Wayne L Pendley wlp @ tirebiter.com

www.linkedin.com/in/wlpendley

SUMMARY

Skilled professional whose passion is helping people optimize their data, communications, teamwork and information technology.
Strong competencies are:

Customer Research – Cross-Team Collaboration – High-Impact Data Reports

Tactical/Strategic Balance – Simplifying Complex Information

· Excellent communicator adept in explaining complex concepts to diverse audiences with widely varying levels of experience

· 13 years in Customer Experience Research plus four years in Marketing and Project Management

· 10 years working with global teams to understand the changing needs of international customers

· Strong track record of quickly learning new technology, key market drivers and emerging trends

· Expert in extracting core themes from diverse data sets; trained in formal research design, analysis of qualitative and quantitative data, and multivariate statistics

· Broad experience in budget management, content management systems, decision support tools, RFP / RFQ development, staff recruiting, vendor selection and supervision

· Deep experience using customer data to deliver business insights and drive strategic priorities

· Expert in user-driven business strategies and leading international, matrix-managed teams.

Experience

Microsoft – Washington 2008 – 2009
The worldwide leader in software, services and information technology solutions
with annual revenue of $51.1 billion in 2007

Senior User Experience Researcher
Pioneered the user experience research and design discipline for Microsoft’s lab in Hyderabad, India. Collected and analyzed customer data to guide SQL Server priorities for the next product release.

· Taught the best practices of user-centered design to product engineers, managers and executives

· Led the redesign of multiple products’ information architectures, user interaction models and visual presentation layers

· Conducted research at customer events and in focus groups; translated the results into clear reports that enabled Product Managers to align feature plans with user priorities

· Delivered cross-team collaboration and customer data to SQL Server teams leading strategy, architecture, product management, marketing and globalization.

Citrix Systems Inc – Florida 2002 – 2007
Leading developer of application delivery software
with annual revenue of $1.4 billion in 2007

Usability Architect
Led planning, infrastructure, recruiting and requirements for Citrix software usability, serving over 180,000 customer accounts worldwide.

· Created the company’s first usability process, translating best practices of user-centered design into staged tiers that adapt to software development products of varying priority, resources and launch schedules

· Worked with software release managers to clarify the schedule time, budgets, headcount and skill sets required to deliver optimal usability work with high return-on-investment; developed algorithms and decision tools to ensure the company’s scarce design skills were deployed where most needed

· Launched new usability tracking milestones and embedded them within the core software development process; established quarterly quality assurance reviews to identify root causes of deployment issues; developed process improvements and led their action plans

· Designed Citrix’s first set of user interface standards including the core taxonomy, information architecture and content management system; supervised seven technical authors in the US and UK, and served as Site Editor

· Led development of team positions, recruiting, training staff and monitoring team products

· Designed, delivered, analyzed and reported multiple customer surveys using logic-branching web tools to minimize the survey time and speed data analysis

· Led planning, preparation and deployment of highly-acclaimed usability test labs at international customer conferences

· Developed budgets, equipment, employee training and vendor relationships to deliver regular cycles of usability testing during early phases of product design.

Dell –Texas 1997 – 2001
Global engineering and sales of high technology hardware and services
with annual revenue of $31.9 billion in 2001

Senior Project Management Consultant, Round Rock, TX 1999 – 2001
Core member of team that created Dell's first professional consulting services in Europe and Asia. Our Wintel server projects tripled Dell's market share in the US and raised Dell’s worldwide server rank from #4 to #2 in just four years.

· Designed and launched shared workspaces and document management for Dell's first offering of tiered product services, enabling teamwork across 34 Dell business units worldwide

· Created Dell’s first training course on e-commerce fundamentals for the international sales force; This web-delivered, self-training tutorial gave a critical boost to the Dell team as they began selling e-commerce solutions to larger, Fortune 100 customers

· Led redesign of user interfaces for 14 multi-layered intranet web sites and associated software tools, enabling Dell to sell new packages of consulting services with the hardware and software

· Authored dozens of technical articles, created new marketing materials and designed self-training web tutorials for the international sales teams

• Managed collaboration software budget, trained professional services teams and monitored team progress during the shared workspace pilot test.

Technical Marketing Manager, Round Rock, TX 1997 – 1999
Developed and managed the first technical partnership between Dell's server hardware group and Microsoft's software programmers

· Translated complex technical issues into business language accessible to upper management and the sales staff

· Empowered Dell’s new and less experienced sales force to sell complex email server systems by creating training packages, brochures and white papers that clarified the technical benefits of running Microsoft Exchange on Dell's hardware servers

· Designed, delivered and managed Dell's first workload-sizing and configuration software for server customers, leading all usability and quality assurance work; This sizing tool for Microsoft Exchange Server featured a highly intuitive design that required zero training time and was Dell's most powerful tool for selling Exchange software and Dell’s Exchange-optimized hardware servers

· Developed fail-safe server solutions for business continuity and disaster recovery; configured and delivered these systems to 28 partner sites across the US and UK for the customers’ evaluations

· Managed budgets for international server demonstrations and contracted software development.

IBM – North Carolina & Texas 1985 – 1997

Global vendor of high technology, hardware, financing, software and services

with annual revenue of $78.5 billion in 1997

Product Planner, Austin, TX 1992 – 1997

Pioneered IBM’s credibility as an Internet technology vendor by defining, negotiating and delivering the company’s first Internet server solutions on UNIX (AIX)

· Wrote eight, worldwide product announcements and negotiated consensus on their international release; led quality assurance reviews and their action plans

· Led the first joint marketing contract between rivals IBM and Hewlett-Packard through development, testing and product release across four IBM divisions in three countries

· Resolved all business planning, technical and organizational obstacles across multiple groups including Legal, Finance, Marketing, Packaging and Service Planning

· Designed, developed and managed IBM's first intranet collaboration web sites for 17 international teams

· Analyzed customer requirements for office software and managed over 100 confidential bids for early product delivery.

Usability Specialist / Human Factors Engineer, Raleigh, NC & Austin, TX 1985 – 1992
Led teams that prototyped, evaluated and redesigned user interfaces for business workstations and system administration software

· Led user interface design and evaluations for large software development projects (annual budget: $24 million); trained new team members and collaborated with quality assurance

· Performed competitive analyses, heuristic evaluations, field validation studies and corporate ethnographic research

· Led more than 40 usability tests; analyzed test data, reported findings and redesigned user interfaces accordingly

· Created, evaluated, refined and delivered over 20 Graphical User Interfaces for business software and system administration consoles

· Excelled at communicating usability engineering and design logic to key stakeholders who had no formal training in user interface work

· Created new method for measuring usability flaws in terms of financial impact, clearly illustrating their business priority to all resource managers

· Delivered cost-effective business plans that achieved usability goals while meeting schedule and budget constraints.

Education

MA, Experimental Psychology, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ

Research Assistant on US Forest Service grants that developed reliable statistical models to manage scenic beauty as a natural resource

BA, High Honors, Psychology, University of Hawaii at Manoa, Honolulu, HI
Elected to Phi Beta Kappa

Groups and Associations

Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), ACM Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction (SIGCHI), Human Factors and Ergonomics Society (HFES), Usability Professionals' Association (UPA)