Software Development
Project Management & Leadership
Royal Caribbean Cruises
Tingstad.se
Tingstad.se is an e-commerce site for Tingstad Papper AB, one of the biggest Business-2-Business wholesalers of everyday commodities and packaging in Europe. Due to the visitors’ frequent purchasing pattern the site contains functionality much like an application, functionality to make the purchasing process as easy as possible for frequenting/all site visitors. Among the features, a customer can find
- Customer-based prices
- The possibility to, in an intuitive and simple way, create and manage lists
- Support for customer-branded and customer-specific products
- Immediate integration with Tingstad’s business system (Jeeves ERP System)
Position: Project Manager/Lead Developer
As the project manager/lead developer, I had to sell the project idea to top management, create the project plan, ensure that the project and the team stayed within time constraints, report progress to top management, organize and manage required consultancy services, manage feature requests from the business side, make final design and layout decisions, and create as well as communicate design and technical specifications to the project team.
Key Technologies
Design, Layout, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, jQuery, jQuery UI, ASP Classic, VBScript, MSSQL, IIS, XML, XLST
You can find Tingstad.se here
Fairshopping.se
Fairshopping.se aims at providing a platform and a community for consumers to send in complaints and feedback to companies all over Sweden. Due to the site’s simplicity and Fairshopping’s commitment to get a response back from the company, including tracking down companies’ customer representatives as a service to the complainers, the site attract over 50,000 unique visitors every month, a large amount considering the mere 9 million living in Sweden.
In 2010 Fairshopping 2.0 was released. Few changes were made to the everyday visitor/complainer and instead focus was put upon the ‘Company Manager’, a new set of features. As the name suggests, the Company Manager aims to help companies to better manage and analyze the complaints and feedback received.
Position: Project Manager/Lead Developer
In addition to handling extensive communication with the customer and other parties involved, such as former technical partners and under-consultants, I was also responsible for the change of technical platform which included a complete re-write of the code, a database move and a change of web host. Most programming work done by me consisted of fixing bugs, enhancing performance, dealing with technically complex features and making sure the result reflected the expectations of the customer.
Key Technologies
HTML, CSS, JavaScript, jQuery, jQuery UI, Flash, ASP Classic, VBScript, PHP, PHP Cake, MySQL, Apache
You can find Fairshopping.se here
Gracias.nu
Gracias.nu is a site complementing the Spanish-teaching book series with the same name. The site includes extra reading and listening material as well as exercises/games which is supposed to make it more fun to learn. The exercises/games features audio and visual content and includes input through both clicking, drawing and writing. The target audience is students in between age 12 and 15, whose schools the book is sold to.
Position: Project Manager/Technically Responsible/Technical Partner
Due to the lack of knowledge and financial resources with the customer I acted as a complete technical partner. This included, among many roles and tasks, being responsible for web hotel, rolling out new versions, advise on technical solutions, balancing desired functionality with cost, but also being responsible for any occurring problems and making sure a technically sound solution was constructed.
Because of the limited financial resources almost all of this project was outsourced to low-cost developers in India and Bulgaria. To make this work it was crucial that clear and detailed specifications were communicated to the external developers and that these specifications really reflected the customer's needs and desires.
Key Technologies
Design, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, jQuery, Flash, Flex, PHP, MySQL
You can find Gracias.nu here
T2BNordic.se
T2B Nordic is a medium-sized Business-2-Business reseller of electronics and electronic systems. In addition, many services such as installation and support is offered. The web plays still a very small part as a sales channel at T2B Nordic but the aim is to turn it into a key channel. The goal is to be able to distribute and manage the customer base more efficiently and to to offer at least the same quality to their customers on the web as by traditional channels, such as the telephone.
A new site was launched to help T2B Nordic achieve these goals. A new clean look was designed and put upon a Content Management System to help make it easy to update news feeds, texts, images, etcetera, without having to worry that the updates would mess up the design. The already existing e-commerce platform were better integrated with the site and got a very much needed touch up, of course aligned with the rest of the site.
Position: Co-Project Manager
I was mainly involved in the initial sales phase, advising on the best fit for the customer, and as an observer, overseeing the project to make sure everything were going according to plan.
Key Technologies
Design, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, jQuery, PHP, Joomla, MySQL
You can find T2BNordic.se here
PlanBBevakning.se
PlanBBevakning.se is a simple but not yet launched presentation website aimed at providing basic information such as a description of services, company history and contact information – the minimum information a customer expects to find online today. PlanB Bevakning is the fastest growing surveillance company in western Sweden and focuses mainly on civil services and store surveillance.
