eDevelopment - Six years

Following completion of my Computer Science degree in 2000, I took on my first role working for a company in Wiltshire dealing with GPS management systems. The lack of career progression and IT job opportunities led me to leave and move to London. I arrived with a rucksack and suitcase and checked into a hotel for 3 weeks while I began my job search.

I was quickly offered a role here at Elsevier as a Software Developer working on the Chemweb website, which I did for 2 years. As I gained more experience, I was promoted to Software Developer 2 and stayed in this new role, learning and gaining more experience over the next few years. During this time I attended a number of IT training courses from Java to Oracle.

Eighteen months ago, I was chosen to be one of the Developers on an Agile Software Development project working on the Pathconsult website. The Agile technology offered a completely new way of designing and building software products and a great opportunity to work closely with the consulting firm.

After exposure to this project, my career really took off. I took over from the technical lead and was promoted to Senior Developer tasked with using the same Agile technology to build another website: radiologyCONSULT . Here I became responsible for recruiting, building and running the Radconsult team. Even though I had no experience of recruiting staff, I wasn’t fazed as I was quite certain about the type of people we needed to make this team work. Working with Agile requires a different skill set to the usual development roles, with softer skills being just as important, as communication is key to making the methodology work.

One of the key highlights to date was taking part in the Reed Elsevier EPiC conference in Barcelona, an annual conference which focuses on different topics of importance to the business. This year it was "Web 3.0: Technology to enable Business Transformation".

I went with a group of guys from the Agile project and we were tasked with demonstrating to the senior management team of Read Elsevier how an Agile project works. Delegates were given the opportunity to choose a website that they wanted us to build over the period of a week and then the challenge was on to build it. I was then asked to feedback to the conference on our development and how Agile actually works.

Prior to joining Elsevier, I would have found this environment very intimidating but experience here has increased my confidence ten-fold. Our VP of Product Technology – Reed Elsevier Corporate Technology, won the "Innovation" award for both this and other software initiatives he has introduced to help bring about change in the business.

Since the Agile philosophy has been introduced, the Camden IT office atmosphere has been amazing. The Agile teams have a blame-free, fun culture and have formed a close working relationship with our workstation partners. Elsevier has a very good working culture - one Friday a month we have drinks in the cafeteria after work and the flexible hours allow us to avoid the busy London rush hour.

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