Abhishek Swami

Abhishek Swami is a systems analyst and user interface designer at McKesson Medical Imaging Group. He has been part of one of the company's Agile pilot projects for over a year and is currently also working with new teams at MIG to help them adopt Agile techniques in a regulated safety-critical environment. Prior to McKesson, Abhi worked at numerous technology companies such as Keane, CSRS and Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (CDAC). His experience spans across various domains - primarily health sciences and financial services. His skills span different capacities as a developer, test engineer and business analyst. He has a Bachelor of Engineering in Computer Science from V.T. University, Bangalore.

Adam Dymitruk

As a software professional, Adam Dymitruk specializes in .NET development, architecture, and Agile practices. Having consulted for numerous clients over the years, 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 the 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.

Barbara Hubert

For the past four years, Barbara Hubert has been the Branch Manager for Betware Solutions Canada Ltd, which provides the Internet Lottery Platform for the British Columbia Lottery Corporation. Prior to Betware, Barbara has held progressively senior positions in at ACL Services, Fincentric (Open Solutions) Corporation, Top Production, and Epic Data. In addition to being a certified PMP, Barbara is a power user of Agile software practices. The impressive and quantifiable results achieved by her team(s) have turned the staunchest Waterfall advocates within the toughest regulatory environments into strong supporters for Agile software development.

Brent Barton

Brent Barton is a founding partner at Sterling Barton, a software product and consulting services company. Brent’s executive management background and nearly two decades of experience in software technology gives Brent the ability to provide valuable guidance concerning engineering capability and organizational proficiency. As a consultant and trainer, Brent has helped small, medium and Fortune 100 organizations overcome intractable problems and successfully deliver mission-critical solutions. Brent has used Agile practices for a decade as a Chief Technology Officer, development manager, project manager, software developer, ScrumMaster, Product Owner, coach, consultant, and trainer. Brent applies agility, pragmatism, persistence, organizational constructs, and process disciplines to help organizations outperform their status quo. Brent became one of the earliest Certified Scrum Trainers and has been implementing Scrum in organizations since 2005. Brent uses a practical and engaging teaching style that incorporates modern adult learning styles. Brent’s conversational and experience-based training style provokes thoughtful discussions and challenges that create a great learning environment for software and business professionals to solidify their understanding and decide on next actions. His years of experience practicing, coaching and spearheading agile transformations provide a foundation for him to be effective in a broad range of industries and organizational structures. Brent has trained thousands of people in Scrum and Agile practices both in formal training environments and in coaching situations. Samples of clients include: Computer Associates, NIIT, Microsoft, T-Mobile, Medco, Pegasystems, Phillips, Precor, RIM, SolutionsIQ, and Vertafore. Brent has written several important papers on Agile and organizational change: “Implementing a Professional Services Organization Using Type C Scrum “ (IEEE), “Establishing and Maintaining Top to Bottom Transparency Using the Meta-Scrum” (Agile Journal), and “All-Out Organizational Scrum as an Innovation Value Chain” (IEEE). Brent also helped develop AgileEVM, a mathematically proven method that connects Scrum and traditional Earned Value Management techniques.

Chet Richards

Chet Richards was a close associate of the late US Air Force Colonel John Boyd beginning in the mid-1970s. He has consulted with a number of aerospace and professional services companies and has lectured at the Air War College and the Army's Command and General Staff College. He is the author of A Swift, Elusive Sword and other works on applications of Boyd's strategy. Chet holds a Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of Mississippi and maintains a business and communications strategy practice with Tarkenton & Addams, Inc., a public relations firm in Atlanta, Georgia.

Christopher Avery Ph.D.

Christopher helps leaders and coaches discover and consciously develop their innate leadership power, called the Leadership Gift, to turn upsets and problems into growth, freedom of choice, and power. An applied organizational scientist for more than 20 years, Christopher accidentally became a leading expert in how personal and shared responsibility works in the mind — i.e., how we avoid and take responsibility for our lives and relationships — when he set out to help software developers learn to build powerful teams quickly. He wrote the classic “Teamwork Is An Individual Skill: Getting Your Work Done When Sharing Responsibility” for everyone who is ready to be done with bad teams. Christopher co-authored the Declaration of Interdependence, an integral set of values guiding agile and adaptive approaches to business. He is a co-founder of the Agile Project Leadership Network focused on supporting and developing great project leaders.

