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Meet Our CEO
I'm Kenji Hiranabe, CEO of Change Vision, Inc.
I started this company in 2006 to develop and market Astah, a UML editor integrated with Mind Mapping features.
My background is in software engineering something I"ve been doing for more 20 years. For about half of that time I worked on practical applications for object-oriented technologies, the other half for Agile approaches in real world software development.
Astah is the project of a lifetime; I still enjoy working daily with the development team. My motivation is to make software development projects more productive, more collaborative and more fun! I believe this can be accomplished through effective communication using visualization software. I believe "modeling" is one of the keys to quality and productivity in software development, but I realize that complete MDA or other code generation technology isnt going to work in all real world software development; they are "models for human-to-computer communication". The more important part is "models for human-to-human communication." Tools for visualization and drawing (including analog tools like a whiteboard) to communicate are essential to effectiveness. This is why I am incorporating mind mapping and other "soft" visualizations with UML. We developed an iPad UML editor, and provide features like adding "smiley icons" besides UML diagrams. We developers are human and we need more humanity in our daily development life.
Agile Contributions
You may know me as an Agile practitioner in Japan. I am a 2008 Gordon Pask Award Recipient for my contributions to Agile practices, especially for nurturing the Japanese Agile community, of which I am very proud of being a member. I am also a frequent speaker of international Agile conferences, such as "Agile2007", "Agile2008", "UK Lean Conference 2009", "Agile Brazil 2011", and a co-producer of "Hands-On" stage at "Agile2011". And I am a Program Chair of a Japanese local Agile conference "Agile Japan." My favorite topics are around "Lean(TPS)", "Mind Mapping", and "Project Visualization and Facilitation".
Books
I have helped to translate a dozen books on topics like XP and Agile including:
- Agile Project Management: Creating Innovative Products by Jim Highsmith
- Lean Software Development: An Agile Toolkit" by Mary and Tom Poppendieck
- Implementing Lean Software Development: From Concept to Cash by Mary and Tom Poppendieck
- Leading Lean Software Development: The Results Are Not the Point by Mary and Tom Poppendieck
- Art of Agile Software Development by James Shore
- Extreme Programming Install by Ron Jeffires
- Extreme Programming Applied by Ken Auer and Roy Miller
- Extreme Programming in Practice by James Newkirk and Robert Martin
- Extreme Programming for Web Projects by Doug Wallace, Isobel Raggett and Joel Aufgang
I have also written a book (in Japanese) Mind Mapping for Better Software Development: How graphical communication works. - The idea is to use mindmapping as a tool to capture the user wish and to use UML to formalize it.
Articles
Mind Mapping and Software Development
- white paper on the idea of UML and Mind Mapping integration. Downloadable from here; Zen and the art of Software Requirements
- Agile Modeling with Mind Map and UML
- Exploring User Stories Through Mind Mapping
Lean, Agile and Kanban
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