Introducing the Visual Studio ALM Rangers – Stephan Dekker

This post is part of an ongoing series of Rangers introductions. SeeRanger Index (Who is Who?)for more details.

Who are you?

My name is Stephan Dekker, Dutch from origin and moved to Australia in 2008, 10+ years experience in IT in various roles from developer, tester project manager, QA/Standards/Process Improvements, to setting up a call centre to support waterfalls of a customers’ customers queries. However, all together not too serious and maximising the enjoyment of whatever life throws at me.

What makes you “tick”?

I’m passionate about removing efficiency waste. There is so much waste going on in the average organisation which makes everyone lives easier when removed. Pretty much taking the “Getting Things Done” approach to organisations.

Where I live?

I live in Melbourne Australia, so I change from warm to cold clothes and back again multiple times a day! I absolutely love the live style, AFL, Sunday afternoon BBQs in the park with Wife and Child.

Why am I active in the Rangers Program?

There are three parts to that actually:

1) Like I said, I hate efficiency waste and there is plenty of it in IT. I’ve created the Global ALM Community that is technology agnostic, so joining the ALM Rangers allows me to help improve IT in the Microsoft landscape.

2) I want to make standards useful instead of a bother. Success to my mind is when Team Leads will start telling their junior team members: “Dude, seriously: Why don’t you just use the standard??” (Or whatever the new generating will say). That, in my mind, means that standards are helping teams and not preventing them to “get on with things”.

3) I can’t remember the third one. I had three when I started typing… And it was a really awesome one to end the list with!!

What Rangers projects have you worked on:

I have just joined the rangers program so none, although there is plenty of content that the Global ALM Community is creating.