Hi. I’m Berry Langerak, and I am an agile solution architect. I’m for hire.
I’ve been crafting software since somewhere around 2005. During this time, I have played a lot of roles within that process. Apart from the role of software developer, I’ve been scrum master, business analyst, database administrator, technical lead and solution architect.
I’ve been working in an Agile setting for the better part of my career. Most of the projects I have done employed Scrum, but some projects were better suited for Kanban. I strongly believe in the philosophy of Agile software development, mostly because I have seen it working quite a few times, especially with large projects and even across multiple teams within different companies.
My biggest quality is being able to combine Agile, technology, and architecture. This translates into the following concrete activities:
Educating people in the Agile philosophy. A lot of people might be familiar with the ceremony of scrum, but without getting the philosophy of Agile, this will certainly not lead to the best results;
Combining system architecture with Agile. Big design up front might not be the answer to delivering software, but not thinking of architecture in advance might well be even worse. It’s a delicate balancing act, and one I’m quite experienced in. Even in legacy landscapes, I can find the hard spots and make them a little less hard by introducing just the right amount of abstraction. This will lead to much better velocity. Now, but even more so in the future.
Setting the quality standard. Agile is hard, because the code of your application needs to be as flexible as your roadmap. Unfortunately, a lot of developers either simply don’t know how to do this, or they are pressed for time because of deadlines and budgets. To solve the former, I’m familiar with various techniques that will lead to more flexible code, such as XP, TDD, DDD, BDD, and can coach developers to become better developers. To solve the latter, I can convince managers and clients that quality takes time. Bargains are ultimately costly.
Focus on value. If it’s not valuable, you shouldn’t be building it. But what does provide value, and what doesn’t? Technology can give you insights into what works and what does not. I can set-up instrumentation on your applications so that everyone knows what the impact is of a certain change.
Automate delivery. If you’re doing agile to be able to deliver quickly and respond to changing requests of the market, it’s no good to be stalled by a bottle neck in the form of an obsolete release mechanism. I can help with setting up continuous integration environments, as well as continuous delivery platforms.