My ideal Technical Project Manager position

James O. Herrick
Technical Project Manager
 

My ideal Technical Project Manager position:

I enjoy travel and the opportunity for customer facing meetings, and working to enable the vendors while rolling up my sleeves to help and get the work done, is how I operate. I thrive in the participation of all phases of a project's lifecycle with primary responsibilities on project planning, requirements and data gathering, facilitation of design and testing issues, and coordinating tasks involving dependencies within cross-functional teams.

I have enjoyed and want to continue to use my multitude of project experiences of translating IT and business needs into actionable and implementable plans. Thus I have the experience of pulling together teams of partners, vendors and consultants and recognizing any project deficiencies and where to implement effective solutions. I truly see the value of travel for on sight oversight, project management, site assessment, logistic coordination, vendor coordination. Pre-planning is where some projects can fall short and as such the site assessment with logistic and technical review of existing hardware is the key to a fluid completion. This is what I enjoy and want to continue to do to expand in my career.

James Herrick's CV

James O. Herrick
Technical Project Manager
 



James Herrick
Senior Technical Project & Solutions Manager at NetDirect Systems
james.o.herrick@gmail.com

Summary
I am passionate about presenting and overseeing technology solutions that solve business challenges; therefore it is imperative that I can directly contribute to the success of a team as a Senior Technical Project and Solutions Manager. My diverse skill set and services knowledge would enhance the operational strategies offered internally and to the customer base of many types of dynamic companies. I have a multitude of project experiences translating IT and business needs into actionable and implementable plans. I have experience pulling together teams of partners, vendors and consultants and recognizing project deficiencies and where to implement effective solutions.

Specialties:
Technical Project Management | Service Development | Systems Integration | Product Management | Vendor & Channel Relations | Systems Architect | Pre Sales & Post Sales Support | IT Operations Management | Operational on-site Training | Data Center Relocation | vShere Managed Cluster | Service Management & Delivery

Experience:
Senior Technical Project & Solutions Manager at NetDirect Systems LLC
January 2012 - Present
Technical Project management experience with translating technology and business requirements into
actionable plans and implementation results, with service development and planning. Coordinated service partner relations and management while engaged on multi-level service offerings.
Technical Project and Services pre-planning and on-site implementation of comprehensive design and datacenter integration projects.
Provide Technical Project Management and direction while overseeing infrastructure transitions, technology and A/V integration to NCSU Institute for Emerging Issues in the Jim Hunt Jr. Library. Coordinated with and served as single point of contact to NCSU Office of Information Technology departments.
Provided Technical Project Management and direction to US Army/HP Federal, Interior Systems Inc., Bass Pro Shops and eCommerce.
Provide SME solutions and integration knowledge as well as pre & post sales support to the nationwide account management team.
Provided Operational on-site training to commercial customers as part of "turn key" projects across the country.
Provided complex system designs and integration of over 300 HP Blades and Enclosures as well as ISS servers to military operations and commercial enterprise customers.
Supervised corporate Information Technology operational direction and maintenance.
Administer and maintain corporate and development Microsoft & VMware environment of Microsoft AD, Exchange 2003/2007, VMware 4.x cluster and HP SAN storage.
4 recommendations available upon request

Senior Integration and Solutions Manager at NetDirect Systems LLC
July 2004 - September 2012
Senior Integration and Solutions management experience with translating IT and business requirements into actionable plans and implementation results, with service development and planning. Coordinated service
partner relations and management while engaged on multi-level service offerings.
Technical Project and Services pre-planning and on-site implementation of comprehensive design and
datacenter integration projects for Interior Systems Inc., Bass Pro Shops, and eCommerce Inc.
Provide SME solutions and integration as well as pre & post sales support to the nationwide account
management team.
Supported internal Government practices with pre sales, design and demonstration opportunities on product offerings aimed at DoD/US Army and translating those business needs into technology solutions. Provided Technical Project and Product management of intricate design and quality.
Provided on-site training to US Army personnel across the country focusing on our unique solution,
Microsoft Technologies, blade technologies and HP server equipment.
Provided Operational on-site training to commercial customers as part of "turn key" projects across the
country.
Provided complex system designs and integration of over 300 HP Blades and Enclosures to military
operations and commercial enterprise customers.
Supervised corporate Information Technology operational direction and maintenance.
Administer and maintain corporate and development Microsoft & VMware environment of Microsoft AD, Exchange 2003/2007, VMware 4.x cluster and HP SAN storage.

