PhilStubbingtonBackStory

Born 8th May 1966 (which was apparently an important year for English football, although I've had little interest in football until 1998 - for reasons which become obvious later!). A Taurean (if you believe in that stuff) so hotheaded, romantic, passionate, stubborn, etc.

Parents both teachers and well travelled - my Mum was born in Sri Lanka to English parents and worked in Nigeria for several years in her teens and twenties. My Dad was born in Nuneaton (near Coventry - otherwise known as the Midlands), did his National Service (all hush hush stuff for MI8) in Cyprus, and later lived in Spain for a number of years teaching English. I also have a sister 3 years older than me - who is at least partly following in our parents footsteps by getting involved in craft workshops and computer training.

School wise, enjoyed most subjects with the exception of sports - although later on got very involved in racket sports - primarily Tennis and Badminton (definitely not Squash!).

First exposure to computers was when visiting my Dad's college in the summer holidays and playing Lunar Lander on a Prime mini-computer.

At secondary school (starting age 11 or 12 or so) got more interested in computers (this time an RML 380Z - Research Machines Limited are still a supplier of computers to educational establishments in the UK). We had the grand total of one of these computers - and spent most of the lunch hour loading the operating system, BASIC and Duck Shoot from tape, followed by 10 minutes playing Duck Shoot before it crashed or we ran out of lunch hour!

Around 1980 my Dad arrived home with a Sinclair ZX80 from college which I probably spent the entire summer messing about with - primarily typing in games programs from the first computer magazines. Probably attempted to write the occasional program myself.

Sometime after that my Dad bought a BBC Model B (later changed to a BBC Master) computer which I spent a lot of time messing about with. Taught myself BASIC, 6502 Assembler, etc.

1985 saw the arrival of the Atari ST 1040STF and I taught myself GEM (a forerunner to Windows), C and 68000 Assembler.

I eventually emerged from my bedroom and studied Business and Finance, followed by Computer Studies at College and University respectively.

My first permanent full-time computing job was for Rank-Hovis-McDougall in the British Bakeries division where (of course) I wrote a stock control system! Has anyone ever done anything else as their first job?

I then went through a sucession of jobs including Autodesk, Phocis (a DRM start-up), Barlow Wilson (a PowerBuilder consultancy with clients including Rank Xerox EDS), SHL Systemhouse, Ambitus (my own consultancy - with clients including Barclays, Equant, British Standards Institution, some Japanese investement banks, publishing houses, etc.), Dell and finally arriving at Exel.

My interest during this time changed from development to project management to programme management to people management and service delivery management.

I probably first came across the notion of feedback when I did my Computing course and was very interested in how you could put the idea of feedback to use to improve service delivery.

It wasn't until 1999 however that I was introduced to JerryWeinberg and the QualitySoftwareManagement series of books. I've now read all four volumes (only the once, mind) and trying to get my head around applying SystemsThinking and SystemsDynamics to my working life. Some of the other topics (FirstOrderMeasurement, CongruentAction and AnticipatingChange) I've found much easier!

Updated: Thursday, October 23, 2003