← Back to project timeline

Project Detail

Optimize Bulk Door Access Control Lists

Employer: Litton Poly-Scientific (LPS) Department: LPS Access Control Systems Engagement: LPS Legacy Access Control Product Manager Project Type: Embedded feature delivery Visibility: Client-facing

One-Sentence Summary

Used the platform's new broadcast capability to cut mass door-access updates from hours to minutes for a customer facing a time-sensitive layoff event.

The Context

This project built on a legacy embedded access control product where feature requests were increasingly driven by larger customers operating at a scale the original communications model had not anticipated.

The Challenge

Marketing's success at finding large customers to purchase our access control system came back to haunt us. One of these customers was getting ready to do a large layoff and wanted to disable all affected employees within minutes, not 4 or more hours.

Why It Was Hard

The customer needed a dramatic improvement in response time for a high-stakes operational scenario, but the solution still had to run on installed equipment with the same physical limits as before.

The Constraints

Physically, we had what we had and that as it. Any solution would have to work on already installed equipment.

The Approach

Marketing had already forced us to start work on adding broadcasting to our capabilities. All we needed was a new type of message for bulk broadcasting of deactivations.

My Role

I owned this effort end-to-end from initial design through final testing.

Key Decisions

  • Build on the new broadcast capability instead of trying to optimize the old point-to-point approach incrementally.
  • Add bulk activation along with bulk deactivation so the capability solved the broader operational problem, not just the immediate request.

The Outcome

By now, we knew marketing was going to keep pushing us to add features, so we also added bulk user activation as well as deactivation. While the design was simple, the change was huge. Fortunately I inherited an incredible test lab that allowed for 24/7 regression testing for days.

Evidence / Signals of Success

  • The customer requirement shifted from four or more hours to minutes.
  • The final change set supported both bulk deactivation and bulk activation.
  • The inherited test lab allowed 24/7 regression testing for days, reducing delivery risk on a large embedded change.

Resume Bullet Seeds

  • Delivered a bulk access-control update capability that reduced emergency deactivation time from hours to minutes by using broadcast messaging on a legacy embedded network.
  • Extended a customer-driven feature into a broader platform capability by adding both bulk activation and deactivation, then validating the large change through continuous regression testing.

Interview Story Angles

  • Responding to a high-pressure customer need with end-to-end ownership.
  • Leveraging a platform investment to solve a more urgent business problem.
  • Shipping a large behavior change on legacy hardware without replacing the installed base.
  • Using test infrastructure as a strategic advantage.

Lessons Learned

  • Simple designs tend to be simpler to implement, test, and deliver.