About Us
The Marcato organization has over 50 years of combined software development experience covering a wide range of technologies and platforms and we have shipped numerous products over 100 times. Our expertise lies in applying Agile practices to managing distributed teams; we have coached many organizations through this change and we have a high success rate for ensuring that these changes last. Here is additional background information on our partners and associates:
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Craig Knighton, Partner
Until recently, Craig was the V.P. of Engineering at Gearworks building the next generation platform for development of mobile applications known as Appmosphere(TM). Prior to this, he was a Lab Manager at the 3M SEMS corporate lab and the V.P. Product Development for HighJump Software, a 3M Company where he focused on leading the development of platform technologies used across their product line. He also spent 3 years in Microsoft Consulting Services and 12 years with CyberOptics Corporation. Craig has an MBA from the University of Minnesota, Carlson School of Management and a BS Electrical Engineering from the University of Minnesota, Institute of Technology.
Throughout his career, Craig’s main passion has been shipping software products and he has been in just about every role related to the development of commercial software. He is an advocate of agile development processes and has employed them to manage software development around the world. If he’s not busy building software, then you’ll find him hard at work finishing his cabin.
Craig Knighton
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Scott Colestock, Partner
Scott Colestock was most recently a principal at Trace Ventures, based in the Twin Cities. He has delivered solutions in the SOA/BPM and integration space for multiple clients in the area, as well as in the mobile arena. Scott is recognized for his work with Team Foundation Server and Scrum, helping several clients successfully deploy and adopt full ALM tooling along with the requisite changes in process. Scott spent 6 years at Microsoft, and 5 years with CyberOptics Corporation.
Scott is a Microsoft MVP, a certified ScrumMaster, and speaks frequently at user groups and industry conferences. Scott has a passion for agile development that leads to intellectual property with real longevity – using architecture that is simple, durable, and operationally quiet.
Scott Colestock
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Riley Horan
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Jim Brown, Associate - PMP, CMS, CSP
Jim Brown brings over 15 years of technical and project management experience to his engagements. With years spent providing technical leadership, strategy, process design, and detailed technical design to both large and small companies, Jim brings in-depth analysis, facilitation, and problem solving skills to every situation.
He is a certified project management professional, Scrum Master, and Certified Scrum Practitioner, and has provided agile project management, agile coaching, and technical leadership to large organizations like GMAC, Wells Fargo, the State of Minnesota, the City of Minneapolis, SFM Mutual Insurance, and a number of smaller local firms in a variety of industries.
His passion is helping organizations bring agile principles and practices to their teams and take their product development to the next level with a focus on driving business value with technology and building great teams.
Jim graduated from South Dakota State University in 1994 with a bachelor of science in Engineering and graduated from the University of St. Thomas in 2000 with a Masters of Business Administration.
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Adam Henry, Alumni – Currently employed at VersionOne
Adam Henry has been an independent consultant most recently, coaching a large IT organization in Agile principles and evangelizing the benefits of automation, collaboration, working software over process and ceremony, and how to engage the customer through incremental delivery of completed features.
Adam spent 5 years at HighJump Software, a 3M Company where he worked as an Architect, Director and V.P. He was champion of the Agile process at HighJump, where it was utilized by over 50 team members dispersed across 6 locations around the globe. Adam also spent many years as a consultant for a few different firms. Six years of this time was spent at Magenic Technologies, a top-tier consulting practice dedicated to the Microsoft technology stack.
Adam’s career passion is to help others believe it is possible to deliver high quality software that is on time, within budget and meets the needs of the customer. He is a Certified Scrum Master, Microsoft Certified Solution Developer and a Master of Science in Software Engineering.
Adam Henry
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Steve Paro, Alumni – Currently employed as Agile Coach & Product Consultant at VersionOne
Steve Paro has most recently been an independent agile coach and trainer, working with clients nationwide to improve their understanding and application of agile principles and techniques. He has worked with dozens of scrum teams, helping organizations realize significant improvements in quality, productivity and customer satisfaction. As a trainer, Steve has trained hundreds of IT and development professionals on agile project management, requirements definition, process adoption and team best practices.
Prior to consulting, Steve had spent 7 years at HighJump Software. During this time, he experienced almost of facets of the development lifecycle through his various roles as Implementation Consultant, Project Manager, Architect and Director of Product Development. As Director, he oversaw development for multiple product lines, with development teams in North and South America. Steve was instrumental in evolving HighJump’s agile practice by leading a major training and team based reorganization initiative.
Passionate and pragmatic, Steve is extremely excited to utilize his experience to help other organizations succeed in leveraging Agile to develop their people into highly effective, motivated, and productive teams. Steve is a Certified Scrum Master.
Steve is currently working as an Agile coach and Product Consultant out of Atlanta, Georgia.
Steve Paro
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Jamie Bolseth, Alumni – Currently employed as Director, Technical Product Development at Connexions Loyalty Travel Solutions
Prior to Marcato Parthers Jamie Bolseth was working at As One Technologies in the role of Product Owner, as well as leading the Professional Services group. In this role Jamie has worked to find the right balance of development process with the requirements dictated by regulated industries while delivering on customer implementation projects for mission critical manufacturing systems.
Before As One, Jamie was with HighJump Software for over 10 years working as a Developer, Architect and Director of the Application Development team where he was responsible for establishing Agile Development methods used in creating new applications as well as maintaining over a dozen applications within the HighJump suite of Supply Chain products. Jamie was also instrumental in growing the offshore development team significantly to address a time of significant company growth.
Jamie finds great reward in helping software teams reach their fullest potential through Agile Development methods and by fostering a “Team First” environment where members are empowered to do their best work. Jamie is a Microsoft Certified Solution Developer (MCSD), Certified Scrum Master (CSM) and has a Bachelor of Science from the University of North Dakota.
Jamie has taken a Director of Software Development role at a local software house in town – congratulations!
Jamie Bolseth
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Interested in Joining the Team?
Marcato is looking for experienced software development leaders and executives to join the team. We’re very careful in our selection as we need people with proven track records for driving lasting change in technical organizations and delivering on time and with high quality. Our model is to build a network of associates that we can place with clients that can deliver results that are consistent with the Marcato reputation. We will not compromise in this respect, and all candidates that have joined the team will pass through a rigorous qualification process that requires unanimous support from the existing team.
If you are interested in applying your experience with Agile development by helping new organizations adopt these successful techniques, please contact us at info@marcatopartners.com.
