Charlotte AgilePalooza Speaker Bios (August 14th, 2009)

Jeff Sutherland
Jeff Sutherland is a Senior Adviser at OpenView Venture Partners. Jeff provides advice to the investment team and coaching in the use of agile development techniques to OpenView's portfolio companies.

Jeff is the inventor of the immensely popular Scrum Agile Development Process, the highly effective approach for managing software development teams. Scrum has attained worldwide fame for its ability to increase the productivity of software teams by several magnitudes through empowering individuals, fostering a team-oriented environment, and focusing on project transparency and results. Companies employing Scrum development processes include Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, Oracle, Siemens, SAP, Fidelity, British Telecom, The BBC, and many others, large and small.

Jeff is also known as one of the signatories of the Agile Manifesto, helping in the creation of the Agile Alliance, which brings all Agile development processes under one common umbrella. In addition, Jeff has served as the CTO of several notable organizations, on the Microsoft Business Framework Advisory Council, and has traveled the globe extensively coaching development organizations in the US, Europe, and Latin America.

Jeff is a distinguished graduate of the U.S. Military Academy (West Point) and the U.S. Air Force's Top Gun program, and has served as a Phantom jet fighter commander in over 100 reconnaissance missions during combat operations. Jeff also received advanced degrees from Stanford University and the University of Colorado's School of Medicine.

 

David Hussman
David teaches and coaches the adoption and improvement of agility as a delivery tool. His work includes helping companies of all sizes all over the world. Sometimes he is pairing with developers and testers, while other times he is helping to invent, evolve and plan the delivery of all types of products and projects. David also spends a great deal of time helping leaders at all levels find ways to pragmatically use agility as another way to grow and innovate their business.

Prior to working as a fulltime coach, David spent years building software in a variety of domains: digital audio, digital biometrics, medical, financial, retail, and education to name a few. David now leads DevJam, a company composed of agile collaborators. As mentors and practitioners, DevJam focuses on agility as a tool to help people and companies improve their software production skills. DevJam provides seasoned leaders that strive to pragmatically match technology, people, and processes to create better and cooler products in competitive cycles.

Along with teaching and coaching, David participates in conferences around the world. He has continuously publishes and has contributed to several books and many publications. He has helped create agile curriculum for The University of Minnesota and Capella University.

For more information, check out the DevJam website www.devjam.com

 

Guy Beaver
Guy Beaver is a change leader and technology executive with a track record of success in Lean-Agile implementations in large, mid-sized and start-up organizations. He is a recognized expert in Lean, Agile and Scrum technical development with a proven ability to lead, manage and motivate organizations to realize significant productivity and quality improvements. As a Senior Consultant and Coach, he facilitates enterprise clients in successfully transitioning to Lean-Agile practices and methodologies with business-focused strategies and implementation expertise. With over 25 years of software management and development expertise and business experience as both a CIO and business owner, he provides Net Objectives clients with actionable strategies that produce progressive results. Guy has a consistent record of successful delivery in financial services and aerospace industries with corporations such as Vanguard, Critical Point Group, NASA, G & A Technical Software, and the US Naval Research Laboratory. He is frequent contributing author to Better Software Magazine and the Agile Journal.  Guy holds a Masters Degree in Physics from Wake Forest University.  He is currently writing Lean-Agile Software Development: Achieving Enterprise Agility.

 

Mike Cottmeyer
Mike Cottmeyer is a Product Consultant and Agile Evangelist for VersionOne. Prior to joining VersionOne, he was a Senior Project Manager for CheckFree Corporation, where he led a portfolio of projects for its online banking and bill payment business unit. Mike has 20 years’ experience leading IT initiatives using a combination of traditional, agile, and lean project management best practices. He is both a certified PMP and a certified ScrumMaster. He cocreated the DSDM Consortium Agile Project Leader certification program and is certified at the Foundation, Practitioner, and Examiner levels. He is an honorary member of the DSDM Consortium and a founder of the Lean Software and Systems Consortium. Mike speaks internationally on the topic of agile project management and writes for several blogs. He can be reached at Mike.Cottmeyer@VersionOne.com.

 

Joe Little
Joe Little is an Agile Coach and Trainer at Kitty Hawk Consulting, Inc and LeanAgileTraining.com. He is a Certified Scrum Trainer and an MBA. Joe has 20+ years in consulting and new product development in New York, London, Charlotte and elsewhere (mostly SW dev). Clients have ranged from Northrop Grumman to JP Morgan Chase to GE to small software firms in Winston-Salem and Rochester. Joe has twice spoken at Agile200x, and works regularly with Jeff Sutherland and the Poppendiecks. For his sins, he was once a Senior Manager at Ernst & Young and at KPMG Consulting. He has an MBA in Finance and International Business from NYU and majored in English at Yale. He considers that 90% of his job is translating from geek to bizspeak and vice versa. And the other half is easy: getting people to want to completely change their paradigm of the world. He started Agile-Carolinas and the yahoo group AgileBusiness. His two favorite topics right now are "Business Value Engineering" and "Build no more Technical Debt".

 

Paul Culling, Open Space Facilitator
Based in Vancouver, British Columbia, Paul is currently on the board of the Agile Alliance and has been on the board of his local user group, Agile Vancouver, for the past three years helping organize monthly Agile events and three successful conferences in the Vancouver area. Paul is a technology marketing professional with 16 years experience in the development and marketing of both packaged and service based offerings. Paul has worked extensively with Agile community groups at local, regional and international levels.