Mark Wilson – Solution Architect Snr BA Resume CV PROFILE 18 years of IT experience  Applied experience in gathering user requirement specifications functional requirements and

							Mark Wilson – Solution Architect (Snr BA)
Resume / CV



PROFILE: 18 years of IT experience

      Applied experience in gathering user requirement specifications, functional requirements and
       creating appropriate designs
      Applied experience in designing and presenting alternate solutions to meet the needs of
       businesses and their development teams
      Very good analytical and communications skills. In particular, a demonstrated ability to relate to
       users needs and to interpret, define and document their requirements. Applied experience in
       people management, team leadership, team building and training
      Extensive experience as a solution designer, business analyst, project manager, team leader and
       developer on a diverse range of projects
      Applied experience in design of n-tier systems, content management systems, web-based
       electronic commerce systems. Applied experience in user interface design, navigation elements,
       menu design
      Applied experience in SDM, RAD, MSF (Microsoft Solutions Framework) and other
       development and UI methodologies such as UML
      International work experience in South Africa, London, New Zealand and Australia



PUBLICATIONS
Extensive written content available online
http://www.topxml.com/editor/showprofile.aspx?id=42

Published author of “XML Programming with VB and ASP” (1999)
http://www.manning.com/wilson




Published author of “Investing for Wealth” (1993)
                                                                                  Mark Wilson



OVERVIEW

Skills Summary                      Description                      Proficiency
Overall IT experience               18 years
Roles
Solution Architect                  8 years experience    5+ Commercial projects delivered
Business Analyst                    3 years experience    2+ Organizations, multiple projects
Project Management                  Extensive applied              Multiple projects
                                    experience
Team Leader                         Extensive applied               Multiple roles
                                    experience
Developer (contract)                Extensive VB, ASP,              Multiple roles
                                    SQL experience
Technologies
.NET                                Architect, Analyst                Excellent
VB, ASP                             Architect, Analyst,               Excellent
                                    Developer
Architect-related skills
UML design, documentation           Applied experience                  Good
Paper based prototyping, user       Extensive applied                 Very good
centered design and development     experience
High level systems design           Extensive applied                 Very good
                                    experience
MSF Business documentation – user   Extensive applied                 Excellent
requirements, business analysis,    experience
testing
MSF (SDLC) experience               Trainer + applied                   Good
                                    experience
Project resource estimation and     Applied experience                  Good
budgeting
Team leading and building           Extensive applied                 Excellent
                                    experience
                                                                                       Mark Wilson



WORK EXPERIENCE
Webservices Marketplace Pty Ltd, Canberra
   November 2000 to current
   Role: Solution Architect

    In my role at Webservices Marketplace as a Solution Architect, I took a lead role in the design of
    six major customer-facing business applications and implemented extensive prototypes to
    demonstrate the feasibility of several design options. As public-facing commercial applications to
    be used by thousands of people, these applications were demanding in their requirements.
    Application architecture differed between the various projects, but usually involved supporting
    legacy systems and legacy content. Implementing the desired solutions required liaison with
    stakeholders in multiple different countries (USA, India, UK, South Africa and Australia).

Task Manager
   Role: Solution Architect
   http://www.topxml.com/taskmanager

    Designed for public use, this application provides task management for teams and individuals with
    a “look ahead” capacity and future tasks area – all in a single page and single interface by using
    Microsoft Ajax.

          Extremely modern user-driven features using Microsoft Ajax
          Fully automated fire and forget design - requires no administration
          Revolutionary UI design for ease of use
          Email notifications of activity
          .NET 2.0, SQL Server 2005, Microsoft Ajax

reBlogger and reNNTP (SEO Product)
    Role: Solution Architect
    http://www.topxml.com/rbnews and http://www.topxml.com/

   reBlogger is a “website-based blog aggregator”. ReNNTP is an aggregator of newsgroup (NNTP://
   internet protocol). Mark researched, designed and led a small team of 4 to develop a system that
   had the following considerations:

           Optimal User interface design, navigation and menu design (for users and search engines)
           Search engine optimization of published pages for ranking highly in Google
           Modern “social/interactive” user-driven features using Microsoft Ajax
           Innovative active, inactive collective search terms (using SQL Server full text indexing)
           Blogs (RSS, ATOM, RDF) to fetch, parse, index and republish onto the website (updating
           the site index pages, Google Sitemap and the defunct Yahoo URLList etc.)
           Fully automated, fire and forget design - requires no administration
           Revolutionary publish by keywords and/or author source visual design
           Extremely easily installed by customers onto their own website
           Phone-home security mechanism to stop piracy
           .NET 2.0 and backwards compatible to 1.1, SQL Server 2005 (and backwards compatible),
           .NET Atlas (Ajax 1.0 beta)

