RallyDev.com
The Agile Blog provides advice and resources for people actively looking to advance their Agile practices.
With regular posts by Ryan Martens (Rally, CTO & Founder) and Jean Tabaka (Rally, Agile Fellow) as well as key contributions from Rally’s Agile Coaching team – the Agile Blog has no shortage of subject expertise. Check out some of our favorite entries by visiting the top posts page.
This blog is updated regularly, so be sure to subscribe by RSS feed or Email to keep up-to-date.
Featuring
Contributors
Alan Atlas | Ben Carey | Ken Clyne | Tye Jones| Zach Nies | Rachel Weston
Ryan Martens
I founded Rally Software in 2002 and I am living the dream with a great team of people and some of the worlds best and brightest software teams as customers. Rally is here to help move the technology industry to a service model from a product model. I hope this leads to changes, as Paul Hawkin and the Lovin’s describe in Natural Capitalism, to break the take-make-waste cycle in the world. (See Chapter 7, “Muda, Service and Flow”) You can follow all of my efforts in this area in my posts on Greening of the Software and High Tech Industry.
Agile is one of the true enablers for this move to services economy. You can not run a service business on 9 month release cycles and poor quality. You can not deploy SOA on 12 month release cycles. To move to services, you have to move to Agile.
In addition to trying to change the technology industry, I am trying to balance my work in capital markets with volunteer work in the social and environment parts of the economy. I like the picture of this at conservation economy. I am a trustee at the Colorado Conservation Trust, a founding board member with Entrepreneurs Foundation of Colorado and the current Treasure for the Agile Alliance.
I live in Boulder with my wife, son Gus and a menagerie of animals including horses, dogs, chickens, goats, rabbits and a canary. I am a place person and will never leave Colorado. The lake sailing, skiing, mountain biking, trail running and fly fishing are all easy accessible to a family that works.
Company: Rally Software Development
Title: Chief Technology Officer & Co-founder
Twitter: http://twitter.com/RallyOn
Jean Tabaka
I’m an Agile Fellow with Rally Software in Boulder, CO. I love coaching others about Agile software development. My passion in this realm has led me to concentrate on practices in collaboration and leadership. I’m also now reaching into systems thinking, Lean, and Kanban so you’ll see me post about these topics as well. I see a strong interdependency among these various processes and practices. This has led me to also look outside of software and IT to our larger community about sustainable and restorative practices within our physical world
Besides blogging and consulting with Rally clients worldwide, I’ve also authored a book Collaboration Explained: Facilitation Skills for Software Product Leaders, Addison-Wesley 2006. I graduated Magna Cum Laude and as a University Scholar from the University of Missouri. I hold a Masters in French Literature from Michigan State University and a Masters in Computer Science from Johns Hopkins University. When I’m not on the road speaking and coaching about Agile and Lean, you can find me in beautiful Boulder, CO.
Jean Tabaka is a Certified ScrumMaster and Practitioner, a Certified ScrumMaster Trainer, and a Certified Professional Facilitator.
Company: Rally Software Development
Title: Agile Fellow
Twitter: http://twitter.com/JeanTabaka
Alan Atlas
Alan Atlas is a Certified ScrumMaster and an Agile Coach with Rally Software.
While a Development Manager in Web Services at Amazon.com, Alan discovered Scrum. He became a CSM, or Certified ScrumMaster, and he and his team used Scrum for over a year to successfully deliver Amazon S3, the industry-award-winning web service that provides unlimited Internet-connected storage, in 2006.
The success of the Amazon S3 project and Alan’s enthusiasm for the Scrum methodology led to widespread Scrum adoption within Amazon.com. Alan became a CST, or Certified Scrum Trainer, and then became the first fulltime Agile Trainer/Coach within Amazon. His experiences in this capacity led him to make a career switch into fulltime Agile Coaching and Training at Rally Software, a market leader in Agile tools and consulting.
Alan also blogs at Scrumwiz.
Ben Carey
Ben Carey is an Agile Coach with Rally Software in Raleigh, North Carolina.
His experience includes over 10 years in the software development industry. Ben has participated on Agile teams as an Architect, Team Lead, Developer, Tester, Analyst, Designer, and ScrumMaster.
Ben has worked as an Agile Coach within a variety of industry verticals and with Agile programs spanning multiple teams, time zones, and continents. His passions include enabling the fast and effective delivery of software, helping teams reach high-performance, and helping find the essence of great software.
Ben also blogs at The Sherpa Project.
Ken Clyne
Ken Clyne is an Agile Coach with Rally Software where he pursues his passion for helping software organizations of all sizes incrementally adopt the benefits of Agile practices.
Ken has over 20 years experience spanning the software life cycle. He began his career as a software engineer developing compilers and air traffic control systems. Evolving from an object-oriented evangelist, Ken’s has spent the past decade helping teams adopt lean and iterative development practices with Rational, Number Six and now Rally. Ken is a certified PMP, ScrumMaster, Eclipse Committer and RUP consultant. He holds a B.S. in Computer Science from the University of Edinburgh, Scotland. In his free time, you will find Ken outdoors on the golf course, kayaking the Potomac or messing around with his kids.
Tye Jones
Tye Jones is a Technical Account Manager at Rally Software.
Where I grew up: Paris, TX. Places I’ve lived: Raleigh, NC; Austin, TX; Greensboro, NC; Durham, NC; Mountain View, CA. Schools I’ve attended: North Carolina State University; University of North Carolina at Greensboro.
Zach Nies
Zach Nies brings close to 20 years of engineering and product development experience to Rally’s innovative products.
Prior to joining Rally, Zach served as Principal Architect and Director of Systems Architecture for Level 3 Communications and founded a small start up which was quickly acquired by the publicly traded Creo, Inc, now a division of Kodak. He also served as Chief Software Architect at Quark, where he provided the overarching technological vision for the company.
Zach’s product vision has won numerous industry awards, including Jolt Product Excellence awards, Seybold HotPicks and the prized MacWorld Best of Show. Zach has served on standards bodies such as the W3C’s HTML working group and currently serves on the board of directors for Agile Denver.
At the age of 13, Zach began commercially publishing software and, at age 16, started a successful consulting business. A Boettcher Scholar, Zach received his BS with distinction in Computer Science Engineering from the University of Colorado at Boulder. He spends his spare time tuning his golf swing and spending time with his family.
Company: Rally Software Development
Title: Vice President, Products
Twitter: http://twitter.com/ZachNies
Rachel Weston
Rachel Weston is a Certified ScrumMaster Trainer and Agile Coach with Rally Software.
Rachel has over eight years of experience in the software development industry working with both in-house IT and product development teams and as a consultant working on software and strategic initiatives. Rachel has held many functional roles within software teams, including IT Manager and Director, Project Manager, Business Analyst, Tech Writer and QA.
Throughout her career, she has worked actively to improve processes in order to create a more collaborative, successful and therefore satisfying working environment. She is passionate about the positive changes Agile methods can enable for software development teams and their customers. Rachel holds a Masters in Linguistics with a specialization in Computational Linguistics from the University of Colorado at Boulder, and received her Bachelor’s degree in Mass Communications from the University of California Berkeley.
