Alan Koch

ASPE’s Alan Koch, PMP, CSM, MS Management Science began his formal education at Edinboro State College where he earned a B.S. in Mathematics with a concentration in Computer Science. He then went on to earn a Master of Science in Management Science with a concentration in Business Administration from the University of Dayton. Since then, Alan has spent more than 40 years in the information technology field with a strong primary focus on software development and software quality.

Alan spent a good deal of his career with the Software Engineering Institute (SEI) at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU). He was there for 13 years and in that time became familiar with the Capability Maturity Model (CMM) and worked on the Personal Software Process & Team Software Process (PSP/TSP) project. Since then, he has provided consulting service and trained professionals for over 20 years. In the process, Alan has logged 14 years designing, developing and maintaining software, over two decades in Quality Assurance, including establishing & managing a QA department, and nearly two decades in each of Process Improvement, Project Management and IT Service Management.

Alan is a speaker and writer on effective Project Management, software development, IT operations, and public speaking methods. He holds these certifications: Project Management Professional (PMP), PMI Agile Certified Professional (PMI-ACP), Certified Scrum Master (CSM), ICAgile Certified Professional in Agile Testing (ICP-TST), Foundations of DevOps (ICP-FDO) and Implementing DevOps (ICP-IDO), DevOps Foundation (DevOps Institute), Certified ITIL Expert, COBIT 5 Foundation, and a Certified Toast Master (CTM).

As a Project Management Expert, Software Quality Professional, IT Service Management Expert, Business Instructor, Agile Expert and SDLC Coach:

Because of Alan’s breadth of experience, he brings a pragmatic consulting approach to each training event. He encourages students to raise questions and issues from their own workplace, listens carefully and strives to make the course material relevant to their situations. When appropriate, he freely admits, "You're right; this won't work for you." Students regularly cite Mr. Koch's knowledge and excitement as prime reasons why they get so much out of his classes and have fun doing it.

A certified PMP and longstanding president of a training and consulting company that helps companies improve the return on their software investment by focusing on the quality of both their software products and the processes they use to develop them, Alan has accumulated a great deal of knowledge and is eager to let others learn from his experiences. These experiences include, but are not limited to contributing to the accomplishment of several successful CMM-Based SPI efforts, presenting at numerous recent software quality and process conferences, and teaching as an adjunct professor of Computer Science.

In more than 15 years of teaching for ASPE, Alan has delivered his veteran software expert’s knowledge to a wide range of companies and a varied spectrum of industries. Alan has saved companies countless hours and dollars showing them how to leverage better development practices and better business processes to increase their competitive advantage.

Alan was an advocate for integrating development and operations teams long before the term DevOps was coined. He wrote articles and spoke at conferences on the opportunities for synergy, and he worked with his consulting clients to establish what is now known as a DevOps culture, and what we now call a continuous deployment pipeline. Alan’s depth of experience in both Dev and Ops has made him a key contributor to ASPE’s DevOps offerings.

Notable Achievements:

At ASPE, Alan has been an established, trusted and highly regarded software team trainer. He has delivered training to thousands of software teams and professionals, helping large organizations nationwide improve their processes, save money and deliver better products. Alan is an accomplished and respected author, speaker and consultant in the world of software development. He and his consulting company have provided more than a dozen years of Service to the IT community, consulting with IT organizations and training IT professionals to ensure dependable, smooth, cost-effective IT Services. Both as an independent consultant and ASPE instructor, when IT process needs have arisen, thousands of engineers and IT managers worldwide have turned to Alan for IT Service Management (ITIL® & CMMI-SVC®), Software Development Methodologies (CMMI-DEV®), Agile Methodologies (Scrum, Extreme Programming), Software and Service Quality (Quality Assurance, Testing and Reviews), IT Project Management (PMBOK®), and DevOps.

Specialties:

• Agile projects and transitions from traditional project practices to Agile frameworks
• Software development methods & processes
• Agile and iterative frameworks
• Quality, testing and quality assurance
• DevOps transformations
• Project management

Publications:

• Agile Software Development: Evaluating the Methods For Your Organization, 2005, Artech House Books (The technical publishing arm of Horizon House

Peer-Reviewed Journal Articles:

The QA Catchall: How Quality Conscious Is Your Organization?, May 2007, Better Software Magazine (The Print Companion to StickyMinds.com)

TSP Can Be Building Blocks for CMMI, Mar 2005, Crosstalk Magazine (The US Department of Defense Software Journal)

The Role of Testers in Agile Methods, Jun 2005, Software Quality Professional (Journal of the American Society for Quality)