Agile Australia 2010 Banner


OUR SPEAKERS

 » Jim Highsmith, Cutter Consortium
 » Jeff Smith, Suncorp
 » Martin Fowler, ThoughtWorks
 » Philip Abernathy, Suncorp (Australia)
 » Mahesh Baxi, ThoughtWorks, India
 » Adam Boas, Aconex
 » James Brett, Thoughtworks
 » Marina Chiovetti, ThoughtWorks
 » Ian Crawford, NOPSA
 » Nigel Dalton, Lonely Planet
 » Neal Ford, ThoughtWorks
 » Shane Hastie, Software Education
 » Richard Henning, Allianz
 » Ben Hogan, agileben
 » Jean-Christophe Huet, Atlassian
 » Jez Humble, ThoughtWorks
 » Tim Hunt-Smith, Neighbourhood Energy
 » Leigh Jasper, Aconex
 » Jay Jenkins, Renewtek
 » David Joyce, ThoughtWorks
 » Holger Kaufmann, Ajilon
 » Martin Kearns, Renewtek
 » Steve Lawrence, Solnet Solutions
 » Kane Mar, Scrumology
 » Andy Marks, ThoughtWorks
 » Josh Melville, RGA Australia
 » Paula Ngov, DiUS
 » Todd Porter, Smart Service Queensland
 » Sharon Robson, Software Education
 » Craig Smith, Suncorp
 » John Sullivan, Sensis
 » Dave Thomas, Bedarra
 » Rob Thomsett, Thomsett International
 » Andy Weir, Bankwest
 » Jason Yip, ThoughtWorks

KEYNOTES

Jim Highsmith | Director, Agile Product & Project Management, Cutter Consortium


Jim Highsmith photo Jim Highsmith is a co-author of the Agile Manifesto and Director of Cutter Consortium's Agile Product & Project Management practice. He is the recipient of the 2005 Stevens Award in recognition of his work in adaptive software development and Agile processes. Jim has 25-plus years experience as an IT manager, product manager, project manager, consultant, and software developer. He has consulted with IT and product development organizations and software companies in the US, Europe, Canada, South Africa, Australia, Japan, India, and New Zealand to help them adapt to the accelerated pace of development in increasingly complex, uncertain environments. His areas of consulting include Agile software development, project management, and collaboration.

Jim is the author of Agile Project Management: Creating Innovative Products, now in its second edition, and Agile Software Development Ecosystems. His first book, Adaptive Software Development: A Collaborative Approach to Managing Complex Systems, won the prestigious Jolt Award. He is co-editor of the Agile Software Development Series. Jim is also co-author of the Agile Manifesto, co-author of the Declaration of Interdependence for project leaders, founding member of the Agile Alliance, and co-founder and first President of the Agile Project Leadership Network. He holds a BS in electrical engineering and an MS in management.

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Jeff Smith | CEO, Suncorp Business Services, Suncorp


Jeff Smith photo Jeff Smith is Chief Executive Officer, Suncorp Business Services and is responsible for the Group's technology, real estate, group procurement and HR services portfolios. He was originally appointed to the role of Group Executive, Business Technology following Suncorp's merger with Promina in 2007. Jeff has 22 years experience in the IT industry, with the last 12 years spent as chief information officer or equivalent for a range of companies in the USA and Australia. He was previously CIO for Telstra Corporation, where he led the transformation and integration of that company's IT systems, and has also held leadership positions in a number of world class companies including Honeywell, Toyota and Charles Schwab.

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Martin Fowler | Chief Scientist, ThoughtWorks


Martin Fowler photo Martin Fowler is an author and software consultant who brings two decades of experience helping corporations utilise object technology for mission-critical information systems.

Before joining ThoughtWorks, Martin was an independent consultant. He worked with clients in Europe and North America pioneering object-oriented design and Agile methods. He was particularly involved with enterprise application development, the Unified Modelling Language, Extreme Programming, Refactoring, and harvesting patterns. His clients included the UK National Health Service, Chrysler, Citibank, Netscape and Andersen Consulting.

Martin has written five books on software development and collected a few awards along the way for them. He spent five years editing the design column for IEEE Software. He is currently a Series Editor for Addison-Wesley's books. His website, www.martinfowler.com, is widely read by software developers. He was one of the authors of the Manifesto for Agile Software Development.

