image

Stokely home 
Search 
Sitemap 
About Stokely 

The Lighter Side of Sysadm | Ranting & Raving | Pete's Back Yard

_____________________

Stokely Consulting's services | Case studies | Contact us | Awards

Peter F. Stokely, Stokely Consulting
163 14th Trail, Unit B, Cotopaxi CO 81223, (719) 792-0135
peter@stokely.com - http://www.stokely.com

Software Architecture, Analysis and Development

Thirty years of experience in the software industry, practicing in the Silicon Valley since 1983. Start-up consulting: extensive knowledge of software start-up environments, rapid incremental development methodologies and their effects on project planning, development, documentation, quality and support. Fortune 1000 consulting: Sun Microsystems, Charles Schwab, Wells Fargo, Rational Software.

Note: Available for contract, contract-to-hire or permanent work. No relocation assistance needed.

Software Lifecycle Experience:

  • Business Plan: Business and Business Systems Architectures
  • Bid and Proposal: Inter/Intra/Extranet assessments and bids
  • Architectures: WWW, Knowledge (Expert System)-based and conventional software
  • Requirements Gathering: Knowledge Engineering, interviewing customers and Customer Experts
  • Requirements Analysis: Scenario-based requirements analysis, data analysis and modeling, maintenance threads
  • Logical System Design: UI, Data and Thread models with 3/4-tier functional allocation
  • Data Analysis: "Have Perl, will travel." Hundreds of programs and tools since 1991
  • Project Planning: PERT, GANTT, custom
  • Software Development: Perl, Java, JavaScript, C, C++, CGI, platform independent DHTML, RDBMS, DBI, Unix, Solaris, MySQL, Apache, various XML parsers, mod_perl, Struts, Tomcat, Ant, JUnit, Object-Oriented development using Extreme Programming/Agile Development techniques
  • QA: Lights-out regression suites; load generation suites
  • Performance Analysis: Schema-based artificial DBs, loading script generation, performance and resource profiling
  • Documentation: Electronic document generation, classification, conversion, rendering; authoring for white papers and architecture, requirements, as-built and user documents
  • Release Engineering: make(1) for nightly or intra-day builds
  • Customer Support: Configuration and programming for help-desk systems

Consulting History:

Principal Consultant, 1991 - present, Stokely Consulting, Mountain View, CA and Silver City, NM
Recent projects:

  • Text/Webmining Tools: Perl, Make and CLUTO robot and information foraging workbench using Scatter/Gather techniques. (For journalists)
  • Software Tools: Perl, mod_perl and Java tools for analyzing software architectures and requirements. (For a consortium of software architects)
  • Business Assessment and Product Architecture: At request of the Board of Directors, conducted an assessment of the business prospects, technical readiness and key issues and risks facing an Internet software product company experiencing a difficult product transition. As follow-on, prepared a get-well plan and the systematic architectural analysis of the requirements and technical foundations of the next generation of the company’s product line. (For a .com start-up)
  • Targeted Web Alerts Notifier: Designed and developed Java client and Perl CGI to periodically notify targeted branch personnel of urgent conditions, such as suspected bad-check or fraud artists operating in a particular geographical area. Maintains permanent queues of all notifications targeted at personnel with designated roles and locations, displays appropriate messages fetched from a secure web site, and returns acknowledgements that the alerts have, in fact, been read. Intended to replace "blast-faxes", which are too coarsely targeted for sensitive information, and Email, which might be ignored. (Wells Fargo)
  • Intranet Portal: Platform-independent DHTML to link ~2000 branch offices and allow targeted applications, Policies and Procedures, etc. to be sent to designated personnel in each branch, market area, division, state, and group. The JavaScript to do this is generated by a Perl/make(1) system with rules-based targeting based on User Role and Location. Non-technical content managers can add content or change targeting rules, and push a new system in fewer than 5 minutes. In production for over three years without a reported bug. (Wells Fargo)
  • Data Denormalization and Reassociation: Analyzed data about licensed customers from the General Ledger, Sales Contact databases (from several divisions, all different databases) and Customer Service call records. Produced a unified sales call schedule for license renewal, in Vantive upload format. (Rational Software) [Perl/Make(1)]
  • Automated Site Administration: Wrote a template-based HTML content authoring and content management system, with provisions for import/export of content, re-branding and reformatting among various divisions of a large insurance company. (OnlineFocus) [Perl, Make(1)]
  • Multi-coordinate Log Analysis: Using parallel coordinate geometry and other techniques, analyzed the complete hit history of a subsite of one of the largest commercial web sites to date. Characterized the prominent navigation paths, and found many surprising, obscure entry points, red herrings, and cul de sacs. (OnlineFocus) [Perl, Make(1), unreleased IBM product]
  • Electronic Products Architecture and System Design: Member of architecture staff for new generation of electronic products for providing financial services. Wrote architecture specification and tools for business systems analysis. (Charles Schwab)
  • Web Application Architecture Analysis: Analyzed existing product line of Internet software products and wrote the company’s first White Paper describing the architectural principles of the entire product line. (Netscape)
  • Operating System Software Supportability Analysis: Wrote toolset to analyze various classes of dependencies among Solaris operating system packages. The tools allow data to be gathered and cleaned from a variety of sources - installation contents files, existing and experimental package prototype files, shared library relationships discovered by ldd, manpages and output from makes of the core operating system. This data set is correlated with information from operational databases containing bug, integration and patch data. The cleaned data are placed on databases from which current and retrospective reports of dependency effects are produced [Perl, make(1)]. (Sun Microsystems)
  • Web-based Automated Product Documentation: Wrote document system to produce an HTML-based programmer's reference set for a pre-release software product. It drew current syntax, parameter information and examples directly from the product's yacc++ files, header files, C++ application source files and test suites. It automatically cross-referenced and indexed the volumes, then translated everything to HTML for a daily-refreshed R&D Web site [Perl, make(1)]. (Quintus)
  • Management: Served in various acting management roles for start-up software companies: VP Engineering, Director of Quality Assurance, Director of Product Support, Director of Engineering Planning. Served on architectural review board to assess existing product testability/supportability issues and make recommendations to R&D group and top management. Conducted product release schedule/commitment/crisis reviews and subsequent replanning.
  • Quality Assurance Automation: Built regression test harness and test suite modules for multi- platform/multi-database products [Atria, C, C++, csh, make, Perl]. Wrote tools to construct artificial databases and load test scenarios for a client-server database product [XRunner/LoadRunner test script languages, Perl, C].