Position: Developer
Mainly involved with interactive parts of the site, including JavaScript and specifically jQuery coding.
Key Technologies
HTML, CSS, JavaScript, jQuery
The website has not yet been launched.
Education
Bachelor of Science
Bachelor of Science in Technology Management and Economics at Chalmers University of Technology. Specialization in Information Technology. Courses taken include:
- Object-Oriented Programming (advanced course), Databases, Algorithms and Data Structure, Programmed Systems, Software Engineering Fundamentals
- Industrial Marketing, Industrial organisations development, Management Information Systems, Logistics, Modeling and Simulation
Find official transcript of records here.
Chalmers University of Technology
Chalmers University of Technology is Sweden's leading and one of Europe's top universities for Engineering and Technology.
Find more information about Chalmers University of Technology here.
Thesis
"A First Look at the Industry of Company-targeted Social Media Tools"
Made in conjunction with a startup-project at Chalmers School of Entrepreneurship, one of Europe's leading entrepreneurship schools. The project aimed at developing a tool for management and monitoring of social media, much like Amazon-owned Radian6.
Find more information about Chalmers School of Entrepreneurship here.
Tingstad Papper
Responsibilities & Goals
E-commerce platform (turnover of about $50,000,000); web strategy, marketing, development and maintenance. Establishing the web as the primary channel in the company. Maintaining leading web presence position in the Scandinavian industry.
Tasks Performed
Initiated the start of a complete reconstruction and consolidation of websites and platforms, including the project management of various internal and external personnel. Launched education program for sales teams.
Achievements
Technology Used
HTML, CSS, JavaScript, jQuery, jQuery UI, ASP Classic, VBScript, MSSQL, IIS 6 & 7, XML, XLST, Google Analytics, Jeeves ERP System, Subversion, Adobe Photoshop
You can find more information about Tingstad and their e-commerce website here
Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd.
Responsibilities & Goals
Maintenance and restructuring of intranet platform. Performance reporting.
Tasks Performed
Administered and evaluated what information to add and remove from the intranet. Participated in rollout of a new balanced scorecard platform. This included traveling with the fleet for 3 months, presenting and discussing the balanced scorecard and bonus program with each ship’s top management.
Achievements
Software Used
Oracle Hyperion Performance Scorecard, Oracle Essbase, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft PowerPoint, Microsoft Word, Microsoft Visio, Microsoft Access
You can find more information about Royal Caribbean Cruises here (homepage) and here (brief facts)
Citro Webbdesign
Responsibilities & Goals
Start up and manage a web bureau which provides the owners with well-paid and rewarding work while attending college.
Tasks Performed
Sales. Management of several projects (10+) for several clients (5+). Development. Management of outsourcing. Accountancy.
Achievements
Technology Used
HTML, CSS, JavaScript, jQuery, jQuery UI, Flash, PHP, CakePHP, ASP Classic, VBScript, MySQL, MSSQL, Apache Web Server, IIS, XML, XLST, Google Analytics, Subversion, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator
You can find more information about Citro Webbdesign here
Chalmers Technology Consultants
Responsibilities & Goals
Head of Recruitment; 50+ employees/year to 6 different business divisions. Sales, ongoing IT projects, development of the IT business unit.
Tasks Performed
Established a new recruitment strategy. Managed and supervised several project. Trained and re-created the IT business unit.
Achievements
Technology Used
HTML, CSS, JavaScript, jQuery, PHP, CakePHP, MySQL, ASP Classic, VBScript, MSSQL, Apache Web Server, Subversion, Adobe Photoshop
You can find more information about Chalmers Technology Consultants here
Attentic (Encubator)
Responsibilities & Goals
The technical/software development of the product, including managing external team of developers. Alignment of customer need and direction of development and project.
Tasks Performed
Explored and evaluated technical possibilities, including integration with existing external products. Arranged and participated in numerous sales meetings.
Achievements
Technology Used
Python, Django, Google App Engine, Google Big Table
You can find more information about the Encubator, the incubation company for Attentic, here and Chalmers School of Entrepreneurship, the school that supported Attentic, here
References
Tingstad Papper
Royal Caribbean Cruises
Chalmers Technology Consultants
Citro Webbdesign
Project Management & Leadership
Every organization continuously deals with project management and leadership. How well a company performs in these areas is usually highly related to the level of success a company experiences. Throughout my life I have often had the opportunity to assume a leadership role, whether it’s a temporary role during a project or a more permanent position. Below are two experiences of mine as a leader:
Project Manager at Tingstad Papper
During my time as project manager at Tingstad Papper I managed a medium-sized web project for slightly less than a year. I faced many challenges throughout the project, among them handling a deficit in time available from the designer (a key resource), getting work done by other departments and handling being both project manager and the lead developer simultaneously. However, due to proper planning, clear communication with superiors and a solution-driven mentality of everyone involved, the project was successfully delivered on time and within budget.