As Chief Scientist Martin's principal role is to identify important techniques and technologies for our industry and spread them through ThoughtWorks, our clients, and the industry as a whole.

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SPEAKERS

Philip Abernathy | Agile Professional Development Lead, Suncorp (Australia)


Philip Abernathy photo In his current role as Agile Professional Development Lead in Suncorp, Philip Abernathy has helped set up the 'Agile Academy', thus leading the spread of Agile across the industry as a whole. He now coaches, trains and consults at board room and senior management level to help companies transform to an Agile way of working.

In his own words, "having grown grey on the Waterfall method" in large corporate organisations in the Financial Services, Energy and Telecom sectors, Philip understands the structure and discipline needed by large organisations. Marrying this need with Agile's dynamism is the alchemy he brings to the table. Philip has guided numerous organisations in the use of Agile and Lean based ways of working to help them deliver business value faster.

Philip has 29 years of hands-on, information technology experience and over 18 years of consulting and management experience with blue chip companies in the IT international arena. He has been practising and preaching Agile for the last 11 years. He was Chief Information Officer of Shell Markets Middle East and later founded his own IT services delivery company in The Netherlands. Philip has extensive experience in the difficult areas of Agile and offshoring, Agile and Legacy and Agile Governance and Lean Leadership.

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Mahesh Baxi | Managing Director, ThoughtWorks, India


Mahesh Baxi photo Mahesh Baxi joined ThoughtWorks in July 2008 as Head of Delivery, and later became Chief Operating Officer where he was responsible for the day-to-day operations of business. As the Managing Director of ThoughtWorks India, Mahesh Baxi is responsible for the company's India operations, business strategy, software delivery excellence, customer relationships, and balancing sustainable growth & employee needs.

Before joining ThoughtWorks, Mahesh had been in the software industry for over 15 years, of which he spent 12 years in the Bay Area, USA. He has worked for various software product development companies including Apttus, Vendavo, Nextance and Challenger Systems, where he led the professional services group as Director of Professional Services, and CRM & B2B practices as Engagement Manager. Mahesh holds a Computer Engineering degree from Gujarat University. Mahesh is a member of the Technology Advisory Board for PSVillage, and a contributing editor of the book 'Tips from the Trenches'.

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Adam Boas | Principal Engineer, Aconex


Adam Boas photo Adam Boas is a Principal Engineer at Aconex, leading development in the new product space. He has a long history in software delivery as a developer, tech lead, architect and manager.

Adam has delivered bespoke development projects and new products in a wide range of areas including telecommunications, logistics, government, mining, and resources. He is a team builder, a coach and a delivery enabler but above all a developer with a low level understanding of the problems development teams face when approaching the sharp end of a delivery.

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James Brett | Scrum and Agile Coach, Thoughtworks


James Brett photo James Brett is a Certified Scrum Coach and Agile Coach with over 15 years experience in software development and has worked with a number of Australian and European blue chip companies such as Suncorp, Conchango, Volkswagen, Boots, Play.com and various leading financial organisations. James coaches Agile teams and businesses to create exceptional products that are of high quality and cost effective. Leadership, self-organisation and continuous improvement are his passions as he helps organisations to develop the practices and culture required to succeed with Agile development.

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Michael Bromley | General Manager, Portals & Online Services, NBN Co


Michael Bromley photo Michael Bromley is the former Director of Online for Telstra Business, during which he introduced Agile software development practices to meet the needs of the business. Having tasted the benefits of Agile, Michael has now moved to NBN Co and has chosen to use Agile methods which has resulted in delivering value to the business through improved collaboration, better engagement, quicker turn-around and greater overall business satisfaction.

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Marina Chiovetti | Principal Consultant, ThoughtWorks


Marina Chiovetti photo Marina Chiovetti is a Principal Consultant who helps organisations transform their software projects by focusing on the human aspects of technology. Her work reflects a particular interest in project-team enablement through iterative development techniques while putting a spotlight on users and their interactions. With over ten years of industry practice, Marina has spent the last three years working as an Agile Coach on large-scale rollouts. She actively shares learnings and experience from working in a distributed corporate Change Program and coaching teams as they embark on an enterprise Agile journey.

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Ian Crawford | Senior Information Officer, National Offshore Petroleum Safety Authority


Ian Crawford photo Ian Crawford is the Senior Information Officer at the National Offshore Petroleum Safety Authority (NOPSA), where he has been involved with building the agency's information management capabilities since it opened its doors in 2005.

