SuperDevs

Personal profile

I'm John Harkins, I've been working in software development since the mid 90's as a developer, team lead, development manager and department head. I have spent most of the last decade working in small businesses and found that I really enjoy the creative and entrepreneurial vibe that too often gets lost in larger organisations. With this in mind, in April 2010 I decided to strike out on my own and so Sprightly was born. I have been working with agile & lean methods since about 2004. I have lots of experience organising teams using a scrum style framework and have introduced xp practices such as TDD, refactoring and pair programming into teams with great results. I've also worked extensively with off-shore teams in China, South Africa, Ukraine and India. Language, cultural and time-zone issues can be a real challenge, but employing simple principals of small steps with lots of communication leads to the building of trust which, after all, is the real secret to offshore success.