Curriculum Vitae: Dennis Robert Adams
Summary
Degree educated, Dennis has 23 years of IT experience, including defining IT strategy, leading teams, and implementing Technologies, Procedures, and Organisational Structures, with the objective of delivering cost-effective IT Production Infrastructure .
Equally capable of discussing current Technical topics with specialists, or presenting Strategic issues at board level, Dennis brings a broad range of experience and perspective to all issues he addresses. With his customer support experience, and previous responsibilities in a commercial environment, he also brings a strong customer-facing aspect to all of his work.
- From a Technical perspective, he has worked as a System Manager, DBA, and managed an IT Infrastructure Technical Strategy & Architecture team.
- His Commercial experience involved him as UK Business Manager for a small software house.
- In terms of Management expertise, he has implemented procedures and tools for tracking costing and activities, to ensure that team activity is aligned to overall objectives.
- He has a practical working knowledge of methodologies such as Prince 2, Rational RUP, and some exposure to ITIL.
Dennis sees himself as pragmatic consensus manager, who is able to work alongside multi-disciplined, multi-cultural teams, where he can be a proactive agent for improvement in IT Production, with an emphasis on a Strategic Approach and Quality Control.
Dennis Adams Associates Limited (2004-present)
Dennis Adams Associates Limited is the vehicle for Dennis' Consultancy Services. Currently just one person, the objective is to build up the service in the future. The vision of the company is to provide
- Management Support for IT Production Managers
- Auditing of client environments for "MOPS" (Metrics, Operational Tools, Processes and Procedures and Standards), gap analysis and recommendations and practical approach for improving the quality of IT Production.
- A skilled resource for Defining and Implementing IT Strategies.
- Mentoring on techniques for ensuring "Production readiness" of IT solutions.
Previous IT Achievements
BNP Paribas (2003-2004):
Working alongside the Business Project Office, established the Infrastructure Project Office function, with a dual remit for delivering relevant Management Reporting both to the Business Division and to Infrastructure Management. Established the Infrastructure Project Office. Responsible for deployment of tools, processes and procedures in order to ensure that Infrastructure project governance was seemless and transparent to the clients.Initated internal reviews of tools, processes, budget structures and controls in order to transition the Infrastructure division into a Client-Facing culture.
BNP Paribas (2000-2002):
Recruited and established team of 4 people, and established liaison between Paris Production, and Development Architects. Set up procedures for defining Production Standards and Certification Process for new Products. Managed a number of technical reviews of products (e.g. SAN Storage, Compaq/HP roadmaps, Enterprise Management-TNG, Java environments, Application Servers). Set in place best practice documents for choice of competing tools. Initiated the involvement of IBM AIX equipment as a standard UNIX solution within London. The Strategy & Architecture team remit included standards for Servers (AIX, Solaris, HP, TRU64, NT), Databases (Oracle/Sybase/SQL), Storage (EMC/Compaq), Middleware Infrastructure (Tibco, MQSeries), and Enterprise Management (TNG etc.). Part of the team’s responsibility was management of a central intranet database of standards and versions.
Paribas / BNP Paribas (1998 - 2000):
Assisted with the definition and implementation of a Capacity Planning and Monitoring function withing the Database Management Group. Including developement of business procedures, technical thresholds, and mechanisms for managing and monitoring multiple database servers in multiple locations. Part of a key multi-disciplinary team involved in addressing key business-critical performance issues with significant business systems. Assisted with Euro and Year 2000 implementation projects. Experience with DecUnix, HP, Sun and NT systems hosting Ingres, and Sybase. Monitoring tools including Ecotools and I/Watch as well as developing in-house capacity planning tools and techniques.
