Johannesburg, 14 Aug 2013
Software development company DVT has appointed Riaan du Toit to the position of principal Agile consultant.
Du Toit is a professional Agile coach with more than 16 years' experience in all aspects of software development and management, as well as four years of coaching large clients on site as an Agile consultant, champion and practitioner. His specialities are Agile adoption on enterprise level across the software development life cycle, Scrum, Disciplined Agile Delivery (DAD) and SAFe frameworks, Agile project management, and Agile facilitating, coaching, and training.
"DVT has consolidated its Agile services under an agile business to help clients in their adoption of this increasingly popular approach to software development," says Themi Themistocleous, managing director of DVT's Agile business. "We have partnered with Scott Ambler and Associates, who are the world leaders in Disciplined Agile Delivery, a framework that allows enterprises to pragmatically deploy Agile. It therefore made sense to employ someone with Riaan's extensive skill set in this field."
Du Toit's main responsibility will be to consult with and assist clients to implement Agile in their enterprises. "DVT applies the DAD framework and approach to conduct assessments, after which we create roadmaps for the implementation and overall adoption of Agile (and, in particular, DAD) in companies," says Du Toit. "I will also carry out DAD training. My goal is to ease clients' adoption of Agile. Like any other project, it requires changes in the organisation, which is often a painful, uncertain journey. We want to ease this journey by applying the DAD framework, as well as our collective experience."
Du Toit began his career as a developer, moving up the ladder to the position of project manager and then business manager. "When I was introduced to Agile, I took to it immediately and I started a big drive to adopt Agile in the company I worked for. From there, I moved to a company specialising in Agile, where I led a team of Agile coaches and project managers assisting a big telecommunications company in their Agile adoption journey. I learnt many important lessons, which is why I like the DAD framework as it addresses the problems that enterprises have with Agile implementation."
Du Toit has an MSc, a Management Development Programme (MDP) qualification, and a number of Agile certifications. He also has Prince2 practitioner certification - an established and proven best practice in project management, and he is a black belt DAD coach and trainer.
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