Department of Computer Science
Colloquium Series 2019-20
Wednesday, April 1, 2020, 3:00 PM, RB 104
What Makes a Great Team?
Common Roles to Play on Software Teams.
Josh Hurst
Abstract: What makes up a great software team? Individuals filling technical functions such as front-end engineers, QA engineers, and others. Look deeper though and you’ll notice something more subtle: styles of work.
In this talk we’ll explore a few of the common roles that you will need to play on a team. We’ll also explore what collaboration looks like on healthy and unhealthy teams.
Speaker bio:
Josh Hurst (BSU 2012) has spent the majority of his career working at high-growth SaaS startups in the collaboration and healthcare space. Early in his career he worked with enterprise customers like Eli Lilly, Cisco, and Intel, while growing his company’s Engineering department from a single small team, to distributed teams around the world. Later he kick-started the Engineering efforts at a local healthcare insurance startup.
Today, Josh leads the Engineering efforts at High Alpha — an Indianapolis-based Venture Studio that has launched over a dozen B2B SaaS companies in the midwest such as Lessonly, Zylo, Sigstr. At High Alpha, Josh establishes next-gen architectures, builds scalable software teams, and lifts up local technical talent. You may catch Josh backpacking in the woods, playing games with his two children and wife, or navigating roundabouts in Fishers.