IT Business Unit Manager at Chalmers Technology Consultants
As the IT Business Unit Manager, I was faced with the challenge of exceeding previous results while having an almost completely new team. Lots of focus was put into training and sales, while pushing a you-can-do-it mentality. A good balance between the risk of critical mistakes and help provided to junior consultants was attained by ensuring that every team member felt he/she had the capability to perform individually, regardless of challenge, while ensuring help was never far away. This resulted in great efficiency and exceeded targets.
You can find more information about these jobs under Work Experience.
Sales
Good sales is the key to any company’s success. I have found through experience that there are many types of sales: internal and external, immediate and indirect, fast and slow, etcetera, and I find it critical to be able to adapt my sales strategy to different situations. Below are a couple of examples of sales experiences I have had:
Slowly Getting the Customer Hooked (Attentic)
During this sale a long-term approach was taken to slowly hook a medium-sized broker. By having the customer involved with development and testing of the product, we made sure the customer got what it wanted and thus assured a safe sale.
Recurring Sales Due to Customer Management (Citro Webbdesign)
By careful management of the customer, a mid-sized Scandinavian reseller, Citro managed to get an increasingly larger part of the customer’s business, both in terms of responsibility and sales. By creating a good relationship, Citro became a part of the planning process and thus was assured to be picked for upcoming projects and contributed to the growth of projects in general.
Internal Sales (Tingstad)
During the startup phase of a relatively large project, I made every effort to find advocates among the company’s key managers to ensure that these managers would support and promote the project among other managers, as well as the CEO. As a result, I always had full support in getting the resources needed without having to go through unnecessary discussions with other managers.
Office Software
Although it can seem trivial today, skills in office software should not be underestimated. The looks of a presentation can many times be the difference between successful or failing sales and efficiency in these programs is the key to save time. I consider myself an experienced user in the below programs, which include everything from being able to put together beautiful charts to advanced macros.
Microsoft Office
Google Apps
Other Office Suites
Performance Management
As performance and strategy have become more and more vital to organizations, proper management of them has become necessary. It is important to drive the workforce to achieve increasingly better results, while making sure the organization develops in line with the overall strategy. As a company grows, a more structured and transparent way is required, which leads to the birth of the balanced scorecard.
A Balanced Scorecard Implementation Experience at Royal Caribbean Cruises
During my time at Royal Caribbean Cruises, I got the opportunity to participate in the roll-out process of their balanced scorecard (BSC). As with most roll-outs of BSCs, focus was put upon lessening the gap between top and bottom management and to get the whole organization more engaged in the performance management process. The outcome would be a more aware and aligned workforce, which would lead to an increase in the company’s overall performance. To achieve this, several sub-goals were set, including:
- Turn top-down communication into two-way communication
- Update metrics to better reflect and align with the overall company strategy
- Properly involve all directly affected individuals
The Result
The project received good response from everyone involved. Unfortunately, I do not have insight into the internal progress any longer and hence have no numbers to present.
You can find more information about the balanced scorecard here.
Marketing
I find that marketing, the strategy and idea behind how to reach customers, is among the most important activities in any company and the backbone in sales. In addition to studying industrial marketing and using my marketing knowledge as a base for any business activity, I have also done several marketing projects:
Marketing Plan - A Consulting Job for Processkontroll
During my time at Chalmers Technology Consultants, I participated in a marketing plan project for Processkontroll. The project focused on Processkontroll’s quickly expanding division for building natural gas stations; Processkontroll is the leading natural gas station developer in Scandinavia. The goal was to analyze and estimate potential investment scenarios and expansion rates.
You can find more information about Processkontroll here.
Market & Competition Analysis - My Bachelor's Thesis with Attentic
This thesis, titled “A First Look at the Industry of Company-targeted Social Media Tools”, was a part of the startup project Attentic. This thesis explored the conditions of Attentic’s market based on Porter’s Five Forces Model. Estimating market size and evaluating the competition were, among other things, part of the project.
You can find more information about Attentic here.
