Simon Baker

Current

• User Interaction Dood at Visual Healthcare Solutions
• Head of Blutac at Energized Work

Past

• Consultant at City Index
• Energizer and Coach at BSkyB
• Owner at think-box

• Agile Coach and Scrum Master at AOL
• Agile Coach and Scrum Master at Optimistic Media
• Agile Coach and Scrum Master at lastminute.com
• Agile Coach, Shopping and Payments Team at lastminute.com
• Technical Analyst at VocaLink
• Testing Consultant, VISA Direct Service – Person-to-person payments facility at Visa
• Development Manager at Clear Money
• Development Manager at Databeat
• Principal Software Engineer at Vislink, CCTV Division
• Senior Software Engineer at Active Imaging
• Applications Consultant at Data Cell
• Systems Engineer at or industrial Computers

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12 more...

Education

• Brunel University

Recommended

51 people have recommended Simon

Connections

500+ connections

Industry

Computer Software

Websites

• Energized Work
• Agile in Action Blog
• Commutineer

Simon Baker’s Summary

Simon is an enlightened renegade and incorrigible fun-monger whose resolute attitude to craftsmanship and quality, relentless focus on what’s important and ability to create exciting working conditions is changing the way people produce software. Since 1992, following a degree in Electronic Engineering, he has been delivering software in the Internet, media, retail, financial services and banking sectors. With a perennially inquisitive nature he questions conventional thinking, and with innate courage and intellectual acuity he’s developed an instinct for doing the right thing and getting stuff done. He’s an altruist and his raw energy and desire to work with inspirational people drive his passion for achieving the remarkable.

Simon Baker’s Experience

• User Interaction Dood

  Visual Healthcare Solutions

  (Hospital & Health Care industry)

  July 2009 — Present (5 months)

  Experimenting with an iterative approach to user interaction design within weekly deliveries.

• Head of Blutac

  Energized Work

  (Privately Held; Computer Software industry)

  June 2007 — Present (2 years 6 months)

• Consultant

  City Index

  (Privately Held; Financial Services industry)

  October 2008 — April 2009 (7 months)

  Provided organisation and software delivery consulting. Also carried out a feasibility study to create a representative trading system providing a reference implementation model for a rigorous revenue accounting model that strips back prices to their components (financing, commissions, dividends, etc) at the point of trade and focuses on servicing core risk management requirements providing visibility of clean exposure and risk.

• Energizer and Coach

  BSkyB

  (Public Company; BSY; Broadcast Media industry)

  September 2007 — December 2008 (1 year 4 months)

  Delivered Sky's Entertainment sites including Showbiz, TV and Movies.

• Owner

  think-box

  (Computer Software industry)

  January 2002 — August 2007 (5 years 8 months)

  Provided independent consulting and coaching on agile methods.

• Agile Coach and Scrum Master

  AOL

  (Public Company; TWX; Internet industry)

  March 2006 — January 2007 (11 months)

  AOL set up a department to explore and quickly deliver Web2 social networking applications. Helped them embrace an agile approach to product development. Recruited and coached cross-functional, self-organising team of 25 experienced contractors, operating as 3 smaller dependent teams servicing different Product Backlogs. Used Lean techniques with business organisation to create continuous flow of work that delivered running tested software to the market every week. Delivered comments, review and opinions Web services; Love it/Hate-it Website; personalised Home page prototype; feeds-based, editor-light, internationalised portal used to break into new geographies rapidly and provide localised news, entertainments, weather and horoscopes. All developed using Scrum and eXtreme Programming and AJAX, DWR and Spring technologies.

• Agile Coach and Scrum Master

  Optimistic Media

  (Privately Held; Media Production industry)

  August 2005 — January 2006 (6 months)

  Optimistic Media operate a TV channel that broadcasts quiz shows. Delivered internationalised CRM system that allowed the programming/scheduling of quiz shows, and the production of live shows using an integrated dashboard displaying call-TV customer trends and KPI measurements driven from real-time data feeds. Conducted initial assessment of project scope using a user story-writing workshop with prospective Product Owner. Recruited and built cross-functional, self-organising team of 6 people that used Scrum and eXtreme Programming. Performed role of Scrum Master and coached Scrum Team and Product Owner.

• Agile Coach and Scrum Master

  lastminute.com

  (Public Company; LMC; Leisure, Travel & Tourism industry)

  February 2004 — November 2004 (10 months)

  Introduced Scrum as a wrapper for eXtreme Programming (XP) enabling scaling across multiple collocated and remote product development teams. This helped facilitate synchronised iterative development and incremental delivery of features that realised broader business value. Project Managers were coached in facilitation techniques and servant-leadership to become Scrum Masters. Business people were coached as Product Owners, learning to express requirements as user stories and acceptance tests, communicate detail through conversations with Scrum teams, and to prioritise to maximise ROI.

• Agile Coach, Shopping and Payments Team

  lastminute.com

  (Public Company; LMC; Leisure, Travel & Tourism industry)

  August 2003 — November 2004 (1 year 4 months)

  Introduced eXtreme Programming to Shopping and Payments Team to facilitate rapid development and increase quality. Coached team in TDD, user stories, agile planning and estimation techniques. Highest priority was to migrate products from old shopping basket to eBasket across 11 locales. Other projects included introduction of payer authentication schemes (Verified-by-VISA, MasterCard’s Secure Code); integration of risk-management; dynamic currency converter enabling foreign shoppers to be billed in currency of issuing country of card; AMEX foreign currency/traveller’s cheques; gift vouchers; PSP integration using Cybersource, NetGiro, and Camtech; new payment mechanisms. Engineering projects included extensive refactoring to simplify architecture and code design; performance optimisation of eBasket; re-architected eBasket to clustered JBOSS improving reliability and resilience; HCI initiative improving usability of checkout; consolidation and optimisation of settlement processes.

