Nathan Slippen 
Chief Technologist, Valtech U.S.  - Enterprise Architect

Summary of Background
Nathan Slippen is a Principal Consultant with Valtech Technologies.  Nathan’s focus is all around customer satisfaction through continuous and efficient delivery of useful and valuable software. Nathan believes that every great software implementation no matter how big or small cannot be done successfully without the people involved and their commitment to succeed; it is not always about the Architecture.  Success in software delivery comes in many forms, but has to be grounded by productive communication of the stakeholders with the contributors to the software product.  Success is also seen when the business vision has a proven business process in place to back that vision, a solid enterprise architecture, and usage of creative solutions along with efficient technological development practices that are promoted in the delivery of the software product.

Nathan’s consulting experience in information technology goes back over 21 years.  He started consulting in the analysis, design, development, and testing of small-scale applications and moved into larger enterprise systems within 3 years.  Nathan has worked as a database administrator, network administration, and systems administrator in both Windows and Unix operating systems.   Nathan has also practiced and mentored in Rational Unified Process, Dynamic Systems Development Method, Extreme Programming, and today in Agile practices and principles relating to Scrum. He has a breadth of knowledge in hardware and software enterprise architectures and understands quality assurance, quality controls, as well as configuration, risk, and release management relating to enterprise software development.

Skills and Experience

➢    Java Enterprise Architect
➢    Certified SCRUM Master.
➢    21 years of experience in the information technology industry.  Areas of exposure include:

         •   Banking and Finance
         •   Medical / Healthcare
         •   Automotive
         •   Insurance
         •   Utilities
         •   Agriculture
         •   Government

➢    Consulting, Mentoring, and Team Leadership positions in numerous organizations.
➢    Responsible for enterprise software delivery through design, development, testing, and release management.
➢    Expertise in:

         •   Software Languages:  Objective C, Java, SQL
         •   API utilization with JMS, JAAS, Spring, JUnit, Hibernate and iBatis
         •   N Tier Architectures and SOA
         •   Practical RDBMS Design and Development
         •   Agile tenets; Scrum and XP

Personal Statement
As an Information Technology professional, it is well known that the failure rate of usable delivered software products is far greater than the success rate.  Much of this is attributed to factors such as:
•    Poor communication and lack of vision
•    Lack of understanding and use of a development methodology
•    Poorly designed enterprise architecture
•    Poor requirements and misunderstanding how to gauge the return on investment
•    Misappropriation of resources, as well as a lack of expertise from some resources

With all these factors looming, most projects start off with a steep uphill climb to success.  My career has been focused on not only learning about these factors, but also how to mitigate these factors in many of the organizations where I consulted.  Unfortunately there is no magic pill that will fix all issues, but understanding where and when issues arise in the overall software lifecycle can make or break a company’s successful software delivery.  Every project should have a checklist of questions asked and answered.

•    Who is the customer and what is most important and valuable to them
•    Who defines success and what does success look like
•    Will the architecture support the product’s usability, scalability, performance and how long will it support these aspects

•    Is the organization able to support this product being created and delivered
•    Does the organization have a consensus on the methodology to be used in the delivery process
•    Does the organization have the correct resources to get the product delivered in an efficient timeline to ensure a viable ROI

My focus is continually looking at the big picture of every IT project that leads to enterprise software delivery, and understanding the details involved at every juncture.  If the questions above are not answered, I try and help determine the answers.  I commit through team mentoring and leadership within an organization to help facilitate practical and useful principles and practices in business requirements, enterprise architecture, development, quality, and release processes, as well as other facets relating to enterprise software delivery.  I also commit to customer satisfaction throughout the process with effective communication to all involved, so they can experience success every day.

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