Dave Waller

Myprogress is a web and native-mobile software product that facilitates assessment and communication as part of off-campus, workplace-based education.

For the last 5 years, I have managed the growth and development of the Myprogress product, taking it from a small, project-based development to a market-leading product in use across more than 20 prestigious universities and organisations.

Acting as an interface between sales and development, I work closely with all stakeholders to understand the problems that need solving before designing solutions that deliver visually, technically and intuitively.

Working throughout the development lifecycle I am hands-on and active, taking a leading role in:

• Client engagement & end-user requirements gathering
• Roadmap prioritisation based on internal & external analysis
• Solution design & specification documentation
• Workflow design & UX design leadership
• Coordination of development based on both waterfall & agile methodologies
• Management of development budgets, delivery timelines & overall quality
• Hands-on involvement in development, especially with user experience components
• Product support & end-user documentation

Want to know more about Myprogress? Watch Dr. Kim Tartaglia from Ohio State University discuss how Myprogress supports direct observation within their medical curriculum on YouTube.

The GMC EMS seeks to revolutionise their traditionally paper-based examination processes, building on the Myprogress platform to leverage highly connected iPads and enhanced exam content management functionality.

I have worked extremely closely with the client, and their end users, throughout the development project to ensure that, as software suppliers, we fully understood the nature of the processes being upgraded. While exploring requirements I created a set of comprehensive user personas that could be referenced throughout the project and an equally comprehensive set of key user stories providing a store of essential reference material.

Blending both waterfall (to satisfy the customer need for a fixed scope, fixed timeframe & fixed cost) and agile (to allow for modern, adaptable development) I led on the design, development and delivery of both the back-office exam management aspects of the software as well as the front-of-house iPad assessment apps.

Working with a cross-functional team, including developers, iOS contractors and front-end designers, we have delivered a comprehensive toolset to support the creation, compilation and delivery of exams.

Find out more at www.myprogressapp.com

Leading the field of medical education in Singapore, LKC have integrated the Myprogress platform within their academic offering providing students with unrivalled opportunities for workplace experience, assessment and rich, academic feedback.

As the sole business analysist on a $1M+ development project for Singapore's newest medical school I worked closely with both the IT and academic teams to elicit their sophisticated requirements and design a solution that was technically viable, cost effective and suited to the needs of both staff and students.

I have continued, over the past 5 years, to support the remote team taking both the role of outward facing project manager and internal product owner. This multi-disciplinary role has allowed me to focus on the delivery of exceptional customer service while ensuring that the end-user needs are given the highest priority during development.

Now in use across all 5 years of their medical degree, this platform is delivering improved student engagement and academic feedback as well as significant cost savings over paper-based assessment processes and a large reduction in the time demands of, already time-poor, academic medical staff.

Find out more at www.myprogressapp.com

Capitalising on recent Olympic successes as well as the Tour de Yorkshire, British Cycling are extending their training and support for the next generation of coaches. This initiative incorporates Myprogress to facilitate all observational assessment of coaches and trainees.

With a need to support some workflows a little to those previously encountered, a range of bespoke enhancements were identified. Working closely with the business analyst assigned to the project I designed a set of enhancements ranging from new assessment questions to new assessment workflows across both web and iPad.

Initially driven by Mozilla, Open Badges provide an innovative approach to rewards, accreditation and displaying credentials — like a digital version of a 20m swimming badge. As an early adopter and promoter of Open Badges, Myknowledgemap have been at the forefront of providing rich (and often free) platforms to support the use and embedding of badges.

Having led on initial R&D into the field of Open Badges, I was quickly accepted as a source of practical badging experience both in the UK and internationally providing opportunities for presenting research, experiences and developed software at a number of large conferences, including the 2013 Mozilla Summit in Brussels.

I have continued to be heavily involved in all of Myknowledgemap's badge activities offering consultancy services internally throughout the development of the OpenBadges.me, BadgeUp.me and Myshowcase.me products.

Find out more at www.openbadges.me

Acting as the interface between the client and development team comes with a unique set of challenges, not least the need of customers for a fixed-scope, fixed-timeline and fixed-cost, Waterfall approach matched with the development need for Agile. When combined with project management tools that neglected key stakeholders, the day-to-day management of development tasks and the reporting required by senior management became increasingly complex and time-consuming.

Over the years, I had experimented with a range of different approaches, finally finding a hybrid Waterfall/Agile approach that allowed long-term scope to be defined and agreed, while internally providing an Agile, Scrum based development approach. A few months went by, working through sticky notes and index cards before settling on an over-sized whiteboard.

After proving it's worth, the whiteboard made the jump to digital but needed to satisfy some clear requirements:

• Deliver clear, visual progress reports for senior managers tracking overall progress as well as anticipated resource bottlenecks
• Support the developer's need for agile methodologies, tracking tasks, user stories and user personas
• Provide a clear picture of QA/testing progress and outstanding technical debt

The Whiteboard web app provides at a glance progress reporting at a sprint/iteration level (perfect for senior management) with the ability to drill into each sprint to track the progress of its tasks. While offering a more detailed view, without having to hunt around developer desks for sticky notes, this also quickly identifies resource bottlenecks across design, iOS dev, Android dev, .NET dev and QA/testing. Each task, of course, links to more detailed documentation, user stories and personas, and any member of the team can mark their role in a task as completed or reopened.

Finally, an integration with the internal bug tracking system provides a top-level, real-time view of outstanding bugs and issues as well as the demands being placed on QA as they re-test and sign-off historical issues.

Whiteboard is in consistent, day-to-day use within the organisation and has quickly become a key tool in the complete design, development and delivery process.