John Scumniotales

I have been at the forefront of software technology and methodology for nearly twenty years and have had the good fortune to work with and close to some amazing scientists, technologists, and methodologists.

I started my career at Litton Itek Optical systems, where I lead the development of robotic control systems for the fabrication of optics for land and space based reconnaissance systems (yes, sometimes you actually have to use Calculus and Differential Equations at work). After several years of DOD 2167a and TQM, I fled DOD software development to client-server tools and business applications.

I landed at Easel Corporation in Burlington, Massachusetts as a senior technical consultant. After several years on the road using Easel’s object-oriented tools to build business applications, I returned to their engineering group to work with Jeff Sutherland on a next-generation development tool. Using Easel’s Smalltalk development tool, we built a first of its kind object-oriented tool that allowed users to build complete business systems without needing to code. There was a significant amount of experimentation required to get it right and traditional development approaches were in adequate. So we built our own process – Scrum.

Next, I leveraged my experience at Easel, both technology and methodology, at a start-up I co-founded called Vigor Technology. At Vigor, we applied agile techniques to deliver to market object-relational mapping products and services targeted towards Microsoft COM and DCOM developers. Vigor Technology was acquired by Rational Software in 1998.

Working for Rational was a fascinating experience. I held a variety of jobs that ranged from Director of Development where I managed a 60+ engineers spread across 5 time zones to architect of the a design patterns capability for the Rational Rose product line. In the latter role, I had the privilege of working directly with Grady Booch and Jeff McKenna during the inception of this new capability. The most surreal experience was an all day meeting with Grady, Jeff and I in Grady’s basement home office in Boulder, Colorado. I completed my tour at Rational as the Director of E-Business Solutions responsible for the enterprise software development capabilities of Rational’s flagship Rose and XDE products lines.

I left Rational in August 2002 to join Pacific Edge Software, a Project Portfolio Management vendor (PPM). As Vice President of Products at Pacific Edge, I was responsible for Product Strategy and Engineering for our product line and again have applied agile approaches to re-architect our products and processes. Using agile approaches based loosely on Scrum and XP, we drove over 20 product releases to market.

As seems to happen to all start-ups, Pacific Edge was acquired by Serena Software in October of 2006. As acquisitions go, this has gone quite well! I am now VP of ALM Products and in addition to Pacific Edge's PPM product, I also have responsibility over Serena's Application Lifecycle Products (ALM). This now also includes a new Agile On Demand product (SaaS) that wil be available in late 2008!