Speakers
Martin Fowler
Keynote: An extemporaneous talk on the trends in software development I'm an author, speaker, consultant and general loud-mouth on software development. I concentrate on designing enterprise software - looking at what makes a good design and what practices are needed to come up with good design. I've been a pioneer of object-oriented technology, refactoring, patterns, agile methodologies, domain modeling, the Unified Modeling Language (UML), and Extreme Programming. For the last decade I've worked at ThoughtWorks (www.thoughtworks.com), a really rather good system delivery and consulting firm. Notes from Martin's presentation are available at http://martinfowler.com/bliki/TalkNotes.html
Jeremy Lightsmith
Presentation: Hats, Cards, & Cups: Techniques to Help Teams Talk Jeremy spends most of his time & energy building highly performant development teams. A seasoned agile coach & facilitator, Jeremy excels at creating environments where teams can discover how they work best. He has a deep understanding of agile, and is constantly looking for better ways to share knowledge and collaborate. As a presenter, Jeremy favors interactive and group techniques and pulls from disciplines as diverse as improv and Montessori. Though Jeremy is now an independent consultant in Seattle, most of his 11 year career has been spent at companies like ThoughtWorks and Pivotal. During his time at ThoughtWorks, Jeremy coached teams and trained facilitators; he owes much of his toolbox to the ThoughtWorkers with whom he worked. He is currently writing a book about Facilitation Patterns. Slides can be downloaded from Jeremy's site http://jeremylightsmith.com/classes.html
Michael Hugos
Presentation: If Agility is Good for IT it's good for the Rest of the Company Too Michael Hugos is a principal at Center for Systems Innovation [c4si] mentoring companies in IT and business agility and agile systems architecture. Recently collaborated with division of Fortune 100 company to train IT organization in agile development and develop supply chain visibility and global workflow management systems. Previously spent six years as chief information officer of national distribution cooperative where he developed supply chain and e-business systems that transformed company's business model. He writes a blog for CIO magazine titled “Doing Business in Real Time”. Michael is recognized expert in business and IT agility. He won the CIO 100 Award in 2003 and 2005, won the InformationWeek 500 Award in 2005, and in 2006 was selected for the Computerworld Premier 100 Award for career achievement. He earned his MBA from Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management. He has authored six books; Microsoft bought sponsorship rights to his newest book Business Agility: Sustainable Prosperity in a Relentlessly Competitive World.
Robert Reppel
Presentation: Riding Entropy: Evolution of Software Architectures over Time: Patterns, Smells, and Interventions Robert Reppel has written his first commercial software application more than 25 years ago. He has seen many since, as architect, team lead and developer, for companies from start-ups to multinationals. His main interest (and experience) is in finding ways to introduce agile techniques in more "traditional" organisations and legacy projects: How do ways of thinking, social interactions, organisational structures and processes influence the shape of software systems and the way they are built? What are the types of decisions and actions which result in a useful fit-for-its-purpose cost-effective and maintainable solution? He still enjoys coding (at this time, mostly in C#) for its hot-chocolate-on-a-winters’-day feel, giving comfort and refuge in a world which remains obstinately chaotic.
Michael Nygard
Presentation: Antibodies of the Corporate Immune System Michael strives to raise the bar and ease the pain for developers across the country. He shares his passion and energy for improvement with everyone he meets, sometimes even with their permission. Michael has spent the better part of 20 years learning what it means to be a professional programmer who cares about art, quality, and craft. He's always ready to spend time with other developers who are fully engaged and devoted to their work--the "wide awake" developers. On the flip side, he cannot abide apathy or wasted potential. Michael has been a professional programmer and architect for nearly 20 years. During that time, he has delivered running systems to the U. S. Government, the military, banking, finance, agriculture, and retail industries. More often than not, Michael has lived with the systems he built. This experience with the real world of operations changed his views about software architecture and development forever. He worked through the birth and infancy of a Tier 1 retail site and has often served as "roving troubleshooter" for other online businesses. These experiences give him a unique perspective on building software for high performance and high reliability in the face of an actively hostile environment. Most recently, Michael wrote Release It! Design and Deploy Production-Ready Software, a book that realizes many of his thoughts about building software that does more than just pass QA, it survives the real world. Michael previously wrote numerous articles and editorials, spoke at Comdex, and co-authored one of the early Java books.