Partial client list: Charles Schwab and Co. Inc., Sun Microsystems, Netscape Communications Corporation, Rational Technologies, Wells Fargo Bank, Objectivity Inc., OnlineFocus, Inc, PetroVision Inc., Quintus Corporation


Employment History:

Founder, Vice-President of Engineering, 1987 - 1991, Coherent Thought, Inc., Palo Alto, CA
Set up and directed fifteen-person product engineering organization from start-up to Release 1.1 of a software tool for developing expert systems for customer service configuration, diagnosis and repair applications. Led product engineering activities combining such technologies as Expert Systems, RDBMS, OLTP, OOPS, X Windows, embeddable client-server architectures and Sun/Unix-based software engineering.

Responsible for implementing effective processes to accomplish architecture, design, technology development, product specification, product and custom application development, SQA, porting, alpha and beta testing, version control, release engineering, systems environment management, staffing, budgeting, planning and scheduling. Set up and led the customer service Hotline. Developed application knowledge bases for key customers in the areas of computer system help-desk automation and software system configuration. Set up and led the product SQA program. Developed systematic knowledge base testing tools and scripts to automate regression, load and performance testing.

Extensively involved in start-up stage business planning, sales and marketing, investor presentations, bid and proposal activities, contract project execution and consulting to customers. Member of Board of Directors from incorporation through closure of first round of venture funding.

Senior Knowledge Engineer, Section Manager, 1983 - 1987, Teknowledge Inc., Palo Alto, CA
Set up and led section responsible for knowledge-based custom application projects carried out for strategic customers. Responsible for bid and proposal activities, project planning, scheduling, reporting, staffing, recruiting, staff performance appraisals, customer reviews and account management. Supervised project leaders responsible for developing knowledge-based systems, architectures and technology.

Developed application knowledge bases for key customers in the areas of disk drive field service planning and automotive circuit diagnosis and repair. Conducted expert system application feasibility assessments as well as the company's first systems engineering analysis of ways to integrate expert systems into conventional corporate information infrastructures.

Development Group Manager, 1982 - 1983, Transaction Technology Inc., Santa Monica, CA
Managed development and system engineering groups within a large Automated Teller Machine network development project for Citicorp.

Development Group Manager, Sr. Staff Engineer, 1980 - 1981, Logicon Corporation, Torrance CA
Managed development groups for network communications and non-stop message control subsystems of a large distributed document management system for two U.S. Government agencies.

Project Leader, CP-6 Operating System Development Group, 1979 - 1980, Honeywell Information Systems, Los Angeles, CA
Led projects to develop protocol handlers and peripheral drivers, to collect and analyze operating system availability data, and to develop the end-of-line system tests.

Principal Software Engineer, DECNET Development Group, 1976 - 1978, Digital Equipment Corporation, Maynard, MA
Recruited and led the DECNET performance analysis group. Developed traffic generators and monitors to assist in comprehensive network performance evaluation. Member of DECNET architecture staff.

Sr. Member Programming Staff, Operating Systems and Communications Group, 1972 - 1976, Xerox Data Systems, El Segundo, CA
Developed communications management software for asynchronous terminal controllers. Developed protocol handlers for bisync RJE emulation. Taught I/O system class for Field Service personnel.

Programmer/ Analyst 1970 - 1971, Nuclear Associates International, Rockville, MD
Developed protocol handlers for bisync and polled ASCII RJE emulators. Reviewed designs and code for nuclear reactor control room monitoring software.

Post-Doctoral Research Fellow, 1969 - 1970, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA
In a joint appointment to the Departments of Chemistry and Biophysics, developed numerous scientific application programs to accomplish X-ray crystallographic analysis of molecular structures.


Education:
Ph.D. (Chemistry) (Woodrow Wilson Fellow) Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1969
BA (Chemistry) (Honors) University of California, Riverside, 1964

_____________________

Stokely Consulting, http://www.stokely.com
Email: Celeste Stokely | Peter Stokely
163 14th Trail, Unit B, Cotopaxi CO 81223, (719) 942-3621
Copyright © 2013 Stokely Consulting. All rights reserved.