SmitsMC

Passions

Seth Godin is responsible for my thinking in terms of passions, less in terms of the services I offer. I don’t just like what I do, it’s a passion, an addiction.

Over the recent years I broadened my passions from Scrum, to Agile, to Lean and my current focus is Organizational Change. Each topic has it’s page on this website, browse around, borrow freely, recommend me if you feel the materials are worth it.

Okay, I may not know about everything, but I usually have a book about it. The three books on the top of the pile are:

-John Kotter - Leading Change - the book that guides me in change processes
-Linda Gorchels - The Product Manager’s Field Guide - the reference of choice while rethinking the product owner class
-Lisa Crispin & Janet Gregory - Agile Testing - new arrival

More books will appear on the bookshelf.

Books

December 2, 2008 - My personal blog is now live: my blog.

December 1, 2008 - I've been trying to catch up with long overdue reading, having received some great tips from Chris Spagnuolo and Ben Carey - both great coaches in the Rally Services team. I started "Tribes" by Seth Godin, and although it reads like its written by a person who was writing two blogs and three articles at the same time as the book - besides cooking dinner for his family - it is an inspiring little book. Without the book you wouldn't find me on Twitter or Facebook, and this website wouldn't be here. Comes recommended.

What is also an interesting read is "Building the Empire State" by Carol Willis, a reprint of the 1930s notebook of the builders of the Empire State Building. Tom and Mary Poppendieck brought it to my attention, and it is interesting to read how the then largest building in the world got erected in less then a year. It helps when teaching software architects that you don't need a big upfront design for a complicated project. What one does need is a good understanding of the trade-offs of the important limiting factors for the new product. Interestingly enough the building variables (like amount of steel and concrete) weren't the most important factors for the Empire State, it was traffic - having a truck arrive every minute on-site, and not being able to store the goods anywhere. The architects solved this problem by designing a new set of transportation solutions on the building site, thus avoiding the need to store materials. These trade-offs, caught in an A3 (see elsewhere on the site) are an interesting topic for study in our software development world.

News

Email: hubert@smitsmc.com

Phone: (720) 212-3757

Fax: (720) 548-9881

And you can find me on LinkedIn (mainly business info), Facebook (mainly personal info) and Twitter (updates on daily activities).

Contact

Yes, I’d love to come and work with you if we share a passion. In the recent years I worked around the globe, helping organizations change the way they develop software. I worked with local teams, teams of teams, with distributed teams and off-shored teams. I trained development teams, project managers, product people and executive teams. Every engagement is different and made to measure for your organization and your change objectives. Contact me to discuss your ideas. Information on in-company work is on the services page. If you would like to attend a public course then find me at the Agile University.

Services