Sherród Faulks & Michael Jabbour
Agile for the Freelance Corporation
Agile books are not meant for startups. They are written for companies with QA teams, middle management, development teams, theme days, and oodles of money. We are not such a company; we are a small group of people with a handful of contractors and a small client base. Our business works more like one big freelancer. While we support our contractors like employees, we remain lean and focused like a freelancer. We have achieved this by translating traditional project management, Scrum and Extreme Programming methods and processes for startups.
In our presentation, we will talk about the changes we have made to project management methodologies and engineering practices. Then we will talk about our clientele and how we "freelance." Finally, we will show how our software stack (which includes Rails, of course) enables us to work faster and with better quality than less adapted teams. It sounds like a lot for 20 slides, but if someone told you that you could be more productive, deliver better, more consistent results, and have happier clients in just 5 minutes, wouldn't you listen?
About Sherród Faulks & Michael Jabbour:
Sherród Faulks has diverse background ranging from Fine Arts, Graphic Design, Photography, and Visual Communication, to Workflow Analysis, Software Development, and Software Design. He writes software the way he designs -- with a strong foundation, attention to detail and with cultural relevance.
Michael Jabbour is a master organizer, bringing multidisciplinary talents together in a cohesive Agile environment. Michael has consulted in strategy, management and technology for 10 years, coaching and teaching executives how to build then execute their dreams. With a graduate degree in Oriental Medicine, he combines a holistic view of people and organizations with a reductionist view toward complex business and technology problems to create simple solutions.