Rob vanSpronssen
Presentation: Disciplined Agile: Agile Techniques within the Iron Triangle Rob vanSpronssen has been working in the software development industry for over twenty years, with over seventeen years at MacDonald Dettwiler. Rob holds a BSc in Computing and Mathematics from Simon Fraser University. Rob has worked primarily in large scale systems design and implementation, including weather systems, flight planning and flight briefing systems, airline crew scheduling systems, satellite imaging ground station systems and various electronic business systems in the housing and home/business/contents insurance markets. Rob’s responsibilities have ranged from software developer, team lead, project engineer, and is currently the project manager of a twenty seven person development team with an annual budget over three million dollars.
Chuck Clark
Presentation: Agile Operations: Knowing is Half the Battle Chuck Clark is a technologist with Pulse Energy (http://www.pulseenergy.com), an early stage company building Energy Management Software designed to help building facility managers reduce energy costs and optimize building performance. Chuck focuses on agile operations and addressing the challenges associated with scaling Pulse Energy's flagship product. After spending much of 2007 exploring Patagonia and riding a mountain bike 3,300 miles along the Continental Divide, Chuck realized it was time to live and work where he could pursue his outdoor passions. He left his role as Chief Architect at Orbitz Worldwide, where over the previous six years he designed and built the mission critical systems behind the Orbitz, Cheaptickets, eBookers and American Airlines websites and moved to Vancouver. Previously, Chuck worked in many different technical capacities at Curious Networks, Lante and the investment banking division of UBS.
Linda Rising
Presentation: Deception and Estimation: How We Fool Ourselves Linda Rising has a Ph.D. from Arizona State University in the area of object-based design metrics. Her background includes university teaching as well as work in industry in telecommunications, avionics, and strategic weapons systems. She is an internationally known presenter on topics related to patterns, retrospectives, and the change process. Linda is the author of numerous articles and has published four books: Design Patterns in Communications, The Pattern Almanac 2000, and A Patterns Handbook. Her latest book, written with Mary Lynn Manns, is titled Fearless Change: Patterns for introducing new ideas. Her web site is: http://www.lindarising.org
Ade Miller
Presentation: Distributed Agile Development Ade Miller is currently the Development Manager for Microsoft’s patterns & practices group (p&p) where he manages several agile teams executing on a variety of projects. He also lead the development of the p&p Web Services Software Factory: Modeling Edition. Before joining p&p Ade was a developer and then a Development Lead on Visual Studio Tools for Office 2005 and 2008 during Visual Studio’s transition to a more agile approach. Prior to joining Microsoft Ade worked in a variety of development environments including start-ups, consultancy and web publishing. His primary interest is in improving the way people develop software. He spends much of his time trying to figure out what being “agile” really means. Ade is a regular speaker on these topics, he also blogs and writes about his experiences. Ade received his BSc and PhD in Physics from the University of Southampton, UK. Slides can be downloaded from Ade's site http://www.ademiller.com/blogs/tech/talks/#distributed_agile_development
Alex Aizikovsky
Presentation: Acceptance Test-Driven Design Alex Aizikovsky works as a software developer at Elastic Path in Vancouver. For over 20 years Alex has been a software developer, architect, and an agile coach. He lead an agile team at Custom House, was working as an agile coach at Industrial Logic, and consulted as a Test Mercenary at Google.
Arlo Belshee
Presentation: It's the People, Stupid! Arlo does a little bit of everything, but what he really does is inspire courage. He has gone back and forth several times between management and in-the-trenches development on technically sophisticated products. He challenges every assumption he can find, and helps people learn to change – always and continuously. He has been involved in Agile since 1999. Yet in the middle of that period he worked for 2 years in a rigorous, effective, and pro-people Waterfall development shop. He's a strong believer in discipline and the agility that comes from it, in punctuated continuity, and in change as the only constant. Don't do anything he says, but learn why he says it and come up with something better. The best compliment he's recently received was when a co-worker termed him the Company Jester – because Arlo always has permission to laugh at the King.
Philippe Kruchten
Presentation: What colour is your backlog?–or: what do we do next? Philippe Kruchten is professor of software engineering at UBC, which he joined in 2004 after a 30+ year a career in the software industry, in telecommunications, defense and aerospace. His main interests are in software architecture, software project management and software development processes. He is a co-founder of Agile Vancouver. Slides: http://files.me.com/philippe.kruchten/vuldw4
Mary Poppendieck
Keynote: Lean Principles Mary Poppendieck has been in the Information Technology industry for over thirty years. She has managed software development, supply chain management, manufacturing operations, and new product development. She spearheaded the implementation of a Just-in-Time system in a 3M video tape manufacturing plant and led new product development teams, commercializing products ranging from digital controllers to 3M Light Fiber™. Mary is a popular writer and speaker, and coauthor of the book Lean Software Development, which was awarded the Software Development Productivity Award in 2004. A sequel, Implementing Lean Software Development, was published in 2006. A third book, Leading Lean Software Development, will be published in November 2009.