Chris Nicola

Chris is a software engineer with Vision Critical's R&D team building rich-web applications for the market research industry. Currently, his work involves technologies like WCF, Silverlight and nServiceBus and applying CQRS to build flexible SOA systems.

Chris Sterling

Chris Sterling is a Partner at Sterling Barton, LLC where he works with clients as an Agile Coach, Certified Scrum Trainer, and Technology Consultant. Chris has an extensive technology, process, and consulting background allowing him to work with a diverse set of clients and teams. Chris brings his real world experience and deep passion for software development into his engagements enabling others to grasp important points and always take away something of value. Chris has created and continues contributing to multiple open source projects. He has been a speaker at many conferences and group meetings including Agile 2007-2009, SD West, Scrum Gatherings, PNSQC 2009 and others. He has been a coordinator of multiple Puget Sound area groups including International Association of Software Architects (IASA), Seattle Scrum, and most recently Beyond Agile . Chris is currently teaching the “Advanced Topics in Agile Software Development” class at the University of Washington Agile Developer Certificate extension program and writing a book with publisher Addison-Wesley on software architecture.

Chris Turner

Chris Turner, ThoughtWorks Cilent Services. In the last 5 years, Chris Turner has worked as a Network Technician, Software Developer, Deployment Engineer, and most recently Agile Coach and Trainer. For several years he worked on ThoughtWorks' Continuous Delivery tool Go. His current focus is on helping organizations understand and implement agile methodologies, specifically in the development and DevOps arenas.

Christine Callaghan

Christine Callaghan is a systems analyst and user interface designer at McKesson Medical Imaging Group (MIG). She has been part of the company's Agile pilot project for 2 years and is currently working with new teams at MIG to help them adopt Agile techniques in a regulated safety-critical environment. Christine has worked in software development in several industries, including financial services and telecommunications, in Vancouver, Toronto and New York City. She has a Bachelor of Commerce from Queen's University and a Masters of Science from University College London.

Dan Rawsthorne

I have worked in software for more than 25 years in many capacities, from coder to product/project manager. I have worked small (3 people working on an e-commerce web site) and large (500 people working on aircraft avionics) projects, and have learned many things about what works and what doesn’t. I’ve worked in small “hack it out” companies and big CMM and ISO organizations and have been involved in process improvement in most of them. At Danube I am a transformation agent. I help organizations transform themselves through applications of common sense and agile techniques. My formal training (PhD in mathematics) guides me to look for underlying problems rather than focus on surface symptoms; my military background (retired reserve officer) helps me understand the importance of teamwork and empowerment; and my common sense tells me that change must happen in small manageable bites. I am a Certified Scrum Trainer with knowledge of many software processes, procedures, and techniques and bring them all to bear on the problems I see. I’m a firm believer in agility, having been introduced to eXtreme Programming (XP) by Kent Beck in 1995, and to Scrum by Linda Rising soon after. It was these experiences that led me to move from government contracting to become a coach and consultant.

Declan Whelan

I am an agile coach and developer with a passion for helping companies build great software. I thrive on helping teams reach their full potential through teamwork and technical excellence guided by agile principles and practices. I am a professional engineer with 25 years experience in software development. I am very active in the agile community; contributing articles on agile development and speaking at conferences. I founded both the Waterloo Agile/Lean User Group and Agile Coach Camp Canada.

Donald Belcham

Donald Belcham is a senior software developer, independent contractor, and agile development expert who is a strong supporter of fundamental OO patterns and practices. He is co-author of the book, “Brownfield Application Development in .NET” (Manning Press, 2009), and actively shares his expertise with other technical professionals at user groups, code camps and conferences held throughout out the world. Past lectures have covered topics that encompass development practices, quality team leadership, and the intricacies of new and emerging technologies. In addition to acting as a mentor and keynote speaker, Donald has led a wide range of highly successful projects and developed top-performing teams for a variety of companies. Since 2007, he has been awarded the Microsoft MVP Award in C# and is a member of the JetBrains Academy. Donald is a founding member and the current president of the Edmonton .NET User Group. You can access Donald Belcham’s thoughts on software development, .NET and C# through his various lectures, keynote presentations and at his outspoken technical blog; www.igloocoder.com.

Eric Ridgeway

Eric is a Senior Developer for Russell Investments in Tacoma, WA where he works an awesome group of craftsmen who enjoy writing software and making cool stuff. His current main interests include BDD, NoSql, scalability and craftsmanship as a way of life.

