Elmeri Kokkonen

Here is a short story from my past experiences in ICT/IT industry: I started my career in IT sector when I was still in the middle school in 1996 as a technical consultant (ended up being CTO pretty soon) in my uncle's old wood industry company (on it's peak year 2005, the company was able to handle over 10% of all imported Russian wood business in Finland). I continued working and studying the theory in both in software engineering in the University of Kuopio and software business studies in the University of Jyväskylä. During my work career I have had the opportunity to work in many roles (only CEO and CFO roles I have skipped) where both technical and economical skills have been highly valued. In companies, I have been able to work with different people, cultures and roles which have taught me to adapt to change and I welcome it. I actively try to understand the problems and solve them with the help of collaboration with team and stakeholders in most simple way possible. This of course is never easy. I believe that finding correct talents, looking for clarity and helping others makes a big difference when reaching the project/customer goals. It all builds on trust between people participating on the given tasks and it greatly speeds up the process. Good reading material still that I have found very useful on my daily work and which I fully endorse as a way of looking practical examples in software development business, are the following: - Lean from the Trenches: Managing Large-Scale Projects with Kanban, by Henrik Kniberg - Software Architecture for Developers, by Simon Brown - Jenkins: The Definitive Guide, by John Ferguson Smart These books have helped me and usually the individuals and teams to understand the idea behind Agile, Leadership and DevOps mentality. And finally, everything I do, breath and learn, is for understanding the big picture and help others to do so too (this is especially helpful in leading roles).