Meet our associates... Richard Coplan

With almost 40 years of IT industry experience under his belt, which started on an early IBM PC, complete with Lotus 1-2-3, Scrum Master Richard Coplan has literally experienced IT history unfolding. Read on to discover his predictions for IR35 and learn why people simply cannot be ‘sheep dipped’ into Agile… 

 

"I embarked on my career in IT back in 1983 when, whilst working in a customer service role, an early IBM PC arrived at my London-based workplace. The manager wanted to know if any of the team was interested in working on this new machine, which came complete with Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheet on a bootable 5¼” floppy disk. I said yes, and the rest is history. 

 

"In my role as a Scrum Master, I’m motivated by helping teams to deliver and broker the relationship between development and management. I am particularly interested in using new collaboration tools and helping people to understand how they can communicate better by engaging with virtual technology. 

 

"When working with clients it’s important to understand where they are on their Agile journey. There is an old saying amongst the Agile community... you can’t sheep dip people into Agile. This is very true, and careful increments with the right people aligned is essential. 

 

"Iridium’s model of working with specialists that are specifically matched to a client’s needs is great for both client and consultant. Especially if, as a consultant, one takes advantage of the Iridium communication route into the client. This allows consultants to leverage higher level communication where, on their own, this would be more challenging. 

 

"The lockdown has worked out well for me with home-working becoming the norm. I used to commute weekly to Cambridge, and the travelling and disruption to family life was not great. When considering contracting roles in the future, I shall be looking for fully or near-fully remote positions which, of course, opens up a much wider geographic network. 

 

"Moving forward, as we emerge from lockdown, I believe that office space and how it is used will change dramatically. Companies have come to realise that significant savings can be made by reducing office working, without reducing productivity. 

 

"If I was to make a prediction about the impact of IR35, I’d say that contractors will continue to seek roles outside IR35. I feel that, as companies struggle to recruit quality consultants inside IR35, they will seek to offer more roles outside of IR35 in order to attract high calibre resources." 

 

Work with Iridium. Contact ben.dainton@ir77.co.uk