Technical Project Manager/ Senior Solutions Engineer at IBM/Intervise Consulting
August 2001 - July 2004
Provide Technical Project Management for IBM PSG to their customers, such as Dow Chemical, Israeli Ministry Of Defense and Fortune 500 companies.
Developed and validate solutions for their Fortune 100 Customers.
Managed the technical process between the internal departmental stages for custom deployment projects.
Documented first and second stage phase custom configuration procedures for IBM PSG manufacturing.
Provided configuration and product consulting to IBM commercial and educational customers.
Provided detailed training to new engineers, on procedures, protocols, and technical aspects of the high level projects.

Senior Solutions Engineer/ Operations Specialist at Interpath Communications
December 2000 - May 2001
Microsoft Server operations Administrator for data center environment.
Provided critical operational assistance to hosted and CoLo customers.
Datacenter management and maintenance, and first line on-call support for NOC.
Responsible for entire enterprise server systems and hardware maintenance.

Senior Solutions Engineer at BB&T Bank
May 1999 - December 2000
Novell administration and Microsoft domain administrator for Branch Automation.
Provided operational support to SE region branches.
Coordinated support to 3rd party operations support vendors.
Microsoft and Novel datacenter management and maintenance and on-call support.
Responsible for entire enterprise server systems and hardware maintenance support.
Evaluate, design and implement server solutions.

Microsoft Network Project & Solutions Engineer at Duke Engineering & Services
April 1995 - May 1999
Lead Microsoft Network Project & Solutions Engineer as wel as integration professional of the Microsoft domain and server infrastructure.
Primary Domain Administrator providing direction for corporate server support team.
Managed conversion from Novel 3.x server infrastructure to Microsoft domain model and design.
Corporate support team lead providing direction to desktop and application issues and resolution.
Responsible for entire enterprise server systems and hardware, including desktop support.
Evaluate, design and implemented system solutions.
Administered I/T operational direction and support.

Senior Solutions & Project Engineer at Bannex Corporation
January 1993 - April 1995
Solutions & Project Engineer over the "personal computing solutions" team to First Union National Bank headquarters. I was able to translate technical projects and business requirements into actionable plans and implementation results.
Senior Solutions Engineer to the First Union National Bank executive team for computing solutions.
Point of sale troubleshooting and maintenance to Fortune 500 retailers.

Courses:
Introduction to HP Insight Control 6.0
HP Blade Solutions I: Planning & Deployment
HP Blade Solutions II: Automated Provisioning &
Management
HP StorageWorks P4000 SAN Install & Configuration
HP TSG Partner Symposium

HP/Arrow Storage Boot Camp: HP StoreOnce & P40000

Certifications:
HP Blade Technical Advocate Hewlett Packard

Projects:
Infrastructure Upgrade Project: Interior Systems Inc. Milwaukee
January 2011 to June 2012
I provided multi-skilled Senior level Technical Project Management to a Interior Systems Inc. a national
retail and food services interior design and manufacturer in Milwaukee, WI. They required a complete
infrastructure upgrade that included ISS servers, Enterprise class storage and Enterprise network equipment re-design and on-site design and integration services. I was able to provide a multi-skilled approach to the Technical Project Management tasks and identify any project deficiencies and  implement effective solutions.
Equipment integrated:
• HP Proliant DL380G7 x8
• HP Proliant DL360G7 x2
• HP LeftHand P4500 x2
• P4000 x2
• HP Networking J series modular switches x2
Project scope:
• Site survey and technical pre-planning
• Preconfiguration services in Integration Center
• On-site implementation services and Technical Project Management
• Operational training on-site

HP C7000 and HP InsightControl Integration Project: Bass Pro Shops
April 2011 to April 2011
Bass Pro Shops, a national outdoors retailer and distributor in Springfield, MO wished to move away from IBM BladeCenters and towards HP C7000 and Insight Control Environment.
Equipment integrated:
• HP C7000
• HP BL460G7 x8
• HP Insight Control for Windows Insight Control for linux
Project scope:
• Installation services for C7000 and operational training
• Installation services for Insight Control Environment on Windows and RedHat

HP C7000 and EVA4400 Integration: eCommerce Inc.
April 2009 to June 2009
National webhosting and eCommerce Inc. in Columbus OH needed the density of the C7000 and storage
flexibility of the HP EVA in a custom CentOS environment formerly on Dell rack servers.
Equipment:
• HP C7000
• HP BL260G7 x 16
• HP EVA 4400
Project scope:
• Demo installation of C7000 and EVA4400 at software development site in Reston VA.
• Full start up service for C7000, Blades and EVA4400.
• Operational training on-site.

