Speaker Index
An agile coach with WSA Consulting, Inc., Steve Adolph partners with Scaled Agile and Rally Software where he pursues his passion for helping organizations get the job done. He has been creating and managing software development projects long enough to remember Fortran and OS/MVT JCL. Steve’s professional career includes many exciting and critical projects—designing call processing software for digital telephone exchanges, design and development of leading edge network management systems, railway signaling, and telecom billing.
read moreEditor-in-chief of CM Crossroads and author of Configuration Management Best Practices: Practical Methods that Work in the Real World, Bob Aiello is a consultant and software engineer specializing in software process improvement, including software configuration and release management. He has more than twenty-five years of experience as a technical manager at top New York City financial services firms, where he held company-wide responsibility for configuration management.
read moreScott Ambler works with organizations worldwide to help them improve their software processes. Scott is the founder of the Agile Modeling, Agile Data, Disciplined Agile Delivery, and Enterprise Unified Process methodologies, and creator of the Agile Scaling Model. A senior contributing editor with Dr. Dobb’s Journal, Scott is the coauthor of twenty-one books, including Refactoring Databases, Agile Modeling, Agile Database Techniques, The Object Primer 3rd Edition, The Enterprise Unified Process, and Disciplined Agile Delivery.
read moreSanjiv Augustine is an industry-leading agile and lean expert, author, speaker, management consultant, and trainer. He is the president of LitheSpeed, an agile consulting, training, and product development company. For more than twelve years, Sanjiv has managed agile projects from five to more than 100 people, trained thousands of agile practitioners through workshops and conference presentations, and coached numerous project teams.
read moreArlen Bankston is an established leader in the application and evolution of process management methodologies such as Lean, Six Sigma and BPM, as well as Agile software development processes such as Extreme Programming (XP) and Scrum. He is a Lean Six Sigma Master Black Belt and Certified ScrumMaster Trainer. He also has twelve years of experience in product design, leveraging principles of information architecture, interaction design and usability to develop innovative products that meet customers' expressed and unspoken needs.
read moreMatt Barcomb (@mattbarcomb) is passionate about building collaborative, cross-functional teams; enjoys being out-of-doors; loves punning; and thrives on guiding organizations toward sustainable, adaptive, and holistic improvement. Matt started programming as a wee lad and eventually wound up getting paid for it. It took him nearly ten years to realize that “people problems” were the biggest issue facing most software development businesses.
read moreSteve Berczuk is an agile software developer and agile SCM expert with more than twenty-five years of experience building systems and helping teams work together effectively. Most of his experience has been working in startup environments, including many teams trying to adopt Scrum and agile engineering techniques. Steve is coauthor of Software Configuration Management Patterns: Effective Teamwork, Practical Integration; a regular contributor to TechWell.com; and a member of the Scrum Alliance, IEEE, and ACM.
read moreJennifer Bonine is a VP of global delivery and solutions for tap|QA Inc., a global company that specializes in strategic solutions for businesses. Jennifer began her career in consulting, implementing large ERP solutions. She has held executive level positions leading development, quality assurance and testing, organizational development, and process improvement teams for Fortune 500 companies in several domains. In a recent engagement for one of the world’s largest technology companies, Jennifer served as a strategy executive and in corporate marketing for the C-Suite.
read morePassionately focused on facilitating high-performance software development environments, Tricia Broderick brings sixteen years of experience including the last six years of focus with an agile mindset. Tricia leverages and openly shares work experience stories and examples to inspire people, especially managers and leaders, to reach new heights through continuous reflection, both as individuals and as members of innovative teams. A highly experienced leader, coach, mentor, presenter, trainer, and speaker, Tricia recently joined the Santeon Group’s Learning team.
read moreBrian Button is VP of engineering and director of agile methods at Asynchrony, a St. Louis-based industry-leading agile transformation and development organization. Brian has twenty-seven years of experience, the past thirteen spent in most every role possible on an agile team. He leads the agile practice at Asynchrony, providing training, coaching, and development services using the agile methods to companies worldwide.
