Steve is a developer, facilitator, mentor, and change agent. Since his introduction to the technical concepts and core values of Extreme Programming in 2007, Steve has been transforming organizations, growing self-organizing teams, and empowering individuals. Steve continues to evolve how he writes software, how he works with teams and organizations to deliberately master techniques, learning about new promising ways to write high quality software, introspecting on ways to improve himself, or just embracing change as a way of life.

Steve has had the opportunity to work across a wide range of industries including telcom, finance, insurance, advertising, shipping, retail, travel, games, mobile, and more. He has led and coordinated the transformation of a 13 team bi-continent department from lowest performing in the company to a team known for delivering highquality features at a cadence that the rest of the enterprise could not match. On time and on budget, Steve moved a long-established company with sensitive data to the cloud, a challenge that five previous teams had failed with. In that process he was able to create a dynamic high-performing group of 60+ people that lead the rest of the enterprise into the cloud. For a number of different engagements and employers, Steve has transformed the hiring process from esoteric questions and a whiteboard, to metric driven near real-world work scenarios that simulate, as close as possible, how a person would work as a team within an organization.

He has talked at companies, conferences, and groups around the world on topics such as XP, collaborative programming techniques, how to create/adopt a culture of learning, object-oriented design, deliberate practice, transforming hiring practices, and Fluid Scaling Technologies. Steve is committed to supporting the software community and actively does so by leading, growing and organizing the 3,900+ member Seattle Code Crafters monthly meetup. He has organized and led four Global Day of CodeRetreats, both locally and world-wide. You can almost always find him at Agile Open Northwest, every year and certainly monthly at the Seattle Code Crafters meetup.

Sustainable pace and work-life balance are core to Steve’s world. He balances his professional career with spending time with his partner, two sons, two cats and two neighbor dogs. When not hammering, digging, or sawing something he will be found communing with nature through hiking/backpacking, cycling (mtn and road), whitewater kayaking, rock climbing, or even just sitting on the patio birding.