Magnetic Reason started out in 2003 as Keith Sterling Consulting Services Ltd A consultancy that allowed me to pursue my interests in agile/lean software development, specifically around Scrum and eXtreme Programming.
The interest in Agile techniques started years before while I was VP of Engineering at Jacobs Rimell where I was responsible for the design and delivery of large scale digital TV provisioning platforms for customers such as NTL ( now Virgin Media ), ComCast, UPC and many many more.
As a software product company in the dot com boom, we always had the struggle.tension between satisfying every requirement whim and demand of our key customers, while trying to develop and extend the product to ensure it was usuable by as wide as possible customer base.
Waterfall never really worked for us, it took too long from understanding a customers needs to getting software to market and the pressure to deliver was always affecting the quality of the product. The move to RUP did little to improve, time to market barely changed, but quality did increase as the iterative nature of RUP started to allow us to respond to change in a more controlled environment, and to address our major risks early in the delivery cycle.
Having read Kent Becks book eXtreme Programming Explained, it was clear there was a different approach, that was starting to bare fruit for the brave souls adopting these new Agile practices and having explored many of the key ideas and seen for myself that they did work, there was no turning back
KSCS was formed to help others embrace Agile practices, and since 2003 we have worked with a number of large commercial organisations in adopting and benefitting from Agile., Companies such as
- London Clearing House
- AOL Bradoband
- Orange Broadband
- William Hill
- BT
- HBOS
- BSkyB
Unfortunately as a company grows, the name sometimes starts to age more than the company, and the original name did not reflect the growing number of people involved in the organisation, or the fact that we where no longer just consulting on Agile, but providing coaching and mentoring services as well as actual delivery functions.
So 2008 sees the change to Magnetic Reason, a new website and branding. A fresh new look with a clear statement of what we as an organisation are about.