Celebrating 20 years of Agility Discover Pyxis history from 2000 until today
Pyxis|20 years
The friendship and the desire to do differently as a starting point…
Discover the history of Pyxis, its beginnings, lived and told by François Beauregard, one of the founders of Pyxis.
He comes back on the genesis of the company that brought together three friends in love with software development: François Beauregard, Alain Chaput et François Denommée. All three founders were driven by a desire to do things differently.
Pyxis Technologies was founded in 2000 following the reflection of software engineers questioning the conventional ways of doing business in software development and more generally on their profession.
Alain Chaput, François Denommé and François Beauregard. Three developers fed up with delivering software that does not always correspond to the clients’ needs.
Their reflection led them to adopt new project management approaches, to continuously question themselves and to improve their processes and practices. Pyxis Technologies was born with the mission to offer unique and high quality solutions that meet the real needs of its customers.
Originally, Pyxis Technologies was a software development studio.
François Beauregard and André Brissette (Briss by his nickname) decide to create an Agile community to share the first agile methods between developers in Montreal.
They thus became the initiators of the Montreal Agile Users Group. The goal of this group was to encourage and support the exchange of ideas, knowledge and experiences regarding Agile software development, its methodologies and practices.
The first meeting was held at the Montreal Enterprise and Innovation Center on September 24, 2002 at 6:00 PM with guest speaker Ken Schwaber. Schwaber is one of the leaders of the agile software development movement, one of the seventeen initial signatories of the Agile Manifesto and founder of Scrum.org, which Pyxis is now a partner since 2010.
Today, Agile Tour Montreal has more than 1700 participants and over 50 conferences per event.
Huge milestone ! François becomes the first Canadian Francophone trainer with Agile Alliance, founded by none other than Ken Schwaber*.
Pyxis Technologies now provides training for people who are passionate and interested in Agile in Montreal.
The range of courses offered by Pyxis Technologies is an answer to all those who are challenged by Agility or by the development of efficient and quality software. It is composed of professional and experienced developers who live Agile software development on a daily basis and who appreciate all its benefits.
*Ken Schwaber, who is now the founder of Scrum.org since 2010.
Pyxis Technologies is now well known for its software development. But also more and more in demand for Agile coaching and training in corporate IT teams. And we are now displaying it on the website!
The coaching approach that Pyxis Technologies offers is based on the experience acquired in software development. The Pyxis team helps companies in the assessment of the processes and practices in place, the management of a pilot project and the progressive deployment of Agility throughout the organization.
The range of courses offered is an answer to all those who are challenged by Agility or by the development of efficient and quality software. The team of trainers is composed of professional and experienced developers who live Agile software development on a daily basis and who appreciate all its benefits.
Marion Gilbert shares with us a piece of the Pyxis history by telling us about the years from 2005 to 2010.
The first years allowed Pyxis Technologies to make a place for itself within the developer community, but also to become known as an initiator of Agility. Avant-garde, the company invests in research and experimentation of new development practices. This is how Pyxis Technologies took the turn to Agile software development.
In 2005, the Agile Community of Quebec was born. Pyxis will be very involved in the creation of this community and will also be very present during the following years.
During the first edition of the Agile Tour Quebec, François Beauregard will be the keynote speaker and gave his conference «Introduction au développement AGILE : interprétations, défis et avantages». Today, the Agile Québec community has more that 2200 members and over 1000 participants during the Agiles Tours Quebec.
With more and more mandates in Quebec City, Pyxis and Agility travel and are now present in the capital’s companies.
We’re changing the site and the logo. New look!
Our offer is more and more important in team coaching and Agile training. Also, we passed the 20 full-time employees mark. We have the wind in our sails.
Many clients from different business fields now trust Pyxis for its coaching, software development and training services. Banking companies (CIBC, BNC), medical and pharmaceutical companies (Varian, MDS Pharma, SANOFI-AVENTIS, etc.), public companies (Hydro-Quebec, University of Montreal) and many other large players such as CGI and Ericsson, to name a few.
The origin of the word Pyxis, is in fact the constellation of the Compass, a small constellation in the southern sky visible in the southern hemisphere.
For the 3 founders of Pyxis, the compass represented a simple and precise instrument. The constellation evoked the willingness to go above and beyond.
A first office in Europe.
Different French European organizations that participated in the courses given by Pyxis also call for software development services. France Telecom, now Orange, entrusts a large-scale project to Pyxis. The demand for development services and the market potential for Scrum Master training allowed Pyxis to open an office in Paris. The Paris office allows Pyxis to cover the French-speaking European market and to establish its credibility abroad.
Today, ODDES, a member of the Pyxis network, is still providing Agile training and coaching. The office has four people, Christian, Eric, Julia and Sarah.
Why not let our neighbors benefit from this wave of change, which is accompanied by a desire to do things better, more humanely and with better processes?
Pyxis has been developing products related to Agile software development for a while.