James Lewis
Presentation: Agile Adoption Anti-Patterns James Lewis is a Developer, Tech Lead and Project Manager for ThoughtWorks. James has helped introduce Agile to various blue chip companies: Investment Banks, Publishers and media organisations with varying degrees of success. He believes the only way to make agile transitions work is to listen and then listen some more.
Johanna Rothman
Presentation: Lean/Agile Project Portfolio Management Johanna Rothman consults, speaks, and writes on managing high-technology product development. During her consulting career, she has assisted managers, teams, and organizations become more effective by applying her pragmatic approaches to the issues of project management, risk management, and people management. She.s helped Engineering organizations, IT organizations, and startups hire technical people, manage projects, and release successful products faster. Her action-based assessment reports have helped managers and teams improve their projects, products, and financial results. She is a sought-after speaker and teacher in the areas of project management, people management, and problem-solving. Johanna has written over 100 articles and papers, maintains two blogs, and is a frequent contributor for Fast Company.s online career center, Software Development, Computerworld.com, and StickyMinds.com. Johanna is a coauthor (with Esther Derby) of Behind Closed Doors, Secrets of Great Management. She is the author of the highly acclaimed Hiring the Best Knowledge Workers, Techies & Nerds, and is a coauthor(with Denise Robitaille) of Corrective Action for the Software Industry. Johanna is also a host and session leader at the Amplifying Your Effectiveness (AYE) conference.
Joe Poon
Presentation: The Last Mile Joe Poon is a lead consultant with ThoughtWorks. He has developed software in .NET and Ruby on Rails for a variety of clients. Joe has worked in Canada, the US and India in domains such as finance, communications, technology and oil and gas. He has worked with and coached software development teams on sound object-oriented design and the value of XP practices. Joe has extensive experience with continuous integration and has made contributions to cruisecontrol.rb. Joe is passionate about finding better ways to develop software and his iterative thoughts can be found at http://joepoon.com.
Troy Gould
Presentation: The Last Mile Troy Gould is a lead consultant at ThoughtWorks, a global IT consultancy focused on development and delivery utilizing agile practices. With close to ten years of experience, Troy has played many and multiple roles on projects - architect, developer, DBA and build specialist. Over the past five years, Troy has worked with clients in Australia, Canada, UK and the US in both .NET and Java environments. Troy has a strong interest in continuous integration and deployment, as well as trying to keep up with the latest buzzwords in IT.
Brent Barton
Presentation: Coaching in an Environment Where Trust Has Been Broken Brent Barton is a partner at Sterling Barton, LLC. Brent has an extensive background mentoring people, enabling teams and guiding organizations toward agility. As a former CTO at SolutionsIQ, Brent has unique insights into challenges that emerge from the increased focus and intensity that iterative and incremental development brings to a business. As a Certified Scrum Trainer and Agile Coach, Brent has helped people, teams and organizations adopt Scrum successfully for many years. Brent believes developing great software is both a creative and technically challenging endeavor. If doing it is not fun then something is wrong. We must figure out why it is not and do something about it. Brent’s passion for helping teams and organizations build great software has shown to be a considerable asset for companies he has worked with.
Monica Yap
Presentation: Coaching in an Environment Where Trust Has Been Broken Monica Yap is an Agile coach, delivery manager, engagement manager, and occasionally a developer. I like to focus on building and leading successful Agile teams, or help to turn teams into successful Agile teams. I'm a Certified ScrumMaster and have over 18 years of software development experience, providing quality products through small releases, and an evolving architecture. My teams have delivered successful projects in vertical industries such as mobile data, finance, and property tax management. My expertise ranges from ‘rescuing’ failing projects, managing multiple vendors to deliver a large and complex project, working with distributed teams in various countries to deliver on same product, to software/system technical evaluation. I regularly organize and sometimes present at conferences (including Agile2005, Agile2006, Agile2007, Agile2008, and Agile2009). I’m currently helping to create a new Beyond Agile group in Seattle, USA.
