My Story, where it all began

In my last post, I said I was to write a bit about me so that you get to know me better. So here it is.

When I graduated in 2005, I had already started to serve residential and commercial customers by offering them on site technical support. From 2005, I offered my services as an employee to IT companies around the city, Shawinigan and Trois-Rivières, QC, Canada. Yes, I had the diploma, but I hadn’t the experience, so no employer was willing to give me a chance. I then decided to take the bull by the horns and founded my own enterprise in Febuary of 2005. The next month, be it the 25th of March 2005, a big fire burnt my entire residence. This was a total loss. With the help provided from family and friends I bought my first furnitures, a work desk and a computer.

In October 2005, I learned that a transport company needed a management software badly. Let’s call it ABCT. I offered my services and about 7 months later, in summer 2006, a friend and I delivered the first pieces of software required for the company to work with. Of course, I didn’t know about Agile methodologies back then. About a month later, the office clerks had gotten used to work with my software, Transport Manager, and finally were able to perform with only two clerks more than the work performed with three clerks, because of some of the business flow improvements I had suggested. This represented an economy of about 45 000,00 $CAN per year. Keep in mind that this was my first at all contract! Quite a frank success for a young entrepreneur and unexperienced IT consultant!

Then, came the wood economy crisis that severed in 2007, and ABCT bankrupted. I went back to propose my services to places where I was refused back in 2005, and I finally got a job as a programming trainer at a private IT college in my area. I discovered a new passion, knowledge sharing! I loved the fact that I was sharing my knowledge and experience to students from whom I learned a lot of interesting things! I wonder if they did learn as much as I did during these training sessions! When this college stopped the program, I moved along and got another job as an analyst-programmer for Alcoa Canada - Primary Metals. I have worked there from 2008 to 2009 before the economy crisis severed even more letting Alcoa no other choice than to reduce by 15% the hours worked, so I was thanked by the way and decided to come back with my company for which I fulfilled many other needs for the Quebec government and other private corporations such as Bridgestone, Bell Business Markets and others.

In 2010, I had the great opportunity to meet with Ken Schwaber himself, co-founder of Scrum and founder/president of Scrum.org. I have taken his class to become a certified Professional Scrum Master. My first project using Scrum was a hell, since I didn’t master Scrum that much, and between theory and practice, there’s a world of difference! Now that I master it, I wish to share some of my Agile Adventures with you.
In 2013, I decided to change my company brand name for something a bit more serious, Société Groupe Conseil WMI (which would translate as WMI Software Consulting Group), and here I am today!

Now that you know me better, I believe that I have some knowledge to share as both an entrepreneur and an IT professional. That is this blog’s purpose. I do hope you enjoyed learning a bit more about my story and that this will inspire others.

Thanks for reading!