9th December 1973 - First job at UK Chemical Information Service as Junior Programmer.

Working on an ICL System 4/50, the code was written on green and white striped paper with boxes for each letter which had to be written in capitals. That was transposed onto punch cards and once per day (if you were lucky) the cards were fed into the computer and it attempted to build the program. A missed full stop, a 1 that became an I or all manner of slip-ups produced a rainforest of print-out and another day’s delay.

18 Months later there were redundancies but an offer to join Gamma Associates in Nottingham was on the table (Gamma hired time on the UKCIS computer).

The computers were already getting smaller - this time DEC PDP 11/44. A computer room one tenth the size of the one at UKCIS, a computer that could multi-task and you could key your programs in directly and check them as soon as you were ready. There was still paper tape for off-line data preparation and ‘transmission’ although this was at the slightly slower speed of 10 characters per second! Note that the worst current broadband line is around 1Mb which is 10,000 times faster

The work at Gamma continued into the 80s with new computers growing in power but also becoming smaller. Gamma’s bureau operation for Newspaper Wholesalers grew and the role changed too from programming/ operating the PDP to focussing on software design, development and implementation ...

With the 80s came the first PCs

Still text-based but now you could have one on your desk. Everyone was a programmer! However, it soon became clear that when it comes to business systems there was still a need for organisation, control and support for systems.

Sadly Gamma did not survive and in 1981, after a brief interlude Sharp Software Services was born and the first contract assignment was to recover a struggling software development project for Booker McConnell Wholesale in Uxbridge.

The project needed its scope and budget re-affirming and the developers giving clear guidelines on tasks, priorities and deliverables. User involvement and testing were crucial to the subsequent success of the project. In the end it was handed over to the local support teams to maintain and control.

The 80s were fast and exciting times because computers were evolving at an ever-increasing pace what business could do with them was changing equally quickly. After Booker McConnell came contracts in the financial markets, mainly in London with a few brief trips to Paris

This was the time of the deregulation of the markets - the “Big Bang” when the London Stock Exchange moved from face-to-face trading to disparate dealing rooms using computers and telephones to communicate and trade. Software and systems had to be ready and tested and guaranteed to work on the 27th October 1986.

Software design and development, implementation and migration projects, business analysis, software testing were all involved as the pace quickened and the race to get ahead of the other banks hotted up. Contracting with both the banks and the companies writing third-party software was an excellent way to be exposed to many new technologies and challenges and to see different disciplines of project management and design in action.

1989 finished in Paris as a key technical consultant during the set-up of a brand new French office for a large Japanese investment bank

1990 Started in Paris in investment banking but also included working with two or three local businesses in Southwell to help them choose and implement accounting systems.

This decade also brought software development projects:

• A London bank needed a program to help with borrowing and lending Gilts and to aid PC to VAX (minicomputer) communication.
• A long-term client wanted a large stock-management system designing and the development managing working closely with their own staff ensuring that at the end of the project they could take full control.

There were also huge challenges managing testing and implementation stages of joint in-house/ third-party system development, office moves, and the longest ‘day’ of 52 hours continuous work recovering a catastrophic data error.

Other interesting assignments in the nineties included

• setting up a support team for a major international bank,
• analysing and documenting database design of a large back-office system to enable it to be better supported,
• test and implementation planning on an Accenture-led project
• and a number of projects in Zurich.

The nineties also saw the introduction of the Euro and the growing concerns over the transition into the next millennium.

The introduction of the Euro meant that systems had to redenominate securities held in ‘local’ currencies at an exchange rate fixed on 31st December 1998. Existing software had to be converted to handle the transition, projects were set up to implement the changeover and it was all needed to work on 1st January 1999 when stocks and shares were traded in Euro - but the old currency values were still required too.

‘Y2k’ as it became known generated a lot of extra work as all existing systems and equipment had to be tested for Y2k compliance. Disaster recovery plans specific to the millennium had to be designed, tested, and put in place. This led to 100 flights to Zurich and a busy year in 1999. (culminating in a very enjoyable New Year’s Eve watching the fireworks over Zurichsee).

 

An uneventful New Year’s Day started this decade, to everyone’s surprise. Probably the most embarrassing incident was the failure of a number of American spy satellites, especially as they had probably spent the most on trying to avoid problems!

The 2000s continued with Euro-related projects including the need to support the trading of Euro securities on the Swiss Exchange for the first time. Later projects included:

• Planning, programming and supporting the migration of a banks general ledger system from Zurich to London where Accenture were waiting to receive it into Oracle Financials (this also involved significant troubleshooting and reconciliation on the receiving system).
• Subsequent migration of the remaining back-office systems and the design and supply of software to enable the historic data to be stored for up to 10 years for audit purposes. (The software was last used on it’s tenth anniversary!)
• Testing Swiss Exchange upgrade to EBS which involved participating in market-wide testing.
• Implementation planning and release management for a complex system using new languages and technology for a London bank and software house.
• Extending and testing a business continuity site with full user participation and third-party hardware and software suppliers.
• Design and implement project initiation and control across 10 development teams.
• Design and manage system testing for changes to SECOM (the Swiss clearing system) including market-testing.
• Year-end support for general ledger processing.
• Design and implement a system for managing serious IT incidents for a bank in London/ Frankfurt.

But this decade also saw diversification away from banking with

• Software development for a holiday villa rental company
• Database system to help Crime Reduction Partnerships analyse and address domestic violence issues
• Full process analysis and software provision for an agency supplying experts to law firms, including some process re-engineering.
• Helping a plumbing and heating company upgrade their hardware and software.

The decade ends focussing totally on helping businesses improve and use their IT resources to enable them to run as efficiently as possible

The start of another revolution - while the 80s saw personal computing arrive this decade sees the firm establishment of (what someone else called) ambient computing. Computers are everywhere and the way we interact has changed. “Bring your own device” was a trend that concerned many businesses, there is now now choice but to adapt.

This brings interesting new challenges and opportunities:

• Office 365 is easily accessible but some clients have found it beneficial to get help setting it up
• Clients are looking to allow secure remote access to certain areas of their business.
• The amount and value of data within a business is now being seriously considered - there are projects to design and write new database systems, extending current systems and making more use of spreadsheet analyses
• Business is once again picking up so one client needed help selecting and implementing a scheduling system for their field staff before rolling it out nationally.
• Another client has gone paper-free.

This page is obviously unfinished but it will fill up with projects relating to:

• The move towards touch screens and the impact that has on design or interaction.
• Cloud-based systems with terrestrial components.
• Multi-device access to the same software and data.
• Major end-of-life migrations from Windows XP, Small Business Server, Office 2003.
• Virtual machines, voice over the internet, and much more
• ... ... ...