After starting his career in electronic engineering Ian moved to software development and then into ICT management and information services. Ian has more than 25 years experience of managing projects and services in R&D startups, the petroleum industry, government agencies, a university, an ISP and a retail chain. He is guided by the belief that through continuous learning he will eventually acquire some useful skills.

Recently Ian introduced NOPSA to Agile methods at the commencement of the agency's first major software development project. His current interests include the application of lean management techniques in the often reactive environment of a government agency.

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Nigel Dalton | General Manager, IT, Lonely Planet


Nigel Dalton photo For Nigel Dalton, the Agile road to Damascus was Flight QF73 to San Francisco in early 2000. Fleeing the Y2K-obsessed development organisation at AXA Australia for the promise of Po Bronson's Nudist on the Late Shift, he read XP Explained on the plane, and never looked back. Agile software development was a key part of the success of that start-up (ePredix, later bought by Previsor). Use of the methodology spread to product development and client implementations, with varying levels of success. In 2007, Nigel joined Lonely Planet. In the wreckage of a 24 month ERP/ CMS/ Web project delivery (so waterfall the program reviews were known as the Nuremberg Trials), the seeds of an Agile IT organisation, coupled with an ITIL focused operations team were planted. Now under BBCW ownership, Agile is a well ingrained habit, with new ventures into book product development using Scrum being explored.

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Neal Ford | Software Architect, ThoughtWorks


Neal Ford photo Neal Ford is a Software Architect and Meme Wrangler at ThoughtWorks, a global IT consultancy with an exclusive focus on end-to-end software development and delivery. He is also the designer and developer of applications, instructional materials, magazine articles, courseware, video/DVD presentations, and author and/or editor of six books spanning a variety of technologies, including the most recent The Productive Programmer. He focuses on designing and building of large-scale enterprise applications. He is also an internationally acclaimed speaker, speaking at over 100 developer conferences worldwide, delivering more than 600 talks.

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Shane Hastie | Chief Knowledge Engineer, Software Education


Shane Hastie photo Shane Hastie provides training and consultancy in business systems analysis, requirements engineering, software project management, software testing, and design techniques. Shane is a highly experienced Agile practitioner, coach and trainer.

With nearly 30 years experience in software development in real-world environments, Shane has worked on a diverse range of projects which have allowed him to design and build systems in the finance, agriculture, pharmaceutical, manufacturing, security and aviation industries. The systems these projects have developed cover a similarly impressive variety - from a pharmaceutical drug dissolution analysis system to an airline revenue management system which was sold to 12 airlines throughout Africa. Shane's wealth of experience implementing complex systems in the real world enables him to bring great value to the training courses he delivers for Software Education, and the consultancy services he offers to Software Education customers.

He has worked with a variety of organisations in Australia and New Zealand helping them implement Agile techniques.

Shane holds a Masters degree in Information Management (MIM), is a Certified ScrumMaster (CSM), is ISTQB Foundation certified (CTFL), is also a Certified Business Analysis Professional™ (CBAP®) and a Qualified Business Analysis Professional (QBAP).

Shane is a member of the International Institute of Business Analysis (IIBA), the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), and the Agile Alliance. He is a frequent speaker at industry events, and is a trained personal development coach. He regularly contributes to the Agile Q at www.infoq.com

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Richard Henning | IT Program Manager, Allianz


Richard Henning photo Richard Henning is the IT Program Manager at Allianz Australia Insurance and is responsible for software application delivery to all lines of Allianz insurance products, and the successful introduction of business change in a challenging environment.

Richard is also the Agile Champion at Allianz and is a vocal supporter of the principles, practices and behaviours that Agile thinking introduces into an organisation. Richard has 22 years experience in the IT and Insurance industries, across global locations including Australia, London, Wales, Japan and South Africa.

Richard has introduced Agile techniques into the large financial institution and has successfully gained acceptance of Agile as a credible alternative where appropriate. More importantly Richard is working tirelessly to ensure the concept of 'Living Agile' is embodied into everything the IT organisation undertakes.