Technology Relocation Project: NCSU Institute for Emerging Issues
September 2012 to Present
I am providing multi-skilled Senior level Technical Project Management to the Institute for Emerging Issues in the Jim Hunt Jr. Library on the NCSU Centennial Campus. I am effectively managing the technology relocation project tasks with NCSU Office of Information Technology. I designated the proper port configuration map and provided the completed plan to NCSU OIT. I facilitated up to date modifications to the Lucent QIP systems to provide TCP/IP allocation.

Audio/Video Installation Project: NCSU Institute for Emerging Issues
September 2012 to Present
I am providing multi-skilled Senior level Technical Project Management to the Institute for Emerging Issues in the Jim Hunt Jr. Library on the NCSU Centennial Campus. I am effectively managing the audio/visual installation project with AVI/SPL, 1220 Exhibits, Second Story Design, Sexton, Skanka Construction and NCSU CMP office.

Mobile Tactical Server Suite to US Army/HP Federal
July 2004 to March 2011
Provided complex system designs and integration of over 300 HP Blades and Enclosures to the unit level military operations customers. Provided pre & post design oversight and demonstration opportunities on product offerings to the DoD/US Army and translated those operational needs into technology solutions.
Provided Technical Project and Product management of intricate design and quality.
Provided on-site training to US Army personnel across the country focusing on our unique solution,
Microsoft Technologies, blade technologies and HP server equipment.

Skills & Expertise
Technical Product Management (Advanced, 15 years experience)
Integration (Advanced, 15 years experience)
Reseller/VAR Networks (Advanced, 8 years experience)
Project Planning (Advanced, 15 years experience)
Strategic Consulting (Intermediate, 8 years experience)
HP Server Hardware (Advanced, 15 years experience)
Vendor Relationships (Advanced, 8 years experience)
Vendor Management (Advanced, 10 years experience)
Channel Partner Relations (Advanced, 8 years experience)
Data Center (Advanced, 10 years experience)
Pre Sales Support (Advanced, 8 years experience)
Post Sales Support (Advanced, 10 years experience)
System Architecture (Advanced, 15 years experience)
System Deployment (Advanced, 15 years experience)
System Integration (Advanced, 10 years experience)
Service Delivery (Advanced, 20+ years experience)
Service Development (Advanced, 10 years experience)
Service Management (Advanced, 10 years experience)
Consulting (Advanced, 8 years experience)
Solution Architecture (Intermediate, 10 years experience)
Server Administration (Advanced, 10 years experience)
HP Storage (Intermediate, 8 years experience)
Project Management (Advanced, 15 years experience)
VMware Infrastructure (Intermediate, 6 years experience)
IT Operations Management (Intermediate, 15 years experience)
Microsoft Technologies (Advanced, 15 years experience)
HP Proliant (Advanced, 10 years experience)
vSphere (Intermediate, 6 years experience)
LeftHand (Intermediate, 4 years experience)
Ubuntu (Intermediate, 6 years experience)
Microsoft Exchange (Intermediate, 3 years experience)
HP Insight Manager (Intermediate, 8 years experience)
HP Procurve Networking (Intermediate, 8 years experience)
VAR (Advanced, 8 years experience)
Technical Presentations (Intermediate, 10 years experience)
Pre-sales
Lutron Quantum
Alcatel-Lucent VitalQIP

Education
UNC Greensboro
Bachelor of Arts (B.A.), Communication and Media Studies, 1985 - 1990
Activities and Societies: Lambda Chi Alpha
Greensboro Day School
College Prep, High School, 1980 - 1985

4 people have recommended James
"James and I worked together on the Lan-in-a-Can project for a DoD customer. James was hard working and easy to work with. He ensured the project moved forward quickly. James and I have remained friends ever since."
— Scott Ostrum, Solution Architect, Hewlett-Packard, worked directly with James at NetDirect Systems
LLC

"I worked with James at NetDirect Systems. He is a strong engineer with very good customer relationship skills. He accomplishes tasks and exceeds customer expectations. I highly recommend James whenever a superior performance is critical."
— Bill Villa, Sales, NetDirect Systems, worked directly with James at NetDirect Systems LLC

