Joseph L. Mabel: Resume

Available only for short-term consulting

As of December 2020, I am semi-retired and available only for short-term consulting, mainly in the areas listed immediately below as my skills/strengths. I also remain available for a half-day or full day of "pair programming" as a means of coaching a developer. I retain strong connections with IT and development teams in Seattle and Bucharest.

• My Wikipedia user page 🔗
• My Wikimedia Commons user page 🔗
• My Wikidata user page 🔗.

Skills/Strengths:

40 years in the software development industry, both as a hands-on contributor and in management, both contract and permanent.

Technical Personnel Management: Consensus-building, team-building, training and management of technical personnel up to and including managers. Coordination between technical and non-technical personnel.

Software Development: Specification, design, programming, debugging. Emphasis on data structures, object-oriented design, efficient algorithms, flexible configuration, graphics, and user-friendly interface. Extensive experience in numerous computer languages, notably JavaScript/jQuery and PHP (full stack developer through the 2010s) and C++ (more than once taught advanced C++ classes to the developers at a company where I was employed). Pretty solid in web technologies, though those change fast. Expertise in internationalization, CAD, web-centric and database-centric development.

Project/Program Management: Scheduling and estimation, requirements gathering, functional specification, risk identification and management. Expert in turning around troubled projects.

Vendor/Client relationships: Estimating/bidding projects, managing relationships. Experience on both sides of the vendor/client interface, both domestically and internationally.

Communications: Strong written and oral communicator. Documentation experience includes technical and process standards, specifications, API documentation, user documentation, and preparing software systems for source licensing. Very big on code review, see separate article. Multilingual. Worked as a freelance writer prior to my involvement in computing.

Problem-solving and flexibility: A broad range of experience including both regular and contract employment in a variety of environments. Feasibility studies, overall systems design, database and data structures work, close work with people from a variety of cultures and a variety of professional backgrounds.

User experience: this doesn't easily fit a resume format; see this related article I've written about user experience.

Recent:

Builders' Exchange of Washington (BXWA) 🔗, contract
Software Contractor (August 2010-March 2018; still consulting)

Front-end and back-end development, plus project management, for graphics-intensive web-based applications for the construction industry.

Designed and implemented Fastbid 3, a web-based measurement/takeoff tool (basically a stripped-down CAD system for the construction industry). Fastbid 3 allows builders and subcontractors to view and mark up plans and specs, take measurements, share takeoff markup, and make useful calculations during the bidding process. This graphics-intensive program is a full, far more portable, browser-based replacement for a compiled C++ application, Fastbid 2. In its basic configuration it provides a near-perfect emulation of that application and matches or exceeds the performance of that compiled application; I've also implemented extensive new members-only features, including realtime data-sharing; by now, the added features constitute the majority of the system.

Since October 2012, Fastbid 3 has been BXWA's default system for new users, and they have steadily migrated their legacy users; I continued to add advanced features until 2018, which are slipstreamed into the live site. Customer perception has been very positive, and BXWA memberships have been steadily on the rise.

I architected, designed and implemented both the front and back ends of this complex graphical web application, mostly jQuery/JavaScript/HTML5 and PHP/PostgreSQL, including highly interactive HTML5 Canvas graphics that work effectively on both PCs and Apple iOS devices. Through expedient use of JavaScript and HTML5 Canvas, the application can achieve better graphics downsampling than the browsers' default.

My role has also included about half of the project management and a good deal of research, as well as reverse-engineering some previously undocumented binary file formats. Further work for BXWA has included stripped-down SaaS version of FastBid for other plan centers, as well as numerous internal tools ranging from administrative dashboards to tools (graphical and otherwise) to import construction drawings from a variety of formats for use in FastBid.

Sound Structural Solutions 🔗, contract
Software Contractor (November 2017-January 2021; still consulting)

Consulting, project management, and hands-on development to bring a database-intensive internal web-based systems to a greater maturity level and to implement new features. Because this is an internal system that encodes their business methods, details of this work are confidential, but as long as you are in no way their competitor, after we sign a mutual non-disclosure I can discuss far more than I can write here.

