Douglas E. Shimp has 17 years of experience in the technology field and has played key roles in software development (developer, QA, Analyst, Manager, Leader, Coach and Consultant etc). Doug whose passion is about teams and applied learning for real product development is establishing himself as a leader in this area. He believes that the core bases for applied agile is that “You must see the result for it to be real; otherwise it is all just theory to the individual”.

One of Doug’s distinctions is his focus on the interaction of technology and corporate cultural issues. He has worked extensively with Cockburn and Associates to teach “Writing Effective Use Cases” as well as becoming a Certified Scrum Trainer and Scrum Master by Advanced Development Methods and the Scrum Alliance respectively.

Doug has also worked in the finance industry as a leader for the management and development of core finance technology. The finance company created a subsidiary company that needed an emergent business/technology trend setter to push its IT systems forward. Doug was successful in enabling the parent company to attain a dominant market position by providing incubation space for the innovation of key finance technology.

Currently, Doug is managing partner with 3Back, a consulting business that focuses on “making teams better” at applied agile product development. 3Back’s clients who are using agile practices across teams in their organizations range from 45 employees to 3000 employees. 3back’s focus has broadened considerably in the last couple of years as Doug has been getting requests outside of classic software development to apply agile to things like architecture firms, marketing houses and auto auctions. Through his experiences, he has seen that the lessons from software product development are very applicable to other areas. Doug has found that software product development has been an evolutionary proving ground for selecting practices “that work” from those “that do not work”.

Doug is currently working on a book with his colleagues that covers applied agile for teams. He is also publishing several case studies from his work with 3back’c clients.