Objective

What I can do for you:

• Understand ill-defined and nascent markets and develop business plans, product plans and market analyses.


• Take raw technologies and turn them into award winning, profitable products and services.


• Design and specify new software products, customer premise appliances and hosted services with exceptional ease of use and quick adoption rates.


• Attract, recruit, retain talented technical teams of exceptional experience and capabilities.


• Perform general management and executive roles including directly leading engineering, technical and product marketing staffs to deliver outstanding products on a strict schedule.


• Guide Software Engineering Management activities including policies and procedures, tools and technical training. Lead distributed and outsourced technical teams


• Train members of all functional areas in the SWIFT design method for generating easy to use products and services.
• Lead graphic artists, designers, writers and other creative team members including outsourced talent.


• Manage product and service roll outs and market introductions; develop compelling stage and booth tradeshow demonstrations, product sales training, slide decks and scripts ensuring product success.

Summary

• Attracted industry talent - built, motivated and managed engineering teams, small and large (30+).


• Led engineering and product marketing in numerous start ups and in large mature companies, with profit and loss responsibilities and annual departmental budgets exceeding $3M+.


• Developed innovative approaches to complex technical, marketing and organizational issues.


• Created strategies to capitalize on emerging technologies; pioneered new markets such as web conferencing.


• My products succeed because I focus design on rewarding user experiences.


• Designed products and demonstrated in-depth knowledge of a variety of software markets: mobile networking, web conferencing, web applications, streaming video, business analytics, social networking and group productivity applications, collaboration and coordination tools, email, GUI, CASE, and SCM.


• Completed complex engineering projects on schedule. Rescued and turned around late projects.
  
• Wrote marketing, product and business sections of S1 and IPO road show materials. Developed many business plans for start-up fund raising.

Experience

Founder and President

• Founded company, developed business plans, product plans and product designs, led fund raising activities.
  
• Wrote and filed for patents on new products.
  
• Recruited executive team, plus world class board of directors and advisors.
  
• Identified firm in a related space and developed a joint venture/ merger-acquisition plan.
  

Mobile Everywhere Mobile Network Access and Security
VP Product Marketing San Jose, CA

• Co-founded company, developed business plans, product plans and product designs.
  
• Recruited key executives: including VP of Sales/Business Development and VP of Engineering.
  
• Developed Innovative Service Business Model aimed at Small to Medium size businesses.
  
• Led company name selection, Corporate ID, and positioning efforts; developed marketing materials.
  
• Developed initial product plans, led development of demo (debuted at Mobile Showcase 2004).

TailWind Solutions Compliance Mobile Document Management
Product Marketing San Mateo, CA

• Developed product demonstration, accompanying video and stage script for debut of product at DEMO 2004.
  
• Developed recommendations for next generation product designs and implemented the SWIFT design process.
  
• Researched target industry (Pharmaceuticals) and developed bottoms up forecasts of the Total Available Market.

2004-2005 Intuit Tax Software
Sr. Engineering Manager San Diego, CA

• Led new team creating new Runtime platform and Tools for Tax Developers, expected to increase productivity of tax developers 2-10X authoring TurboTax, SnapTax and other tax products.
  
• Inspired radical improvements in usability and accuracy for both developers and end users, including automated derivation of English text explanations from tax calculations.
  
• Introduced Lean Agile Slice and Extreme Programming Methods, dramatically reducing release times.

2002-2003 SeeItFirst Fremont, CA
Vice President Product Development Streaming Video Applications

• Managed engineering teams, product marketing, and program management.
  
• Developed business and product plans, pricing, collateral and presentations.
  
• Designed an innovative mobile video field collaboration product that can work over cellular bandwidth.

• Grew team from 4 to 15 engineers (including many Sr. Algorithm developers from Stanford and LNLL) in less than six months and completed development of first product on schedule in twelve months.


• Developed business and product plans, pricing, collateral and presentations, and supported strategic partnerships.

• Working directly with the CEO, led design of the company's Conference Center now Microsoft Live Office.
  
• Ensured a satisfying whole product experience for all stakeholders in customer organizations.


• Participated on staffs of Engineering, Marketing and Sales and developed customer profiles and scenarios of use, sales and marketing presentations, marketing collateral, specifications for new product features and user interface requirements.


• Established the Usability Test organization, and developed Usability test plans.


• Developed a strategy for a new sales channel, involving partnerships with telecom companies.


