Silver-Owl

Keeping an informed eye
on your business

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Be straightforward
Avoid buzzwords

Trevor started in the IT industry in 1974 as a trainee computer programmer and after a spell as a systems designer took on team leading and eventually project management roles. During this time he was involved with banking, parcels delivery/tracking and accountancy systems.

The next phase of his career saw him become Production Support Group (PSG) Manager at British Rail's Reading site, where he was responsible for the continued operation and fault-fixing for all of the railway's financial systems. He was tasked to reduce faults and support costs by 10% - he achieved almost 40% by introducing new processes and software to track work, costs and time spent and so identify areas for improvement.

In his next few roles he took on responsibly for development of further systems, rising to become Development Manager with a multi-million pound budget. His responsibilities included overseeing multiple groups of projects and Project Managers, with up to 55 IT specialists reporting to him. During this time he redesigned his earlier PSG work management software to meet the group's needs and successfully delivered projects on time and to budget. He was also a key member of a team that delivered BS5750/ISO9001 compliance for the centre. "I learnt the importance of having controllable, and controlled processes during a project's development and how the use of appropriate tools can facilitate good management and help cut costs and improve quality" Trevor says of his time as Development Manager.

After attending various Project Management courses both as a student and as an evaluator, Trevor also noticed that there can be big differences between how some people would like to believe that projects should be run, and the practicalities found in the real world. "Some tools are like this, but I believe that it is important that they reflect how people work in the real world and I've brought this philosophy to Silverstar Software. One example is our emphasis on tracking people's actions. In the real world a project's success may well rest on actions (that are often devised in meetings) being completed on time, just as much as keeping to a Project Plan".

After a year analysing and recommending ways to improve the service levels between the railway's large IT infrastructure and its customers (the soon to be privatised railway departments) Trevor was asked to lead the investigation into Year 2000 compliance on the railway.  Subsequently, as Programme Manager, he successfully oversaw the delivery of hundreds of compliant software systems despite privatisation half way,  against a fixed timescale  - the end of the millennium couldn't be changed! Once again he designed and developed management tools to track risks, progress and workloads.

In his final post before forming Silverstar Software he worked for the telecoms subsidiary of a major bank, setting up and running a Programme Office to track sales projects, IT development and technical engineering work. Here he designed and implemented software to help manage the business. He says "Working directly with people who are not from my more technical background helped me better appreciate that some people can be easily put off when presented with a computer system. If they don't have your background it can be a daunting experience. It also became apparent that what our sales managers saw as a campaign, I saw as a project. Once we both understood that, we could apply project management techniques to their work, backed with tools that actually helped them do their job and save them time. I hope that those lessons are reflected in Silverstar's products".

After graduating from University with an honours degree in Electrical and Electronic Engineering in 1985, Tim joined a small but evolving company in the Oil & Gas industry, as a software engineer.

Projects Tim worked on took him to Europe, the Middle East and the USA, including offshore work.  His roles included Specification, Design, Implementation, Installation, Commissioning, Training and Support.  He worked closely with the Quality department to develop design processes which enabled the company to obtain BS5750/ISO9001 compliance.  

Working in such an (initially) small company, Tim has always been involved in the whole project lifecycle, from initial discussions with the end user to installation and support.  "I particularly enjoy working with the customer to solve a problem.  However long you spend on the design phase, there are always things that come up when the end-users get their hands on the system.  Sometimes you can work with them to help them get more out of the system, but sometimes you have to change the system to meet their requirements.  The trick is to do that in a way that also makes the system better for other users."

As the company grew from 4 to over 200 employees worldwide, Tim progressed through technical team leadership roles to become manager of a joint development with a multi-billion dollar US corporation.  This involved a 3 month secondment to Charlottesville, Virginia, where he served as the interface between the UK and US companies and drove the project through.

As an experienced employee, Tim also became recognised as the person to ask when there was a tricky problem. "With 15 years of experience under my belt, often I was the only person who had any experience of one of the old systems.  I often told people that I would explain it just one more time, but only if they wrote it all down for the next person.  That was the deal.  Of course they just wrote it in their notebooks and no one else got the benefit!  This was one of the driving forces behind the Information Database in Silver-Owl.  A place that everybody knows they can go to find anything they need to know."

Tim then went on to lead and manage the company's largest development project. This was a software productivity tool that was designed to help people to work in environments which they were not expert in, allowing them to concentrate on the tasks they knew how to achieve, rather than spending their time on the low-level detail. 

After 15 rewarding years working for someone else, Tim decided to leave that job and put his knowledge and experience to good use.  After discussions with Trevor, they recognised that their complementary experience and background could be used to help small and medium sized companies to improve their business management processes, and hence improve their productivity.

"There seemed to be a lot of project planning tools around, but for many small businesses, the overheads involved in learning and using them meant that they continually put it off to another day."

Tim and Trevor then formed Silverstar Software with a view to solving this dilemma.