Article originally posted on InfoQ. Visit InfoQ

Product development expert and agile (“with a small a”) practitioner, community builder and stalwart David Hussman (“The Dude”) passed away on 18 August 2018. David was the founder of DevJam, known for expressing Dude’s Law to succinctly express the value in a product or idea, and a strong advocate of pragmatic approaches to software development drawing on the ideas embodied in the Agile Manifesto without being tied to any particular framework or methodology.

He was one of the first to advocate and use Story Mapping, working with Jeff Patton to explore the ideas and share them with the community as far back as 2009. He produced a tool CardboardIt to enable teams to produce story maps electronically.

He received the Gordan Pask award in 2009 for his contribution to the agile community. JB Rainsberger said of David at that time

“David is not just someone who builds agile communities, but someone who is building community builders”

Dude’s Law is a deceptively simple construct that he devised, inspired by Ohms Law, it states that Value = Why divided by How.

He explained the thinking behind Dudes Law here and spoke about it in this episode of the InfoQ Culture Podcast.

He freely shared his knowledge, as a speaker, coach and educator. He was regularly featured in InfoQ for his talks and presentations

In February 2018 he spoke to the Developer on File podcast about his life, as a musician, father, entrepreneur and community builder, and his battle with lung cancer.

The DevJam tribute to David says:

David Hussman was a thundering catalyst and pioneer for the agile community. More importantly, it was his coaching, mentoring, and sharing of ideas and techniques that will forever leave his imprint on all of our lives. His ability to string together chords of pragmatism and sustainability pushed product learning to new heights and brought together product communities. David is survived by his loving wife and two daughters.

For his impact on the community and on our lives, we honor his memory today and always.

We invite you to add your memories of David to the comments.