Prior experience:

Accretive Technology Group in Seattle, Washington.
Software Development Manager (January 2008-February 2009)

Managed an e-commerce intensive, Internet-centric software development group. Combined people management, project/program management, and occasional hands-on tech work to bring a software department successfully out of perpetual "maintenance mode" and evolve it into a group capable of taking on major new projects. Turned a system that was essentially undocumented when I joined into something that new, mid-level hires could understand. Vastly improved specification processes, bug tracking processes, etc. Drove internationalization of company's online products. Led an evolution from focus on individual features to a greater focus on capabilities and configurability.

Contracting/Consulting 2001-2007

From 2001 through 2007 I was contracting and consulting. Major projects included:

• Lux Group, November 2007 - December 2007: Wrote the requirements, compliance checklist, etc. for the online version of the Washington State Health Insurance Pool (WSHIP) Standard Health Questionnaire (SHQ).
• Active Voice, LLC (AVLLC, later absorbed into NEC 🔗) , January-December 2006: wrote functional and technical specifications (and designed GUI and telephone user interfaces) for the company's next several major product releases. These specifications drove AVLLC's features for roughly the next two years. [More…]
  • AVLLC was a subsidiary of NEC, now absorbed into the parent company. AVLLC specialized in voice technology and was eventually absorbed into NEC's Infrontia group.
  • Working with a team distributed between Seattle and Bucharest, specified voice mail features such as:
    • Highly flexible conversations
    • Hospitality (hotel/motel) package
    • Schedule- and caller-ID-based call handling.
    • SMS (Short Message Service) integration: use SMS to notify about voice messages, etc.
  • Led a research effort on networked, multi-client, multi-PBX systems.
  • Also wrote post facto technical specifications for several features where internal documentation was lacking.
• Microsoft 🔗 / Sakson & Taylor (now Aquent 🔗), March-December 2005: wrote or rewrote most of the Microsoft SDK's conceptual documents and API references (Win32 PSDK for C++ and .NET Framework) on internationalization and typography. [More…]
  • Covered such diverse topics as developing software in ways that make it easy to change UI language resources; Microsoft's concept of locale; formatting dates, times, numbers, and currencies internationally; typography and scripts; and text encodings.
  • Included both the Win32 PSDK for C++ developers and .NET Framework.
  • This work is now "live" on MSDN. I did major additions and rewrites to the material on National Language Support 🔗, Unicode and Character Sets 🔗, Uniscribe 🔗, and Multilingual User Interface 🔗.
  • I'm particularly proud of adding pages such as the Uniscribe glossary 🔗 (though I see as of February 2022 that they have lost the intro and duplicated the first entry) and of completely reworking pages like Language Identifier Constants and Strings 🔗, the previous version of which was almost unusable.
• Tableau Software 🔗, July-August 2004: Internationalized Tableau's flagship product, Visual Spreadsheet, functioning as both project manager and developer. This was successfully achieved within a very tight 8-week schedule. [More…]
  • Developed overall strategy for internationalization of this Microsoft^® Windows Desktop application.
  • Re-instrumented to use Unicode internally rather than ANSI; identified and isolated string resources.
  • Internationalized presentation and validation of dates, floating point numbers, etc. at the user interface and in communicating with a variety of DBMSs.
  • Internationalized the approach to sorting order and other string operations.
  • Internationalized the approach to recognizing a column in a database table as containing day-of-week or month-of-year data.
  • Identified international UI layout issues; helped established policies that will allow maintenance of internationalized software.
• Lux Group, June 2003 - March 2004: Acting Director of Development. [More…]
  • Estimated, bid, and pitched a broad range of software, consulting, and documentation projects for current and prospective clients. Clients included major national software firms, an insurance company, a hospital, and several e-commerce companies.
  • Managed software development group.
  • Managed technical projects.
  • Participated directly in projects as a consultant, software developer, and programmer/writer.
• Active Voice, LLC (AVLLC), November 2001 - May 2002 (Bucharest), July - December 2002 (Seattle): Represented executive management of AVLLC at Unidec , an offshore R&D center in Bucharest. Also functioned as a technical consultant to Unidec. Tremendously improved mutual working relationship. Also researched future products and wrote functional specifications for future features for several of AVLLC's existing products. [More…]
  • Functioned as a consultant to Unidec on technical matters, managerial approaches, and American business practices; successfully integrated them into AVLLC's development process.
    • Provided liaison between Seattle-based marketing and Bucharest-based technical groups. Tremendously improved mutual working relationship.
    • Taught voice mail technology and other messaging technology to a team of Romanian software developers.
    • Supported several different teams within a 50-person software development group.
    • Helped establish software development standards for the Romanian team.
  • Authored numerous functional specifications and guided these through AVLLC's consensus process for new features.
  • Designed an integration between email and voice mail based on IMAP4.
  • Mastered and documented a large, previously undocumented body of third party C++ code.
  • Researched future products and wrote functional specifications for future features for several of AVLLC's existing products, notably the Kinesis^TM unified (voice and text) messaging product.
• Saltmine, June-October 2001 (Manchester and London, UK): As a member of a Microsoft Consulting Services team, helped the "Manchester 2002" team design a web-based system to integrate with the Central Results System and serve 100 million objects per day during the 2002 Commonwealth Games . Also, QA Lead for Microsoft UK online events calendar. Devised development standards and policies for Saltmine's London office. [More…]
  • Manchester (Manchester 2002 Commonwealth Games):
  • Authored recommendations documents that proposed a range of alternatives for design, testing, and implementation of systems to deliver live results to the web with minimal latency, and which explained tradeoffs among these approaches.
  • Strategized stress and performance testing. Wrote high-level test plan. Specified several utility and component programs as part of the site and the test harness. Worked with Manchester 2002 personnel to implement these successfully.
  • Devised strategy to reconcile clashing systems of identifiers, so that web sites may appropriately link information from different third-party sources applying to a particular athlete, country, etc.
  • Worked successfully to improve communications between Microsoft and Manchester 2002 personnel.
  • London (Microsoft UK and Saltmine UK):
  • QA Lead for an online events calendar for Microsoft UK, which provides such features as workflow for submission and review of event content, integration with Microsoft's HR systems, content personalization, and email subscription services for both users and Event Administrators.
  • Devised development standards and policies for Saltmine's London office.