Operations & Logistics Management
In many businesses operations & logistics are areas where hands on, immediate changes can make the largest difference. At Chalmers University of Technology, both operations and logistics are two key areas of focus, due to the closeness of companies such as Volvo Cars, Volvo Trucks, Scania Trucks and Saab Automobile. I completed several classes related to these subjects:
Industrial Organization Development
This class provided knowledge and a set of tools geared towards how to manage complex issues, such as how to keep work force motivation and safety while trying to rationalize and streamline a production system. A real-world case of a poorly run production facility was included as a major project.
Production Management
This class mainly discussed design, management and improvement of the core business of any company, regardless of service or product orientation. Several case studies were included where questions were analyzed, i.e. where to locate a production facility for a global company.
Logistics
This class discussed key areas of any supply chain, such as key efficiency variables and flow of resources and information. The well-known Beer Game was taught as a part of the class.
Modeling & Simulation
This class aimed at providing full knowledge of how to use simulation as a method to analyze any part of a business. The examination consisted of a large simulation project of a medical center.
Business Development
Business development is the core of all management and should be the core of any business. It can take many forms and should be a continuous effort. During my six years of work experience, I have continuously embraced business development. I have had many opportunities to participate in these efforts, some of which were at Attentic and Chalmers Technology Consultants:
Business Development from Scratch at a Startup Company
As one of two co-founders, I took part in all aspects of the business development at Attentic. Greatest attention was put upon product development, but a lot of focus was also put into securing financing and a first sale. Our goal was to find market fit for our product by trying to find an interested customer as well as developing the product based upon where it would create most values for the customer. Meanwhile, we needed to make sure that we had a plan for materializing the product, which included finding developers and financing. It was determined that market fit and an initial customer were found and financing was almost secured, but unfortunately, the project was shut down due to different goals among the owners.
Business Development at an Established & Expanding Company
As a part of the management team of Chalmers Technology Consultants, I took lots of interest in the main issues at that time: stability, efficiency and growth. I promoted more structure, more efficient and streamlined processes, more training of new personnel, less re-invention of already established processes and, most importantly, more focus on key activities. Ideas that were, and are still, being implemented include: creating different job-offer templates, making internal projects non-mandatory and clarifying responsibilities within each business unit. The company has since grown with a 50% increase in turnover but a mere 20% increase in workforce.
Business Systems
Today, business systems massively reduce companies' need of employees as well as make things possible that one could only dream about fifty years ago. Despite this, business systems are usually very complex issues in every company, due to the fact that they determine the core processes of any company. In addition to a class in Information Systems in college, I have also come in contact with business systems through my work experience:
Oracle Hyperion Essbase & Oracle Hyperion Performance Scorecard
During my time at Royal Caribbean Cruises I used Oracle Hyperion Essbase & Oracle Hyperion Performance Scorecard extensively to create performance reports and to perform product life-cycle analysis. Essbase was used in order to pull data for reports and to provide a better understanding of anomalies. Hyperion Performance Scorecard was used in the role of administrator, meaning I was responsible for the setup as well as reporting.
You can find more information about Oracles EPM products here.
Jeeves ERP System
As a software engineer and project manager at Tingstad, I dealt with most parts of their installation of Jeeves ERP System. This included the design of new features, managing customizations done by external resources and providing support to other employees as well as the integration of the e-commerce platform.
You can find more information about Jeeves ERP System here.
Contact Me
Feel free to contact me regarding career opportunities, job inquiries, collaboration opportunities or anything that may come to mind. You can contact me through e-mail, phone, social media or by filling out the form below. Unless traveling, I always respond within 24 hours.
Derby: Authentication part #1
31st of July, 2012 05:14 PM
Long time no post! A lot has happened since my last blog post about Derby - a completely new query system is in place and not long after, support for access control and thus authentication! Because currently Derby/Racer is too buggy but a lot of people have requested and longed for an authentication example, I decided to release a sneak peak of what is to come when it comes to authentication!
Current status of authentication in Derby
Authentication depends on three different parts of Derby: The new session system/middleware, access control and partly, the new query system. The new query system is up and running and seems to be working pretty okay. "Minor" bugs are there but are also expected, so nothing new under the moon there. Access control seems to work similarly well as the query system - some "minor" bugs but nothing not expected. Sessions however, is working quite sketchy at the moment. Access control was introduced in 0.3.12, but since access control is more or less pointless without sessions, sessions were also sneaked in. However, it worked pretty badly. I only managed to get it to work for regular HTTP calls (i.e. not with websockets). A lot of the fixes Nate and Brian have made since the release of 0.3.12 have been related to fixing sessions and I am glad to say it is now working with websockets as well.