read morePassionate about getting products and services shipped, Phillip Cave might be called a “process expert” person. In reality, he is a “get the damn thing shipped already, and it better work and be what the customer wants” person. In his early software engineer days, Phillip hated development models that did not allow him to experiment and forced him to think of and document everything possible at the beginning of the delivery process.
read moreWith her tremendous passion for programming, Iris Classon has had a remarkable career that proves that anything is possible. A registered and licensed clinical dietitian, Iris decided in 2011 to learn programming and rapidly accelerated from 0 to 100. Within her first year, she earned several certifications, landed a developer job, and after just six months, was a technical evangelist for the renowned international company Telerik. In less than two years, Iris was awarded a Microsoft MVP for her contributions in the C# community.
read moreA consultant, lecturer, author, and test manager, Rick Craig has led numerous teams of testers on both large and small projects. In his twenty-five years of consulting worldwide, Rick has advised and supported a diverse group of organizations on many testing and test management issues. From large insurance providers and telecommunications companies to smaller software services companies, he has mentored senior software managers and helped test teams improve their effectiveness.
read moreA principal agile coach for BigVisible, Howard Deiner transforms organizations by working everywhere from boardrooms to the project rooms. Howard has a varied background spanning thirty-eight years in the industry with extensive domain knowledge in commercial software, aerospace, and financial services. He has played many of the roles in development, including developer, analyst, team lead, architect, and project manager. Howard has dabbled in the executive office and wears the battle scars of the dotcom revolution proudly.
read moreFor more than a decade, André Dhondt has led agile adoptions, providing guidance to teams and organizations seeking shorter development cycles, higher quality, and more effective discovery of customer value. In various roles including developer, manager, product owner, and scrum master, André has done everything from hiring and building teams in startup environments to coaching teams for an organization with more than 100,000 employees. Some of his teams have seen cycle time reduced by half, practically bug-free code with daily deployments, and improved employee morale.
read moreGeorge Dinwiddie is an independent software development consultant who helps organizations, large and small, increase the effectiveness of their software development efforts. As a coach, George he provides guidance over a broad range, at the organizational, process, team, interpersonal, and technical levels. As a trainer, he offers experiential education in technical practices and agile methods. George is currently crusading to break down the barriers that hinder effective collaboration between the business, the programmers, and the testers.
read moreSince 1980, Dale Emery has worked in both IT organizations and software product development companies as a developer, manager, process steward, trainer, and consultant. He helps people apply the agile values of communication, feedback, simplicity, courage, and respect to software development. Dale's combination of deep technical expertise and extensive organizational development experience makes him particularly effective in working with software teams.
read moreCEO of Genesis Consulting Jason Fair has more than twenty years of experience. Jason leads re-engineering and modernization initiatives for complex business operations, developing and delivering lean and agile ERP solutions to his customers. He challenges the traditional ERP waterfall delivery approach and incorporates lean and agile techniques to stimulate and increase project teams productivity and accelerate benefits realization.
read moreAn agile methodologist, practitioner, and coach based in Cary, NC, Bob Galen helps guide companies in their adoption of Scrum and other agile methodologies and practices. Bob is a principal agile evangelist at Velocity Partners, a leading agile nearshore development partner; president of RGalen Consulting Group; and frequent speaker on software development, project management, software testing, and team leadership at conferences and professional groups.
read moreIn the IT industry for more than twenty years, Julie Gardiner has held positions as an analyst programmer, Oracle DBA, and project manager. She has first-hand experience as a test analyst, test team leader, test consultant, and test manager. Previously with UK-based Grove Consultants for seven years, Julie now is head of agile, talent and transition management with The Test People. A certified ScrumMaster and agile coach, Julie also specializes in risk-based testing, agile testing, test management, and people issues.