Esther Derby

Esther Derby works with individuals, teams, and organizations to improve their ability to deliver valuable software. Esther is recognized as a leader in the human-side of software development, including management, organizational change, collaboration, building teams, and retrospectives. She’s been a programmer, systems manager, project manager, and internal consultant. She currently runs her own consulting firm, Esther Derby Associates, Inc., in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Esther has an MA in Organizational Leadership, is the author of over 100 articles and co-author of Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great and Behind Closed Doors: Secrets of Great Management. At the moment, she’s working on a book about managing in team-based organizations. She’s a founder of the AYE Conference and is serving her second term as a board member for the Agile Alliance.

Gerard Meszaros

Gerard Meszaros is an independent software development consultant and trainer with 20+ years experience in software and over a decade of experience in agile methods. He is an expert in test automation patterns, refactoring of software and tests, and design for testability and has applied automated unit and acceptance testing on projects ranging from full-on eXtreme Programming to traditional waterfall development in wide range of industries. He is also a leading expert in the implementation and customization of agile methods such as Scrum, Lean and eXtreme Programming and has been one of the early proponents of including User/Usage Centered Design (UxD) practices on agile projects. He has been a frequent presenter of papers and tutorials at major conferences such as Agile 200x, OOPSLA, JAOO and SD West/Best Practices. His book xUnit Test Patterns – Refactoring Test Codewas published in May 2007 by Addison Wesley in the Martin Fowler Signature Series and won a Jolt Productivity Award in the Best Technical Book category.

Heather Regehr

Heather Regehr worked as a developer after graduating from UBC with a Computer Science degree gradually moving into project management. Heather has many years of experience managing projects and improving both software and business processes in a wide variety of organizations. Experiences with formal and rigorous waterfall projects, enterprise application development and the fast paced world of high volume web sites give Heather a unique perspective on selecting methods, tools and tailoring your process. Heather now provides project management and software process improvement consulting services to clients across the Lower Mainland helping them build high performing teams, deliver business value on time and align software process to business strategy.

James Kovacs

James Kovacs is an independent architect, developer, trainer, and jack-of-all-trades specializing in agile development using the .NET Framework. He is passionate about helping developers create flexible software using test-driven development (TDD), unit testing, object-relational mapping, dependency injection, refactoring, continuous integration, and related techniques. He blogs on CodeBetter.com as well as his own blog, is a technical contributor for Pluralsight, writes articles for MSDN Magazine and CoDe Magazine, and is a frequent speaker at conferences and user groups. He is the creator of psake, a PowerShell-based build automation tool, to save developers from XML Hell. James is a Microsoft MVP – ASP/ASP.NET and card-carrying member of ALT.NET – a group of software professionals continually looking for more effective ways to develop applications. He is the Agile Track Chair for DevTeach, Canada’s largest independent Microsoft conference. He holds a variety of designations, including MCP, MCAD, MCSD, and MCT. He received his Bachelors degree from the University of Toronto and his Masters degree from Harvard University.

Jeff Patton

Jeff Patton has designed and developed software for the past 12 years on a wide variety of projects from on-line aircraft parts ordering to electronic medical records. Jeff has focused on Agile approaches since working on an early Extreme Programming team in 2000. In particular Jeff has specialized in the application of user centered design techniques to improve Agile requirements, planning, and products. Some of his recent writing on the subject can be found at www.AgileProductDesign.comand Alistair Cockburn’s Crystal Clear. His forthcoming book to be released in Addison-Wesley’s Agile Development Series gives tactical advice to those seeking to deliver useful, usable, and valuable software. Jeff works currently as an independent consultant, is founder and list moderator of the agile-usability Yahoo discussion group, a columnist with StickyMinds.com and IEEE Software, and a winner of the Agile Alliance’s 2007 Gordon Pask Award for contributions to Agile Development.

Johanna Rothman

Johanna Rothman started managing her project portfolio in 1986, out of necessity. She started managing projects before we had software tools to discover critical paths. She managed her first program in 1988, to lead the first LISP on a chip project. Her most recent program management was managing the 2009 Agile conference. Johanna is the author of several books:

• Manage Your Project Portfolio: Increase Your Capacity and Finish More Projects
• The 2008 Jolt-award winning Manage It! Your Guide to Modern, Pragmatic Project Management
• Behind Closed Doors: Secrets of Great Management
• Hiring the Best Knowledge Workers, Techies & Nerds: The Secrets and Science of Hiring Technical People

She writes columns on “extreme project management” for Gantthead.com, and writes two blogs on her web site, jrothman.com. She is the project-manager-for-life for the Amplifying Your Effectiveness conference.

