Consultancy
You’ve probably heard of Agile. The Agile Manifesto was written back in 2001 by a gathering of practitioners as an attempt to codify and describe a growing movement towards lighter weight processes for delivering software. The manifesto was designed to highlight the shared values of a collection of specific processes.
Of the various processes self-identifying under the Agile umbrella, only one spoke directly to development practices as well as project management practices. So if your aim to to build better software, rather than just to have better management, there’s only one real choice.
That process is called Extreme Programming (or XP).
Switching a team over to XP (or any Agile process) involves a fundamental shift in priorities and perceptions for every role in the team, and most successful teams utilised the services of an external “coach” in the early stages of their transition.
I’ve been involved with the XP community since 1999, and was one of the first independent signatories to the Agile Manifesto. I’ve spent more than 10 years working in the UK, US and Australia alongside the biggest names in the Agile community at ObjectMentor, ThoughtWorks and laterally as an independent. I’ve teams and clients of all sizes, from Coca-Cola to .com startups, in all kinds of technologies, from Lotus Notes to Ruby on Rails.
If you feel like you’d like to hear more about how adopting an Agile process like XP could help you and your team, or are interested in coaching or training for developers, testers, analysts and project managers, please get in touch.
What people are saying about my consultancy work
“Alan uses his experience and sense of humor to produce learning moments out of challenging situations.”
Erik Meade – ObjectMentor
“Alan is a highly experienced XP practitioner with an enviable history of coaching XP teams to pull together and focus on working software delivered in partnership with the customer. During his time in the eManaged Trades team his experience of the dynamics of XP teams and his pragmatism has helped shape the teams processes as we grew and engaged in new streams of work. With a pragmatic yet creative approach to test driven development, Alan has consistently shown his skill in refactoring the most obfuscated legacy code into a thing of beauty with consummate ease. Quite simply with his easy-going nature allied to his wealth of experience in agile coaching and software development, I consider myself very fortunate to have worked with him over the past 3 years.”
Stuart Blair – JP Morgan
“Alan is quite simply one of the best people I have ever worked with, I hope to have the opportunity to do so again sometime. He’s an asset to any team and a genuine bloke.”
Les Oliver – ThoughtWorks
“I heart Alan.”
Dave Hoover – Obtiva