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Dominic Burford - Professional Profile



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I am a professional software engineer and technical architect with over twenty years commercial development experience with a strong focus on the design and development of web and mobile applications.

I have experience of architecting scalable, distributed, high volume web applications that are accessible from multiple devices due to their responsive web design, including architecting enterprise service-oriented solutions. I have also developed enterprise mobile applications using Xamarin and Telerik Platform.

I have extensive experience using .NET, ASP.NET, Windows and Web Services, WCF, SQL Server, LINQ and other Microsoft technologies. I am also familiar with HTML, Bootstrap, Javascript (inc. JQuery and Node.js), CSS, XML, JSON, Apache Cordova, KendoUI and many other web and mobile related technologies.

I am enthusiastic about Continuous Integration, Continuous Delivery and Application Life-cycle Management having configured such environments using CruiseControl.NET, TeamCity and Team Foundation Services. I enjoy working in Agile and Test Driven Development (TDD) environments.

Outside of work I have two beautiful daughters. I am also an avid cyclist who enjoys reading, listening to music and travelling.

 

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GeneralThe Structure of an Azure Service Bus message Pin
Dominic Burford30-Dec-16 3:11
professionalDominic Burford30-Dec-16 3:11 
GeneralMy Introduction into Service Bus Architecture Pin
Dominic Burford21-Dec-16 6:40
professionalDominic Burford21-Dec-16 6:40 
GeneralAdding resilience to your services by implementng a retry pattern Pin
Dominic Burford19-Dec-16 1:10
professionalDominic Burford19-Dec-16 1:10 
GeneralAuthenticating Web API services with JSON Web Token Pin
Dominic Burford13-Dec-16 2:26
professionalDominic Burford13-Dec-16 2:26 
GeneralDeploying to Azure with Team Foundation Server 2015 Pin
Dominic Burford9-Dec-16 2:29
professionalDominic Burford9-Dec-16 2:29 
GeneralCatch me over on Medium for my latest blog posts Pin
Dominic Burford7-Dec-16 1:15
professionalDominic Burford7-Dec-16 1:15 
GeneralWeb application metrics with Application Insight Pin
Dominic Burford25-Nov-16 10:03
professionalDominic Burford25-Nov-16 10:03 
GeneralHow to Pick Your Battles on a Software Team Pin
Dominic Burford16-Nov-16 2:33
professionalDominic Burford16-Nov-16 2:33 
As with picking any battle, you need to decide if the effort is worth the reward. If there are only marginal gains to be made from making a substantial effort, then is it worth proceeding? Of course, determining the effort and the reward may be subjective.

What I mean by battles is where you become embroiled in a war of words or a bitter feud with your manager and / or a customer. This may escalate to the point where one or both of you you decide to part company. This can often lead to ill feeling if either party feel their voice has not been heard.

For example, suppose you are asked to make a change on behalf of a customer, and after careful consideration you conclude that making the change may lead (directly or indirectly) to a negative impact on the product. This then upsets or angers the customer who tells your manager that they are a paying customer and you should make the change. You reply back that they are not the only paying customer, and you have to consider the many other customers who are also using the product and who are not affected by the issue.

This leads to a battle between yourself (the technical authority with the most intimate knowledge of the impact of the problem), the customer (who wants their issue fixed as they are a paying customer who can go elsewhere if you don't comply) and your manager (who is trying to find some compromise that will please everyone).

I think every developer has been pitched into such a battle at some point or other. Possibly several times. I remember working for one particular IT Director (who shall remain nameless) who overrode the entire development team, including the IT Manager, and sided squarely with the customer. This created an Us vs Them situation that created much hostility, and led to several of the team leaving as it was clear that the upper management didn't have the backs of any of the team.

Treading the fine line between making adjustments to the code to keep a customer happy, and trying not to introduce any bugs for all your other customers, is never easy.

Performance gains that could be made following a code review may be important to only some of your bigger customers, but then again it's precisely

those bigger customers that keep the business afloat. This is where experience and good common business sense come into play. These are not trivial decisions to be taken lightly, and careful consideration and appreciation of both the technical and business trade-offs is important.

There are no rules of thumb for these situations. You certainly can't keep everyone happy, but at the very least you need to be transparent in your actions and communication to all those involved. You don't want a mutiny from the development team any more than you want a disgruntled customer.
"There are two ways of constructing a software design: One way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies, and the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies. The first method is far more difficult." - C.A.R. Hoare

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GeneralComplete 360 Testing Pin
Dominic Burford27-Oct-16 2:49
professionalDominic Burford27-Oct-16 2:49 
GeneralCompleted the ASP.NET Web API build pipeline Pin
Dominic Burford24-Oct-16 1:18
professionalDominic Burford24-Oct-16 1:18 
GeneralOne code-base for all mobile platforms is a pipe dream Pin
Dominic Burford12-Oct-16 18:42
professionalDominic Burford12-Oct-16 18:42 
GeneralRe: One code-base for all mobile platforms is a pipe dream Pin
Member 1280340119-Oct-16 9:29
Member 1280340119-Oct-16 9:29 
GeneralRe: One code-base for all mobile platforms is a pipe dream Pin
Dominic Burford19-Oct-16 21:26
professionalDominic Burford19-Oct-16 21:26 
GeneralOur apps have gone live Pin
Dominic Burford11-Oct-16 18:54
professionalDominic Burford11-Oct-16 18:54 
GeneralFive truths about software development Part IV Pin
Dominic Burford13-Sep-16 2:44
professionalDominic Burford13-Sep-16 2:44 
GeneralIsolating unit tests using Dependency Injection Pin
Dominic Burford11-Aug-16 22:01
professionalDominic Burford11-Aug-16 22:01 
GeneralCould this function be unit tested without modifying it? Pin
Dominic Burford4-Aug-16 1:41
professionalDominic Burford4-Aug-16 1:41 
GeneralRe: Could this function be unit tested without modifying it? Pin
Dominic Burford5-Aug-16 0:24
professionalDominic Burford5-Aug-16 0:24 
GeneralTeam Foundation Services 2015 build tools Pin
Dominic Burford12-Jul-16 9:27
professionalDominic Burford12-Jul-16 9:27 
GeneralMy first app using Telerik Platform Pin
Dominic Burford8-Jul-16 2:23
professionalDominic Burford8-Jul-16 2:23 
GeneralHaving a Mobile Strategy Pin
Dominic Burford5-Jul-16 1:23
professionalDominic Burford5-Jul-16 1:23 
GeneralExciting times ahead Pin
Dominic Burford31-May-16 6:00
professionalDominic Burford31-May-16 6:00 
GeneralRe: Exciting times ahead Pin
Sander Rossel31-May-16 9:43
professionalSander Rossel31-May-16 9:43 
GeneralRe: Exciting times ahead Pin
Dominic Burford31-May-16 20:47
professionalDominic Burford31-May-16 20:47 
GeneralBootcamps vs. College Pin
Dominic Burford23-May-16 2:41
professionalDominic Burford23-May-16 2:41 

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