Brian Meloche's Blog I'll blog about ColdFusion, weight loss, podcasting and life with too many pets! :-)

I thought I would pass this on. If interested, contact John Seward - jseward@dealertire.com.

Sr. eBusiness Business Analyst Wanted - Cleveland, OH

Overall Accountability: The Sr. eBusiness Analyst has responsibility for understanding, planning, and leading the delivery of web-based Technology solutions on business critical projects. For both internal and external teams, the Sr. eBusiness Analyst will work directly with the eBusiness Architect to frame the business value from technology initiatives and articulate this value to meet the customer's business goals and objectives.

• Project Initiation / Management Utilize architecture design principles in creating complex custom software solutions or enhancing package solutions. Identify the design vs. implementation tradeoffs with the tools being used. Own the design of assigned business-critical, customer-facing module. Lead a team of Dealer Tire and various department people in business and technical designs of a module. Manage dependencies across other modules
• Business Requirements / Management Documents detailed business requirements in terms of complete enterprise work flows, business rules and data needs for review by eBusiness Architect. These requirements provide the basis for business projects and subsequent systems. Communicates these requirements to the development and infrastructure management. Collaborates on projects with Business Owners, Business Analysts and Web development staff to clarify business requirements, answer questions and resolve problems throughout a project and on-going support. Leads and obtains business approval with business users in review of business requirements. Reviews technical analysis documents, technical designs, and test results to verify enterprise business requirements are understood and addressed completely, correctly and consistently. Translates the customer's business requirements into a component design. Creates alternative business design solutions. Plans and manages: business design, technical design, development, stabilization, pilot, parallel, production tracks, cut-over, and support
• Web customer facing business design Utilizes existing standards as they relate to: site usability, typography, global elements and placement, color, font, measurement, logical and physical models, etc.
• Testing Work with business owners to create and execute test plans. Coordinate with development on any changes resulting from such testing. Coordinate with the technical teams to implement software into production.
• Change Management Facilitate documentation and approval of requirements changes of either a business or technical nature during Web projects, using the existing change management procedures, which include assessment of the impact of requested changes and taking such changes through the required approval process.
• Training Work with Cross Functional Department Teams and develops training materials, schedules and conducts courses for Web systems.
• Web Standards and Guidelines Adheres to Web standards and guidelines for business analysis work, and its integration with software development standards and guidelines.

Position Requirements:

• Bachelor's degree required
• Minimum 5+ years of Business experience
• Minimum 3-5 years Web Integration / Design experience
• Strong creative and problem-solving skills
• Experience developing improved processes
• Strong communication skills
• Ability to function effectively in a fast-paced environment

Physical job requirements:

• Continuous viewing from and inputting data to a computer screen.
• Sitting for long periods of time.

Drug Policy:

• Dealer Tire is a drug-free environment. All applicants being considered for employment must pass a pre-employment drug screening before beginning work.

Update and note: The CF developer position is still available. You may contact John Seward - jseward@dealertire.com for that position as well.

This post on the Weather Channel's website actually made me laugh...

We've got a LOT more snow than this clip shows. I am guessing the clip was shot yesterday, during rush hour.

Update: You'll see a much more appropriate video clip here, from Fox 8 Cleveland.

Like my friend, Dan Vega, blogged earlier, the mystical land of Cleve was hit by 14+ inches of snow that started Tuesday and continued over night. I shoveled my driveway, sidewalk and porch last night, after about 8 or so inches had fallen, and it hardly looks like I did a thing.

Thankfully, last night, my insightful boss instructed her entire team to work from home today (except one consultant). He had to go in today, since he has no way to work from home, like the rest of us.

My wife had a terrible drive home last night, and, thankfully, decided not to go into work today. It's her day off, but she was going to go in to work overtime, but she rightly decided that it wasn't worth it. I guess we'll be celebrating Valentine's Day indoors tonight. Too bad we don't have a fireplace because it would be coming in handy right now.

Our poor dummies (our three dogs) have had to drudge through the back yard just to go potty. It is kind of funny to watch them, in a cruel kind of way... ;-)

Matt Warzel, wanted me to repost this position...

We are seeking a Web Developer with a strong background in Internet Technologies and Enterprise Resource Planning Systems (ERP) to be part of our Application Development team. This position is responsible for developing reusable architectures and methodologies that can be integrated into various enterprise applications for our company. This position requires the ability to design, develop, and implement leading edge solutions that will meet the needs of our customers. This individual will participate in the entire software development life cycle for enterprise class Business-To-Business (B2B) applications, while also providing systems integration leadership. This position requires the ability to perform daily in an exciting and fast-paced, results oriented environment.