read moreAgile testing coach and practitioner Janet Gregory (@janetgregoryca) is the coauthor of Agile Testing: A Practical Guide for Testers and Agile Teams and a contributor to 97 Things Every Programmer Should Know. Janet specializes in showing agile teams how testers can add value in areas beyond critiquing the product. For the past ten years, she has been working with teams to transition to agile development.
read moreA systems engineer and project management consultant, Payson Hall is a founding member of Catalysis Group, Inc. Formally trained as a software engineer and computer scientist, Payson has performed and consulted on a variety of hardware and software systems integration projects in both the public and private sectors throughout North America and Europe during his thirty-year professional career. He has been a writer and featured speaker on topics of systems integration, project management, and risk management.
read moreBob Hartman’s logic-based approach to development and quality was honed early in his now more than thirty-year software development career. Bob has acquired wide-ranging industry knowledge by working as a software developer, tester, product manager, project manager, development manager, and executive. During the past ten years, he has grown from being an early adopter of agile to his current status as a Certified Scrum Trainer and Coach.
read moreDawn Haynes is COO, principal trainer, and consultant for PerfTestPlus, Inc., and a former director of the Association for Software Testing. Dawn’s unique blend of experience, humor, and effectiveness at providing tools and techniques that help students at all levels generate new approaches to common and complex software testing problems has resulted in her international recognition as an elite trainer of testers. She provides consulting services and is a frequent speaker at testing conferences, local groups, and intimate gatherings of testers.
read moreKevlin Henney is an independent consultant, speaker, writer, and trainer helping individuals, teams, and companies improve the state of their development practice. Kevlin’s development interests are in patterns, programming, and process, with a long track record in programming practices, agile skills, and software architecture. He has contributed to open source projects and been a columnist for various magazines and websites, including Better Software, The Register, Java Report, and CUJ.
read moreWorking with companies of all sizes worldwide, David Hussman teaches and coaches the adoption of agile methods as powerful delivery tools. Sometimes he pairs with developers and testers; other times he helps plan and create product roadmaps. David often works with leadership groups to pragmatically use agile methods to foster innovation and a competitive business advantage. Prior to working as a full-time coach, he spent years building software in the audio, biometrics, medical, financial, retail, and education sectors.
read moreA partner at goAgile, Jenni Jepsen focuses on helping individuals, teams, and organizations increase motivation, effectiveness, and transparency by engaging with business goals, creating meaning for stakeholders, and building trust through the process. With extensive experience in change leadership and communications, Jenni integrates neuroleadership concepts into her coaching, training, and sparring with leaders at every level to help people create lasting change.
read moreA partner at goAgile, a Denmark-based consulting firm, Ole Jepsen is a highly-esteemed agile coach for organizations experiencing change. Ole works with organizations to help leaders and teams expand their perspectives, focus on value, and increase joy of work to create ownership and get results. An involving and engaging way to lead, it results in happier teams, increased business value, and is key to a lasting enterprise-wide agile transformation.
read moreTodd Little is a senior development manager for Landmark Graphics. Todd has been involved in most aspects of software development with a focus on commercial software applications for oil and gas exploration and production. He is a coauthor of the Declaration of Interdependence and a founding member and past president of the Agile Leadership Network.
read moreSince his entry into the world of commercial software in 1989, John Lynch has been involved in solving interesting software problems. Whether moving mainframe print jobs to servers or getting software teams to deliver their very best, John has provided creative solutions. In the early 1990s, he led the team responsible for inventing the very first mainframe to Unix print server system.
read moreWith twenty-five years of industry experience Michael Mah teaches, writes, and consults for QSM Associates to tech companies on measuring and estimating software projects for offshore, waterfall, and agile. Michael and his QSM partners have researched thousands of projects worldwide. His work examines time-pressure dynamics of teams and their contribution to project success and failure. Michael’s clients include Boeing, Progressive, Verizon Wireless, Nationwide, JPMorgan Chase, Roche, and other Fortune 100 companies.
