Jon Kern Email & Phone Number

Quakertown, Pa, Us

London, Gb

Help organizations and teams succeed with Agile approaches, from product ideation, road mapping; to process, to tools and automation, and the critical: culture and mindset bits.

Hershey, Pa, Us

Help do webmaster and other leadership role stuff for our local Audi Club.

4-year elected terms

Been working with some firefighter friends over the past decade+. We have built a stellar web app for pre-incident planning to help save lives and property for firefighters and first responders, across businesses, schools, and industrial complexes.

Jacksonville, Florida, Us

Working with good friends (formerly my 2nd ever clients at Lightship) to help grow the business and develop a world-class development shop and new software products.

Worked with LeanDog coaches to help an old-school, matrixed organization, produce a new flagship product to help their manufacturing facilities (and eventually automotive locations) sell "color" (in the guise of paint, stain, etc.). This product will eventually replace 6 existing systems.Soup-to-nuts transition for a team of about 12. Hard-core agile. C# MVC stack (their area of expertise). A spectacular group of folks to work with, they made amazing progress in the short time I was there. I wish them well!

Raleigh , North Carolina, Us

Translate vision into a working product through collaborating with medical practitioners and advanced use of technology to meet customer needs in the healthcare space.Building event-driven architecture to mine the nuggets of gold in the dark, dank, hills of healthcare IT. Cobbled together an approach based on Mule Soft's ESB, RabbitMQ, Event Machine, a Rules Engine, MongoDB, Ruby, Rails, Ajax. Processed ~30K HL7 messages/day. Also receiving nasty-ass NEMSIS XML, a horrid schema (for ambulance run data) that makes HL7 look modern (IMHO).

Work with distributed teams and organizations to promote and instill agile practices, pragmatic processes and tools. Helps teams to architect and implement well-engineered solutions that routinely beat expectations -- and always deliver tremendous business value.

Detroit, Mi, Us

Director-level position with varied roles to promote better software development through tools and practices: speaking at industry events and to technical groups, working with clients on OptimalJ projects and agile training, providing input for product direction, working on sales processes and collateral, writing monthly newsletters (6700+ opt-in subscribers) and blogging frequently (up to 34K views per month after one year).

Us

While focusing on the 2nd product line, Ver 6.0 of the flagship product was being developed. It soon became clear to management that there were major quality issues. I was asked to jump in and work some miracles. o Developed customer-centric “Quality Attributes” to guide the development and testing. This quickly showed its worth in improving the quality of product releases. o Established a Quality Review Board cross-functional team to rapidly deal with critical customer issues. o Established criteria and process for determining severity of bugs, and setting priority to more efficiently handle customer concerns and to effectively reduce the mountain of backlogged change requests. o Ensured that development of the critical, next-generation Java platform was in right direction. Played a key role in fighting for this work to get the proper attention and schedule. o Overall modernization or QA process and team

Us

Developed a new product line that blended process, project management, workflow, versioning, and resource tasking (team support). Product was distributed, Java-based, rich-client, and with a server component. o Had primary vision and “big picture” for ground-breaking new product expected to take TS to next level. o Chief architect, designer, and product manager; led team of 25 (mostly in Russia). o Created/gathered/confirmed requirements from potential clients. o Used agile development process (blend of XP and FDD). o Market/competitive research and analysis. Innovative product had no equal in the marketplace. o Developed pilot program (external customers and internal usage). o Product was on schedule, and had great customer feedback. o Technologies: Java, XML, WebDAV, Servlets, HTTP, JSP, SVG.

Us

Hired by Peter Coad to create the professional services organization and infrastructure. Instrumental in helping form TogetherSoft and to grow it from 35 in Sep 99 to over 400 o Instrumental to clinch major client deals (critical for our corporate image) o Hired and trained top-flight mentors across the USA and UK o Guided development of flagship product (Together ControlCenter) o Created scheduling system and collaborative e-community to deliver $Ms in workshops o Developed courseware, new courses, updates; created sales demo format for ControlCenter o Developed training, growth, and promotion strategy for mentors o Developed marketing techniques, sales process, FAQs, website content, etc o Designed delivery and feedback process to ensure workshops met client’s needs o Provided custom mentoring and workshops o Extensive experience across varied problem domains o Provided fresh, innovative ideas to provide tactical and strategic solutions

President. Founder, chief strategist, marketer, and leader of ~$1M/yr software development firm. Highlights include: o Led dozens of on-site OO workshops, Java training, project start-up mentoring. o Chief architect/modeler for IBM's next-gen Manufacturing Execution System (C++, thin-client, message-driven, fault-tolerant). o Architected OO solution for developing an engineering rules-based product configurator and proposal generation system for Ingersoll-Dresser Pump’s complex product lines. o Lead designer on a state-of-the-art embedded low-cost, Java-based, "video phone appliance," collaborative white board, & VoIP. o Designed an in-home tele-health medicine system that linked to a remote office server, sending video and vital sign sensor signals (designed to work over dial-up). o Developed a configurable solution to control a direct mail sorter system. Included real-time controls, integration with customer's order system, and “intelligent” multi-pass sorting.

North Sydney, Nsw, Au

As an aerospace engineer, Jon worked with software to help solve problems (like real-time data acquisition, control of hardware-in-the-loop, and flight simulation). He did research into enhanced fighter AGILITY, HUD symbology, EKG/G-induced Loss of Consciousness, and helmet-related technologies. By the late 80s, Jon was probing the new object-oriented paradigm, and he quickly adopted C++. By the early 90s, he was doing object modeling (with PowerPoint and Excel), following Peter Coad's methods. As one of four Program Managers, he managed a group of ~10 engineers and a few $M in projects.

Project engineer, testing (R&D) the F107 & F112 Advanced Cruise Missile turbofans.