In my work I have built up a wealth of experience in many areas of IT, learning whatever is required to get the job done. I particularly enjoy working in the Scrum Master role.

Here then is a summary of Andrea’s areas of expertise in the professional world.

Primary Skills

  • Scrum Master: I’ve been a Certified Scrum Master since 2011. Projects I’ve worked on as Scrum Master have included migration of the Company’s flagship client-facing website from on-premise equipment to the Cloud (AWS), enhancements of that web site, then a complete re-development of the site using APIs, Javascript and other newer technologies.
  • Agile methodology: While I’ve also worked with the waterfall SDLC methodology, I am passionate about the Agile / Scrum methodology, seeing work get into production quickly, with the team-based approach, and everyone on the team contributing to the project’s success. In 2017 I also became a Certified Scrum Production Owner, to extend my understanding of Scrum, and became a Certified Agile Coach, to be better equipped both as a Scrum Master and to help other Scrum teams. Also in 2017 I kept studying, to become a Certified Scrum Professional, with the Scrum Alliance. And so I am now a Certified Scrum Professional – Scrum Master and Certified Scrum Professional – Product Owner.  In 2021 I completed the Team Kanban Practitioner training, to keep on learning more about Kanban.  I keep pursuing my learning of working with Scrum and Agile, and how to keep improving the way that works in the teams with which I am involved.
  • Project management: I’ve directed numerous projects, including development of the Company’s web site, and addition of functionality there, infrastructure upgrades / migrations, the development of the CRM and data migration for the Asia-Pacific and Africa regions with Pivotal eRelationship, further development of the Asia-Pacific web sites, the development and data migration for the Asia-Pacific region to Microsoft CRM, upgrading the WAN across the Australia, New Zealand and Asia, and rolling out Unified Communications across the company.
  • Business analysis: Gathered the requirements of the business in a number of roles, including across countries, documenting those requirements, for the technical staff to meet those needs.
  • Technology: Have been the main Jira, Confluence and Slack administrator for a long time now. Also used to working with Miro, Product Plan, and other tools. And I use Trello for my personal work To Do list.
  • Trainer: I’ve trained people as an educator (teaching English and Computing), and in workshops for training on new systems or new features of systems (including CRMs and WordPress), and Agile methodology.
  • Management: Managed numerous teams, with people with a variety of skills, in IT and in other areas. That included developing and managing budgets, coordinating the work to be accomplished, guiding and leading the team, and developing the skills of the team.
  • Business operation: Developed a business from scratch to a company employing people in Australia and New Zealand, providing service to over 5,700 license-holders and distributing royalty revenue to song copyright owners. That role included working out legal agreements in the copyright arena with copyright lawyers, developing budgets and ensuring the company kept on track, and all of the financial reporting needed associated with that.

Other skills developed earlier

Web-related development is an area in which I’ve enjoyed working, which allows for a combination of creativity and technical challenges.

  • Systems analysis: Took the business requirements and from there planned how to implement those needs, documenting the steps involved, planning the projects, and ensured the technical staff working on those understood those requirements.
  • IT Strategy: Developed the IT strategy for the Asia-Pacific region of the Company, and liaised with the other regional IT managers in planning global IT strategies.
  • User Acceptance Testing: planned and coordinated the User Acceptance Testing for several projects, primarily for migration from one CRM to another.
  • Technical documentation: Preparation of quality, detailed, documentation for projects and software is a strength of mine. Years after returning to a company I found people still referring to my documenation as classic examples of how it should be done.
  • Web development: Extensive experience developing web sites, especially with developing one company’s web site from being just a brochure site, to a fully global site, with e-commerce. Web development is an area where Andrea plays, for fun.
  • Social Media: I’ve been involved with social media since the early days, with Jaiku, Twitter, Facebook, and so on, before it became “a thing”. Through that exposure, I’ve learnt what it takes to build a social community, and market using those channels.
  • WordPress: Seeing that web development is a fun thing, I’ve developed a number of web sites for family and friends, using WordPress.
  • ColdFusion: I’ve programmed extensively in ColdFusion.
  • CSS: It’s fun seeing what’s possible with CSS.
  • New Technology: I’m always experimenting with new technology, learning what tools there are out there, and how they work, to see if any would apply for my work.
  • Network administration: Extensive experience with network administration / systems administration work, in the Windows environment.That has included hardware operation and maintenance, active directory work, security, network connectivity, telephony including VOIP, and so on.
  • SQL Server: Have worked with SQL Server extensively, as a database administrator, writing reports and and queries to access data stored in CRMs, and for accessing data used by web sites.
  • IIS: Main web server experience is with IIS, but for the WordPress sites has also had experience with Linux-based web servers.
  • Adobe Creative Suite: I’ve worked most with Adobe PhotoShop and LightRoom, for developing artwork for web sites, with Acrobat for documentation production, but also with Illustrator and InDesign for the development of marketing materials. I’ve also tweaked Flash projects, but am not an expert there.
  • Microsoft Office: Know the suite of Microsoft Office products well, having used them continuously as essential tools of work.
  • Microsoft Project: Use of Microsoft Project has been essential for project planning and monitoring.
  • Crystal Reports: Developed reports using Crystal Reports to extract data from CRMs.
  • SharePoint: Have worked with SharePoint for some years, in its administration and development.
  • Microsoft CRM: Have developed Microsoft Dynamics CRM, and directed a project for the migration of data and functionality from an earlier CRM into Microsoft CRM.
  • Pivotal eRelationship CRM: Have detailed experience in developing, including programming, and administering the Pivotal eRelationship CRM.

Questions? Want to have a chat? Please contact me.