Aaron Brethorst

Millions of Developers Served

For Visual Studio 2008, I was responsible for the overall look and feel of the product suite and the core shell user interface. Over the course of our planning phase, I ran a multidisciplinary, ‘virtual’ team tasked with determining the set of core product experience improvements that should make it into the “Orcas” release of Visual Studio.

I synthesized the virtual team’s output into a series of product specifications that were implementable in the amount of time allotted to us, and then worked with my feature team to achieve buy-in on the specific objectives I had identified.

Once team buy-in had been achieved, I was responsible for securing management’s agreement to the plan of record, and then for helping my team execute on the work to which we had committed.

As the Program Manager for a feature team, I managed every aspect of our development process: interpersonal conflict, scheduling challenges, development roadblocks, issues with other teams, and—most importantly—shielding my team from the distractions rife in such an environment.

Developers, Developers, Developers

I succeeded in my role as the Program Manager for the Shell UI feature team, helping my team deliver on all of our commitments on time. We were able to update and further refine the look-and-feel and usability of key user interface components of Visual Studio.