Company: iolo technologies, Los Angeles, CA
Company Description: iolo technologies, a privately held firm founded in 1998 and located in Los Angeles, produces award-winning software that repairs, optimizes, and protects computers running Windows, such as System Mechanic, the #1 best-selling PC performance software, Search and Recover and DriveScrubber. Crowned fastest-growing U.S. Company by ABAs in 2010 and 2009.
Nomination Category: Products & Product Management Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Product Development/Management Executive of the Year

Nomination Title: Lars Oleson, Executive Director of Product Engineering

Tell the story about what this nominee achieved since January 1 2011 (up to 500 words). Focus on specific accomplishments, and relate these accomplishments to past performance or industry norms. Be sure to mention obstacles overcome, innovations or discoveries made, and outcomes:

Under the leadership of Lars Oleson, Executive Director of Product Engineering and part of the winning Management Team of the Year as crowned by both International and American Business Awards in 2011, iolo technologies’ engineering department handles all product development and management for the company’s line of 8 products in 6 languages.

Lars Oleson, believes in the Tao Te Ching’s leadership advice “when his work isdone, the people say, ‘Amazing: we did it, all by ourselves!’.” In that spirit,Mr. Oleson joined an award-winning product department which had successfully shipped software for 12 years, winning 50 product awards and achieving marke tdominance of 85% in the US alone – and set out to make it even better. Two year slater, the department had achieved product process improvements upwards of 600%, garnered close to 60 new product awards and gained 30% more happy customers – all the while, with Mr. Oleson’s careful management and mentoring, believing they did it “all by themselves.”

Rather than focusing on the high level management organization changes typical of a new leader, Lars got into the day-to-day process and habits of the individual departmental contributors first. By understanding how each discipline was doing its job on a daily basis, Lars identified important informal process ingrained in the culture and introduced some changes to that process that had low resistance and high impact, securing early wins and building credibility and confidence to lead more change. After only a few months at the helm, Lars had the buy-in from the entire department at a grass-roots level to help them identify changes that would boost its success.

When Lars finally introduced major changes, they seemed organic. Because of reduced logistical speedbumps, the feature development was happening faster and multisite integrations took place more frequently. Department members began asking that status meetings take place more frequently. Lars formally introduced Agile/Scrum after the department had already begun working in this mode. These changes added up, and last year’s results increased exponentially:

1. Accelerated international release schedules from 6 months to 60 days.
2. Improved project predictability window from 12 weeks to 4 weeks.
3. Shortened time to market for large, breakthrough innovations from 12 months to 5 months.
4. Introduced early planning phase to develop ideas 2 months earlier than in previous lifecycles, improving alignment, predictability and quality.
5. Adopted Agile project management practices, increasing productivity and product quality.
6. Merged bug tracking tool with the tracking of new work, leading to significant quality improvements, when small but annoying bugs of years ago efficiently got fixed alongside new work in the same area of code.
7. Improved quality through obsessive advocacy and process discipline.
8. Authored patent applications for Program Accelerator and Energy Booster.
9. Built new facilities exclusive to engineering; collocating development and QA, improving communication and teamwork, reducing distractions and improving productivity.

With process improvements upwards of 600%, new facilities and better tools, the department has successfully accomplished yet higher product quality and even more cutting-edge technological innovations. Yet, departmental morale, cohesiveness and drive are particularly impressive. Amazingly, the team does believe they did it all by themselves.

Upload a collection of supporting files and web addresses to our server to provide more background information to the judges. You may upload any number of attachments and URLs through the "Add Attachments, Videos, or Links to This Entry" link above. (Do NOT list your URLs below.)

List of top coverage on iolo and its products, incl. many award-winning reviews:
http://www.iolo.com/company/news.aspx

List of top awards won by iolo in its 14-year history:
http://www.iolo.com/company/awards.aspx

LAPTOP magazine gives System Mechanic 10.7 5 stars, 2/27/12:
http://www.laptopmag.com/best-pc-system-utility-software/system-mechanic-review.aspx

FOX News Latino recommends System Mechanic 10.7 on Clean Out Your Computer Day, 2/10/12:
http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/lifestyle/2012/02/09/avances-tecnologicos-que-cambian-el-mundo/

PC Magazine awards System Mechanic 10.7 its Editors’ Choice, 1/27/12:
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2371043,00.asp

LAPTOP magazine recommends System Mechanic, 5/5/11:
http://blog.laptopmag.com/fix-your-laptop-34-tips-apps-and-gear/3

iolo featured as an expert on KCAL-9 TV, 2/14/11:
http://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2011/02/14/have-a-heart-this-is-also-clean-out-your-computer-day/

Windows IT Pro names System Mechanic Business one of the Editors’ Best Products of 2010, 12/1/10:
http://www.windowsitpro.com/article/review/2010-Windows-IT-Pro-Editors-Best-and-Community-Choice-Awards/6.aspx

PC Magazine names System Mechanic 10 one of Best of the Year 2010 products, 11/19/10:
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2372780,00.asp

PC Magazine awards System Mechanic 10 its Editors’ Choice award, 10/19/10:
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2371043,00.asp

New York Times highly recommends System Mechanic as a painless way to keep computers in shape, 9/14/10:
http://gadgetwise.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/14/an-easy-painless-way-to-keep-a-pc-in-shape/

Exec Digitial (UK) names iolo technologies one of the five fastest-growing companies on Earth, 8/29/10: http://www.execdigital.com/business/leader/fastest-growing-companies-earth

Government Computer News awards System Mechanic its Reviewer’s Choice award, 8/10/10:
http://gcn.com/Articles/2010/08/16/Review-System-Mechanic-9.5-Keeps-PCs-Running-At-Speed.aspx?Page=1

WIRED magazine praises System Mechanic’s speed improvements, 7/11/10:
http://www.wired.com/geekdad/2010/07/system-mechanic-nice-product-especially-for-younger-computer-users/

Fox Business recommends System Mechanic as a cost-saving solution for small businesses, 7/2/10:
http://www.foxsmallbusinesscenter.com/entrepreneurs/2010/07/02/make-business-computers-run-faster/

Huffington Post praises System Mechanic as “definitely a keeper,” 2/8/10:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/stephanie-vaughn-hapke/clean-out-your-computer-d_b_453126.html

Sacramento Bee recommends System Mechanic to “keep your computer in shape,” 2/7/10:
http://www.sacbee.com/135/story/2517323.html

Provide a brief (up to 100 words) biography about the nominee:

As executive director of product engineering and part of Management Team of the Year as crowned by both International and American Business Awards in 2011, Lars Oleson leads all software development and management at iolo technologies.

Lars was formerly head of engineering for Symantec, where he led engineering for Symantec Endpoint Protection, the third most frequently installed paid software after Microsoft Windows and MS Office worldwide.

Previously, Lars invented products for Sun Microsystems, cofounded a hydroelectric energy startup, and cofounded and sold an electronic medical record systems startup. Since graduating from MIT in 1999 in Electrical Engineering (in 3 years), teams under his watch have grossed over $5 billion.