Erick Ornio

PropertyWhiz is an open source web-based property management system developed using Ruby on Rails.

What I did: I am the creator and maintainer of PropertyWhiz.

What is project scope creep? Why should you care?

Almost all software development projects carry some inherent level of risk. Project scope creep is a risk that comes from frequent and uncontrolled changes in the scope of a project. In practice, almost everyone who has ever worked on a project has experienced some kind of project scope creep. It is considered one of the most common reasons why projects run into cost overruns and schedule delays. Moreover, when handled poorly it can lead to project failure. Thus, it is critical for Business Analysts (BA) and Project Managers (PM) to know how to anticipate, prevent and manage project scope creep.  Read more... (506 words, estimated 2:01 mins reading time)

Red Velvet™ is an e-commerce and content management software platform, tailored to the requirements of the music industry. It was conceived as a one-stop web-based solution, allowing artists, record labels, and distributors to seamlessly connect with their fans and customers.

What I did: All the back-end development of the content management system for the complete rewriting of Red Velvet™. Re-factored legacy code to increase performance, maintainability, and functionality. Translated initial wireframes into functional specifications, and developed new features. Implemented functionality included: content version control; localization/multi-lingual support; automatic language translation. Server-side data validation, prevention of SQL injection, and cross site scripting attacks. Wrote and optimized SQL database queries. Developed stored procedures, triggers, and views. Implemented tree structures using nested sets. QA.  Read more... (200 words, estimated 48 secs reading time)

MyEarls.ca is a web-based Leadership Training and Employee Survey system for Earls restaurant chain.

What I did: Working as a developer for Rook Technologies, I was in charge of enhancing Earls’ Leadership Training and Employee Survey system. This project involved: heavy customization of their existing e-learning system; integration and development of their Employee and Leadership Review system; and complete overhaul of their content management system. I did all the back-end development, and client-side JavaScript development. Server-side data validation, prevention of SQL injection, and cross site scripting attacks. Implemented tree structures involving adjacency list and materialized paths.

Scorecon League Management is an on-line league and tournament management system for administrating, organizing, scheduling, and tracking hockey leagues.

What I did: Mostly back-end development. Implemented functionality included: league setup; scheduling; tournament management; division/team/player statistics; secure admin user registration; role-based access control; integrating open-source webmail application; and customizing configuration features for email filtering/forwarding, address book, and mailing lists. Entity-relationship (ER) data modelling. Designed and implemented database schema changes as application requirements evolved. Wrote and optimized SQL database queries. Developed client-side JavaScript validation libraries for the whole application.