Joana Penha-Lopes

Joana Penha-Lopes

Started as a Physics student and after my first course in Programming i decided to change to Software Engineering due to my successful grades (20 out of 20) and out of passion. On my second year in Software Enginnering i was invited to be a Monitor in Practical Classes for the University. I started monitoring Introduction to Programming, Programming 1 and Programming 2. Almost at the end of the degree i was invite to do research which i accepted but after 2 months received a proposal from a private company to work on the same project but with them. The project i enjoyed the most was for the European Space Agency and was an European Consortium, the project was called SEISOP. Stayed in the company for 5 years and gained a lot of experience on IT, small management tasks and collaboration with customers. Changed to a different company, Saphety were i was part of an extremely efficient team run by SCRUM. Was at that stage i felt in love with the SCRUM methodology. May 2013 i left my country to join the uk and accepted a role at Encore Tickets Ltd that became my first Technical Architect role and so the transformation to use Scrum started at one of the teams lead by me. I introduced the concept of scrum and played the role of Scrum Master the best i could given the transformational factors. I am now the Head of Development and i am bringing continuous integration, tools, methodologies to my teams as well as getting them to understand and start Scrum. This is a work in progress and the transformation is the most interesting and challenging development i have ever made. Hope to grow and learn and step forward in this Agile world by bringing business, customer and teams together and adapt whenever possible.