Mike Cohn


Mike Cohn is one of the contributors to the Scrum software development method.
He is one of the founders of the Scrum Alliance.
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Early life and education

Born in Anaheim, California, U.S. in 1962, Mike Cohn received his master's degree in computer science from the University of Idaho in northern Idaho. Having a research interest in Agile project management, he specializes in communicating needs and achieving Agile project goals through user stories.

Career

Cohn began his career in the early 1980s as a programmer in APL and BASIC before moving on to C++ and Java and running development groups.
Cohn is the founder of Mountain Goat Software, a process and project management consultancy and training firm. He is the author of Agile Estimating and Planning, User Stories Applied for Agile Software Development and Succeeding with Agile: Software Development using Scrum, as well as books on Java and C++ programming. Cohn was a keynote speaker on ADAPTing to Agile for Continued Success at the Agile 2010 Presented by the Agile Alliance. In 2012, Cohn was named #1 in The Top 20 Most Influential Agile People.
Cohn is a proponent of stand-up meeting, particularly emphasizing actual standing during them. Teams are encouraged to come up with their own rules for improving these meetings, for example fining people who are late to them. A 2011 survey of tech employees from around the world found that 78% held daily stand-up-meetings.
Cohn created the SPIDR technique for user story splitting.

Publications