One example of how I used Visual Basic was the Retirement Calculators project I did for Waddell and Reed as a sub-contractor for ImagiSOFT, Inc. in Albuquerque, New Mexico. In 1998, I flew with Michael Prestwich, ImagiSOFT's president, to Shawnee Mission Kansas to meet with Debra Zipp, Waddell and Reed's Marketing V.P. We collaborated with her staff for several days to design the Retirement Calculators system. We had long discussions defining the calculations for each section of the Retirement Plans system, what each report would produce, and the input fields that would be required.

Waddell & Reed required clear, concise thinking and planning because they knew that they would have to rely on this system for many years to come. We decided to use Crystal Reports as our reporting tool, because it allowed us to generate stable, easy to modify code that would create reports and graphs. 

This project was brought to a successful conclusion on time and within budget. The clearly commented, well-engineered code passed ImagiSOFT's code inspection. Waddell & Reed was so impressed that Debra Zipp offered to stand in a commercial for ImagiSOFT.