The Green products, GreenPepper and GreenHopper, are essentially tools that accelerate software development through testing, communication between the team and the client, and monitoring of Agile projects.
Pyxis is convinced that the development of these applications is a must and will facilitate the integration of Agile methods in teams that wish to integrate Agility in their practices.
Jean-Christophe Huet, a developer at Pyxis Technologies at the time, decided to participate in a contest to create a plug-in for the Jira platform. At the time, he was far from imagining that his participation in this contest would change the face of the company for several years to come.
Jean-Christophe participated and won the contest with the GreenHopper plug-in which offers users an intuitive interface for Agile project management while increasing visibility of work progress.
In the fall of 2008, a new version of the website is created and the Pyxis logo will evolve with the introduction of the “edgy” (man).
The design is inspired by more organic symbols like the bamboo and the new logo refers to the human being. More than ever, Pyxis is convinced that change comes through the human being at the center of success.
Coaching and training are put forward and take more and more space in order to meet the growing demand and will to apply Agile VALUES in Quebec and European companies.
Pyxis attracts a lot of interest. Many trainers, coaches and developers want to work for Pyxis and the company is forced to expand its Laval offices.
The Agile Project Management Application is a success! So much so that Jira©, (Atlassian) bought the product to put on their development platform.
From now on, people who subscribe to Jira© will work with GreenHooper for their Agile project tracking.
This transaction gives wings to Pyxis and its developers to start other Pyxis Agile products.
Today, hundreds of thousands of users manage their projects with Jira Software© and this application is used by many companies around the world.
The formula worked for Jira, so let’s do it for Microsoft©!
This was the birth of the Agile project management application, but for developers on Microsoft©’s “Team Foundation Server”.
Developers are busy creating this tool to meet the needs of teams developing in .NET. Still today, the tool is available on www.urbanturtle.com
This allows Pyxis developers to work on the creation of a product to keep the “hand” in the code, and through the coaching mandates at the customers, to know the management needs of IT teams and to adapt the Urban Turtle© tool. That’s Agile!
While Pyxis had experienced significant revenue growth in recent years, in 2011 the company faced heavy internal challenges that led to a major restructuring.
This marked a difficult period in the history of the company that still leaves vivid memories in the minds of employees.
Reaching the 10-year milestone for a company is no small achievement. So, we celebrate with employees, partners, customers and family.
Pyxis will take the time to thank all those who make a difference in the IT market. Pyxis will start to make a shift towards entrepreneurs who, just like François and the leaders of the time, want change to come through management and leadership.
Ken Schwaber founded Scrum.org in 2010 and since then, Pyxis becomes the first French speaking company in Canada to offer Agile training with Scrum.org
Pyxis offers a complete catalog of certified trainings. To this day, our PSM, PSPO, PAL-e courses are the most popular in the curriculum.
Our trainers are active in the Agile and Scrum.org community and Pyxis is a major provider of scrum.org training in Quebec and Europe.
In May 2011, the idea of a Pyxis franchise in Switzerland was born. Gaël, originally from Switzerland and a junior developer at Pyxis at the the time, wrote business plan with François Beauregard and Christian Lapointe.
When the compnay had to restructure, Gaël and Christian decided to conquer new markets in Europe and to export the Pyxis Technologies brand by opening an office in Switzerland.
Pyxis aspired to become the reference for Agility in the French-speaking market. This is how the website agileknowhow.com was created and has since been incredibly successful with French-speaking customers.
In fact, the Agile Know How blog is one of the only information platforms on Agility available in French and whose articles are written by experienced and certified coaches and trainers from around the world.
Around 2014- 2015, the story of Pyxis is quite peculiar. True to form, Pyxis continued its exploration of innovative organizational models, heavily influenced by the beliefs of its leaders. Here are some highlights of its history from 2015 to today:
Pyxis decided to move to larger offices in Laval, better suited for the work methods of Pyxis and Done, e.g.: open spaces, walls for drawing, modern conference rooms, bench spaces, etc.
In its drive to give back to the Laval community and in line with its values, Pyxis wishes to offer a space that can welcome people from different work environments, a place where ideas bubble up, collide, and where genres mix. A place where technology, social innovation and culture would intersect. This is how the Pyxis/Le Tiers Lieu project was born. In the new offices of 1200 Saint-Martin West, a space is then reserved for co-working. In 2017, Pyxis became a partner in this initiative, with the collaboration of Marie-Anne Perrault and Jonathan Falardeau, founder of Le Tier Lieu.
In 2020, Pyxis Studio changes its name to Done Technologies and gets its own identity. This change marks the end of a long period of questioning, difficult discussions and questioning the relevance of having these several services under the same banner.
In 2021, Pyxis creates Pyxis Services and Consulting with the will to offer a new range of services for the agile organization. From digital transformation to expansion strategy and human capital management, Pyxis Services and Consulting supports organizational leaders in adopting a new business model based on Agility.