While Director of Development, also served as Acting Director of Software QA (Jan-June 2000) and managed the IT department through a management transition (Aug-Sept 2000). Conceived, developed, and conducted a series of training sessions for working developers; topics included advanced C++, internationalization and localization, and (for QA) fundamentals of database modeling and programming.

Orca Medical Systems (1996-1997)
Program Manager

Chief author of database and GUI specifications for a Windows- and SQL Server-based medical records system, later a product of Spacelabs, Inc.

• Through rapid iterations of prototypes and mini-specs, developed a consensus from half a dozen initially very divergent visions of Orca's product. To this end, worked with in-house domain experts (nurses and physicians), client clinicians, and hospital CIOs to develop a UI that could handle hundreds of distinct scenarios by which data may become part of the medical record. Successfully communicated these to a team of software engineers.
• Developed a "GUI vocabulary" of about 15 screen controls that covered cases which, in an earlier release of the product, had used approximately 50 distinct controls.
• Overhauled medical records database schema. Introduced a full journalizing capability while actually reducing disk storage requirements and speeding access for common operations.

Active Voice Corporation (1991-1996)
Software Architect, Project Lead

Software Architect for Repartee^TM, the flagship product of the world's then-leading manufacturer of PC-based voice mail. This highly multi-tasking voice mail system integrates with third-party e-mail and various proprietary LAN-based applications.

Functioned simultaneously as both Project Manager and Development Lead for Repartee 7.4. Over the course of 18 months, led and motivated my team to successfully deliver what was, at the time, the largest project in the history of the company.

• Directly supervised 7 Software Engineers plus QA Lead, Technical Publications Lead, and Field Test Coordinator. Coordinated with Marketing, Training, Technical Support, and Production departments, as well as Platform, Desktop Applications, and Software Components groups within Development.
• Set schedules and tracked progress of project. Negotiated with engineering management for resources and delegated work responsibilities within the team.
• Authored approximately one third of requirement, functional specification, and technical specification documents, and reviewed the other two-thirds of these documents.
• Programmed several of the more difficult portions of the system and coordinated and supervised code reviews.

