Forrester Research

Analyst's Photo	Name and Title	Contact information
	Tom Grant, Ph.D. Senior Analyst

Research Coverage

Agile Methodologies, Application Development, Application Development Management, Application Development Organizational Structure, Application Development Processes & Methodologies, Application Development Processes & Tools, Application Development Roles & Responsibilities, Application Infrastructure Technologies, Application Life-Cycle Management, Computer Hardware Industry, Computer Software Industry, Customer Experience, Design & Usability Processes, Enterprise Collaboration, Government, High-Tech, Information & Knowledge Management, Innovation Best Practices, Innovation Networks, Innovation Strategy, Integrated Development Environments, Market Research, Packaged Applications, Product & Solutions Strategies, Requirements Definition & Management, Research & Development, Sales, Marketing, & Product Strategy, Serious Gaming, Social Computing & Web 2.0, Tech Product Management

Research Focus

Tom Grant serves Application Development & Delivery Professionals. He is a leading expert on the roles that AD&D plays in the larger innovation process. His research interests include innovation, products and productization, Agile, product management, serious games, social media as an input into development, road maps, requirements, application life-cycle management, and embedded software.

Previous Work Experience

Tom Grant worked for two decades in the software industry. Prior to joining Forrester, Tom was a vice president of product management at a small collaboration software company and headed product management teams at Oracle and other Silicon Valley companies. As part of development teams working on a variety of products, Tom gained a keen appreciation for the challenges that AD&D teams face and the need to look beyond invention to understand what it takes to be a successful innovator. Tom's background includes firsthand experience building and deploying technologies for collaboration, content management, compliance, and other solution areas, across a broad array of platforms and devices. Tom has worked with an equally broad range of clients, in market segments such as government, finance, manufacturing, energy, and higher education. In companies where he has worked, he has built social media strategies and tools, such as developer communities, and implemented new ways of bringing customers and stakeholders closer to the development team. He has firsthand experiences in other areas of his own research, such as software-as-a-service (SaaS), requirements, and serious games.

Education

Tom earned a Ph.D. in political science from the University of California at Irvine. The topic of his dissertation, obstacles to innovation — specifically, American frustrations with counterterrorism and counterinsurgency — has direct relevance to the innovation challenges other organizations face.