OKRs Coach, Change Coach, author

Let him take up the story:

Once upon a time, I was a programmer. People I worked with thought I was quite a good one. I was part of a team building a handheld PC, which was a big deal in 1991. I worked on electricity modeling, wrote programs for railway timetables, software for banks, and real-time data feeds for Reuters, and built secure e-mail systems and mobile phone network diagnostic tools.

The code was not the problem; the problem was the way the team was set up, the way we were asked to work, or the way work reached us. To fix that problem, I needed to become a manager. But I didn’t want to be a foolish manager like all the ones I’d worked for before, so I got myself a management qualification.

While I was getting that qualification, I discovered that modern management thinking was very close to the then-newly emerging field of “agile software development.” When I looked back at my experiences, so many of the good times matched what we call agile.

I still love software and coding, but I don’t code anymore. (Actually, I code a little for love.) I devote my time to helping make software better. When I’m teaching, advising, coaching, or consulting, I’m helping the person I used to be. When I see programmers at work, I see my younger self. And I want them to do a great job; I want them to be able to do a better job than I ever did.

Today, I call myself an Agile Guide. I guide people and organizations to greater agility. I provide coaching and direct advice on agile working to leaders and teams creating digital products (software!). The companies I work with come from many different fields, such as healthcare and surveying. However, they all depend on software to deliver for their customers. Without software, they are nothing.

Yesterday… I started coding in 1982 on a Sinclair ZX81. By 1986, I was earning money as a regular contributor to BBC Telesoftware – PDP, PDR, Eclipse, Fonts, Demon’s Tomb, EMACS (no, not that emacs), Snapshot, and Femcoms, to name a few, mostly in 6502 assembler.

In 1989, I was a system administrator with Nixdorf Computer. In 1991, I was a software tester at DIP in Guildford, building the Sharp PC-3000. Even as an undergraduate, the University hired me to help teach other undergraduates and occasionally postgraduates.