The longest project, part I

I was brought on as a UI developer for Fossil's in-house UI dev / e-commerce content production team, in a six-month contract to take Fossil's US site and spin off an Italy version. Italy is, like all countries, a unique culture to do business in, especially for a company with a hip-and-edgy feel to some of their products and design work. Commerce laws, as well, are interesting to deal with.

I was assigned one junior developer, and later had another contractor and an intermediate developer placed under me. The project (initially) consisted of the beginning steps of the project management process; establishing scope, establishing timelines, establishing deliverables, establishing needs. We extracted all content, had it translated, created new design collaterals and worked with Fossil's in-house design team to commission new designs to spec. We created the new site to brand guidelines, got it up and running 30 days before deadline, and the client extended my contract in order to oversee the site through the hypercare period (90 days post-launch).

After that, Fossil wanted to spin off more locales, and brought me on full-time, as well as placing me at the Senior / 3 / team lead level, with 2 direct reports. Our lane was in charge of performing the same process as earlier, for Korea, India, and Canada (both French and English).