Steve Denning is the author of the forthcoming book, The Age of Agile: How Smart Companies Are Transforming the Way Work Gets Done (Amacom, February 2018). Steve is the former Program Director, Knowledge Management at the World Bank. He now works with organizations in the U.S., Europe, Asia and Australia on leadership, innovation, Agile management and organizational storytelling. Steve’s innovative work has been recognized world-wide. His clients have included many Fortune 500 companies. He also leads the SD Learning Consortium, a group of major private sector that are sharing knowledge about the Agil transformation journey.
Steve currently writes a popular column for Forbes.com on Agile management, leadership, innovation and leadership storytelling. His book, The Leader’s Guide to Radical Management, (Jossey-Bass, 2010), sets out the basic principles of Agile management. His forthcoming book, The Age of Agile shows how Agile has become a necessity in all organizations to survive—and thrive—in the modern workplace. In 2010, 2011, 2014 and 2016, Steve’s articles on Agile management were selected by the journal, Strategy & Leadership, for outstanding contributions to management.
An agile methodologist, practitioner, and coach, Bob Galen helps guide leaders and teams in their pragmatic adoption and organizational shift toward Scrum and other agile methods. Bob is often called “a Coach of Coaches” because of his deep and broad experience in the agile arena. He is director, agile practices at Zenergy Technologies; president of RGCG, LLC; and a frequent speaker at international conferences and professional groups on topics of agile software development. Bob authored Three Pillars of Agile Quality and Testing, Scrum Product Ownership, and Agile Reflections. A prolific writer, blogger, and podcaster, Bob can be reached at bob@rgalen.com or at LinkedIn.
With four large-scale agile transformations under his belt, Josh Anderson has seen it all—good agile, bad agile, and other things sometimes referred to as agile. As the VP of product development at Broadvine, Josh is responsible for the company’s agile adoption and all aspects of software engineering. He gives back to the community by speaking regularly at industry conferences and co-hosting an agile-centric podcast. Follow Josh on Twitter at @nosrednAhsoJ.
Laura Smyrl is a Senior Agile Delivery Manager within the Professional Services group at MATRIX. She has ten years of experience guiding and coaching agile teams. Her passion is working with clients to use the agile tools that can improve their specific situation. She has worked within a variety of industries including government contracting, scientific research, large scale enterprises, medical technologies and finance. Laura appreciates the unique business drivers in each software project, and brings fresh energy and perspective to her clients. Laura works very effectively and diligently with her teams through collaboration. She is communicates well with executives in explaining the value of Agile and in team-based delivery. Laura enjoys helping organizations make the transition to a collaborative mindset that offers quality output sprint over sprint. Her background includes both agile development and traditional project management; she holds PMP, CSM and SPC certifications.
Catherine Louis A Certified Scrum Trainer™, independent agile coach, and founder of CLL-Group and PoDojo.com, Catherine Louis has more than twenty years of experience in complex product development. Catherine’s focus is on product discovery and delivery—using design thinking, agile methods, and agile R&D—and managing organizational agile transitions to build speed and flexibility in business. Her specialty is accelerating innovation by enabling agile transitions. Catherine helps small start-ups as well as large enterprises inspect and adapt, evolve and improve, accelerate delivery, and delight their customers.
Ken Pugh, helps companies evolve into lean-agile organizations through training and coaching. His special interests are in collaborating on 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. He has written several programming books, including the 2006 Jolt Award winner Prefactoring and his latest: Acceptance Test-Driven Development: Better Software Through Collaboration. Ken has helped clients from London to Boston to Sydney to Beijing to Hyderabad. He features Acceptance Test-Driven Development / Behavior Driven Development based on his book. Ken will be presenting “Better Software through Collaboration”
Over the last 15 years, Matt Hicks has worked in the epicenter of this technological shift and has developed the expertise to steer companies toward a more competitive future.
As one of the founding members of Red Hat’s OpenShift offering (now an award-winning PaaS solution), Matt is passionate about using development, operations, and infrastructure to take winning concepts from ideation to reality.
Matt offers a distinct advantage in: Aligning IT/engineering operations with business priorities, Defining and communicating the organization’s vision, Building and inspiring world-class engineering teams, Establishing and executing on a product strategy.
Product manager & former coder, Dean Peters is a recovering opera singer with principal roles in both U.S. and World premieres (that don’t appear on his current resume). However, when plied with enough coffee, he cheerfully and humorously combines both his musical and technical skills to connect others, make good things happen, and create order out of your software development chaos.
Christopher Curley is an Agile practitioner since 2004, working at LexisNexis in the Global PMO. His career spans coaching small teams, coordinating Scrum of Scrums, and transitioning Agile at scale across global enterprises. Christopher’s professional research focuses on Agile and epistemology, developing ways to improve how teams think to purpose before taking purposeful action. He is a graduate of the Schreyer Honors College at Penn State, an active member of the Research Triangle Park Agile Leadership Network (ALN).