TextAds (SEO Product)
   Role: Solution Architect


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                                                                                       Mark Wilson


    http://www.topxml.com/textads

    A world-first solution which serves as a clearing house for buyers and sellers of text advertising
    (SEO, Search Engine Optimization). Mark researched, designed and led a small team to develop a
    system that had the following considerations:

           User interface design, navigation and menu design (for users and search engines)
           Uses financial webservices for up to date exchange rates
           Uses XML based webservice-like feature for technically proficient customers
           Provides scripts that automate the movement of data for technically non-proficient
           customers
           Invoices, payments, ecommerce credit card gateway, banking, PayPal integration, historical
           data, live data, active and inactive data
           Privacy and security needs of competing customers
           Scalability
           Graphing, reporting, timely renewal notifications, email notifications
           VB.NET 1.1, 2.0, Microsoft Atlas, Ajax - this is an internal application

Internal Financial System
    Role: Solution Architect
    http://www.topxml.com/financial

    A complete financial solution was needed to provide figures for running the business. Mark
    designed this system and led a developer to build a system that had the following considerations:

           Live, up-to-the second financial details drawn from many different financial sources
           internal and external to the business
           Outstanding debts, payment status, breakeven analysis
           Fully secure and online/accessible via the internet for remote working
           Historical data
           Usage of appropriate technology
           Breakdown by product, by business unit
           VB.NET 2.0 - this is an internal application

Website Content Management System
   Role: Solution Architect
   http://www.topxml.com

   This established company runs one of the top 3 leading XML developer websites worldwide. It
   serves 10-15,000+ unique visitors per day and makes a significant turnover in sales of products.
   The technical design that Mark provided had to accommodate for issues such as:

           Easy navigation and indexing for 70k of pages of content (menus and interlinking of pages)
           SEO (search engine optimization) and RSS feeds
           eCommerce solutions, payment systems, webservice-like systems between the company
           and software providers
           Modern ASP.NET design which includes legacy ASP content
           Scalability for large numbers of visitors per day
           VB.NET 2.0, VBScript (ASP) - this is an internal application

   Mark also contributed business analysis skills such as:


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                                                                                     Mark Wilson




          documenting the requirements and user specifications for those systems
          assessing the ideal ways to use the internet to attract customers and identify user
          requirements
          providing high level goals and managing the development projects
          providing guidance on scalability issues, XML usage and good ecommerce design
          new business development
          user interface design guidelines (layout, navigation, user help)
          during 1999-2000 Mark wrote a book called “XML Programming with VB and ASP”
          which sold 17,000 copies

Contract with DEWR (Australian Government)
   6 month contract in 2003
   Role: Business Analyst

   In my role at DEWR as a Business Analyst, I shared with one other BA the lead role in designing
   and assisting the management to gain business acceptance for several major business applications.
   Stakeholders consulted included developer teams, user acceptance groups and senior management.
   I provided reports, documentation and assistance to the various managers. The role was initially
   seen as assisting the management to decide between migrating old software or choosing from
   several options to build/buy new software to replace the old one with new functionality. The role
   gradually shifted into helping provide assistance to various managers and helping small internal
   development teams get set up to meet whatever urgent business needs that had developed.

   Mark assisted the teams in the following ways:
       Interaction with direct management and management further up the organization
       Team building
       Team leadership
       Developer team deliverables, goals
       Ad-hoc assistance and training


Microsoft Consulting Services, Canberra
   June 1999 to November 2000
   Role: Business Analyst, Team Leader

   As a consultant for Microsoft (MCS), Mark was placed at the ATO (Australian Government Tax
   Office)
       met with the various ATO internal businesses,
       built and maintained relationships,
       evaluated their needs and worked with multiple development teams of 5 to 8 people
       managed up to 3 or 4 simultaneous projects for a wide variety of customers within the
           ATO
       assisted in training development teams to supply solutions for those needs

   Mark provided business analysis into the following projects:
       VBScript/ASP-based workflow solution
       Microsoft Solutions Training (MSF) for development teams
       intranet/internet document publishing solution
       a Microsoft Outlook based backup call center solution for the call center during the launch
          of the Australian GST


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                                                                                         Mark Wilson



          during 1999-2000 Mark wrote a book called “XML Programming with VB and ASP”
           which sold 17,000 copies

Glazier Systems, Wellington, New Zealand
    August 1998 – June 1999
    Role: Project Manager, Team Leader and Developer

    Mark had co-design responsibility for the development and provided primary project management
    for development. This project provided a VB Desktop / ASP intranet solution for delivering data
    to 270 desktops from a central data store. Design issues that needed to be considered included
    concurrency and updating. Designed for user needs were training and usability of the system.
    Skills: VB, ASP, SQL Server

Synergy International, Wellington, New Zealand
    April 1998 – August 1998
    Role: Contract as a systems analyst/developer

    Mark had co-design responsibility for the development, developed the SQL Server tables and
    automated scripts for SQL Server BCP of updated files. He received applied exposure to object
    oriented design patterns and strategies in building highly reusable systems.

