Danube Technologies

Danube Technologies, Inc

Type	Private
Industry	Agile software development tooling, training, and coaching
Founded	2000
Headquarters	Bellevue, Washington, USA
Key people	Laszlo Szalvay, President Victor Szalvay CTO
Products	ScrumWorks Basic ScrumWorks Pro
Employees	25+
Website	danube.com

Danube Technologies is a project success company, specializing in the improvement of management and engineering processes through Scrum. Danube is the developer and publisher of the Scrum lifecycle management tool – ScrumWorks Basic and ScrumWorks Pro. With over 105,000 licensed customers, the ScrumWorks family of products is well known for Scrum project management method. Danube also includes its ScrumCORE training division, which provides Scrum training through regularly scheduled public courses and private, on-site coaching engagements.

History

Danube Technologies was founded in Seattle, Washington in August 2000 by brothers Laszlo and Victor Szalvay. At that time, Danube served its clients as a project services company, managing outsourced software projects with both offshore and onshore models. In an effort to improve its own processes, Danube adopted Agile project management methods for its own projects and began to hire process experts and developers with an agile focus. Danube soon shifted its business focus to help other software organizations improve their development processes through Agile methods and Scrum, in particular.

Based on the response from its consulting clients, Danube further developed an internal Scrum management tool, ScrumWorks, and released it as a commercial product in August 2004 and decided by January 2005 to make it freely available through a freeware license model. The company continued to refine the product and, two years later, released an enhanced version of the freeware product called ScrumWorks Pro. Currently, more than half of the companies included in the Fortune 100 list of top companies utilize one version of ScrumWorks. The company’s clients have included Google, Amazon.com, Intuit, Intel, Siemens, Oracle Corporation, Motorola, and AMD.

In concert with the development of the ScrumWorks product, Danube began offering Scrum coaching and training services in August 2004 for the State of Washington. Shortly thereafter, Danube began teaching Introduction to Scrum, ScrumMaster certification, Product Owner, and ScrumWorks Training courses. The company currently retains three certified Scrum Trainers (CSTs). Today, Danube has two major divisions: Product, which supports the development and sales of ScrumWorks, and Services, which trains clients in the fundamental practices of Scrum and coaches them through every stage of Scrum transformation.

Timeline

• August, 2000: Brothers Laszlo and Victor Szalvay found Danube Technologies, Inc. as a project services company.
• August, 2004: Danube releases first version of ScrumWorks.
• January, 2005: Danube releases ScrumWorks as freeware product.
• January, 2007: Danube releases an upgraded, commercial version of the product, ScrumWorks Pro.
• March, 2008: Danube releases ScrumWorks Pro 3.0
• November, 2008: With the release of ScrumWorks 3.2, Danube begins offering the tool through a perpetual licensing model.
• February, 2009: Danube adds three Certified Scrum Trainers to its ScrumCORE team.
• February, 2010: Danube was acquired by CollabNet

Founders

Laszlo Szalvay

In August 2000, Laszlo Szalvay founded Danube Technologies, Inc. with his brother Victor in Seattle, Washington. Although Danube was originally created to manage outsourced software projects, the company’s focus soon shifted to helping organizations transform to Agile management practices. When an internal tool that Danube developed to improve its own processes became a hit with clients, Danube inadvertently discovered its flagship product, ScrumWorks Pro. Danube has also introduced a services division, now called ScrumCORE, in August 2004, which provides Scrum and XP coaching to clients through public and private courses as well as onsite engagements.

Currently, Laszlo serves as president of Danube Technologies, Inc. As such, he drives the company’s vision, creating business initiatives that influence everything from sales and marketing to human resources and employee retention to accounting. Laszlo graduated from the University of Puget Sound in 2000, where he studied economics and earned departmental honors. He lives in Camas, Washington, with his wife, Alison, and their daughter, Claire. In his free time, Laszlo enjoys barbecuing, collecting Oregon Pinot Noir, playing speed chess, and spending time with old friends and family.^{[citation needed]}

Victor Szalvay

With his brother Laszlo, Victor Szalvay founded Danube Technologies, Inc. in Seattle, Wash. in August 2000. Though the company was created to manage outsourced software projects, Danube’s focus quickly shifted to helping organizations transition to Agile management practices. Central to this transition in business strategy was the development of ScrumWorks, a Scrum-specific project management tool and Danube’s flagship product. Danube also introduced a services division, now called ScrumCORE, in August 2004, which provides Agile coaching to clients through public and private courses as well as onsite engagements. Currently, Victor serves as Product Owner for ScrumWorks Pro. In that capacity, he works closely with a team of developers to implement features that create value for Danube’s customers. With more than 150,000 active users worldwide, ScrumWorks is used by more than half of the Fortune 100.

Prior to serving as Product Owner, Victor acted as one of Danube’s Certified Scrum Trainers (CST), providing instruction through both public courses and onsite coaching engagements.

Victor graduated from the University of Washington in 1994, where he studied biochemistry. He lives in Redmond, Washington. When he’s not working on the next generation of ScrumWorks, Victor enjoys photography and marksmanship.

To learn more about Victor’s interests and thoughts on Agile, visit his blog at http://www.danube.com/blog/victorszalvay.

Awards

• Washington State Young Entrepreneurs of the Year, 2004, Small Business Administration (Laszlo and Victor Szalvay)
• Fastest Growing Private Companies Award, Puget Sound Business Journal, 2004 (#35), 2006 (#17) and 2007 (#24)
• Inclusion in Inc. Magazine's Top 5000 list (2007)
• ScrumWorks Pro nominated for 2009 Jolt Product Excellence Award in Project Management category

External links

• Web site: [1]

References

"Is SaaS and the Recession Killing Software Licenses? No, Say Experts" in Computerworld

• http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&taxonomyName=Software&articleId=9122678&taxonomyId=18&pageNumber=1

"Scrum Beat" in Projects@Work

• http://www.projectsatwork.com/article.cfm?ID=244734&authenticated=1

"Scrum: An Agile Development Favorite" in Application Development Trends

• http://www.adtmag.com/article.aspx?id=23023

"Danube Upgrade Seeks to Improve Scrum Method" in SD Times

• http://www.sdtimes.com/content/article.aspx?ArticleID=32466

Word-of-Mouth Marketing and ScrumWorks in the Wall Street Journal

• http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB119635478165408110-lMyQjAxMDE4OTE2NzMxNTc0Wj.html

InfoQ: Agile Project Management ScrumWorks Pro 3.0 released

• http://www.infoq.com/news/2008/03/ScrumWorksPro_3

SWP release announced on InfoQ:

• http://www.infoq.com/news/2007/01/scrumworks-pro-released
• http://www.cmcrossroads.com/the-news/announcements/danube-announces-release-of-scrumworks-pro.html
• http://seattle.bizjournals.com/seattle/stories/2007/10/22/focus10.html

SWP bug integrations, Summer 07 upgrade:

• http://www.infoq.com/news/2007/08/scrumworks-integration-burndown
• http://www.bugzilla.org/
• http://www.atlassian.com/software/jira

SBA Award in Diversity News

• http://www.diversitynews.com/brothers.html

“Agile Development Teams Need Tools, Too,” Forrester Research, Inc., October 2004

• http://www.forrester.com/Research/Document/Excerpt/0,7211,34977,00.html

Agile software development