Expertise:

Agile Development Coaching
Product Management
Facilitation
Agile Methodologies
Business Process Modeling
Enterprise Architecture
Testing Methodologies
Rapid Scoping
Systems Implementation
Systems Integration
Training
Analysis and Design
Open Source Software
Ruby on Rails
Web 2.0
Paper-based Modeling

Industries:

Web Based Applications
Consumer Software
Financial Services
Construction
Shipping
Insurance

Computer Languages:

Ruby, JavaScript, CSS, Java, .NET(C#), Python, C++/C, PHP, Perl, Pascal, Lisp

Education:

University of
Southern California
BS in Computer Science

Jeremy Lightsmith

(formerly Jeremy Stell-Smith)

My 10 years as a project manager, coach, facilitator, team lead, and software developer have been about aligning people, building teams, and creating value.

I have extensive experience coaching software development teams across many industries, introducing agile best practices and values, and leading my teams to deliver working software.

I believe that leadership is about service and two-way trust. I believe that integrity and passion are contagious, and I try to model my beliefs.

EXPERIENCE

Apr 2007 - present

Pivotal Labs

Agile Coach / Project Manager

My responsibilities at Pivotal include Client / Project Management, Agile Enablement and Coaching of development teams, and Ruby on Rails development. I also help kick off projects by facilitating intensive requirements gathering sessions.

• Client: Construction Services Company

  I managed the client relationship and led development of their flagship product. I collaborated with my client's clients to sell, design and develop new products. My team of 2-6 completed a ruby on rails rewrite and data migration of a multiyear legacy Java system in 6 months. I was also responsible for systems architecture and further development against the rewrite.

• Client: Major Construction Company

  I was responsible for a systems implementation of a punchlist product from inception to launch. I facilitated requirements gathering, led development, and collaborated closely with its customers to see it through to a successful 1.0 release. Replacing a previous system, the new system is up to 10 times more responsive, scales to millions of records, handles concurrent users and offline access, and was delivered on time and on budget.

• Product: Pivotal Tracker

  As a senior developer, I was responsible for much of a UI overhaul as we pushed it toward full public release.

Aug 2000 - Mar 2007

ThoughtWorks, Inc.

Consultant / Facilitator / Agile Coach / Senior Developer / Sr. Business Analyst

Serving ThoughtWorks, I have seen and been a part of real change. As an Extreme Programming Coach, I concentrated on gelling teams and introducing Agile Best Practices as well as mentoring developers and business analysts. As a developer, I was responsible for evolving much of the architecture on each of my projects at ThoughtWorks. During my time here, I taught unit testing workshops, hosted the Bay XP User Group, presented at various conferences, co-started the first GeekNight, and even got a chance to pair with people like Ward Cunningham, Martin Fowler, Robert Martin, and Brian Marick.

• QuickStart Engagements

  I served as lead facilitator on several QuickStarts and developed and taught internal classes to train other facilitators. In this type of engagement, a small ThoughtWorks team facilitates intense working meetings with stakeholders, BAs and developers to drive out clear business goals and objectives, and eventually flesh out enough requirements to kickoff an agile project. The projects that I started this way ranged from small 4 person projects to multimillion dollar projects lasting multiple years.

• Product: CruiseControl.rb

  Alexey Verkhovsky and I led a small development team to design and implement a ruby version of cruise control. We drove the product to a successful 1.0 release and beyond. It is now the de facto standard for ruby continuous integration, in use in hundreds of projects around the world. Because it is open source, I am able to remain active as a lead developer today.

• Client: Cutting Edge Software Product Company

  I served as a developer & architect and was called upon to influence the product by sharing industry knowledge and best practices. This client is using and hoping to introduce many revolutionary technologies around Domain Specific Languages which could have a significant impact on the way we write software, challenging our notions of computer languages and whose job it is to write them.

• Client: Major Financial Company

  As a coach, I brought best practices to the team which allowed it to grow from 5 developers in a room to 30 developers on 3 sites including an offshore component. As an architect, I was responsible for much of the architecture, especially an MVC framework that allowed the same presenters and agents/web services to be used on SmartClient and ASP.NET views.

• Client: Major Petroleum Company

  As a team lead and senior developer on this 100+ person project, I helped define their methodology and architecture. I helped write a persistence layer for the project and wrote the data migration framework that has now been used for several releases. Developed a bespoke oil trading application to capture and process deals involving physical and derivative instruments.

• Client: Container Shipping Web Service

  I helped bring many best practices to the team, as well as to the client through mentoring. I also pioneered n-stage XSL transforms, developed a powerful framework for writing web applications, and rewrote and optimized an entity bean code generator.

May 2007 - present

Burn Blue

Co-Founder / Director

Burn Blue is a non-profit, community-run organization for the promotion of blues dancing in Seattle. From a vision shared by Topher Howard and myself, we built it up to a self sustaining organization with a weekly dance with an average attendance of over 100. We use this venue to train and grow the organizers, teachers, and DJs in our community.

June 1999 - July 2000

IBM Corp.

Software Developer / Team Lead

I was team lead of the Windows GUI team on a large-scale cross-platform C++/Java environment. I led development of Testing Frameworks, User Wizards, and Dynamic Control Resizing for Internationalization.

Jan 1998 - Aug 1998

Intel Corp.

Software Developer (intern)

I developed a feature-rich IDE for non-programmer chip testers to write test scripts. I also co-developed a commercial Failure Analysis Tool with an outside company.

May 1997 - Aug 1997

Microsoft Corp.

Software Developer in Test (intern)

I did an internship as part of the Expedia team and was responsible for development of a database stress-testing tool. It had an MFC interface, and limited "Smart Monkey"/ AI functionality.

Aug 1995 - May 1999

University of Southern California

Research Assistant / Consultant

As a research assistant in the USC Robotics Lab, I worked on an AI and real-time 3D physical simulation projects. As a consultant for the university, I provided end-user support for all of our software and services.

OPEN SOURCE PROJECTS