    Internet web site
    Role: Contract as a systems analyst/developer

    In this solution, the Government Printers required an internet/intranet solution for taking printing
    orders via a website from their customers. In 1998 this was not commonly done and was at the
    time a highly innovative solution. Mark performed the
          business needs analysis
          user-centered design
          software development
          implementation responsibility for the development of this important application.
          Skills: VB, SQL Server, VB, ASP, VB Script, JavaScript

Link (Lloyds), London, UK
    September – November 1997
    Role: Contract as systems analyst/developer

    Link (an insurance company working within Lloyds) needed to access data held in an IBM
    mainframe and wanted a way to get that data to their employees more efficiently. After analysis we
    chose to synchronize the data into an MS Outlook form for the users. The data also needed to be
    moved into an IBM database called DB2 Universal Database and had to be placed directly into MS
    Exchange (using OLE Automation of MS Outlook). Mark had responsibility for the front end
    development of this important application, developed the MS Outlook form and VB Script code
    within it, developed a service (a Visual Basic program) to run on the NT server which polls for the
    mainframe data file. This service program would then use OLE Automation on MS Outlook in
    order to put the data file in MS Exchange directly (in order for the MS Outlook form to be able to
    access it). Mark partly administered the NT server and Exchange server. Worked with ADM files
    (security) and roaming scripts for security. Skills: Visual Basic, MS Exchange, NT Server, IBM
    DB2, VB Script, MS Outlook.




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                                                                                          Mark Wilson


Goldsmith’s College, Central London, UK
   August 1997 – September 1997
   Role: Contract as a systems analyst/developer

    The college had recently bought an access-control system for their building which was neither
    installed nor working. They had incompatibilities with their existing records, and needed to set up
    a SQL Server automated process and user-interfaces which are suitable for librarians to use, in
    order to manage the access-control system. In addition, this was a rush job and only 2 weeks was
    set aside. Mark had complete responsibility for the front end development of this important
    application, developed most of the SQL Server SQL scripts which would synchronize the
    movement of the records and developed the Access user interface to the access control records.
    Skills: SQL Server, MS Access.

SBC-Warburgs-Dilon-Reed, Central London, UK
   March 1997 - August 1997
   Role: Contract as a systems analyst/developer

    This mission critical solution is a trading “profit and loss” reconciliation system, based on Sybase.
    This system reconciled GBP500M in 1997. Mark used MS Access as a front end to a Sybase back-
    end. Skills: MS Access, Artisan (Sybase front end SQL developer product

Bank of Tokyo – Mitsubishi, Central London, UK
   August 1996 - March 1997
   Role: Contract as analyst/developer

    Mark developed a mission-critical „client control system‟ which financially evaluates the banks
    clients based on in-house requirements and considerations. The users had abandoned the prior
    system for various reasons, including speed, it was DOS based and the limited availability of the
    system. My solution to the challenge was to develop an innovative graphical windows interface
    with a SQL Server back-end.

    Mark assisted in setting Intranet policy for the company. I evaluated, implemented and trained the
    help desk on Intranet potential and solutions. He provided a Visual Basic program which accessed
    their “Customer master file” on SQL Server. I designed the SQL Server database such as to be a
    suitable backbone for further development projects, centering around their customers details. He
    also researched and prototyped a Visual Basic - SQL Server - SNA - AS400 solution for providing
    near real-time Windows-based access to their AS400 data. The problem was that the data was stored
    in an AS400 and the data was only available via massive report printouts. Skills: Visual Basic, SQL
    Server, NT Server/workstation, IIS, Cold Fusion, MS Access.

West London Training & Enterprise Council, West London, UK
   Nov 1995 - Aug 1996
   Role: Systems analyst contract

    Mark‟s task was to design and develop a project management system for a GBP100M NGO. This
    system had to provide a suitable interface for the employees to insert data about their 140+
    projects for this year, 160+ legacy projects and all future ones. The system also had to extract the
    data into manager-ready reports. An attempt at this had been made 6 times previously and the
    users and management had rejected them. Mark developed a project management system,
    including their legacy database and incorporating mission critical reports. After business analysis of
    the previous failures, we settled on an innovative design to enable the users to easily access and
    enter the vast amounts of information. He had complete responsibility for the project, completed



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                                                                                          Mark Wilson


    the lifecycle of the project and at times led a team of two other developers. Skills: Visual Basic, MS
    Access.

PRIOR EXPERIENCE

Rega Digital Systems, Cape Town, South Africa
   February 1995 - November 1995
   Role: General development role
   Skills: Clarion for DOS/Windows, Visual Basic, MS Access

Professional Telematics Networking Systems, Cape Town, South Africa
    Jan 1994 - Jan 1995
    Role: General development role
    Skills: MS Access

NIS (Network Information Systems) / Sharenet, Cape Town, South Africa
   July 1992 - Dec 1994
   Role: Business Development Manager, Financial book author




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