams.
•Manage QA bug tracking database with team and relevant QA teams as well as Localization QA.
•Keeping the teams in a good supply of South-African home baked Banana Bread.
•Nurturing and maintaining Client Relationships with Game Developers and Publishers.
Completed Projects
SodiumOne
Resistance 2 Home
InFamous Home
Guitar Hero Home
Guitar Hero VIP Home
Uncharted 2 Home
Sing Star Home
War Hawk Apartment
Uncharted Apartment
Assassins Creed Clothing Line
Assassins Creed Space
Assassins Creed Apartment
Sony PlayStation Home Villains Lair Apartment
Sony PlayStation Home Arcade
Sony PlayStation Home Central Plaza
Free Radical Design, Project Manager
January 2007 - December 2008, Nottingham, United Kingdom
Liaise with Directors over progress and issues.
•Regular weekly meetings with Project Management team to review the previous weeks work and plan for the following week.
•Chair meetings and all reviews to ensure smooth running and adherence to schedule.
•Distribute feedback from publishers to teams, via Leads, and Project Leads – update schedules.
•Regular walk around of departments to gain updates on progress. Highlight potential issues quickly and deal with them efficiently.
•Daily interaction with key personnel to ensure work distributed is in line with the plan.
•Regular and effective documentation of scheduled tasks and databases including Bugs database (where appropriate).
•Preparing milestone schedules, in collaboration with all relevant departments.
•Updating Road maps and distribution to all relevant parties.
•Arrange reviews of work prior to milestone submission.
•Ensure all co-dependent functions are kept informed of progress/issues that may impact them.
•Milestone Validation against deliverables.