Richard Brooksby

Current

Development Manager at Zoonami Limited
Senior Consultant at Ravenbrook Limited
Director at Ravenbrook Limited

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Past

Development Lead at Zoonami Limited
Non-executive Director at Zùjí
Executive Trainee at Delegation of the European Commission in Japan

Vice President of Engineering and Development at Geodesic Systems
Systems Architect at Geodesic Systems
Software Engineer at Harlequin

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3 more...

Education

University of Cambridge

Recommended

15 people have recommended Richard

Connections

190 connections

Industry

Computer Software

Websites

My Company

Richard Brooksby’s Summary

My goal has been to become a skilled generalist -- to understand well how all parts of an organization work, and how those parts must connect together to achieve the organization's goals. I can talk to anyone and understand their problems, understand the general problems, then propose solutions which work across the organization. In my experience, most problems are to do with communication. Having said that I can also solve domain specific problems. And I write good code.

Richard Brooksby’s Specialties:

software engineering management, software development, product management, evolutionary delivery, agile methods, requirements, architecture, design, implementation, release engineering, delivery, issue tracking, workflow, organizations, quality, CMM, software metrics, software inspection, highly reliable systems, embedded systems, memory management, garbage collection, compilers, computer architecture, operating systems, system administration, networking, product management

Richard Brooksby’s Experience

Development Manager

Zoonami Limited

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

January 2007 — Present (3 years )

Software development management (and programming) for Zoonami's ongoing top secret game projects. Involved in all apsects of game design and development including graphics and audio, asset management, localization, gameplay and balancing, puzzle generation, networked gameplay, defect management, planning, design, tools -- you name it. In particular, though, managing a small team of creative programmers to deliver focussed software on time, and enjoy doing it.
Senior Consultant

Ravenbrook Limited

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

December 1997 — Present (12 years 1 month)

Numerous product strategy, management, and software engineering engagements for various well known software organizations. Varies from consultation with senior management over strategic software engineering and growth problems, to developing tools to assist in software development.

Clients include: Symbian (mobile phone operating systems), Lastminute.com (online travel, entertainment, gifts), Perforce Software (configuration management tools), Configura (configuration, CAD, business tools), Zoonami (games), and many smaller companies struggling with growth problems.

See http://www.ravenbrook.com/ for more details of our services.
Director

Ravenbrook Limited

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

December 1997 — Present (12 years 1 month)

Co-founder and director of independent software engineering consultancy, dealing with company and business administration, marketing, contract & legal, finance, etc. See my position as "Senior Consultant" for details of my external consultancy work for Ravenbrook.
Development Lead

Zoonami Limited

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

June 2006 — December 2006 (7 months)

Programming and programmer management for Zoonami's "Zendoku" puzzle/battle game for the Nintendo DS and Sony PSP. Involved in all apsects of game development including graphics and audio, asset management, localization, gameplay and balancing, puzzle generation, networked gameplay, defect management, planning, and design.
Non-executive Director

Zùjí

(Privately Held; 1-10 employees; Design industry)

September 2004 — May 2006 (1 year 9 months)

I'm helping Zùjí with general business and management advice, helping with technical matters, and marketing strategy.
Executive Trainee

Delegation of the European Commission in Japan

(Government Agency; 11-50 employees; International Trade and Development industry)

May 2005 — April 2006 (1 year )

The Executive Training Programme in Japan (see www.etp.org) was a course of intensive Japanese language and business study, followed by internships in Japanese companies, with the aim of improving and expanding trade between the European Union and Japan. My aim is to improve communication in software engineering and advance the field in general in both Japan and the EU.
Vice President of Engineering and Development

Geodesic Systems

(Public Company; 11-50 employees; Computer Software industry)

July 1998 — December 1999 (1 year 6 months)

Created new product vision for Geodesic Systems based on market analysis and core competencies. Developed strategic, medium, and short term product development plans based on new vision. Created highly successful board presentation which changed the direction of the company.

Managed engineering team of software, web, quality, and production engineers developing Geodesic's flagship product. Structured the team into functional groups, recruited group managers, and developed department processes.

Implemented an evolutionary planning process in co-operation with sales and marketing. Shifted department focus to plan execution, to the point where deliverables were produced on time at high quality.

Planned and executed the unification of seven diverging codelines to create single source, documentation, and design codeline, eliminating duplicated effort and increasing productivity and quality.
Systems Architect

Geodesic Systems

(Public Company; 11-50 employees; Computer Software industry)

December 1997 — July 1998 (8 months)

Planned and implemented a program of software engineering process improvement, based on the Capability Maturity Model, resulting in improved delivery of software from the development group.

Lifted the development organization half-way from CMM level 1 (chaotic) to CMM level 2 (repeatable) in less than six months.

Defined and implemented a change management process and configuration management system.

Designed, created, and managed the company information system.

Instrumental in the improvement of general company infrastructure, from network management to documentation standards.

Developed requirements management, specification, planning and tracking processes in order to bring company to level 2 of the Capability Maturity Model.
Software Engineer

Harlequin

(Privately Held; 201-500 employees; Computer Software industry)

September 1991 — December 1997 (6 years 4 months)

Conceived and created a highly portable, robust, and innovative memory management system including advanced garbage collection abilities. The system was successfully delivered into widely differing internal projects. (This software is now open source -- see <http://www.ravenbrook.com/project/mps/>.)

Achieved an extremely low bug rate — as low as 1 defect in six months.

Built and managed a highly effective team of engineers to develop and maintain the memory management system at an advanced level of software engineering process maturity (approximately CMM Level 3 plus defect prevention).

Led and managed Harlequin's contribution to the ESPRIT COMPARE collaborative research project, the goal of which a multi-language parallel compiler family.

Completed the MLWorks run-time system and garbage collector, taking an early non-functional prototype to production quality. Designed and developed the MLWorks compiler optimization phase.

Additional Information

Richard Brooksby’s Websites:

My Company

Richard Brooksby’s Interests:

adventure, aikido, anthropology, anticapitalism, boats, Britain, cats, China, Chinese, comedy, comics, consulting, cryptography, culture jamming, cycling, design, dilettantism, drawing, eclecticism, electronic music, England, eschatology, ethics, evolution, exploring, fair trade, generalism, go, graphic design, human communication, idealism, intelligence, islands, Japan, Japanese, kites, law, learning, legerdemain, linguistics, living aboard, magic, mandolin, memetics, new experiences, new skills, parrots, philosophy, piano, poker, process, programming, puzzles, requirements engineering, rock climbing, romance, sailing, scheme, scotch, ships, silliness, snow skiing, snowboarding, social darwinism, social responsibility, software engineering, software engineering management, tea, the absurd, the new, the sea, thinking, toys, travel, traveling, travelling, trees, understanding, utilitarianism, words, writing, writing systems, yachts, zen