Gojko Adzic is the next in my serie of “who is?” As requested earlier by Lisa Crispin. Gojko wrote a few wonderful books about specification-by-example. Gojko took a 2 months holiday last summer. Even if he is considered a big upcomming name in the community. Only for that he is already my hero. Yes Slack is important.
When I was 23, I became editor-in-chief for PC World for Serbia, which suddenly gave me an editorial staff of 20 people to run and they were all older than me, mostly 10 years or more. This had a profound influence on me in terms of understanding team psychology, communication problems and systems thinking.
This was never an option for me. I got a C64 when I was 6 and never wanted to do anything else than programming.
I have too many interests, ideas and things I’d like to do and the day only has 24 hours. My biggest challenge is coordinating and prioritising things with so few time. I guess this is a good thing because it makes me continuously evaluate whether I’m doing the most important things.
What drives you ?
I’m hyperactive and get bored quickly. Continuously learning new things and working with different teams feeds my hunger for change. I guess that drives me. Money is a good short term driver as well, but it cannot work even mid-term if I get bored. That’s why full-time employment never worked out nicely for me.
I don’t think I’ve achieved this yet
I’m currently reading Streetlights and Shadows: Searching for the Keys to Adaptive Decision Making (Gary Klein) and Beautiful Visualisation (edited by Julie Steele and Noah Iliinsky)
Being from Serbia, the question I get asked all the time is “Is it very cold there?”. The answer is “Nope, you’re thinking of Siberia“.
Dan North
Update: if you liked this, please buy the “Who is agile” book. It contains similar answers from other agilists. And Gojko’s answer to the question: What are the insights that guide your behavior?
3 comments on “Who is Gojko Adzic (@gojkoadzic)?”
Gojko is even more amazing than I knew! Another thing people should know about Gojko is that he’s incredibly helpful. Last fall at Agile Testing Days, he stayed up late putting a fix into FitNesse for us. And he’s incredibly inspiring with his common-sense approach. His keynote at StarEast last spring put me on a new mission to help more teams understand the value of a whole-team approach to test automation.