Richard Hopkins and Kevin Jenkins are both executive IT architects in IBM’s U.K. services division. They first met in 2002 when Richard hired Kevin to do a few weeks’ worth of work performance testing a system for 80,000 concurrent users. The end result of the interview was a spirited argument and solution better than either of them had originally envisaged. They have been collaborating ever since.
They are both members of IBM’s U.K. & Ireland Technical Consulting Group, which advises IBM’s executives on technical matters. They are also named on the patents that describe IBM’s implementation of its Elephant Eater. Brownfield is the result of a number of years of thought and is designed to overcome the deficiencies in the IT industry’s way of doing things that the authors have experienced firsthand.
Kevin Jenkins originally found himself in IBM’s services division when he returned from a skiing vacation and found that his company had been acquired in his absence. At that time, Kevin was leading the development of major elements of large air traffic control systems for numerous countries.
Since he came into IBM more than 11 years ago, Kevin has moved from air traffic control into other areas. He now leads the successful delivery of systems for governments, financial institutions, and retailers. These solutions include leading the delivery of a major online store system, a pensions portal, and a government customer-management system.
Over that period, Kevin has also performed reviews on a number of projects, and this broad experience of both successes and failures in the industry led him to develop the concepts in this book.
Richard Hopkins is also a long-time member of IBM’s services business. In this capacity, he has worked as chief architect for a wide variety of clients around the globe. He has been responsible for delivering systems for governments, banks, insurers, car manufacturers, and software vendors.
During the last 11 years, Richard has successfully led the delivery of a biometric-based national identity card system, a credit card account services system, and a major customer-management system. Tens of thousands of users and millions of customers use his systems every day.
Richard has also been involved in a number of less successful projects. This book draws as heavily on the experience of his failures as it does on his successes.
Outside IBM, Richard chaired the technical definition of the BioAPI standard from 1998 to 2000. BioAPI is the de facto programming standard of the biometrics industry (www.bioapi.org).
He has been resident in Second Life since 2006, where he is known as Turner Boehm. He took the name of Turner because of his love of J. M. W. Turner’s oil paintings; to find out why he chose the name Boehm, you will have to read this book!