"I had the valuable opportunity to work with James at NetDirectSystems. Both James and myself held
multiple roles within the oraganization at the time. But we shared a role in which we supported the internal government practice. In this role, our focus at the time was to provide all facets of support at a product offering aimed at the DoD, specifically the US Army. Our responsibilities included pre-sales work, meeting with high ranking goverment officials, demonstrating our products and understanding their needs and translating those business needs into technology solutions. We also provided on-site training to US Army personnel. This training while aimed at our unique solution, entailed training Army personnel on Microsoft Technologies, blade technologies and HP server equipment. We also engineered and implemented solutions across the country at military posts. James was an invaluable asset to me and to our company. He has that unique blend of technical skills, high level communication skills, and business accumen, that enables him to "truly" solve customer issues. I understand that his skill set and experience has only grown since we last worked together. If I had a position for a high level senior systems engineer, I would hire James in a heartbeat. I'm happy to be a personal and professional reference as well so please feel free to contact me."
— Bradley Stokes, IT Manager/Systems Architect/Consultant/Trainer, NetDirectSystems, worked with
James at NetDirect Systems LLC

"James has always displayed a strong work ethic, uncompromising customer service skills and a strong desire to exceed expectations as well as advancing his own knowledge. James’ outgoing nature and his ability to ask for assistance when needed is a tremendous strength. While James has a very strong technical background and ability, these traits are what help him build and maintain strong relationships with his coworkers and customers. Overall, I would not hesitate to work the James again in the future."

— Marty Bauer, IT Infrastructure Architect, Sauer-Danfoss, worked directly with James at NetDirect
Systems LLC

James O. Herrick
Technical Project Manager
 


A Technical Project Manager is paramount for any technical project no matter how big or small. I came across this from TechRepublic.

Three strengths of a technical project manager

By Shannon Kalvar

April 14, 2007, 5:25 AM PDT

A technical project manager straddles the line between technical savvy and organizational skill.  As I mentioned in my earlier blog, this combination makes him prone to the same kinds of psychological traps which plague developers and infrastructure technicians.  It also gives them considerable and unexpected strengths a skilled manager can leverage to accelerate project completion and improve project quality. 1) A technical project manager knows when to wait
The hardest thing to do when working with technical problems is to know when to hold'em and know when to fold'em.  He knows when to walk…ahem.  Sorry, flashback. It's tempting, especially in what looks like a crisis from one or more angles, to put pressure on the technical team for "answers" or "solutions".  However, a good TPM knows from his own experience just how dangerous that kind of pressure can be.  It can take a good technical team from overburdened to completely useless and send even experienced problem solvers deep into denial.  His own times spent hacking together code on release day or keeping servers up with bailing wire and good intentions allows him to judge when to push and when to sit back and wait. 2) A technical project manager knows when to move
Sometimes waiting for the team to come up with the solution, or for the paperwork to get finished, or for good sense to assert itself is the surest way to failure.  There are times when the people and the solutions line up just right, and someone needs to make the decision to move.  That person is usually the technical project manager, who draws on a long history of understanding technical systems and the people who work on them to make the right call. Unfortunately knowing when to wait and when to move is as much an art as it is a science.  It comes from being able to read the system, the environment, and the team and combining that information into a view of the tactical situation.  Unfortunately, this ability to read the tactical situation does come at the price of occasionally obscuring the TPM's view of the greater picture. 3) A technical project manager can build a technical team
A project manager generally gets decent work out of his team.  However, he rarely understands the ins and outs of the technical mindset.  He doesn't talk the same way, use language the same way, or have the same deep seated addiction to puzzles and intellectual contests which make technical teams so much fun to work with.  A TPM, on the other hand, is a technical person.  He honestly cares about things like optimizing code, processor architecture, and the latest developments in the Linux world. More importantly, the TPM knows what it's like to work as an IT person in today's business world.  This knowledge allows him to both help the technical team perform well and to translate the team's needs into language a business people can understand. In the next few weeks I'm going to explore these concepts a little bit more.  I've got some heavy-duty thinking to do about the translation of business interactions into technical direction which, if I can properly articulate it, might actually be useful at some point.

