Gregory Smith

Gregory Smith:

With years of experience managing (surviving?) 2 red haired daughters, I now believe that I can handle *anything*, bring it on!

Seriously though, my enthusiasm for agile and scrum goes back to my first CS professor.  She said that "Computer Science" is a misnomer and that the things we do with computers have barely transitioned from black-magic to an art form, let alone a “hard” science.  She explained that efforts to make the software development process consistent and predictable were hugely successful, in making it consistently and predictably AWFUL.  Since that day I've sought to be a part of the solution to that problem.  After 23 years of attempting to be a part of that solution I whole-heartedly support Scrum, seasoned with XP practices, as the antidote for widespread CS and IT project pathologies. 

I began my career as a software engineer in the very early days of the web.  I was introduced to Scrum in 1997 and Extreme Programming in 2001.  During my entire career I have been able use exclusively Agile techniques for startups and product development companies and continued to refine my approach after joining ThoughtWorks for a 6 year tour of duty as a principal consultant. They say every year of experience at ThoughtWorks is like 7 dog years and it is very true.  I was routinely in front of some of the largest, most change resistant and hide-bound clients out there.  I draw upon vast experience in making agile take root and grow strong in shaping my Scrum workshops.  None of this is academic for me, I have managed my career and practiced my craft using nothing but Agile techniques. My workshops are jam packed full of practical advice, deep experience and a well refined and battle hardened set of messages that I have found effective at convincing even the most entrenched agile resistant organizations. I look forward to Sharing them with you.

Here are some highlights from my Career:

·        in 2015 I concluded a year long engagement with a San Francisco based client in the online ticketing space to build a team and help scale the client from their sweet spot (300-500 seat Rock venues) to the ability to sell 40,000 tickets in an hour.

·        After 6 years as a road warrior for Thoughtwoks I left them in 2013. I am now working for my own training and coaching company, CodeGarden and my software delivery company LetsGetDone.  Please send any inquiries to [email protected]

·         I recently completed an engagement on behalf of Thoughtworks in the Healthcare IT sector driving one of (if not the) largest international distributed Scrum practice attempted to date.  While still with ThoughtWorks I used Agile techniques to deliver code that runs in embedded cardiac devices, embedded neurological devices, the trade resolution engine for NYSE as well as the streaming media and gaming industries.

·         At Rosetta Stone, I implemented a complete Scrum practice including a Scrum-Of-Scrums lightweight multi-team scaling pattern where my teams built the largest commercial international, multilingual, multicurrency Ruby on Rails web presence to date.

·         At Ten-TV (Technology Education Network) I helped build one of the first global content distribution networks and was awarded US Patent #6801576, “System for accessing, distributing and maintaining video content”

·         I Designed the web and tcp/ip components for an array of cellular monitoring devices which was among the first uses of the cellular network as a data service, SCADA-net.

·         As a CS Student I built the roughly 650th website on the internet for UMKC in the early 90’s.