• Technical Analyst

  VocaLink

  (Privately Held; Financial Services industry)

  July 2003 — July 2003 (1 month)

  BACS and Clear Money worked in partnership with the principal stakeholder high street banks (Lloyds TSB and HSBC) to define an electronic bill presentment and payment (EBPP) service for the UK. The work involved the elicitation of new business and operational requirements from the banks and analysis to determine the gap between those requirements and the core functionality offered by the Clear Money service. A technical risk analysis was also conducted. Helped plan a roadmap of goals and an incremental release plan to satisfy both tactical and strategic milestones. Advised on how Extreme Programming might be used as a toolkit of software development practices within the RUP methodology.

• Testing Consultant, VISA Direct Service – Person-to-person payments facility

  Visa

  (Public Company; V; Financial Services industry)

  December 2002 — June 2003 (7 months)

  Provided services for performing iterative validation and acceptance testing of a fraud and money laundering detection system, developed by a third-party using J2EE in a RUP-based development environment. The work involved the creation of an agile test strategy and used a combination of risk analysis and requirements traceability to determine an acceptable level of coverage. A suite of extensible test cases was designed, supported by a comprehensive set of test data.

• Development Manager

  Clear Money

  (Financial Services industry)

  May 2000 — December 2002 (2 years 8 months)

  Clear Money was a dotcom start-up that provided electronic bill presentment and payment (EBPP) services across Internet, Mobile and InteractiveTV channels. Recruited and built a cross-functional team of 16 people, and introduced Extreme Programming to help deliver robust software amongst rapidly changing requirements and incremental product releases from day one. Inculcated agile values and principles into the organisation and connected all facets of product development together into a coherent team with a shared vision and shared goals. Provided coaching to developers, testers and business analysts.

• Development Manager

  Databeat

  (Entertainment industry)

  July 1998 — June 2000 (2 years )

  Databeat developed intelligent music systems for the entertainment industry. Managed and lead the development of a new Intelligent Multimedia System (IMS-4), a distributed COM application that synchronised playing of graphics, audio tracks/messages and videos. Team comprised 6 Developers, 3 Testers and 1 Support Engineer. Developed a Track Management Subsystem, a 3-tier client-server application using SQLServer backend, VB6/XML and a thin client to control the media content of remote systems via a satellite link and an email feedback channel.

• Principal Software Engineer

  Vislink, CCTV Division

  (Broadcast Media industry)

  June 1997 — July 1998 (1 year 2 months)

  Vislink bought Active Imaging. Appointed Team Leader for Mv-2000 (product derived from Mv-ENGINE targeting distributed security applications) because of proven ability to manage projects effectively and deliver milestones. The development team comprised 5 in-house Engineers and 3 external Contractors. Inherited many problems that, coupled with the pressure of an approaching launch, were overwhelming the team. Re-focused team on critical malfunctioning subsystems, reprioritising the work and breaking it into smaller, less complex pieces. The launch was achieved. Worked in the US and Singapore on contracts providing pre-sales technical consultancy for Mv-2000.

• Senior Software Engineer

  Active Imaging

  (Broadcast Media industry)

  October 1995 — June 1997 (1 year 9 months)

  Active Imaging developed digital image processing products. Lead creation of Mv-ENGINE product that provided the platform for a family of intelligent network cameras, which comprised an embedded PC, image acquisition and compression hardware, and connectivity interfaces (Ethernet, PSTN, ISDN and GSM). Used object-oriented design to develop an extensible software library written in C++. Lead the design and development of Mv-NET, a derivative product targeting Internet applications. Its software extended Mv-ENGINE to provide real-time daemons controlling video acquisition and Pan-Tilt-Zoom-Focus. An embedded HTTP daemon was developed and used ‘push’ technology to serve the images. An embedded web site was also created using HTML, JAVA and ActiveX to provide configuration and administration functionality.

• Applications Consultant

  Data Cell

  (Broadcast Media industry)

  June 1995 — October 1995 (5 months)

  Data Cell was a VAR of image processing hardware and software and a Systems Integrator supplying bespoke video and imaging systems to OEM businesses and end users. Worked closely with OEM businesses to develop their image-processing applications based upon video acquisition and compression cards for DOS, Windows 3.1, 95, NT, OS/2 and Solaris. Developed ‘toolkit’ software, eg. configuration utilities, support libraries for serial-controlled cameras and performance demonstrations.

• Systems Engineer

  or industrial Computers

  (Military industry)

  November 1992 — June 1995 (2 years 8 months)

  or Industrial Computers was a Systems Integrator that built bespoke VME computers based upon multi-processor combinations of 8086/88 and 6800x0 CPUs, running software platforms such as OS-9, Windows 3.1 and 95, and Solaris. Performed a number of interacting duties from pre-sales technical consultancy, through design and development to post-sales support. Developed a family of SDKs comprising libraries; drivers and example programs that complemented the individual hardware units and helped improve the overall build time of systems.

Simon Baker’s Education

• Brunel University

  BEng Hons , Electrical & Electronic Engineering , 1988 — 1992

Additional Information

Simon Baker’s Websites:

• Energized Work
• Agile in Action Blog
• Commutineer

Simon Baker’s Interests:

Agile methods: Extreme Programming, Scrum, Lean Coaching and facilitation techniques

Simon Baker’s Groups:

Chartered Engineer, MIEE

•    Grails User Group
•    Energized Worker
•    Groovy User Group
•    XPGame players
•    eXtreme Programming (XP)