Eric Evans
Presentation: Strategic Design: Avoiding Traps Responsible People Tend to Walk Into Eric Evans is the author of Domain-Driven Design: Tackling Complexity in Software, Addison-Wesley 2004. Since the early 1990s, he has worked on many projects developing large business systems with objects with many different approaches and many different outcomes. Eric now leads Domain Language, a consulting group which coaches and trains teams applying domain-driven design, helping them to make their development work more productive and more valuable to their business.
James Goebel
Presentation: How Being Agile Changed Our Human Resources Policies James is a founding partner in a product design company, Menlo Innovations, that uses highly collaborative project teams to design and implement innovative products for clients that place high value on user adoption. The team he helped build at Menlo Innovations has successfully blended an Extreme Programming development team, usability design specialists, a quality assurance practice, and formal project management. The company has moved twice to accommodate growth and maintain its open collaborative floor space. Representatives from start up companies as well as large Fortune 500 firms routinely tour Menlo’s Software Factory environment to study its implementation of agile. James has worked in a variety of environments from 2 employee startups up to billion dollar organizations. As a coach and change agent, James has helped organizations achieve dramatic transformations in both process and culture. He enjoys speaking at conferences, teaching classes, and speaking to small local groups in order to sharing the lessons he has learned. James Goebel is a certified Project Management Professional (PMP), a certified SCRUM master, and has an MBA from Eastern Michigan University. He has practiced software product development for more than twenty years as a developer, team lead, system architect, project manager, practice director, and executive coach. For the past ten years he has been building and managing Agile software teams.
Brent Barton
Presentation: Just-in-Time Requirements Elaboration through Appropriate Product Backlog Grooming Brent Barton is a partner at Sterling Barton, LLC. Brent has an extensive background mentoring people, enabling teams and guiding organizations toward agility. As a former CTO at SolutionsIQ, Brent has unique insights into challenges that emerge from the increased focus and intensity that iterative and incremental development brings to a business. As a Certified Scrum Trainer and Agile Coach, Brent has helped people, teams and organizations adopt Scrum successfully for many years. Brent believes developing great software is both a creative and technically challenging endeavor. If doing it is not fun then something is wrong. We must figure out why it is not and do something about it. Brent’s passion for helping teams and organizations build great software has shown to be a considerable asset for companies he has worked with.
Mike Stockdale
Presentation: Performance Tuning: An Agile Approach Mike Stockdale is the founder and principal software developer of Syterra Software (http://www.syterra.com). His focus is object-oriented development, automated testing and performance tuning of enterprise application software. He wrote his first code in Fortran, on punched cards. Not too agile back then. He was introduced to agile by Gerard Meszaros in 2001. Along the way, he’s been the up-front performance engineer, the last-minute performance super-hero and more recently, the agile developer doing performance tuning. He works for a variety of large corporate and government clients and is also the lead developer for the open source projects FitNesse.NET (http://sourceforge.net/projects/fitnessedotnet) and fitSharp (http://github.com/jediwhale/fitsharp).
Michael Feathers
Presentation: Error-Proofing and Error Handling as First Class Considerations in Design Michael Feathers is a mentor, consultant, and thought leader in the Agile community. He specializes in design and technical practices. He is also the author of Working Effectively with Legacy Code.
Simona Hera
Presentation: Practical Tips on Pair Testing Simona Hera is Senior QA Engineer at Actenum Corporation, a company that develops advanced software solutions to improve operational performance of large industrial organizations. She has more than ten years of experience testing software with technologies ranging from .NET to Java. Before joining Actenum, Simona worked with Axonwave, Microsoft, and NCompass Labs. Throughout years, Simona has mentored testers and has performed several test positions in a large number of projects: from tester, test lead to QA Manager. Her primary focus for the last four years has been on agile testing and empowering testers to transition to agile and improve their effectiveness.
Adam Dymitruk
Presentation: Working with GIT for Agility in the Enterprise Software Professional Adam Dymitruk specializes in .NET development, architecture and Agile practices. Having consulted for numerous clients over the years, he started working with a number of start-ups that are successful. He has also acted as a coach, off-shore development coordinator, strategy consultant, technical lead and development manager for various companies. He has incorporated his own software consulting company as of 1999. Adam has focused his efforts in helping the development community through many avenues such as the board of directors of Agile Vancouver, conference organization for ALT.NET Canada and foundation of ALT.NET Vancouver. He has also taught I.T. courses at Langara college. Adam holds a couple of Microsoft certifications and an Associate of Science degree. In his spare time Adam enjoys soccer and the Vancouver lifestyle.