read moreSara McClintock, IT Director at Nationwide Insurance, has been specializing in transforming the ways development teams create and manage software for one of the largest insurance companies. Sara has helped to scale Agile across multiple locations, including the start up in their Des Moines Iowa location. Nationwide is leading the industry in Agile Transformation using Scrum, Extreme Programming, Lean and was one of the first companies to become CMMI Level 3 certified using Agile practices and techniques. She has over 20 years of experience in the IT indust
read moreA test architect in the Dell Enterprise Solutions Group, Geoff Meyer has more than twenty-seven years of experience as a software developer, manager, test architect, and business analyst. Geoff co-chairs the Agile Steering committee within Dell Enterprise Solutions Group which guides the software development practices of more than 600 development, test, and UX engineers across three Global Design Centers. He is an active member of the Agile Austin community.
read moreMario Moreira is an agile enterprise change agent who helps organizations with their agile transformations. A seasoned agile coach, Mario works with large distributed organizations to small collocated teams, supporting scrum teams, ScrumMasters, product owners, middle management, and executives. A certified ScrumMaster and Scrum Professional, Mario has implemented Scrum, Extreme Programming (XP), and kanban practices, focusing on business benefits that agile can bring to organizations.
read moreRob Myers is founder of the Agile Institute and a founding member of the Agile Cooperative. With twenty-seven years of professional experience on software development teams, Rob has consulted for leading companies in aerospace, government, medical, software, and financial sectors. He has been training and coaching organizations in Scrum and Extreme Programming (XP) management and development practices since 1999.
read moreProgrammer and organizational change specialist Dan North applies principles from lean operations and agile software development to help organizations align their technology capabilities with their business objectives.
read moreAn agile player-coach and founder of CodeSquads, Nate Oster helps clients adopt lean and agile methods. Nate builds high-performance teams that adapt to change, embrace a pragmatic philosophy of continuous improvement, measure progress with new features, and deliver high-quality software that delights customers. As a coach, he inspires adopters with hands-on mentoring and simulations that provide a safe learning environment for new ideas. Nate promotes testing as a serious technical discipline.
read moreAlex Papadimoulis is a speaker and writer who's passionate about looking beyond the code to build great software. Through the years, he’s served in many different roles (from developer to executive), in different industries (from healthcare to manufacturing), at a variety of companies (from a one-man shop to a megabank). He’s seen his share of successful projects and failures—undoubtedly contributing to some. Alex believes failure is a powerful lesson and founded The Daily WTF, a site which chronicles bad code and other failures in IT.
read morePat Arcady, EdD, is an executive consultant and agile coach with a specialty in work team conflict resolution. Consistent with the Agile Manifesto which values individuals and interactions over processes and tools, Pat’s work teaches busy professionals the “how to” of that value—how to interact with colleagues and customers in ways that best serve to achieve the successful outcomes work teams seek.
read moreJeff Payne is CEO and founder of Coveros, Inc., a software company that builds secure software applications using agile methods. Since its inception in 2008, Coveros has become a market leader in secure agile principles and has been recognized by Inc. magazine as one of the fastest growing private US companies. Prior to founding Coveros, Jeff was chairman of the board, CEO, and cofounder of Cigital, Inc., a market leader in software security consulting.
read moreInternational leadership expert, Pollyanna Pixton developed the models for collaboration and collaborative leadership through her thirty-eight years of working inside and consulting with many organizations. She helps companies create workplaces where talent and innovation are unleashed—making them more productive, efficient, and profitable. Pollyanna is a founding partner of Accelinnova, president of Evolutionary Systems, and director of the Institute for Collaborative Leadership.
read moreA fellow consultant with Net Objectives, Ken Pugh helps companies transform into lean-agile organizations through training and coaching. His special interests are in communication (particularly effectively communicating requirements), delivering business value, and using lean principles to deliver high quality quickly. Ken trains, mentors, and testifies on technology topics from object-oriented design to Linux/Unix.
