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CHICAGO----ThoughtWorks, a global IT consultancy, announced today that employees
Naresh Jain, senior developer, and Jeff Patton, senior user-centered
designer, were awarded the Gordon Pask Award for Contributions to Agile
Practice during last week’s Agile 2007
conference held in Washington, D.C. August 13-17. The Gordon Pask Award
recognizes technology professionals whose recent contributions to Agile
practices demonstrate their potential to become leaders of the field.
“The idea behind the award is that we in the
Agile community need to do more to promote and encourage the rising
stars of tomorrow. These are people who help other people: both
indirectly, by producing tools or ideas other people use, and also
through direct support of some Agile community,”
said Brian Marick, consultant and Agile Alliance member.
Naresh Jain joined ThoughtWorks in January of 2004 and is based in
Bangalore, India. For the past 12 weeks, Naresh has served as a trainer
at ThoughtWorks Immersion, a three-week program to introduce new
employees into the organization. “Naresh has
single-handedly opened one Agile user group for every four inhabitants
of southern India,” stated Marick, during the
August 16 awards ceremony. “I’m
honored to be recognized by the committee and hope to continue spreading
the Agile message with ThoughtWorks,” said
Jain.
In a light-hearted introduction, Marick quoted an email that referred to
"the Jeff Patton award for the loveliest person in Agile." Patton was
recognized for his work helping establish what user-centered design
means in Agile, contributions to the Agile-usability group, and for
being an example of the benefits of being fluent in the two fields of
programming and user-centered design. “The
UCD/UX community has had a rough time integrating itself into mainstream
development processes,” said Patton. “Agile
and its iterative, customer-centric nature offer real philosophical
alignment--and a real opportunity to build a holistic, user-centered
process.”
The Agile Alliance will fund each honored recipient’s
travel to two conferences on two different continents in hopes that
others will emulate them and their contributions.
“As an organization, we strive to hire the
best knowledge workers in the world, and we’re
proud of the contributions Naresh and Jeff have both made to their
respective fields and congratulate them both on this prestigious award,”
said Matt Simons, ThoughtWorks chief people officer. “We
are pleased to support them as they continue to grow themselves and
their communities locally and globally.”
ThoughtWorks was also awarded both first and second place in the annual “Agile
Advert” contest in which entrants are
requested to submit short clips of either a serious or light-hearted
nature relating to Agile and Agile practices. Available on YouTube,
ThoughtWorks’ winning clips include “Developer
Abuse,” a look at the benefits of agile
practices on the lives of developers, and “Being
Agile is our Favorite Thing,” an agile
musical set to the tune of The Sound of Music’s
“My Favorite Things.”
About ThoughtWorks
ThoughtWorks, Inc. (www.thoughtworks.com)
is a global IT consultancy providing systems development, consulting,
and transformation services to Global 1000 companies. The company's
pioneering approach, which includes industry-acclaimed Agile and Lean
best practices, helps CIOs maximize investment performance across a
portfolio of complex, business critical applications, while reducing
time and risk. ThoughtWorks' 900 professionals serve clients from
offices in six countries including Australia, Canada, China, India, the
United Kingdom and the United States.
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