My background

James O. Herrick
Technical Project Manager
 

Experience

Senior Technical Project & Solutions Manager

January 2012 – Present
Technical Project management experience with translating technology and business requirements into actionable plans and implementation results, with service development and planning. Coordinated service partner relations and management while engaged on multi-level service offerings.
Technical Project and Services pre-planning and on-site implementation of comprehensive design and datacenter integration projects. 
Provide Technical Project Management and direction while overseeing infrastructure transitions, technology and A/V integration to NCSU Institute for Emerging Issues in the Jim Hunt Jr. Library. Coordinated with and served as single point of contact to NCSU Office of Information Technology departments.
Provided Technical Project Management and direction to US Army/HP Federal, Interior Systems Inc., Bass Pro Shops and eCommerce. 
Provide SME solutions and integration knowledge as well as pre & post sales support to the nationwide account management team. 
Provided Operational on-site training to commercial customers as part of "turn key" projects across the country. 
Provided complex system designs and integration of over 300 HP Blades and Enclosures as well as ISS servers to military operations and commercial enterprise customers. 

Senior Integration and Solutions Manager

July 2004 – September 2012 (8 years 3 months)
Senior Integration and Solutions management experience with translating IT and business requirements into actionable plans and implementation results, with service development and planning. Coordinated service partner relations and management while engaged on multi-level service offerings.
Technical Project and Services pre-planning and on-site implementation of comprehensive design and datacenter integration projects for Interior Systems Inc., Bass Pro Shops, and eCommerce Inc. 
Provide SME solutions and integration as well as pre & post sales support to the nationwide account management team. 
Supported internal Government practices with pre sales, design and demonstration opportunities on product offerings aimed at DoD/US Army and translating those business needs into technology solutions. Provided Technical Project and Product management of intricate design and quality. 
Provided on-site training to US Army personnel across the country focusing on our unique solution, Microsoft Technologies, blade technologies and HP server equipment.
Provided Operational on-site training to commercial customers as part of "turn key" projects across the country. 
Provided complex system designs and integration of over 300 HP Blades and Enclosures to military operations and commercial enterprise customers. 
Supervised corporate Information Technology operational direction and maintenance.
Administer and maintain corporate and development Microsoft & VMware environment of Microsoft AD, Exchange 2003/2007, VMware 4.x cluster and HP SAN storage.

Technical Project Manager/ Senior Solutions Engineer

August 2001 – July 2004 (3 years) 

Provide Technical Project Management for IBM PSG to their customers, such as Dow Chemical, Israeli Ministry Of Defense and Fortune 500 companies. 
Developed and validate solutions for their Fortune 100 Customers.
Managed the technical process between the internal departmental stages for custom deployment projects. 
Documented first and second stage phase custom configuration procedures for IBM PSG manufacturing. 
Provided configuration and product consulting to IBM commercial and educational customers.
Provided detailed training to new engineers, on procedures, protocols, and technical aspects of the high level projects.

Senior Solutions Engineer/ Operations Specialist

Interpath Communications

December 2000 – May 2001 (6 months) Morrisville, NC

Microsoft Server operations Administrator for data center environment.
Provided critical operational assistance to hosted and CoLo customers.
Datacenter management and maintenance, and first line on-call support for NOC.
Responsible for entire enterprise server systems and hardware maintenance.

Senior Solutions Engineer

BB&T Bank

May 1999 – December 2000 (1 year 8 months) Charlotte, North Carolina Area

Novell administration and Microsoft domain administrator for Branch Automation.
Provided operational support to SE region branches.
Coordinated support to 3rd party operations support vendors.
Microsoft and Novel datacenter management and maintenance and on-call support.
Responsible for entire enterprise server systems and hardware maintenance support.
Evaluate, design and implement server solutions.

Lead Microsoft Network Designer/Senior Solutions Engineer

Duke Engineering & Services

April 1995 – May 1999 (4 years 2 months) Charlotte, North Carolina Area

Lead Microsoft network designer and integration professional of the Microsoft domain and server infrastructure.
Primary Domain Administrator providing direction for corporate server support team.
Managed conversion from Novel 3.x server infrastructure to Microsoft domain model and design.
Corporate support team lead providing direction to desktop and application issues and resolution.
Responsible for entire enterprise server systems and hardware, including desktop support.
Evaluate, design and implemented system solutions.
Administered I/T operational direction and support.

Senior Solutions & Project Engineer

Bannex Corporation

January 1993 – April 1995 (2 years 4 months) Charlotte, North Carolina Area

Solutions & Project Engineer over the "personal computing solutions" team to First Union National Bank headquarters. I was able to translate technical projects and business requirements into actionable plans and implementation results.
Senior Solutions Engineer to the First Union National Bank executive team for computing solutions.
Point of sale troubleshooting and maintenance to Fortune 500 retailers.