All about me

My name’s Mike MacDonagh, I’m the Technical Director of Soft Practice Ltd.

The views expressed in this blog are mine and are probably, but not necessarily, those of SP. I work via SP or partner organisations with both private and public sector organisations worldwide to help improve the way software is done.

Get in contact if you’d like me to work with you

I’m some way between a tools geek, process geek, (post-)agile geek, psychology geek and programming geek.

I’m a UK based consultant with extensive experience in enabling teams in adoption of various software engineering practices and associated toolsets providing training, consultancy and support, in both small teams (2+) and entire development organisations (1000s) scaling agility and lean concepts at the organisational level. I have developed innovative approaches to business change problems including serious games for education and driving adoption in complex environments, using virtual worlds and simulations to educate practitioners. I’ve developed community based process improvement programmes with deep user engagement and buy-in and practical “Agility at scale” business practices.

I specialise in agile and iterative methods and practices ranging from the practical implementation of scrum, kanban, Agile RUP, business and system analysis covering both use cases and user stories (often together), requirements management, architecture and design as a sketch, iterative and continuous flow patterns to continuous integration practices. I don’t believe in slavishly following a process or meta-model but in collaboratively improving the software value flow chain.

I’m an an expert in the IBM Rational Jazz toolset covering deep knowledge of RTC , RRC, lighter RQM knowledge and deep CLM scenarios as well as various open source tools such as Git, Hudson/Jenkins etc. I have good advanced knowledge of various build technologies including ant and maven. I’m proficient in both linux (various) and MS Windows client and server environments.

I’ve worked with number of high profile organisations, including leading financial services, accounting, central and local government, telecommunications, energy, manufacturing and retail organisations, providing services such as:

• Leading “Agility At Scale” business transformation work
• Leading software organisation (post-)agile transformation business change and coaching
• Planning and managing process improvement and tool adoption/deployment programmes
• Designing deploying large scale portfolio and programme management improvement work
• Managing the organisational change associated with IT process improvement
• Training and mentoring in agile, scrum, kanban, RUP and supporting best practices and tools
• Defining and implementing risk management strategies
• Engagement management between suppliers and customers

I’m interested in new technology, psychology, kung fu, music and guitar playing, travelling, philosophy, linguistics, close up magic, biology, maths, physics (especially astronomy and quantum physics) etc…

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Mike MacDonagh asserts his moral right to be identified as the author of all content on this blog