Never stop questioning and learning
Not many people can boast the title of Master Inventor, fewer still that they are a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering. Mandy Chessell (Software Engineering MSc, 1996) has both.
As a master inventor and Distinguished Engineer for IBM in Hursley, Europe’s largest software development laboratory, Mandy is responsible for developing and implementing technical strategy for a number of IBM software products.
Within the industry, she has a prolific invention record in middleware (the computer software that connects software components or people and their applications), and it has brought her a string of rewards. Mandy was the first woman to be awarded the prestigious Royal Academy of Engineering Silver Medal, and she currently is a visiting professor at the University of Sheffield.
Mandy started her academic career with a degree in Computing and Informatics from the University of Plymouth. She had been working at IBM for about four years and was looking for opportunities to expand her knowledge of software engineering when IBM offered to sponsor her on a modular postgraduate degree at the University of Brighton.
But returning to study whilst working presented its own challenges. So how did she cope? “Combining study with working full-time is a big commitment. You need to be very organised and have a job role you can do easily to allow you to focus in the evenings and weekends on the course work.
“The course updated my skills with objectoriented design skills – which was new at the time – and gave me confidence to move jobs within IBM. My project work specifically created a new opportunity. I presented it at a lunchtime seminar within IBM and a manager who was looking for someone with object-oriented design skills was in the audience. He phoned me afterwards and offered me a new role. This was a pivotal point in my career since it made me more visible to our executives and it was when I started inventing.
“I think this course would be useful to someone who had been working in the software industry for a few years and has built an understanding of commercial software development. With that as a background, the course was excellent at taking the real-world experience of the students and aligning it with the software engineering theory.”
Unsurprisingly, there is no such thing as a typical work day for Mandy. Her roles are numerous: at the time of this interview, she was on a site visit to a US-based customer, advising them how to use the products for a complex and ambitious project: “This type of visit helps to understand where our products can be improved and to understand new opportunities.
“I also lead two global teams of architects who are each responsible for the design and evolution of software products or large cross-product software capabilities. Through conference calls and workshops we discuss and decide on the technical integration and use of the products. I am a master inventor which means I have a large patent portfolio (45 inventions issued) and I spend a lot of my time mentoring people around innovation and career development. I also author white papers and I am writing a book.”
Mandy said the hardest part of her leadership role was time management – prioritising her work and encouraging people to change.
So what advice would Mandy offer current students? “Specific technologies come and go, but the principles and underlying theories remain true. Make sure you have a good grounding in the theory. Also, technical skills are important, but so are communication skills and the ability to work in teams. Always understand the context (environment) for your software solution. Never stop questioning and learning.”
Having achieved so much already, what priorities does Mandy have for the future? “Focus on growing my skills around leadership and new technology. Keep moving to the next generation of software challenges.”