Common Sense Computing / Quest Software (1994-1998):
Overall responsibility for company growth within the UK, including marketing strategy, recruitment, budget control and cash flow. Implemented corporate in-house Procedures and Systems to ensure sales management, ordering, support procedures etc. Pre-Sales demonstrations and preparation of technical proof-of-concept. Consultancy on database housekeeping, capacity planning, as well as Common Sense's own tools, for customers and prospects. Preparation and presentation of training courses on Common Sense Computing tools. Experience in many flavours of Unix (HP, Sequent, Sun, IBM etc.), and different DBMS versions including Ingres 6.4, OpenIngres 1.n (including development work on the OpenIngres IMA), Oracle 7.n and Sybase 10.n.
Barclays Commercial Services (1990-1994):
Definition of Ingres database environment, configuration,, backup/recovery procedures. Definition of Operational Acceptance Criteria etc. Procedures for Database Housekeeping etc. Performance Monitoring & Tuning on Ingres with VAX/VMS. Theoretical Capacity planning for new VAX system. Developed & Conducted Benchmarking capacity tests.
Empire Paper Mill (1989-1990):
Direct Responsibility to the board for purchase, installation, configuration & implementation of sales/ordering system. Co-responsibility for developing corporate IT strategy for mill-wide system. Architecture was VMS/VAX with Corvision 4GL and Coda Financials. Introduced spreadsheets and basic wordprocessing office-wide.
Arbuthnot Factors (1983-1989):
Starting as a trainee programmer, doing software upgrades (VaxBasic), then design, business liaison. Progressed to become deputy to the Operations Manager, including callout for application software problems. Responsible for delivery of service level (uptime, responsetime etc.), and hardware and software capacity planning and installation/upgrades, backup/recovery. Implementation of new Networking system, including systems management, and documentation. Major upgrades to Hardware and Operating system versions. Installation & tuning of Corvision 4GL database system on VAX/VMS.
Other Achievements
Midland Bank plc (1979-1983):
Served in various branches of the Bank, eventually becoming Head of Securities for a team of 3 people, responsible for Mortgage and personal lending, securities (life assurance policies, etc.).
Professional Membership
- Chartered IT Professional Member of the British Computer Society, and ELITE Member.
- Associate of the Institute of Quality Assurance
- Member of the HP Users Group for many years.
- Oracle User Group Member.
Educational Details
IT Technology Courses:
J2EE Fundamentals. Rational ClearCase UCM. Rational Requisite Pro. Niku Administration, Sybase DBA. Open-Ingres features. Ingres DBA. VMS Systems Management. VMS Security. VMS Performance Tuning. Excel.
IT Processes/Management:
ITIL Foundation. Prince 2 Fundamentals. PKI Security Principles. Developing Performance Applications. Professional Programming.
Presentations and Papers:
Publishes Presentations & IT News Analysis on web site http://www.dennisadams.co.uk
Developed and presented Public Courses for Common Sense Computing / Quest Software on Database Administration and Tools for Ingres and Oracle.Published Presentations for Compuware, Ingres and Oracle Users Groups, and HP User Group.
Various Publications in trade magazines and software-vendor's magazines, including "Talking Common Sense", "Relate" (UK Oracle User Group magazine), "Computing", "IT Now" (British Computer Society).
Developer of the "MOPS" Methodology Framework approach for management of IT Production.
Institute of Banking Exams (1979-1983):
Part 1 and Part 2 exams, including Law, Economics, Accounting, Finance, Management Theory, and some Practice Papers.
Foreign Languages:
Business French (CFP and DELF access)
University of Keele (1976-79):
BSc. 1st Class Hons in Mathematics, Economics, Computer Science and Greek Studies.
Personal Details
- Born in the UK, educated in Kenya and the UK. Current UK Passport and driving license. Resident in North Harrow, Middlesex.
- Age 50, Married with 2 children. Enjoys family-based leisure activities, and very involved in local church in Harrow.
- Hobbies include Skiing (when opportunities arrive), Dinghy Sailing (RYA Level2, and currently learning racing) and an arm-chair interest in American Football. Amateur interest in military history, particular the Napoleonic and Ancient periods.