The Development of Project Management Academy

Project Management Academy

About the Project

This is my current employer with the occupation of Lead Developer. I've been working here for two and one-half years and mostly everything has been updated or created in my time as Lead Developer.

Project Management Academy, in terms of the website, is an ecommerce system on the front end, and a robust administrative system on the back end. In short Project Management Academy provides the product of education for Project Managers and the website is the teaching aid.

In 2014 Project Management Academy was declared to be the #136 fastest growing company on the internet and #1 for education according to INC 5000*.

Technology, Methodoligies, and My Role

Project Management Academy uses a LAMP* architecture. The site also takes advantage of adobe products, Microsoft products, jquery, APIs, html5, authorize.net, and jwplayer. Everything besides jwplayer and the ecommerce system was created in house with my either leading the project or developing it.

Our IT team consists of programmers, marketers, customer service and designers so I seldom have insight on design elements. My main role is to develop and lead our other developers in the creation and maintenance of the site. Most of what I have learned in inbound marketing and pay-per-click (PPC) I've picked up from our marketing team here at Project Management Academy.

Our IT team follows Agile/Scrum methodologies*. In most cases I do take part in our meetings as the scrum master. (Yes this is a real thing, I know.)

Features

This project consists of so many features, with some that are always changing and new ones created monthly.

Account system, order system, product system, customer relationship management system (CRM), refund system, workflows, email system, campaigns (promotions, etc.), training system, inventory system, coupon system, access system, reports system, and many others. Along with these, there tools dealing with development and tracking.

Terminology

Agile/Scrum: A methodology or framework used for product development.

LAMP: Acronym for Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP. This is a typical system coding stack for PHP web developers.

INC 5000: A website that annually ranks fastest-growing online businesses.