Malcolm Sparks

Past

• Senior Mentor at Exoftware
• Software coach and trainer at BBC
• Independent Consultant at Congreve Computing

• CTO at LeCayla Technologies
• Consultant at LogicaCMG
• Founder at jcoverage
• Principal Engineer at IONA Technologies
• Founder at EJBHome
• Java Contractor at Financial Times Information
• Oracle DBA at Littlewoods Stores
• Technical Consultant at Cap Gemini
• Programmer at Capgemini

see less...

9 more...

Education

• University of Warwick

Recommended

2 people have recommended Malcolm

Connections

152 connections

Industry

Computer Software

Malcolm Sparks’s Summary

Professional experience:

Have developed and delivered solutions in the areas of Unix/database administration, workflow, software packaging and distribution, call-centres, image processing, drug licensing, billing and many others.

Have also developed numerous ground-breaking and award-winning software products and technologies.

Much consulting experience, in various industies including telecommunications, government, finance, insurance, pharmaceuticals, retail, broadcasting, healthcare and IT.

Established innovator, instigator and mentor.

Personal 'projectography' :-

[1986]
MusexxMaker (music authoring tool for games, published for Atari ST)

[1987]
Steel (Vermin Software Design, 68000-based driving simulation/game for Atari/Amiga)

[1992]
In car navigational software, C++/XWindows (won Lucas Software Engineering Award)

[1994]
Nuance - UNIX administration shell with remote control

[1995]
PMC - Oracle-based workflow management system, PL/SQL

[1997]
Taska - Java-based workflow management system

[1998]
EJBHome - World's first EJB 1.0 server (with Peter Morgan)

[1999]
iPAS - Ground-breaking J2EE server

[2000]
Xwing - Extensible XML-based GUI construction language, pre-dates Mozilla XUL and Microsoft XAML.

[2001]
Xpipe - Composite-pattern based parallel XML pipelining

[2002]
Xsume - Software modularization, packaging, distribution and installation maintenance technology (won IONA's President's Award for Innovation) - pre-dates Maven.

[2003]
jcoverage - World's most popular code coverage tool (with Peter Morgan)

[2004]
PackageWare - see http://www.congreve.com/modsoft

[2004]
ConfigurePlus - Commercial configuration framework

[2005-2008]
Modularity/CleanBuild - Next generation build technology

Malcolm Sparks’s Specialties:

Extreme Programming
Testing, mentoring, process improvement
Software architecture and build environments
Java, J2EE
XML
Security
Database design and programming esp. Oracle
Linux, Windows

Malcolm Sparks’s Experience

• Senior Mentor

  Exoftware

  (Privately Held; Computer Software industry)

  August 2007 — May 2008 (10 months)

  Consulted at a number of organisations in many industries, including BT, British Airways, Royal Bank of Scotland, HBOS, Siemens, Dell and the BBC.

• Software coach and trainer

  BBC

  (Public Company; Computer Software industry)

  2006 — 2007 (1 year )

• Independent Consultant

  Congreve Computing

  (Privately Held; Myself Only; Professional Training & Coaching industry)

  April 2003 — August 2007 (4 years 5 months)

  Have provided hands-on coaching, training and mentoring in Java and Agile practices for various companies internationally, including the BBC, Telenor, Siemens, LogicaCMG, Beaumont Hospital, Valista, Netsure, Zenark...

• CTO

  LeCayla Technologies

  (Privately Held; 11-50 employees; Computer Software industry)

  August 2004 — December 2005 (1 year 5 months)

• Consultant

  LogicaCMG

  (Public Company; Computer Software industry)

  2004 — 2004 (less than a year)

• Founder

  jcoverage

  (Computer Software industry)

  April 2003 — November 2003 (8 months)

  Founder of jcoverage, see jcoverage.com

• Principal Engineer

  IONA Technologies

  (Public Company; 501-1000 employees; IONA; Computer Software industry)

  January 1999 — April 2003 (4 years 4 months)

  Key developer of J2EE application server and XML software

• Founder

  EJBHome

  (Privately Held; 1-10 employees; Computer Software industry)

  October 1998 — January 1999 (4 months)

  Co-developer of EJBHome, the world's first EJB app. server (with Peter Morgan)

• Java Contractor

  Financial Times Information

  (Public Company; 10,001 or more employees; Computer Software industry)

  January 1998 — October 1998 (10 months)

• Oracle DBA

  Littlewoods Stores

  (Privately Held; 5001-10,000 employees; Information Technology and Services industry)

  January 1997 — December 1997 (1 year )

  Worked in a team, in the end felt more like a family, of Unix administrators and Oracle DBAs in Albert Dock, Liverpool. Didn't feel like a contractor at the end, was very sorry to leave.

• Technical Consultant

  Cap Gemini

  (Public Company; 1001-5000 employees; Information Technology and Services industry)

  January 1994 — January 1997 (3 years 1 month)

  Unix/C programmer and administrator (Solaris)
  Consultant and programmer in DIP (document image processing), workflow, Notes, Java, Oracle (PL/SQL, Forms, Reports, DBA).

• Programmer

  Capgemini

  (Public Company; Computer Software industry)

  January 1994 — December 1996 (3 years )

Malcolm Sparks’s Education

• University of Warwick

  Bsc IIi (Hons) , Computer Science , 1990 — 1993

Additional Information

Malcolm Sparks’s Interests:

Social aspects of software development Continuous improvement of developer environments and processes Modular software and metadata-based architectural decomposition. (see http://www.congreve.com/modsoft/) Software versioning and dependencies Pluggable architectures and frameworks Organizational knowledge life-cycle Packaging, release, installation and software maintenance technologies XML Cryptography Acceptance testing Test-driven development SVG SGML/DocBook Design (Graphic/Web/UI) Darwinism Quantum Physics Skiiing, snowboarding Piano playing Music production, mixing

Malcolm Sparks’s Groups:

Irish Skeptics Society

Malcolm Sparks’s Honors:

Lucas Software Engineering Award
IONA President's Award for Innovation

Malcolm Sparks’s Contact Settings

Interested In:

• reference requests
• getting back in touch