I am Alex, and less is more.
Every single day, I get out of bed with a passion for helping people be their best selves. A passion for making life easier, more inclusive and frictionless. I do that by growing and serving diverse, empowered teams of passionate humans, rallied around a cause.
Having spent the last 15 years learning how to parse big meaty problems into smaller issues in order to solve them with technology, I’ve honed in on the type of work I love. I write about technology, product development and other things when I do write. With two kids + wife, university and full time work, life always seems to get in the way.
Awards
At LIC I repaired substantial rifts between departments where those relationships later drove substantial technical transformation in areas of substantial risk and complexity. At FarmIQ I rebuilt the architecture function transitioning from architecture antagonistic to engineers to a practice focused on helping engineers do what they do best.
These significant cultural transformations drove technical success in both businesses.
At LIC I created new operating model concepts and ways of working that enabled business success not previously possible - my teams delivered a brand new product to market (Smart Wearables) in eight weeks, where previously the business could only ever deliver iterations on existing software in 10 weeks due to being shackled to a 10 week SAFE release train.
At FarmIQ the cultural changes I brought made it safe for engineers to work on the technical health of the product while introducing supporting capabilities that helped engineers deliver more change in six months then they had the previous year.
The technical success I delivered downstream of cultural success led to significant business success in the form of profit and revenue growth at LIC. FarmIQ made me redundant soon after my achievements there due to a failed capital raise - I was unable to stay long enough to observe results there.
For this work I was awarded the Emerging Young ICT Leader of the Year at the 2023 CIO Awards.
Projects
Professional
- Datapay - There is a good chance you’ve been paid by this software at some point in your life!
- FarmIQ - Software to help convert dry matter into milk, beef, lamb and wool as efficiently as possible
- MINDA Live, Unnamed Digital Platform - Agritech
- bnz.co.nz - Banking, Fintech
- Healthlink - Healthcare, Distributed Messaging Systems, Developer Experience
- Morepork.nz - eCommerce, Security
- Bigpipe - ISP / Telco
Personal
Long Talks
DevOps Days Wellington - Health is hard // Slides
Summer of Tech Bootcamp - DevOps: The Good Parts
Junior Dev Meetup - Deliberate, Continuous Career Progression
Lightning Talks
- Full Stack Day Auckland - The Role of a Software Developer