Gerry Kirk

Current

Agile Coach / Scrum Master, Chief Bottle Washer at Gerry Kirk Consulting

Past

Scrum Master and Process Manager at ifPeople
Project Manager at Jazkarta
General Manager at Faith Online Ltd.

Manager, Deployment Services at Faith Online Ltd.
Information Systems Specialist (Bangladesh) at Mennonite Central Committee
Software Quality Manager / Engineer at Trademart Technologies
Product Developer at Equist Inc. (Microsoft Solutions Provider)
Systems developer (co-op term) at London Life Insurance Company

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Education

University of Waterloo

Recommended

10 people have recommended Gerry

Connections

320 connections

Industry

Information Technology and Services

Websites

Gerry Kirk’s Summary

What matters to me most is believing that my work contributes to the greater good. My focus now is on helping organizations and teams deliver higher value faster by teaching and coaching Agile practices and principles.

Extensive experience working with distributed teams over the past 3 years, with small companies and startups. Distributed can be done, but it's hard to do well. Have experimented with dozens of tools and process tweaks to suit each team's needs.

Steeped in the social networking experience, in turn ramp up small businesses to engage the web.

Gerry Kirk’s Specialties:

Certified Scrum Master
Twitter-holic

Gerry Kirk’s Experience

Agile Coach / Scrum Master, Chief Bottle Washer

Gerry Kirk Consulting

(Information Technology and Services industry)

September 2002 — Present (7 years 4 months)

Discovered Agile in 2007 and haven't looked back. Helping organizations and teams remotely from home office, using selected mix of process and tools.

Clients include webcollective.coop, theblogstudio.com, changecamp.ca, thmvmnt.info

Assisting small businesses to engage customers through social media, including DearVivian.com
Scrum Master and Process Manager

ifPeople

(Privately Held; Information Technology and Services industry)

September 2007 — December 2008 (1 year 4 months)

Working as a remote Scrum Master / process manager, overseeing projects and integrating the Scrum agile framework into our development process.
Project Manager

Jazkarta

(Privately Held; 11-50 employees; Internet industry)

April 2007 — January 2008 (10 months)

Turned around several web site projects having issues by introducing rigorous process, timely and effective communication. Team members all work from home across North America and Europe mainly, office is virtual. We use an agile process for software development.
General Manager

Faith Online Ltd.

(Privately Held; 1-10 employees; Information Technology and Services industry)

December 2005 — June 2007 (1 year 7 months)

As the only full-time employee, I handled everything from sales to support to finances to managing contractors as project manager. Time management was critical in juggling many projects and varied responsibilities. I provided monthly reports to all clients detailing work completed, along with key achievements and any issues of note.

Recently, I proposed and managed a podcasting initiative for the Sault diocese, including a media launch at a parish. This included writing media releases, selecting appropriate technology and efforts to generate buzz.
Manager, Deployment Services

Faith Online Ltd.

(Privately Held; 1-10 employees; Information Technology and Services industry)

February 2003 — November 2005 (2 years 10 months)

Responsible for planning and integrating our solution DeoWeb (www.deoweb.com) into the life of parishes and diocesan office of Diocese of Sault Ste. Marie (www.diocesessm.org).

Involved a roll-out to 80+ parishes, working with broad spectrum of people, many volunteers with little technical knowledge. Assembled a mobile lab for on site training, mentored support staff, fixed system glitches.

Also worked closely with lead developer and the Plone community (www.plone.org) to build solution.
Information Systems Specialist (Bangladesh)

Mennonite Central Committee

(Non-Profit; 1001-5000 employees; Non-Profit Organization Management industry)

January 2000 — July 2002 (2 years 7 months)

Recruited, led and mentored three person team in planning, time management, user support, system administration. Instilling confidence in team improved performance.

Advocated for improved expatriate – local staff relations. Proposed forming a listening committee to encourage openness, address issues, generate solutions.

Empowered local staff by switching an administrator-laden, mainly expatriate computing committee to local office staff, with male / female balance.

Increased user computing skills and motivation through innovative training program.

Transformed an unstable Microsoft computing environment into an effective, reliable one. Utilized open source technologies including Linux, Apache, MySQL, OpenOffice, Sendmail.
Software Quality Manager / Engineer

Trademart Technologies

(Privately Held; 11-50 employees; Information Technology and Services industry)

September 1997 — August 1999 (2 years )

Hired with no formal testing experience to address serious software quality issues.

In short time established and documented testing process for consistent, effective testing. Introduced automated testing tools to handle regression testing at functional, integration and unit levels. Developers made happy with tool that tracked down hard-to-find bugs.

Recruited and managed team of four testers including two co-op students.

Mentored team on testing, technical issues. Planned, assigned and monitored tasks.
Product Developer

Equist Inc. (Microsoft Solutions Provider)

(Privately Held; 11-50 employees; Information Technology and Services industry)

July 1996 — August 1997 (1 year 2 months)

Met consistently time estimates submitted for project assignments.

Overcame technical hurdles as sole developer on three month database project; met users’ reporting, data entry needs under scheduling, budget constraints.
Systems developer (co-op term)

London Life Insurance Company

(Public Company; 5001-10,000 employees; Insurance industry)

January 1995 — April 1995 (4 months)

Proposed and developed testing tool which reduced manual testing time by over 50% on high profile project with tight deadline.

Gerry Kirk’s Education

University of Waterloo

Honours B Math Co-op with Information Systems Option , Math, Business, Information Systems, Computer Science , 1991 — 1996

Additional Information

Gerry Kirk’s Websites:

Gerry Kirk’s Interests:

social networks - user of linkedin, facebook, twitter, youtube, flickr marketing & communications - follow Seth Godin, Guy Kawasaki, Mark Hurst social entrepreneurship - Kiva lender, read NetSquared, others productivity - GTD, Web Worker Daily, Lifehacker, 43 Folders sports - ultimate frisbee, hiking, canoeing faith - active in local church, St. Gerard Majella health & environment - natural lifestyle (buy local, reduce toxins, earthly impact)

Gerry Kirk’s Groups:

Sault Ultimate Players Association (founder) - www.saultultimate.ca
Fair Vote Canada - www.fairvote.ca
Save Darfur - www.savedarfur.org
Plone.org community