read moreLinda Rising’s background includes university teaching and industry work in telecommunications, avionics, and strategic weapons systems. An internationally-known presenter on topics related to patterns, retrospectives, and the change process, Linda is the author of Design Patterns in Communications Software, The Pattern Almanac 2000, The Patterns Handbook, and coauthor (with Mary Lynn Manns) of Fearless Change: Patterns for Introducing New Ideas.
read moreKnown as the “Pragmatic Manager,”Johanna Rothman helps organizational leaders identify problems and risks in their product development and recognize potential “gotchas,” seize opportunities, and remove impediments. Johanna is the technical editor for agileconnection.com and is author of Manage Your Job Search, Hiring Geeks That Fit, Manage Your Project Portfolio: Increase Your Capacity and Finish More Projects, the 2008 Jolt Productivity award-winning Manage It!
read moreRob Sabourin, P. Eng., has more than thirty years of management experience leading teams of software development professionals. A well-respected member of the software engineering community, Rob has managed, trained, mentored, and coached hundreds of top professionals in the field. He frequently speaks at conferences and writes on software engineering, SQA, testing, management, and internationalization.
read moreAhmed Sidky, aka Dr. Agile, combines more than fifteen years of software development experience with research from his Ph.D. in agile transformation and agility assessment to guide enterprise agile transformations in Fortune 100 companies. Ahmed helps small to medium companies worldwide realize sustainable organizational agility and educates people—CEOs to developers—on the agile mindset and creating lean high-performing teams. The principal consultant at SCG Inc. and co-author of Becoming Agile in an Imperfect World, Ahmed consults, teaches, and writes.
read moreAndy Singleton is the founder of Assembla, a SaaS company providing tools for distributed agile development teams. Andy moved Assembla from bi-weekly releases to multiple daily releases. His forthcoming book Unblock! A Guide to the New Continuous Agile describes workflows for product management, task management, coding, and testing. Previously, Andy founded PowerSteering Software, a provider of enterprise project management software, and Cambridge Interactive, an eBusiness consultancy.
read moreBrad Swanson is a senior agile coach and vice president at agile42. He started his software career at age ten on the Apple IIe and is now a Certified Scrum Coach with seventeen years of experience in management, project and program leadership, product management, and software development in both start-ups and large companies. Brad has led agile transformations using XP, Scrum, and kanban at many organizations across the US, Europe, and Asia. He has deep experience with agile software development, starting with eXtreme Programming (XP) in 1999.
read moreKyle Thomson, a vice president at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, is an experienced agile software developer. Kyle has worked in Australia, Canada, England, and most recently in the United States, helping to transform a 300-member technology department into a lean software development shop. Having learned, practiced, and taught agile development techniques such as test-driven development, continuous integration, and specification by example, Kyle can’t imagine going back to the “old ways” and is passionate about making sure his organization doesn’t go back either.
read moreA leading international consultant, trainer, and recognized expert in software testing, Erik van Veenendaal (erikvanveenendaal.nl) is the founder of Improve IT Services BV, a company that specializes in testing, requirements engineering, and quality management.
read moreThe author of implementingscrum.com, Michael Vizdos travels internationally working with clients to improve delivery of products to their customers using Scrum and other agile techniques. He is a Certified Scrum Trainer with more than twenty years of experience in all facets of software development and product delivery.
read moreKen Whitaker of Leading Software Maniacs™ (LSM) has more than twenty-five years of software development executive leadership and training experience in a variety of technology roles and industries, leading many commercial software development teams. He is an active PMI® member, Project Management Professional certified, and a Certified ScrumMaster.
read morePeter Zimmerer is a principal engineer at Siemens AG, Corporate Technology, in Munich, Germany. For more than twenty years Peter has been working in the field of software testing and quality engineering. He performs consulting, coaching, and training on test management and test engineering practices in real-world projects, driving research and innovation in this area.
read more