kathleen forden

My name is Jurgen Appelo. I am Chief Information Officer at ISM eCompany, rated (a while ago) as the #1 fastest growing technology company in The Netherlands. As a manager, I lead a horde of 100 software developers, development managers, project managers, business consultants, quality managers, service managers and kangaroos, some of which I hired accidentally.

I am primarily interested in software engineering, quality improvement and complexity theory, from a manager’s perspective. I am trying to write a book about this, and I keep track of it on my blog. I am a writer, having published a number of papers and articles in several magazines, like Dr. Dobb’s, Software Quality Professional, Methods & Tools, The Software Practitioner, StickyMinds, Software Development Network, Computable and Automatisering Gids.

I am also a speaker, being regularly invited to talk at seminars and conferences about agile software development, project management, process improvement, and development management. People tell me I’m quite good at doing presentations. I don’t know why. I only show them pretty pictures while making fun of myself. But that seems to help.

However, sometimes I put all writing, speaking and managing aside to do some intensive programming myself, or to spend time on my ever-growing collection of science fiction and fantasy literature.

I live in Rotterdam (The Netherlands) — and sometimes in Brussels (Belgium) — with my partner Raoul. I have two kids, and an imaginary hamster called George.