VP, Product Development @ WorthPoint, Inc

McLean, VA and Columbus, OH

03/2008 – 02/2010

As Director, Product Development managed the Agile development process for the maintenance and enhancement of the WorthPoint website.  Baseline was built on the Drupal CMS utilizing 200+ modules and contained over 2 million nodes.  Development team consisted of a local lead engineer and offshore developers in Illigan City, Philippines.

  • Managed 30 plus developers locally and off-shore.  Traveled to off-shore contractor facilities in Philippines to oversee implementation of new development processes and team structure.
  • Work with product owners to populate backlog, prioritize tasks, and monitor sprints.  Managed each product owner as their own project including Product Manager, Sales, Taxonomy/Operations, Marketing, Content and Data Loading.

WorthPoint acquired GoAntiques in the winter of 2009 and our development efforts were migrated to their offices/team in Columbus, OH.  Product Development Director role migrated to a Vice President position with the responsibility of overseeing all efforts pertaining to software maintenance and new development.  The development team for this consisted of a team of 8 software engineers and quality assurance personnel in Columbus.

  • Supported the migration of all content from Drupal to a Grails/Wordpress architecture.  Developed the new WorthPoint theme for Wordpress and migrated existing content of over 3000 articles.
  • Managed requirements and developers efforts for new functionality and efforts including the following:
    • Creation of backend management system for support staff to monitor and troubleshoot customer issues
    • Migration of e-commerce from VeriSign to Paypal
    • Creation of coupon codes to allow for discount offerings of all WorthPoint products
    • Established weekly newsletter with subscription option
    • Managed efforts to define an all-encompassing taxonomy for antiques and collectibles.  Internal subject matter experts defined the top two node levels.  Designed and oversaw the development of a patented crowd sourced solution to define further levels through the use of a custom wiki. Launched Alpha version of the wiki in January 2010.
    • Supported various SEO improvements within the site.  Efforts resulted in an average of 100k daily unique visitors to the site in December.
  • Initiated WorthPoint’s social media marketing efforts on Twitter and Facebook. Before turning over our Facebook fan page to our Marketing Department I had built a fan base of over 300 members. Advised Marketing on social media efforts after the turnover. Managed the development of coupon codes in the WorthPoint e-commerce system with the purpose of being utilized on these networks along with printed business cards to be spread during auction and collectibles events.

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