Ahoy Me Hearties!
Having mortgaged my soul to Davey Jones’ BBC Model B long before the dot com Boom & Bust, the Millenium Bug, the introduction of the Euro and the demise of Altavista; 2011 is the 15th year of my commercial softwarefaring exploits and roughly the 25th year since my voyaging began in Basic with Usborne books, the “Welcome Tape” and early forays into the online ocean via Prestel.
Herewith begins my testimony of daring exploits, shores travelled, cultures & rituals observed and occasional ramblings associated with bad bread.
Before I commence it is important to clarify that these musings represent a manifestation of my inner monologue and must not be associated with those of any of my current or past employers.
With this short introduction, I bid you good day.
C
About The Dread Pirate Crom
Captain Crom started programming and debugging games from magazines on his Brother’s BBC as a small boy in the early 1980s. With early qualifications in both computer science & art and a love of live music it became clear he was destined for bad things.
His tyrannical ways commenced with a degree in Computing & Informatics at Plymouth and from the mid 1990's a career in the software industry. After formative years as "The Scourge of the Thames Valley" between Reading and Bracknell with occasional raids on the San Francisco Bay area, since 2004 he has been seen sailing stretches of the A10 North and South of the Isle of Ely with the primary source of his raids targeted around Cambridge. Sightings have also been rumored as far afield as Scotland, Norway, India, Nevada, Florida and Georgia.
The Captain has served in companies ranging from successful startups and ailing dot-coms to global corporations, spanning roles from IT, consulting, support, development and management through to agile coaching.
The common thread in each of his roles is that he has always chosen to join software product groups - usually large-scale enterprise software. His large-scale product and organizational focus differentiates him from the more common textbook agile captains.
(Other differentiators include his distinctive hoop earrings and love of spiced rum)
The Captain's Agile experience started with a blend of FDD and XP in what he describes as "the most disciplined team he had ever served with". He subsequently moved onto using Scrum and XP blended with Theory Of Constraints, Kanban and Lean philosophies to improve software delivery techniques in other organizations.
He believes every member of a delivery team should spend time with customers supporting the product they produced. “Sitting at the dirty end of a product (or cutlass) completely changes the way you think about business processes and write software for the rest of your softwarefaring career!”
