Interview with Nicolae Giurescu
Partner & Senior Consultant | 3PRO-LAB
Tell us a few things about yourself. Where did you study, where do you work?
I graduated the Faculty of Automatic Control and Computers from Bucharest with a major in Control Engineering. Most of my career has been marked by a series of very interesting jobs in USA and Canada, but I cannot forget my first ones in Romania, as an embedded software developer and an Assistant Professor. In 2006 my wife and I decided to return and start a business. 3PRO-LAB Consulting is offering training and consulting services for software process improvement. After 10 years I still love my job, as it gives me constant opportunities to meet new people and plenty of reasons to keep abreast with changes in methodologies and tools.
What is your typical day at work?
No such day for me. When I am at clients’ site my work spans from discussing with project teams to better understand the problems they are facing, to working together for identifying feasible improvements, coaching and training. I also organize public and private courses, some in partnership. Lately I’ve been quite busy with organizing Professional Scrum Master and How to Scrum courses.
Mostly at the end of the day, I do some marketing, answer messages and sometimes talk with my business partners.
But don’t take me for and workaholic. I value my spare time and spend it with my family and friends.
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I started with being just a participant at different conferences, seminars and user’s groups meetings.
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The inspiration and reasons to continue come from the people I’ve met on different occasions, whom I consider being great influencers of my career.
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What inspired you to be active in the community?
I’ve been involved in the community for over two decades. I started with being just a participant at different conferences, seminars and user’s groups meetings. At one point I decided to get seriously involved and thus I ended up organizing Montreal SPIN conferences, being active in the Software Engineering Committee of the Canadian Standards Council, and being a reviewer for the Software Engineering Body of Knowledge. In Romania I am co-organizer of the Agile Tour Bucharest conference and regular participant at different software development community meetings. The inspiration and reasons to continue come from the people I’ve met on different occasions, whom I consider being great influencers of my career. In no particular order and not forming an exhaustive list, I would like to mention Watts Humphrey, Luciano Guerrero, Richard Basque, James Odell, Steve Dewhurst, Bran Selic, Gunther Verheyen, Ralph Jocham, Scott Ambler, and David Anderson.
Could you recommend some books, resources that young IT professionals might find useful?
I like reading, technical books as well. I like one in particular, as it helped me a lot in my early career: “Advanced Object-Oriented Analysis & Design Using UML”, by James J. Odell.
There are plenty of books worth reading. My only recommendation is to start making your own list, after researching the work of the best authors in your domains of interest.
What you do to “recharge your batteries”? What are your hobbies? Do you have time for them?
I like hiking, photography and hiking photography, of course.:)
If you could go back in time and choose a different profession (outside of IT), what would it be?
If I were a cat, I would choose a different profession for each of my nine lives. On a serious note, I would have had to take a difficult decision between continuing as a University Professor and going back to software development, if I stayed in Romania.
What do you think about ITCamp, and what brings you here?
This is my first participation at ITCamp, and I thank the organizers for giving me the opportunity to come as a speaker. For the last two years I’ve been following this event from the distance, by exploring its site and reviewing all presentations. I appreciate its diversity and the organizers’ willingness to take chances with presentations apparently not aligned with the main goal of the conference.
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For the last two years I’ve been following this event from the distance, by exploring its site and reviewing all presentations.
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