Hello …
I’m not one for titles. I haven’t had a title for the past 5 years and it’s working quite nicely. Every so often, however, someone feels it necessary to ask me who I am and what I do. This happened recently on the Agile Project Management newsgroup (here). Here was my reply:
“Sure. I started as a developer and gradually moved into PM, initially with Waterfall projects. The last project I did with waterfall was large (150 people), multi-year (3 ), troubled (failed at least once) but eventually successful.
I moved to the US in 2000 and fell in with ThoughtWorks in 2001 where I had my first exposure to Agile. Initially I “faked it”, then became confortable. In an earlier post someone said that Agile was more of an approach than a process. That’s the path that I’ve been down, and I can identify with that.
At the moment I lead projects with vanilla XP, although I have some experience with Scrum. I’m also a really big fan of the XP Game as a training tool.
I’ve done project with insurance, land information management, insurance, telecoms, insurance, financial services, insurance, power
(AM/FM) … and did I mention insurance?
I joined this group because there are only a small number of colleagues that I can share information with, and I wanted more learning opportunities [which is why I ask a lot of questions] .”
I’m now working with Danube Technologies, Inc. They’re a small company based out of Seattle, Washington and are well known in the Agile community for their ScrumWorks product.
Victor and Laszlo (the owners and brains behind Danube) are great guys. They are a large part of the reason why I joined Danube over larger rivals. I was impressed by their commitment to professional integrity, and the honest and transparent way in which they run their company. It’s very refreshing.
My intention is to use this blog as a vehicle for discussing the wider aspect of introducing Agile methodologies into an organisation. Agile Methologies are, after all, a disruptive practice and they can have a profound impact on an organisations culture. I’d like to discuss some of the problems I’ve observed and how they were addressed.
