Paul and his IT Team – first in line for Time Travel
Super 6 Questions: Paul Dunleavy
Can you give a very brief overview of your department’s main responsibilities within Granby?
Our in-house development team are responsible for the support and ongoing development of the Granby software solutions that drive both our service offering along some bespoke client solutions for their end customers and campaigns. This involves analysis, design, coding and testing to a high standard. In any week we may be undertaking a new project for a client or adding new functionality to our existing products to support continuous improvement.
Is there a specific challenge or opportunity your department is currently facing – that you can share?
We see some emergent technologies such as AI and machine learning as opportunities to empower people, reduce operating overheads and provide greater insights over data. This has the potential to differentiate a lot of businesses and the challenge is identifying if and where this can be applied..
What do you enjoy most about the culture and environment in your department?
The opportunity to get involved in every aspect of delivering an IT solution. We welcome all ideas and encourage innovative thinking. Working within an SME we have a close working relationship with the end users of the solutions who provide great feedback and we love to provide them with what they need to make life easier.
Can you share one memorable moment that made you feel proud to lead this department?
There have been multiple projects I’ve been proud to lead the team on that have been really well received, from the ground up re-development of our warehouse management system to our self-serve shopping cart and client portal and numerous automations and integrations. It’s the great feedback we get from the users that is the icing on the cake.
If your department had a theme song, what would it be and why?
Fleetwood Mac “Don’t stop (thinking about tomorrow)”.
It’s all too easy when developing an IT solution to just provide exactly what the customer asked for. However, this can lead to inflexible solutions that are costly to rework as business needs are constantly changing. So we try to apply principals of design to allow for growth and provide the users with the facilities to self serve.
If your department could have a superpower, what would it be and how would it benefit the team?
“Time Travel”, the most costly mistakes in any software development project are made before a line of code is written. It is important to fully identify the business requirements and what is critical before you start. Mistakes here can drive your project over budget or leave you not knowing where it will end.
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