• Changed sales model from standalone perpetual product sales to annual hosting service.


• Divided original generic product into two targeted products that had faster start-up, quicker learning time, and were more targeted to specific tasks performed.


• Designed enhancement that cut initial slide load time over a 28.8 modem from 7 minutes to 4 seconds.


• Developed key marketing, product and business sections for S1 and IPO road show presentations.

• Project managed the first customer release, tracking new development tasks and bug fixes, developing specifications documents, etc. Led the Quality Assurance team. Led redesign of the company's product.


• Managed the Creative Services Team, which developed the graphics and textual material that is used in the product, as well as created methodology based content.


• Led development of the first content title, Life Cycle Selling, based upon Geoffrey Moore's books: Crossing the Chasm, and Inside the Tornado, and Rick Brown's seminars: Life Cycle Sales.

• Recruited a team, designed and developed the Briefing Associate, a speech recognition powered Web-based artificial intelligence enabled system for DARPA for in person and remote, live and delayed, multimedia crisis action briefings.


• Developed the Sales Associate, a rule bases system that acts as an unattended sales assistant for Web based Sales transactions. Initial system included an on-line wine retail system with a database of over 750 selections that advised customers on selections based upon meal preferences.

• Directed the newly formed 30+ member team with $3M+ annual budget serving nearly 1000 engineers.


• Responsible for centrally managing engineering tools, training, help desk, process consulting, interoperability and compatibility testing, and product release management functions across multiple divisions.

• Acquired rights to Merge Ahead, designed improved version, and founded company as a spinout.
  
• Secured re-sellers, recruited executives and engineering staff, negotiated contracts, developed business plans and participated in raising investment capital. Provided customer support services.


• Developed a C++ and later a Java version of MergeRight licensed by Lucent.


• Design /software engineering consultancy. Clients: Tandem, Real Communities and Social Net.

• Managed the creation of a new applications division; spun out to create Prescient Software.


• Reported directly to board of directors. Responsibilities included profit and loss. $1M annual budget.


• Developed key product in one quarter using SWIFT method, 3 months ahead of schedule, saving $450,000, and closing first 2 quarters of quota during the beta period.

• Managed 14 engineers ($1.5M budget) developing Computer Aided Software Engineering (CASE) tools.


• Developed Prescient Agents, receiving technical and press recognition.

Productivity Manager, Corporate Computing Center Palo Alto, CA Wide Area Network Applications

• Led several interdisciplinary and interdivisional technical teams, developing a high performance computer environment, including supercomputers, linked by a high-speed worldwide network, the HP Internet.

Teaching

Education

Technical

Industry Recognition:

COVER NOTICE for my Merge Ahead product in major industry journal (SunWorld) and favorable review for version 1.0 product due to its exceptional ease of use and clarity of focus and customer value.

"Indeed one thing that is impressive about Merge Ahead is that is so simple to use. [The product makes] extensive use of ...graphical devices so that users don't ever need to read manuals. The vendor has also included a multimedia interactive help system...[T]his product could easily pay for itself in productivity boosts within hours of installation. -- Dave Taylor, SunWorld Reviews editor.

EDITORIAL in a major industry journal(Unix World):"Smarter Programming Brings Smarter Computers" promoting my invention of Prescient Agents.

"Scott McGregor...thinks smarter computers are the next step beyond the ease of use we get from graphical user interfaces, or GUIs. Many people are just beginning to understand how GUIs make computers easier to use by making them easier to command. But prescient user interfaces promise to teach our computers to learn from what we have done and serve as an active helper...We all want computers to make us more productive. But before that can happen, there is much to be done to make computers easier to use and less problematic. If programmers are beginning to recognize the needs of naive users , we are likely to see improvements in how computers work for all of us." -- Dave Flack, Unix World Editor.

JOURNAL PRAISE in Practical
Programmer (Communications of the ACM) for my SWIFT Experience Design method:

"Scott McGregor... uses storyboarding techniques to model the flow of an interface and tries to pace the interaction to make the experience satisfying for the person using the tool...[Video games and] Screenplay writing follow a similar rule, if you don't hook the audience within the first five minutes you lose them. For both, once you have caught the audience, the audience is interested in learning more a bit at a time ais it is relevant to continued participation...The same thing is true for software people like to use vs. tolerate using. A good user computer-based training/help system.. can help achieve this immensely."

Scott L. McGregor
408.385.1014 tel
408.505.4123 cell