Jim Coplien ("Cope") is the father of Organizational Patterns, is one of the founders of the Software Pattern discipline, a pioneer in practical object-oriented design in the early 1990s and is a widely consulted authority and author in the areas of software design and organizational improvements.
Cope currently works as Senior Agile Coach and Senior Software Architect for Nordija A/S in Kongens Lyngby, Denmark. His work ranges from programming and performance evaluation, to organizational improvement assessments, organizational development, and process improvement, to consulting on system architecture. He also is affiliated with PacificSoft Ltd. in Tel Aviv and with ScrumHouse in Stora Nyteboda, Sweden.
As one of the founders and proponents of Agile software development, one of Cope's passions is to root out dysfunction in widely but naively adopted software practices such as TDD and On-Site Customer, that look good on the surface but which do harm in practice. His article, "The Evils of TDD," co-authored with testing authority Neil Harrison and requirements expert Gertrud Bjørnvig, is scheduled for publication as a mini-series in Better Software in November and December of 2007. He also is actively leading the work in Agile Architecture, in conjunction with CampScrum and the Scrum community. He sits on the editorial board of the LNCS Pattern Journal.
Cope does extensive consulting in Europe, North America, and the Middle East, with a special focus on the Nordic countries. He is a frequently-sought conference speaker at venues such as JaOO, Better Software, JavaZone, ROOTS, Expo-C, the ACCU Conference, and the patterns conferences. He regularly gives international seminars on Agile Architecture, Scrum fine-tuning, patterns, and Agile software development and project management practice.
He is also a researcher with affiliations to University of Manchester, and is a past holder of the Vloebergh Endowed Chair at Vrije Universiteit Brussel. He has also held affiliations with Flinders University in Adelaide, Australia, and is a past professor at North Central College in Naperville, Illinois. His current research lies in the areas of design theory based on broken symmetries in design structures, and in "entropic patterns" of product portfolio management.
Books
Cope has written or co-authored several books in his career, including the seminal Advanced C++ Programming Styles and Idioms, originally a Jolt Cola productivity winner, and still strong in its sixteenth year.
His most recent book, co-authored with Neil Harrison, is Organizational Patterns of Agile Software Development.
He was one of the first authors to treat the concept of domain-driven design, together with modern programming principles such as object orientation, in his Multi-Paradigm Design for C++:
