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David Rogers aka "AL the X" Software Development Coach and Instructor

Raleigh, NC

Long-time freelance Lead Developer and Technical Coach turned part-time Instructor and full-time Senior Software Engineer. I code everything from bash to CSS.

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  • Reviews 19
  • Answers 1

David offered some great advice and even took the time to share his detailed notes from our call, which included some valuable resources to address the problems with my current software development project. 5/5

Source: Clarity Mike Coulbourn Apr 11, 2022

Great call. Direct, to the point, lots of action items we can use to achieve our objectives of placing the call. Highly recommend

Source: Clarity Tim Delaney Feb 16, 2022

David is great

Source: Clarity Daniel Vianna Sep 5, 2019

David was a wonderful listener and even better council. He knew precisely which questions to ask to give him what he needed to be of most help in a succinct amount of time possible... his brain works like a finely tuned algorithm, and the best part: hat algorithm had real empathy behind it. Will def be speaking with him again in the future – thank you, David!

Source: Clarity Greg Archbald Oct 20, 2017

David is very knowledgeable. He gave me very good ideas on dealing with some software development issues that my team has. He was very thorough and very clear. He packed in a lot in a 15 minute phone call. I will be scheduling another call with him.

Source: Clarity Mala Ag Jun 25, 2014

David is an incredibly talented technical guru. As one of Kony’s designated “Developer Evangelists”, I have had the pleasure of working with him at trade shows, meeting with clients and demonstrating our product. He is very personable, knowledgeable, and patient. I enjoy very much working with him and would, without pause, put him in front of my customers.

Source: LinkedIn Kelly Morris Jan 3, 2014

David is a very knowledgeable and capable programmer and also seems to be a good team leader. He was the leader of a team that we hired to developed a PHP-based web application. Under David's leadership, the team followed good programming practices and produced a good product for us. (I was not able to directly observe his leadership skills, but to some degree I can judge his capabilities based on the quality work from his team.)

Source: LinkedIn Nathan Kopp Jan 3, 2014

David has a very detailed personality and tends to do everything in a very professional and exceptional manner. He is very skilled and knowledgeable, and is always a great resource when trying to find a solution. There were countless times when David helped me greatly solving difficult problems I encountered.

Source: LinkedIn Jamal Fanaian Jan 3, 2014

Dave is a brilliant software developer. His insight and ability to think through complex problems is awesome. It's like Dave can always see a dozen chess steps in front of him.

Source: LinkedIn Cory Collier Jan 3, 2014

Dave is a unique individual who seems well versed in a wide variety of topics. I am certain this allows him to move seamlessly between different departments of a given organization. I suspect this helps him to keep an eye on the bigger picture which will make him more valuable in large scale projects.

I am certain his quickness and alertness also enables him to understand the fundamentals of different departments within the organization which should offer value to clients looking to integrate parties or those who are struggling with team building scenarios.

As a consultant, I have personally found, his personality also provides a certain social sophistication that other IT consultants might lack. For him, I suspect this will mean that obtaining new clients will never be a problem.

In terms of his breadth and depth of knowledge related to IT, I have personally witnessed other experts seem to learn from him and recognize his qualifications. He is definitely an outstanding individual and I would recommend him professionally to anyone.

Source: LinkedIn Gabe LeBlanc Jan 3, 2014
David Rogers aka "AL the X", Software Development Coach and Instructor answered:

Being a freelance developer for the last 10 years or so, I have seen and used almost every project management software you can think of, open-source and closed, and I have found that the "best bug tracking tool" completely depends on your process. I employ and direct teams in an Agile process that involves loose story-based requirements with point-based estimates, two-week cycles of iterative development, planning and retrospective sessions, and look-ahead and show-and-tell meetings with the stakeholders. It's important to me, then, that my tools have a method of capturing all those pieces with as much detail as I need but no more.

On projects, I've successfully used Pivotal Tracker, Unfuddle, Redmine, Codebase HQ, Basecamp, Trello, and many others. I usually recommend people to Trello for light, agile management; it's essentially a digitized version of sticky notes and swim lanes. If your team actually needs a full-featured ticketing system, see Redmine (Rails), Trac (Python), or Mantis (PHP), depending on your language preference. Hosting a version of these yourself is fairly trivial, and numerous options exist for cheap or free hosted versions. For something in the middle, Github Issues is a good fit and the open-source clone GitLab.org replicates most of those features nicely.

However, if you're looking for a hosted version, you're probably looking to offload that tricky "backup" thingy, and in that case, how important is your data? How proprietary? What's your business model? If you're working on an open-source project, Github will give your team a free account with private repos, issues, wikis, and the like. If you're okay with your project being "readable by all", public projects on Pivotal are still free.

I'm mostly a consultant these days, leading small groups of junior or intermediate developers into a more productive, more mature, fully operational teams of senior software developers. One of the first things I teach folks is how to use a project management system... and why! It'll save your bacon if it's simple, effective, and reliable. With a few minutes of discussion about your project, I can probably help you select the right tool and service for your team. Let me know if I can help with that. Best of luck!

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