Jonathan Kohl

Based in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, Jonathan Kohl is the founder and principal software consultant of Kohl Concepts, Inc. A noted software testing thinker and strategist, Jonathan is a natural investigator on software projects. In addition to assisting teams with testing, Jonathan helps companies define and implement their ideas into products, coaches practitioners as they develop software on teams, and works with leaders helping them define and implement their strategic vision. Jonathan is also a popular author and speaker. His blog on software development and testing issues is one of the most well-read testing blogs in the industry. Jonathan doesn’t just write about and talk about developing software, he actively helps teams deliver the best products they can. Contact Jonathan at www.kohl.ca.

Josh Kerievsky

Joshua Kerievsky is an entrepreneur, author, programmer and globally recognized Agile coach. After writing software on Wall Street for 7 years, he founded Industrial Logic in 1996 to share the "light and magic" of software development. Since the late 1990s, Joshua has led successful Agile transitions at globally recognized companies in advertising, media, telecom, biotech, healthcare and finance. He has created over 10 multimedia eLearning albums that have helped thousands of people practice and gain Agile skills. His 2004 bestselling book, Refactoring to Patterns, won a Jolt Cola award and has been translated to 8 languages. Joshua is passionate about discovering better ways to produce extremely useful software.

Linda Rising

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

Michael Feathers

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.

Mike Edwards

Mike Edwards has nearly 25 years experience in the Information Technology field, 10 of which are on the Project Management career path. Mike holds his PMP and was amongst the first 150 to receive the PgMP designation (Program Management) from PMI. Mike continually seeks better ways to enable those around him to be very successful and gets satisfaction from their success. In the past couple years Mike has explored the fields of Agile and Lean and is excited by the these domains as they can have a strong role in the success of projects. Mike is the Senior Program Manager at Home Hardware with experience in numerous fields including aviation, retail, distribution, municipal, insurance, finance and others. Mike spends his time enabling the project teams within Home Hardware by coaching the entire team to embrace the lean & agile principles in their work.

Mike Stockdale

Mike Stockdale is the founder and principal software developer of Syterra Software (http://www.syterra.com). His focus is on software craft, 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 and started using Fit for automated testing in 2003. He works for a variety of corporate and government clients and continues to seek better ways of automated testing as the lead developer for the open source project fitSharp (http://github.com/jediwhale/fitsharp).

Owen Rogers

Owen Rogers is a developer at Pulse Energy, where his team has been deploying releases to production every week for the past 2 years. He is formerly an Agile coach and consultant with ThoughtWorks and has helped teams make the transition to Agile methods in UK, India, China and Canada. He is a regular speaker at Agile conferences and was previously one of the organizers of Agile Vancouver.

Robert Reppel

Robert wrote his first commercial software application more than 25 years ago. He has worked on many more since, as architect, team lead, and developer, for companies of all sizes from start-ups to multinationals. He is an experienced agile developer and coach, specializing in introducing test-driven development and other agile techniques into existing projects. He usually develops for the .NET platform, with occasional forays into LAMP and Java. His main interest is the people side of the business: How do ways of thinking, social interactions, organizational structures, and processes influence project outcomes? Robert is the software development manager for platform services at Top Producer Systems, Richmond, BC. He blogs at http://robertblogs.wordpress.com.

Scott Bellware

Scott Bellware is a software product designer, builder, and manager living in Austin, TX. Scott works with web startups on rapid new product development as well as with IT shops to improve the quality of their products, processes, and performance. Scott is the founder of the Lean Software Austin group, and has founded and helped organize numerous professional groups and events regionally, nationally, and internationally. He is a teacher, a student, an explorer, an organizer, and an activist who strives to communicate simple and powerful software development topics that are obscured by complex, esoteric language.

Stefan Moser

Stefan Moser is co-founder and lead developer for Integrated Algorithmics Ltd, a Vancouver firm which provides development services for the financial industry. He has been developing with Microsoft tools for nearly 10 years and has been developing on the .NET platform since version 1.0. Stefan is active in the community and is a co-founder of the newly formed ALT.NET Vancouver group where he hopes to help spread the word about test-driven development, domain-driven design, object-oriented fundamentals, continuous integration, refactoring, and many other techniques for building better software. When not slinging code, you can often find him on the links, slopes, trails and hockey rinks around Vancouver.