RallyDev.com
The Agile Blog provides advice and resources for people actively looking to advance their Agile practices. With regular posts by Ryan Martens and Jean Tabaka as well as key contributions from Rally’s Agile coaching and product teams, the Agile Blog has no shortage of subject expertise. Check out some of our favorite entries by visiting the top posts page, and be sure to subscribe by RSS feed or email to keep up-to-date.
Featuring
Contributors
Ben Carey | Ken Clyne | Zach Nies | Rachel Weston
Ryan Martens
I am not Paul Hawken. Or Peter Senge or Richard Branson. But I have studied these social innovators and am diligently working to apply these concepts in a 300-person business, venture-backed startup that I founded in 2002. I am the Chief Sustainability/Social/Strategy Officer and Chief Technology Officer at Rally Software.
We are a How company and I am a How innovator, where the rubber meets the road. I am an expert in helping companies adopt a methodology called Agile development and Lean Startup, loosely defined as methods for delivering small batches in quick cycles to speed learning and innovation. I founded Rally to help make a major impact in the technology industry by moving it from a slow, wasteful and burdensome product model to a fast, sustainable, high-impacting service model. I hope this leads to changes, as Paul Hawken and the Lovins described in Natural Capitalism. The goal here is to break the take-make-waste cycle and move society toward a regenerative service model – a model where work creates joy, diversity, social justice and clean ecosystem services. We are moving beyond product team to Agile portfolio management, as well as agility throughout the organization. You can follow all of my efforts in these areas in my blog posts, like those on Sustainability.
In addition to trying to change the technology industry, I integrate my work in capital markets with social impact. I am a founding board member with Entrepreneurs Foundation of Colorado, a member of the engineering entrepreneurship efforts at the University of Colorado and an mentor at the Unreasonable Institute and Boulder TechStars. The continued work on our the Rally Foundation is the result of working with great people in these institutions.
I live a fantastic life in Boulder, Colorado, with my wife, son Gus and a menagerie of animals including horses, dogs, chickens, goats, burros, bees, worms and canaries. All creatures work hard to make soil amendments or food in our permaculture gardens.
Follow Me:
- Twitter: http://twitter.com/RallyOn
- LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanmartens
Articles & Interviews:
- Engineers: Why Aren’t You Doing Work for Good?, Fast Company’s Co.Exist
- How an Anti-Software Company Plans to Revolutionize the Software Business, GOOD
- 5 Books to Inspire Your Enterprise, GOOD
- An Agile Gathering, Projects@Work
- B is for Benefit, American Executive
- Why Lean and Agile Go Together, Forbes
- Wrestling with Scaling Software Agility, SD Times
- The Agile Social Contract, Dr. Dobb’s
- Agile Development Cuts Costs, eWeek
- Cutting Your Way to Increased Agility, TechTarget
Past Speaking:
- Oracle Open World keynote
- Lean Software & Systems Symposium keynote
- Agile Alliance keynote
References & Recommendations:
“Ryan served as the Entrepreneur in Residence for the Unreasonable Institute in the summer of 2011. As the Entrepreneur in Residence, we were looking for an individual who had been widely successful at leveraging business to have significant social impact, and we were looking for an individual we were convinced would add a great deal of value to our participants. Ryan surpassed our highest hopes in every way. Today, I can say without hesitation that Ryan is one of the top veteran entrepreneurs in the state of Colorado, and that it would be a dis-service to the world if the next generation of change-makers and entrepreneurs did not have the chance to rub shoulders with and learn from Ryan.” – Daniel Epstein, CEO and Co-Founder, Unreasonable Institute
“Ryan is an active member of the entrepreneurial community in Boulder. We are working on numerous experiments in our community to try and create a thriving community that grows, learns and builds joy. Ryan’s efforts, in addition to being a co-founder and CTO of one of the fastest growing companies in the area, focus on corporate social responsibility, sustainability and social enterprise. Our experiences in the community and his experiences at Rally, BEA, Avitek, the Entrepreneurs Foundation, CU Silicon Flatirons, TechStars and the Unreasonable Institute gives him some great stories to share in other communities and businesses. Ryan integrates these passions as part of a long term view of his work over the next twenty years.” – Brad Feld, Managing Director, The Foundry Group
“Ryan is one of the most insightful, logical and helpful people I have had the good fortune to work with. His mentorship has had great impact on the way I thought about my own venture – from business model canvas generation, to agile development, to customer development, to communication skills. Well thought-out, structured feedback, great advice borne of real-life entrepreneur wisdom, and incredibly helpful in every way – what’s not to like?” – Myshkin Ingawale, CEO and Co-founder of Biosense Technologies
“Over the past year, I have had the opportunity to interview many senior corporate executives and social entreprenuers as part of my research into the evolution of sustainability leadership. My numerous conversations with Ryan Martens from Rally Software amongst the most inspiring, informative, and thought provoking amongst all of my interviews. I highly recommend him as a potential conference speaker who I have no doubt will have great appeal to a wide range of audiences.”- Steve Schein, Professor and Coordinator of the Certificate in Sustainability Leadership, Southern Oregon University
“Ryan is a passionate professional who is active in creating positive social change in the software and internet industry and the business community as a whole. I’ve been impressed with his work with the Entrepreneurs Foundation here in Boulder, CO creating a way for our community to share in the success of our local tech start-up and growth companies. I enjoyed a presentation Ryan gave about the greening of the software industry and software as a service (Saas) industry. I’ve worked with him in E2 as an advocate for local, state and federal cleaner energy and climate change policies. I recommend Ryan highly to anyone seeking a seasoned professional with real world industry experience, knowledge and passion about positive corporate social impact and triple bottom line topics.” – Andrew Currie, Founder, Rocky Mtns E2: The Independent Business Voice for the Environment
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. Follow her at http://twitter.com/JeanTabaka
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.
Zach Nies
Zach Nies, as co-CTO, 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. Follow Zach at: 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.