So what is the problem? Minor bugs and sessions are working? With sessions, some work is still left with making the session object available to templates. It is currently available as a variable named 'session' (i.e. use it in a fashion like this: '{session}'). The problem is that it is impossible right now to access any properties of the session object - it seems that because the session object is stored as a normal JSON object straight into the special case {session}, any traveling down the hierarchy of the session object does not work like it does with any Racer-based variable. In other words, it is currently not possible to access or do anything like this: {session.userid}, even if {session} looks like this: { ..., userid: 123, ... }.
There is at least one workaround. You can put the session object in a hidden element on your page and place it as a private path on your model object and then access the model object on that private path. This works as expected, however, when I have been working on my example app, I stumbled upon a bunch of other bugs with Derby, that made me decide I would rather wait for 0.3.13 than try to circumvent all of the bugs (which also lead me to do a very hacky implementation, which is not good as an example app anyway).
My example app
So, basically all parts of authentication works enough to start testing and playing around with it, despite Derby currently being in such a shape that it does not allow for a good implementation of it. I know there are many that have been waiting on authentication and cannot wait another minute until they would like to start playing around with it. So, in order to help you guys get started, I put up my initial work on an example app on GitHub. It is based upon the derby-example GitHub repository, specifically the directory example app. I put in on my GitHub account (cjblomqvist) under the branch authentication and you can find it here.
Note! It requires the very latest version of Derby and Racer in order to work properly, it is currently very few comments and there is currently very little functionality available. Basically you can login with root/root which will correctly log you in and give you access to the rest. If you try to go to :30004/people straight away (before logging in) you will end up with an error. If you do it after logging in, it will work. This currently works both with normal HTTP-requests (has worked since the release of 0.3.12) and with websockets (with the very latest version of Derby/Racer from GitHub). Be aware though that there are a bunch of issues with the rest of the app as well as all of the templates.
To summarize
So, I will not go into more details as I believe it will be a waste of my time right now. When more bugs are fixed and I finish the example app, I will write a better post about how to use and what to think about when using authentication (although my example app will be very trivial).
The Weblog
Citro Webbdesign
T2B
Sales
Education
Gracias
Chalmers Technology Consultants
Tingstad - Home
Chalmers Technology Consultants - Vision
Royal Caribbean Cruises - Navigator of the Seas
Tingstad - Foodservice
Gracias - Crosswords
T2B - References
Plan B - Logo
Chalmers - Avancez
Tingstad, Royal Caribbean Cruises, CTK, Citro
Office Software
Processkontroll
Sales Network
The Balanced Scorecard
Project Management - Gantt
Business Development - Startup
Lean Principles
Oracle Essbase - Oracle Hyperion Performance Scorecard
Microsoft Office
24 Hours
Management Skills
Tingstad
Tingstad Papper
Work Experience
Marketing
Carl-Johan Blomqvist
Portfolio
Operations & Logistics Management
Business Development
References
Plan B
Attentic
The Encubation Process
Chalmers Technology Consultants - Charm
Royal Caribbean Cruises - Hyperion Performance Scorecard
Gracias
Tingstad - Cups
Gracias - Memory
T2B - Electronics
Plan B - Logo
Chalmers School of Entrepreneurship
Business Systems
Porter's Five Forces Model
Attentic, CTK & Tingstad
Leadership
PDCA Cycle
Supply Chain Management
Jeeves ERP System
Microsoft Excel Charts
Tin Can Telephone
Archive
Components performance26th of March, 2021 Common traps26th of March, 2017 Project Management: The Idea/Feedback Bucket28th of July, 2014 Derby: Enhancements and bugfixes to Racer24th of August, 2013 Derby: Issue with array-like bindings in the view and workaround2nd of July, 2013 Derby: Authentication part #131st of July, 2012 Michael Nelson: 6 things I'm loving about Derby31st of July, 2012 CJBlomqvist.com/blog - now with RSS!31st of July, 2012 Makefile for optimizing css, js and index files10th of July, 2012 DerbyJS: refList-wrapper update27th of June, 2012 DerbyJS: Introducing the onrender method render event and its possibilities (Updated!)22nd of June, 2012 Re-launch of Blog!19th of June, 2012 Effective Usage of Mobile Orientation21st of September, 2011 Image Loading in Today's Browsers7th of September, 2011