About Stephen R. Palmer
About Stephen R. Palmer, software developer, consultant and author.
I'm Stephen R. Palmer, a software developer, consultant and author. The use of the middle initial helps separate me from the multitude of other wonderful Stephen Palmers you can find on Google, Bing, and Yahoo, etc.
My work
revolves around two main themes: model-centric software development
and agile process coaching. My interest in these areas really
started when I worked as the development lead on a major project in
Singapore in the late 1990’s. The project was the first to
use Jeff De Luca’s model-centric
agile process called Feature-Driven
Development (FDD) for want of a better name at the time. Jeff was
the project manager on that project. It was also the project that
spawned Peter
Coad's ‘modeling
in color’ object modeling
technique. Peter played the role of domain architect for the initial
stages of the project.
Since then, I have written a
book about FDD, worked with enterprises developing
model-driven
service-oriented architectures, and coached teams adopting agile
processes based on Scrum (I was certified as a Scrum Practitioner in
2009) and
Smart Agile. Right now, I am back working with Jeff De Luca at Nebulon until the end of 2010.
If you or your development team would be interested in taking a workshop on FDD, Scrum, 'modeling in color' or UML, please, feel free to email me at stephen.palmer@step-10.com. Please, make sure you include the word workshop in the subject line to avoid the spam filter that I inevitably have to have on that address. Alternatively, contact Nebulon through their web site.
Over the years, I have written a number of short articles on
software development topics. Some of these have been sent out as
technical newsletter issues, others have been published in various
forums on the Internet. I have collected these articles together on
these
pages, or links to them where they are still available on other web
sites. Some of the notes I have even started updating. Finally, for no
other reason than I enjoy researching and writing them, the site also
includes some pages about some of the places
I have lived.
As this is my personal website and developed more as a hobby than
anything else, the views expressed on this
site are my own and not necessarily those of my current or previous
employers. Please, feel free to send feedback on anything on the site
to stephen.palmer@step-10.com
with the word feedback in the
subject line to avoid the spam filter.
I hope you enjoy the site and apologises in advance for the inevitable typos and occasional broken link.
Have fun
Steve
Professional Background
Formal Resume as PDF documentFor the first ten years of my career, I worked as a developer on
significant software development projects in a wide variety of
industries around the world. In September 2009, I notched
up a further decade as a consultant working with software
development teams from an even wider variety of organisations
including Nato, CapGemini, The Met. Office, British Telecomms (BT),
British Airways (BA), Cisco, Bank of America, and Emirate Airlines. I
am currently working for Nebulon on a significant and complex
.Net-based project.
I graduated from Keele University at the end of the 1980's with a first class honours degree in Computer Science and Mathematics. I then spent four years working at Instem, designing and writing software for the UK electricity generation, transmission and distribution industries. The majority of the work was in C and FORTRAN on Digital VAX VMS machines but it also included some work in C on Unix workstations, and some C and assembler on industrial equipment based on the Motorola 68000 family of processors. Much of the work was low-level, real-time, software that collected data from monitoring devices, processed it, and populated real-time databases with the results.
A move to Singapore resulted in six years working on business process automation and management information projects at a government agency, the old Telecommunication Authority of Singapore (TAS), and leading regional bank, United Overseas Bank (UOB). At TAS, most of my work was in Oracle's PL/SQL. At UOB, I used C++ for two years before escaping to Java in 1997.
It was while I was at UOB, that I had the enormous privilege and career changing experience of working closely with Jeff De Luca for four years. The project also included the opportunity to work closely with Peter Coad over a period of eighteen months.
On moving back to the UK at the end of the 1990's, with ten years of significant and varied software development experience under my belt, I joined Peter Coad's recently formed company, TogetherSoft.
As a consultant at TogetherSoft, I mainly taught and helped software development teams across the USA and Europe apply the 'Modeling in Color' object-oriented analysis and design strategies and patterns we had pioneered in Singapore. In addition, I was given the opportunity to edit and author TogetherSoft's monthly technical newsletter, and write a book with Mac Felsing about Feature-Driven Development.
After two years enjoying and enduring in equal amounts the
roller-coaster that was TogetherSoft, my turn on that particular
ride came to end. I spent a couple years working as an independent
consultant before being asked by Borland,
who had acquired what
was left of TogetherSoft, to join their UK consultancy team. In
July 2009 Borland was acquired by UK company, Micro Focus. I currently work for
Nebulon as a project development
lead and process coach.
Other Stuff
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