I’m David Hicks, Agile Alliance Founder Member, consultant, trainer and coach. I have over 20 years experience of Agile, working on some of the largest and most complex implementations in the world; and I am the only person in the world certified to trainer level in Scrum, Lean-Kanban and Agile Project Management/DSDM.  

I got into this line of work in 1987 through my Masters degree thesis on iterative development which was published by the British Computer Society. I started my career in the hey-day of the waterfall as an analyst-programmer, team leader and ultimately project manager with a company called LBMS. LBMS were the originators of the PRINCE and SSADM structured methods. This was their main business .... but I was responsible for defining LBMS’s first iterative SDLC and worked with a lot of the early large 4GLs and client-server applications doing iterative development.

My career in Agile really took-off in the early 90’s when I started to use DSDM and became a certified Practitioner and Trainer. As an independent consultant in 1997 I was hired by British Airways to manage the implementation of DSDM as the standard method across their 5,000-strong IT organisation. I managed this Programme for nearly four years, and learned an awful lot about enterprise-Agile and organisational change. It also led me onto the Heathrow Terminal 5 project in 1998 which is where I first started using Scrum. A trip from Heathrow to a conference in 2001 is particularly memorable because I was asked by the organisers to give Ken Schwaber a lift in my car. I’d read his stuff but never met him before ... and of course by the time we arrived three hours later, I was totally converted!

I joined the Agile Alliance as a Founder member in 2002 and have been doing Agile consulting, training and coaching in a whole range of different contexts ever since, using the full range of Agile approaches including Scrum, Kanban, Lean, XP, DSDM, Agile Project Management and the Open/Agile Unified Process. I am a regular speaker on the Agile conference circuit and hold the following Agile qualifications:

- Certified Scrum Trainer

- Certified Kanban Trainer

- Certified Lean IT Trainer

- Certified PMI Agile Certified Practitoner

- Certified APMG Agile Project Management Trainer

- Certified DSDM Agile Trainer

- Certified Scrum Practitioner

- Certified DSDM Agile Advanced Practitioner

- Certified Scrum Master

- Certified Scrum Product Owner

- Certified Agile Leadership Practitioner

Outside work I live in the beautiful countryside of SW England. I’m married, have two daughters age 10 and 8, and for R&R indulge my passion for collecting and racing Ducati motorcycles.

Student Comments from my Certified Scrum Training Classes