Repartee 7.4 provided an architectural foundation for Active Voice and NEC products into the early 2010s. Among the key features of the project were: merged three separate code bases, each offering significant unique features; converted from 16-bit code and non-preemptive multi-tasking to 32-bit code and preemptive multi-tasking; expanded from 36 to 60 simultaneous voice conversations, while improving performance; added features in support of fault tolerance; improved system configurability; improved modularity of code; allowed on-line backup; improved granularity in the locking scheme to remove limitations on certain operations occurring simultaneously; improved APIs to maximize forward compatibility; allowed analog networking of multiple voice mail systems.

Other achievements at Active Voice:

• Managed several other projects, including integration of fax and voice mail.
• Instituted much-improved coding discipline throughout the enterprise, including the introduction of code reviews.
• Developed server support for ViewCall, a breakthrough system which allows clients to control incoming phone calls from their desktop computer.
• Made major improvements in the design of the Repartee database and major extensions to the voice interface.

HealthWare Corporation (1989-1991)
Senior Software Engineer

• Liaison to Marketing for 3-person software team.
• Designed and implemented MS Windows Custom Controls to edit structured nursing notes and other structured medical records. Performed extensive database work to support this design.
• Redesigned report generator, resulting in order-of-magnitude speed improvement.

Portable Cellular Communications (1988-89, contract)

Transformed software specific to a single cellular phone rental company into a production system which formed the basis of Cellular Technical Services, a joint venture with Nynex.

• Extensively interviewed PCC programming staff to produce a document which resolved Nynex's issues about the flexibility of the software and applicability beyond one company.
• Wrote in-line documentation of code, created system diagrams, wrote functional and technical descriptions of programs, files, and interprocess communication. Organized source and object libraries and created "make" files.
• Completely redesigned and rewrote point-of-sale software to create a single configurable program.
• Designed simulation/testing environment and developed a strategy for fault tolerance.
• For CTS, wrote programs for data verification, telephone switch interfaces, long-distance telephone billing, serial and TCP/IP communications.

Energy International (1987, contract)

• Designed and implemented a graphical user interface, which added interactive grid design, profiles, vector plots, and contour graphs to an existing fluid dynamics system.
• Established administrative procedures for Apollo network. Greatly improved relations with Apollo and other vendors.

MegaCADD (1983-1988)
Co-founder, Senior Software Engineer

Led team that developed the first effective PC-based three-dimensional modeling tool for architects.

• Designed and implemented three-dimensional graphics capabilities, including efficient automatic hidden line removal, walkthrough animations, DXF (AutoCad) interchange, and highly interactive creation of models and components, including manipulation of curves by handle points.
• Supervised 3-person project team. Set design priorities. Reviewed all technical specifications. Set coding, documentation, and testing standards. Scheduled and monitored all project work, ranging from user documentation to device interfaces.
• With this team, developed four major releases of Design Board Professional (later MegaModel from Design Futures Incorporated), the pioneering three-dimensional CAD application on PCs. Architecture Magazine (February 1987) called this product, which produces perspective renderings and other drawings, "splendid...the only good, inexpensive 3D program."

Azurdata (1983 contract; no relation to the present-day company of the same name)

Key member of a team that designed and implemented software for a a pioneering handheld inventory-gathering device.

Telematic Products (1982 contract)

Key member of a team that designed and implemented a fault-tolerant table-driven system to gather telephone billing information and relay this to a central billing computer.

Education:

M.S. in Computer Science, University of Washington 🔗 (Seattle, WA 1981). Master's thesis describes my design of the interactive symbolic debugger included as part of DEC's Pascal-36. Other major projects while in graduate school included a LISP interpreter and a preprocessor to translate concurrency specifications into C code to manage semaphores.

B.A. Cum Laude in Mathematics, Wesleyan University 🔗 (Middletown, CT 1977).

Languages (human):

My e-mail address is jmabel@joemabel.com. Normally, I check this at least every 48 hours, more often during the working week.