Mike Robinson

P. O. Box ***

Chickamauga, GA ****7

423-***-****

More than twenty-five years of mostly project-oriented software experience.

Able to drop into an existing software project quickly, perform “stop the bleeding,” devise and manage/execute plan to move directly to desired future-state.

Thoroughly familiar with platforms from mainframe to mobile; most programming languages and statistics tools.

Strong and disciplined project management skills.

Excellent interpersonal and communication skill including negotiation and preparations for executive management & owners.

Most of the time, my task is to step directly into a project that is now in serious trouble and to lead it to a successful outcome. This is commonly done under conditions of executive/owner visibility at the highest level. Not just technical acumen, but leadership, conviction and persuasion, have been critical to my success.

Here are a few relevant, recent projects from the last four years:

InterSign Corporation – PHP application overhaul, security hardening, move to cloud:

(2015-2018)

InterSign makes hotel signs in Chattanooga, through more than 200 web-sites all run by the same sophisticated software. Customers can design their signs on-line and see exactly how they will look. When I became engaged, this application was in PHP-4 and running on one OS/X Lion blade-server, which is no longer manufactured and which was failing. I converted this to PHP-7, moved it to seven VM’s in the cloud, overhauled the database interface and caching layer, and made substantial hardening improvements including both OpenVPN and IPSec. The application consists of more than 5,900 PHP source-files and over 135,000 digital assets.

Go-live was completely flawless.

State of Tennessee Department of Mental Health – High-Profile SPSS® Design+Implement:

(2015)

This department is required to make a comprehensive report and data-upload to the US Government once a year and had failed miserably to do so using Microsoft Excel. This upload integrates data from 29 sources – all different.

The politics of the situation were extraordinary, and justified. I worked directly for the head of the depart-ment, and, accompanying her, also met with her superior the State Commissioner on multiple occasions.

Working under this great pressure, I designed and built an SPSS application that would prepare and validate the file, allowing the components of any reported value to be traced back to their original sources. Purposely, I engaged staff-members in the development of those segments which were the departmental responsibility of each of them. I trained their staff to use and to enhance the system, which has been used ever since. The system was a complete success: the upload was accepted as valid on the first attempt, as has (so I am told) every upload since.

ROSWorks, Inc. – Overhaul Perl-based “No Child Left Behind (NCLB)” Educational Testing System

(2013-2015)

ROSWorks, co-founded by Dr. David Mott, was a pioneer in NCLB on-line testing and developed an innovative way to administer op-scan tests using inexpensive fax scanners. He had secured testing contracts in four states. But their attempts to move to on-line testing during the same period did not go well. After the project was abandoned by its previous developer, my first immediate purpose was to actually bring the system to the state where it already should have been.

Next, I led a small team of subcontractors to overhaul their testing environment including preparations to move to mobile devices for this purpose, moving away from its previous base which had been entirely built for the now-obsolete scanners. I worked with school administrators in Virginia and South Carolina at various points in this deployment, which continued to use physical hardware owned by the company. This project unfortunately was discontinued before it reached the point of technical closure that I had wished or anticipated.

Education:

BS Computer Science, UT Chattanooga 1984, summa cum laude. William E. Brock scholar.

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