The document discusses the experience and qualifications of an individual for a technical specialist role supporting an enterprise learning management system. They have 10 years of experience in eLearning/IT roles, including managing applications and systems for over 10,000 staff and 40,000 students. They are ITIL certified and have extensive experience in application support, project management, and working with third-party vendors.

1. I am a technical specialist of the enterprise-wide learning management system, Blackboard,
in the Student Systems Team in IT Services at the University of Manchester.
I hold both a degree in electrical and electronic engineering and have held an Application
Analyst role managing a teaching and learning focused application portfolio within a higher
education setting for 10 years.
During my 10 years of experience of working in the eLearning / IT area has seen me lead,
implement, deliver, administer and support eLearning applications, learning management
systems (LMS), and educational technologies to over 10,000 members of staff and 40,000
students. I have gained full working knowledge and experience of the ITIL approach to IT
service delivery, and have extensive Project Management experience.
I feel continual personal development is essential to being successful in any role. I’ve
learned and applied IT best practices, such as Kanban and ITIL, to enable me to ensure
business-centered solutions are delivered on time and with the highest available uptime. I’ve
led upgrade projects which has shown me to be highly competent at coordinating, managing
and mentoring elearning technologists and application analysts assigned to application
support and delivery.
I have strong problem solving skills and a highly analytical mindset, which I combine process
knowledge to use in incident resolution and problem management. I have a firm and active
commitment to finding solutions that fit business requirements. I am aware of the value of,
and the necessity for adaptability and approachability when functioning as part of a team. I
am highly motivated, responsible and capable of leading groups which includes interaction
with senior managers as well as junior colleagues.
I have managed a fast changing portfolio of applications, which have varied from self-hosted
in which I had responsibility for managing the application tier, having full access to the
operating system (root access). I have managed enterprise scale applications across a
life-cycle (Blackboard Vista) from the planning, through to operation and managing the
upgrade and maintenance processes through to the eventual decommissioning. I’ve also
have extensive experience dealing with 3rd party vendors who provide hosted (BbMH, Talis
Aspire, MapleTA), cloud solutions (Bb Collaborate) or standalone applications. I worked
closely with service providers (Blackboard, Maple TA) to ensure systems met the
requirements of the business, and that changes were authorised via an ITIL change
(RFC/CAB) process. I’ve written Service Design documents for 3rd Party applications, as
such I understand the issues that come with aligning internal and 3rd party processes and
how that can impact expectations (and SLAs) of users and business stakeholders.
I have worked for 10 years in 2nd/3rd line support roles using multiple ticket management
systems to manage and resolve incidents receiving many messages of positive feedback for

2. the excellent support I have provided. I have implemented a problem management log to
record workarounds and assign priorities based the ITIL urgency and impact matrix. This is
then used to assign work to team members so that problems can be investigated until the
root cause is found. I have full understanding of the importance of using, and practical
experience of using ITIL change management processes, this includes the raising of RFCs,
and liaising with CAB members.
I have extensive experience within the higher education sector and in particular pre-92
institutions. I take a lead in the review and selection of eLearning technologies and solutions
based on customer requirements which requires a good understanding of organisational
structures including faculties and schools. I’ve worked with different business functions to
develop solutions tailored to their requirements. For example, I worked closely with an
academic pharmacist to develop a virtual teaching environment, using a simple mobile user
interface, a .NET (VB/C#) application logic tier for pharmacokinetic simulation and a MySQL
database. I work with business functions to develop their reporting capabilities through use
of SQL queries and OpenDB.
I worked in a telecommunications testing division, developing automated test solutions to
ensure volume produced telecoms products adhered to strict standards . I was responsible
for both the design and development of the hardware (mechanical and electronic) and
software (C and C++). I followed a multi-stage design review process, which involved report
writing in the earlier stages and technical sign-off in the later stages. Each stage required the
sign-off of two more senior engineers.
I have a good understanding of ideas behind network topology and the hardware associated,
using this knowledge during my participation in operational working groups to input into the
decision making process for application distribution and online examinations.
My previous experience working in telecommunications test development focused on
hardware that sat between the telecoms backbone and enterprise networks.
Good customer service is at the core of what I bring to a role, I listen to the needs and the
problems of users and stakeholders. Then work to do whatever is necessary to resolve the
issues, and then to diagnose and identify the root cause. Creating a streamlined process for
faster handling of Service Requests was part of a Service Improvement Plan to improve
customer satisfaction by decreasing the handling times.
I am ITIL V3 Foundation qualified (86% pass mark) and am a member of the Chartered
Institute of IT.

3. I have a deep understanding of the importance of SLAs in ensuring all parties in a business
relationship have an understanding of what they can expect and what has to be delivered.
The SLA should be separate from the contract although the contract should refer to the SLA.
This separation allows for the SLA to be revised within the contract period, a perfect
opportunity is during quarterly review meetings.
I’ve planned, led and coordinated successful upgrade projects across areas of the University
(IT Services, Faculty elearning, Library and external suppliers) assigning tasks and
arranging for resource (people, infrastructure) to be made available. I’ve set deadlines that
give contingency in the event of technical or resourcing issues. Examples of this are the
upgrade of Blackboard in preparation for the Start of Year, installation of Collaborate Ultra
and integration of WileyPlus with Blackboard. These were particularly important project as
they brings many increases in functionality. For some of these we only become aware of the
requirement when timescales are tight which leads to a requirement for decision making to
assess the priorities of teaching against the risk to service stability. By using available
monitoring and testing data I have been able to successfully implement feature learning tool
enhancements on a tight schedule to ensure an excellent student experience is maintained
and wheer possible improved.
I have been involved with asset information data acquisition exercises, ensuring precise
details, ownership and relationship of the system architecture and the application stack are
entered into the CMDB.
I have a leadership position in a large voluntary organisation, where together with those
inside the organisation and with external partners we work to develop long term strategic
aims. My role is to motivate members of the organisation and to identify short to medium
term goals that can feed into those strategic aims.
In my Application Analyst role, I mentor fellow team members by identifying tasks that newer
members of the team have been able to take ownership of and use as learning exercises.
I’ve worked with 3rd party vendors to design test processes, and to ensure they have robust
disaster recovery technical solutions in place which feed into the UoM business continuity
planning for Blackboard.
I’m responsible for KPI reporting for Blackboard, this is measured against the strategic
targets on a monthly basis. To improve the accuracy and to enable a 24x7 monitoring
capability I have installed and maintain a monitoring application for the network and
Blackboard application. This gave the ability to highlight changes such as increased
response times and to then work with the 3rd party vendor to find resolutions before such
issues become apparent to the user base.