| Job Title: | Director ECM Architecture |
| Company: | Open Text Corporation (aka OpenText) |
| When: | May 2003 – April 2006 |
| Location: | Based in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada with managerial responsibility for a large team in North America and a smaller, more senior team globally |
| Brief Description: | The Director of ECM Architecture performed two basic tasks: 1) manage the North American Global Services [NAGS] Technical Team, and 2) managed the global team responsible for setting the Architectural, Security, and Performance standards for OpenText's flagship product (of the day), Livelink. Leading the NAGS technical resources meant coordinating technical resources (consultants of varying skills and experience) based across North America with the requirements of the regional sales teams. The role also was responsible to ensure that there were adequate technical resources available in North America in a proactive fashion (meeting expected sales activities). As the worldwide "Thought Leader" for Architecture Security and Performance for OpenText, the Director of ECM Architecture managed and lead a virtual team of senior, global technical resources that created and maintained the development and deployment standards to be used by all of Customer Support, Global Services, and Development departments were expected to be used. While the role was built for so-called Enterprise Deployments, the work was leveraged for the more common and smaller departmental deployments. |
As with many of my roles at OpenText, this was created by me to meet a recognized need of a growing, global corporation. Because growth of the corporation came more from acquisition than from "organic" methods (increased sales of existing products), the skills of various architects, developers, and implementers was not sufficient to meet the needs of the much larger and more mature corporations that formed the core customer base. In 2003. With sales for the year at approximately $175million, the company primarily serviced corporations typically 100 times larger with defined architecture and security standards though OpenText itself was still being managed (from a technical perspective) by those more familiar with small and medium businesses.
While this deficiency has been long since aleviated, at the time all these departments required explicit guidelines for all of Architecture, Security, and Performance. As the Director of ECM Architecture, it was my responsibility to create, maintain, justify, and teach these standards to the larger OpenText global community. Many of these standards remain as the corporate standards in use today.
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