Tim Hirner - I am a Dallas-based software team leader with many years' experience in developing and managing point-of-sale (POS) terminal software projects. Due to a corporate reorganization at my previous employer (VeriFone) in late 2011, I lost my position, but am thankful that it allowed me to "immerse myself" in the agile way.

At VeriFone, my projects included the standard credit/debit/prepaid applications, but also extended to non-traditional uses of POS terminals.  I also contributed to non-trivial projects in the EMV and PCI-compliance areas.  My last "crown jewel"(?) was steering a major application through the PA-DSS acceptance process.  Prior to becoming a full-time manager, I was an embedded POS developer myself, responsible for software running in over 10,000 devices simultaneously across the U.S.  I loved having that level of impact.

As a manager, my teams were both co-located and remote, internal and external to the company.  Our projects were not large enough to fall within the "7 +/- 2" size guideline, and conditions dictated that I had to manage many projects simultaneously.  Thus, although we couldn't have applied Scrum "by the book" I regret that I didn't know then what I know now.  I am an enthusiastic believer in the framework and hope to apply it in a new position soon (not necessarily constraining myself to POS)...I'm somewhat late to the party, but at least I'm here!

Read Less