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Joseph (Joe) Yoder

Agilist, Computer Scientist, Speaker, Pattern Author

Joseph (Joe) Yoder (agilist, computer scientist, speaker, and pattern author) is the founder and principal of The Refactory, a company focused on software architecture, design, implementation, consulting, and mentoring on all facets of software development. Joe is also the president of The Hillside Group, a non-profit dedicated to improving the quality of life of everyone who uses, builds, and encounters software systems. Joe has presented many tutorials and talks, arranged workshops, given keynotes, and help organized leading international agile and technical conferences.

He is best known as an author of the Big Ball of Mud pattern, which illuminates many fallacies in software architecture. Joe teaches and mentors developers on Agile and lean practices, architecture, building flexible systems, clean design, patterns, refactoring, and testing.

Recently Joe has been working with organizations and thought leaders on the best practices for including quality aspects throughout the complete software life-cycle. Joe thinks software is still too hard to change and wants to do something about this. He believes by using good practices (patterns), putting the ability to change software into the hands of the people with the knowledge to change it, and bringing the business side closer to the development process helps solve this problem.