Lars Lindström

Picked up an interest in computers and programming during the 80's. Learnt programming Basic and Assembler on Zilog Z80 computers like Luxor ABC80 and Spectravideo MSX. Assembled my own Jet80 desktop computer and started programming C and Pascal on CP/M.

During my time at ABB I got in touch with Programmable Logic Controllers from ABB and Mitsubishi. The programming of such PLCs is nothing like what I was used to but was very interesting. And the importance of good realtime programs became more evident to me.

Decided to become a Software Engineer and started my studies at Luleå Technical University. I added more programming languages to my experience - Motorola 68K Assembler, Modula and Ada. And programming together with others teached me that this business is not only about entering the source code. Communicating with others and working towards a common goal is of major importance to succeed. 

After graduation I started working with software development full-time. The telecommunications industry has tough requirements on the availability and reliability of software systems. Got more experience on realtime programming, mostly in C, for embedded systems and digital signal processing. Testing software systems became more and more rewarding to me. Not only is it a good way to learn the system and giving direct feedback on quality - it is also about designing and programming. Learnt more about C, Perl, Python and shell scripting for test purposes.

At my first assignment as Project Leader I was not very confident in my new role so I just asked the team how they would like to work in the project. Together we formed a way of working that was truly Agile and to a very large extent reminded about Scrum. None of us had heard about Agile or Scrum at that time so our decisions was probably just common sense. Do I have to say that the project was a success?

During all these years I have become familiar with different parts of the software life cycle – in technical development, operational development and project management. Nothing is as fun and inspiring as working together with other engineers towards a common goal. I do believe that Scrum supports this.

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