2010 Review

Everything changes but change itself. -- John F. Kennedy.

A lot of things went on in 2010. And very fast.


Going a bit back in time, "Change" is everywhere in my life. I learned how to embrace it well some 15 years ago when my father passed away and our whole life as a family had to change. I had been doing some Spectrum basic programming, so even before going to university, I started working for a person that was addicted to lotto. I started doing Access software to calculate probabilities over lotto. Quite funny actually! (All of a sudden the guy left everything he had and started sculpting as a way of living - personally, I think he won the lotto but never told me so he didn't have to share it :) )

From that point on I looked forward to new things coming, to new challenges appearing... But that was to long ago.

30	% improvement in the end-to-end claim resolution process time
338	change requests implemented in the first year of operation
12	languages supported and serving 16 different countries

Back to 2010, as the year was starting, I was still with a Dutch client, doing a major refactoring on its codebase. This is an insurance claims handling system, that was totally relying on a custom built light BPM system. It was not optimal, to say the least. We were able to refactor the whole thing, without never stopping operations, in an iterative and incremental way. BPT, the BPM from the OutSystems platform, was implemented. It was one of the most challenging tasks I have ever gone through. The business is not even aware of what went on under the cover. They just got it as "the new BPM", the tool to help them analyze and optimize the processes. That's how it should be.

We got an amazing set of patterns from there. The technology was so good that it was able to overcome the major BPM pitfalls. I put all that experience, cross-referenced it to my previous experiences with BPM implementations and set up a BPM training (using BPT for the hands-on). This was one of the year achievements I am most proud of. I've already lectured 2 in Portugal and one in The Netherlands. The feedback was great!

It also led to two great events:

• A talk in NextStep, were I shared a set of BPM best practices applied to a real life line of business application
• Winning an award on BPM and SOA, the Business Agility and Process Optimization enabled by BPM and SOA Case Study Competition, given by OMG. I went to Washington DC in order to receive it but, due to some fatality, Dr. Richard Soley, OMG's chairman was not able to be there, neither his replacement (that got stuck in the highway due to some guy shooting at the Pentagon). It turned out to be a good way to do some day walking, discovering the beautiful DC.

On the beginning of the year I was also hosting the Delivery Manager bootcamp. It is an amazing experience to do this kind of training. It targets those that are already managing delivery teams or are already very experienced in delivering projects. From role playing to Lego building, the topics are great. We get the chance to discuss a lot about software architecture, Agile management skills and responsibilities and exchange real life experiences from real life projects. I'm enjoying this coaching side of my job and will surely invest in it.

Then the big news came. I was offered the role of Head of Product Development for the OutSystems Agile Platform. I'm now following up the excellent work done by Kutuma and trying to figure out ways to make a great team even greater. It turned out to be a big transition; going from a Services unit, where I was mostly delivering business solutions, to one of the most challenging roles for delivering a product in a product oriented company. The biggest change is that while I was previously 100% focused in helping a customer, I'm now with a much broader audience. Helping a specific customer request may not be exactly the best thing for the product.

My first release went very well. The team was really focused into delivering the most valued stories, in a very Agile way. It went to the street on 02.12 and we called it the "Try me in the cloud" edition.

All in all it was a great year. A lot of things changed... and for the better. I'm hoping 2011 will be as good as 2010, with this many experiences, allowing me to learn new things, from new persons.

And I wish you'll share that with me. 

Have a great 2011!