Quick Facts
Biography
Mike Cohn is one of the contributors to the invention of the Scrum software development methodology. He is one of the founders of the Scrum AllianceHe is the owner of Mountain Goat Software, a company that provides training on Scrum and Agile software development techniques.
He began his career in the early 1980s as a Programmer in APL and BASIC before moving on to C++ and Java and running development groups. Cohn ran his first Scrum project in 1995 and has been a vocal proponent of Scrum ever since.
He has served as Vice President of Development at four different companies that successfully employed agile concepts and strategies and been a technology executive in companies of various sizes, from start-up to Fortune 40.
Cohn is the author of Agile Estimating and Planning, User Stories Applied for Agile Software Development and Succeeding with Agile: Software Development using Scrum, as well as books on Java and C++ programming and articles for Better Software, IEEE Computer, Software Test and Quality Engineering, Agile Times, Cutter IT Journal, and the C++ Users' Journal. He is also the editor of the Addison-Wesley Mike Cohn Signature Series of books. Cohn was a Keynote Speaker on ADAPTing to Agile for Continued Success at the Agile 2010 Presented by the Agile Alliance. In 2012, Cohn was named #1 in The Top 20 Most Influential Agile People.
Cohn is an avid proponent of stand-up meeting, particularly emphasizing actual standing during them. Teams are encouraged to come up with their own rules for improving these meetings, for example fining people who are late to them. A 2011 survey of tech employees from around the world found that 78% held daily stand-up-meetings.
As a Certified Scrum Trainer and a member of the IEEE Computer Society and the ACM, he is a frequent speaker at industry conferences. As a trainer helped popularize Planning poker, a version of which his company provides as a free online planning tool called PlanningPoker.com.
Publications
- Java Developer's Reference (1996)
- Database Developer's Guide With Borland C++5: (Sams Developers Guide) (1996)
- Sams Teach Yourself Visual Café 2 in 21 Days (1997)
- Web Programming With Visual J++ (1997)