Principal Accountabilities (not limited to): As the Web Developer, the essential job functions include designing, documenting, building, and implementing e-Business applications in the following ways:

• Responsible for the design, development, and testing of application programs utilizing defined development processes, tools, standards, and methodologies.
• Maintain up-to-date documentation of newly developed systems and operations.
• Monitor web services ensuring consistent service reliability and timely problem resolution.
• Interface with key customers from all functional areas.
• Responsible for creation and maintenance of reporting solutions.
• Responsible for meeting/exceeding Customer Service Level Agreements.
• Responsible for ongoing support of the e-Business applications.

Position Qualifications (Professional):

• A positive and professional attitude.
• Excellent communication skills: presentation, written, and oral.
• Team player with a focus towards customer service.
• Ability to self-motivate and work in a dynamic environment.
• Automotive industries experience a plus.

Position Qualifications (Technical):

• Requires a four-year degree in Computer Science or Management Information Systems or 4+ years of I/T experience.
• Minimum 2 years of experience developing web applications.
• Experience in the design, implementation and tuning of applications utilizing HTML, CSS, JavaScript, CFML, XML, XSLT, Java, JSP, JDBC, web services, SOAP, web servers (IIS 5.0/6.0), application servers (ColdFusion 5 or MX).
• Experience developing ColdFusion applications using methodologies (Mach-ii, FuseBox, cfObjects) (Brian adds: these are frameworks, of course, not methodologies. We're using Mach-ii for new projects. CFC skills are a must!)
• Experience with SQL Server 2000.
• Experience in developing web applications in Macromedia Flex, Flash, AJAX, and/or ActionScript is a plus.
• Experience with ERP systems (Oracle, PeopleSoft, SAP, and JD Edwards) is a plus.

Key Performance Measures:

• Timely and successful delivery of application development tasks and projects.
• Meet/exceed customer service commitments.
• Effective training and support of business community.
• Effective coordination of projects and tasks across the I/T organization.

Matt Warzel
HR Recruiter
Dealer Tire
216-432-0088 x 2294

Remember the other day when I said I was working this weekend? That's actually not an isolated event. I have to work almost every weekend, some weekends more than others. I have to do promotions to production environments on the weekend. This past weekend, I worked more than normal. Among other things, I was working on this...

Although I announced that the BIG project went live way back in November, some business issues prevented the full release of that project. It was pushed back several times, but finally went live as of this weekend. As of yesterday morning, a pilot program started for approximately 25 of our retail customers.

Just to review, we released a new version of our extranet that turns our ordering system to also take on drop shippers, and allows new types of content. It's nearly a complete rewrite. Is it a big system? Our existing system processed approximately 80% externally, and, with our inside sales team, accounts for almost 100% of our sales last year (sorry, can't tell you how much), and the new version will take over as our retail customers are slowly converted over the next two years. The primary technology, for both systems, is ColdFusion.

I can only describe the old system as spaghetti, whereas the new system is harmony. Back in May, I was skeptical about developing in OO, but I wouldn't develop any other way today. And, although skeptical in the beginning, I have grown to love Mach-ii.

I am long overdue discussing some of the many techniques I used in this project, many design based, and I will try to talk about them here.

For now... I am off to work!

It's been a trying six months or so, but I am happy to report that the big Mach-ii project I have been working on at the office officially went live this morning. Hopefully, the 60+ hour weeks, 75 at the peak, will start to be reduced over the next few weeks.

Unfortunately, I cannot tell you a lot about the project. What I can say is that it's a B2B website that is designed to replace our existing site, and also has drop shipper functionality, so that we can sell products for other companies. It also completely ties into our mainframe systems for order processing and fulfillment. It's written entirely in Mach-ii, rewritten from the ground up, and is almost entirely OO (one legacy sub application was not entirely converted, but the rest of them were).

It's been a learning experience, that was not always smooth. In fact, there were times when it was quite bumpy. However, it has taught us a lot and the lessons learned are helping us redesign and streamline our development process.

There will be a lot more going on with this project. We have to make a few changes in version 2, and begin to port over other aspects of the business to the new site, but version 1.0 is out the door!

As suggested from last night's post, I am about to be knee-deep in Mach-ii. We're redesigning much of our main site at work to make it Mach-ii, as part of an initiative to support third-party products on our website. We're going to be rearchitecting our application to be Mach-ii from its existing hodgepodge of coding styles.

Mach-ii was selected as the framework over Fusebox. I am not really sure how much Model-Glue was evaluated. Unfortunately, I was not part of the selection process.

Since the new version is going to be incompatible with the existing website, there is going to be an unspecified amount of time to maintain two code bases, which is going to suck.