About.

Technical Coaching for software & hardware engineering

Mission:

Help make the world a better place through the improvement of software delivery.

Software is eating the world: Each day, a little more of our society runs on code. The success of many businesses are constrained by the software they run, not just their end product. Through improving companies' software development capability, we are making the world a little bit better every day.

Approach:

Build technical competence in teams
Structure organizations for learning

Technical practices are how software teams continuously deliver value. Training alone is not sufficient: Top-down adoptions fail because leadership cannot by itself create changes in teams' daily habits. Shaping environments, organizations, and processes is necessary to exchange learning and amplify success patterns. Collaborating with advocates and cultivating emergent internal leaders can create a resilient culture of continuous :improvement.

Services.

Getting from Ideation to Delivery with repeatable results.

Transformation Chartering

Success or failure often is determined before the first step is taken. Start your organizational change by examining the outcomes you want. Focus on the values and principles you are willing to adopt to reach them. Set a realistic adoption strategy and waypoints for your Agile journey.

Team Coaching

Organizational transformation can be a full-time challenge, but also needs a sustainable pace. Design your coaching support to match the needs of your team development. On-site, multiple location, and virtual engagement available.

Technical Training

Improve disciplined engineering behaviors in your teams. Understand how the practices support high-quality product delivery:
DevOps, Continuous Integration, Refactoring, Test-Driven Development, Unit Testing, Source Control and more.

People.

Matthew Plavcan

Engineering Coach, Tacit Focus LLC

Matt helps companies build self-sustaining change at the team and organizational levels.

His career started on Intel’s lead microprocessor design team, testing large-scale semiconductor features and building tools and infrastructure for automation. He is a co-author of “The Art of Validation”, an internal reference on the philosophy and methodology of Intel verification teams.

Matt became Intel's first dedicated technical coach as a member of its Emergent Systems and Coaching team. He assisted teams across the company with improving process and software development practices. He drove adoption of hardware and software Test-Driven Development practices throughout the company.

Matt firmly believes in the “by doing it, and helping others do it” portion of the Agile Manifesto. He is an advocate and instructor for dedicated practice patterns to hone professional programming skills. In 2011, He started Intel's internal software practice program and it is still growing today. Matt is a global coordinator for the Global Day of Coderetreat movement.

Matt served as VR Motion Corporation's Chief Technical Officer from 2017-2022. VR Motion builds virtual reality products that create immersive training experiences for the automotive market.

Matt holds a degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Illinois, where he also taught software development.

Matt resides in Portland, Oregon. He is an avid automobile racer, model railroader, and judoka.