About
Hello, and welcome! I started this blog as an attempt to write down some of the stuff I would otherwise forget. It's been pretty handy for me so far, and I hope it is of some use to you also!
Personal stuff
I live in Sydney with my adorable wife, Soosun, and newborn son Sol. I am a junior Wing Chun instructor and enjoy teaching and training. I like to do yoga, and go bushwalking and swimming. I enjoy reading, and lately I've been listening to a lot of audio-books. I speak English, reasonably fluent French, and a little Korean. I work full time for ThoughtWorks as a consultant and technical lead. I run a small IT business called Crisp Design, a bridal registry website and an online risk assessment system.
Professional Bio
James was coding in primary school, selling his own software in high school and consulting by the time he was at uni. Over the last 11 years, James has written a lot of business applications and services, designed architectures and frameworks, managed products, led development teams and consulted on architecture, acquisitions and process. James is an enthusiastic presenter, the co-organiser of the Sydney ALT.NET user group and a regular at the Sydney Ruby On Rails user group.
James loves to develop software that delights its users. The best way he's found to do this is to:
- understand the business and work closely with all stakeholders
- use agile methods for business analysis, iteration and release management, e.g. user stories, story walls, story maps, burn up charts, etc
- write clear, maintainable code with good test coverage in a modern language such as C# or Ruby
- design and evolve a lean architecture in which each piece and layer adds value
- automate everything possible, including tests, deployment and environment creation
- work in small, cross-functional teams with a high level of trust and self organisation
Random Slew of Favourite technologies
Ruby, Rails, C#, Javascript, CSS, HTTP, AWS
Favourite Methodologies
agile, XP, Scrum
Areas of particular interest
- Simplifying complex architectures
- Pragmatic systems integration
- Where dynamic and static languages meet
Also find me on:
Twitter: @jtcrisp
Linked in: jamescrisp