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Ben Hogan | Agile Coach, agileben


Ben Hogan photo Ben Hogan is an independent consultant, Agile coach, trainer and facilitator based in Sydney and more recently in Melbourne. Ben has over 12 years experience in IT and over eight years of experience using Lean, Agile, Scrum and eXtreme Programming methods to introduce Agile into large corporate environments. Ben is actively involved with the local and international Agile community. He is a founding board member of the Agile Alliance Australia, a speaker at the Sydney Scrum Users Group, a facilitator of the Sydney XP Activities Club, a long-standing member of the London XP community, a Certified Scrum Master and a reviewer, committee member, participant and speaker at a number of international conferences.

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Jez Humble | Principal Consultant, ThoughtWorks


Jez Humble photo Jez Humble is a Principal Consultant with ThoughtWorks. He got into IT in 2000, just in time for the dot-com bust. Since then he has worked as a developer, system administrator, trainer, consultant, manager, and speaker. He has worked with a variety of platforms and technologies, consulting for non-profits, telecoms, financial services, and online retail companies. He is the author of Continuous Delivery, published in Martin Fowler's Signature Series (Addison Wesley, 2010).

Since 2004 he has worked for ThoughtWorks and ThoughtWorks Studios in Beijing, Bangalore, London, and San Francisco. His focus is on helping organisations deliver valuable, high-quality software frequently and reliably through implementing effective engineering practices in the field of Agile delivery. He holds a BA in Physics and Philosophy from Oxford University and an MMus in Ethnomusicology from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.

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Tim Hunt-Smith | Chief Executive Officer, Neighbourhood Energy


Tim Hunt-Smith photo Tim Hunt-Smith is Chief Executive Officer of Neighbourhood Energy, an electricity retailer based in Victoria and a member of the Alinta Energy Group. Tim joined Neighbourhood Energy in 2009 and is responsible for the strategy and operations of the company in the National Electricity Market.

Tim has had wide-ranging General Management experience in both financial services and Energy. Tim joined Neighbourhood Energy from Suncorp where he was an Executive General Manager with responsibility for insurance distribution before taking on integration of IT for the Group following the Suncorp/Promina merger. Prior to Suncorp, Tim spent over seven years at Origin Energy with general management responsibilities for marketing, sales and then operations.

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Leigh Jasper | Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer, Aconex


Leigh Jasper photo Leigh Jasper is the Chief Executive Officer and Co-founder of Aconex, the world's largest provider of online collaboration solutions to the construction and engineering industries.

Since establishing Aconex in 2000, Leigh has been at the helm as the company has become one of Australia's fastest growing organisations, winning more than 20 awards for its fast growth and business excellence. From its 37 offices, the company services more than US$220 billion worth of projects in 65 countries.

In September 2008, Aconex secured a A$109.5 million funding deal with US-based investor Francisco Partners, one of the largest private capital raisings by an Australian technology company.

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Jay Jenkins | Principal Consultant, Renewtek


Jay Jenkins photo Jay Jenkins (James Jenkins) is the Business Process Management (BPM) Practice Lead and a Principal Consultant for Renewtek. Jay has over 13 years of BPM and workflow experience using various technologies. He currently oversees various BPM projects and is an advisor to financial and government agencies for implementation of BPM systems for both tactical and transformational programs of work.

Jay attended the University of Missouri in the Computer Engineering program and immediately joined a software company specialising in terminal emulation. Jay then joined a FileNet partner in New York that specialised in data capture and workflow. This began his focus on business process and efficiency. His clients included Amalgamated Insurance, Federal Express, Gallup, US Census Bureau, Revenue Canada, Massachusetts Department of Revenue and VSI Holdings.

Jay joined the consulting arm of KPMG in New York City which spun off to become BearingPoint. As a consultant and manager for BearingPoint for seven years, Jay worked as one of the BPM leads working across both integration services and data and knowledge management areas. BearingPoint transferred Jay to BearingPoint Australia to help grow the Australian Content Management and BPM capability. Jay's clients included Commonwealth Bank Australia, IAG, Australia Post, Westpac, Telstra Corporation Ltd, New York City Department of Finance, New York City School Construction Authority, Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Florida Department of Education and Arizona Department of Revenue.

Jay Jenkins is a recognised expert and thought leader in BPM. Current clients include international and Australian tier one banks, health insurers and government agencies.

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David Joyce | Principal Consultant, ThoughtWorks


David Joyce photo David Joyce is an Agile coach with 12 years technical team management and coaching experience, and 20 years software development experience.

In recent years, using Scrum and XP, David has coached onshore and offshore teams and successfully launched an internet video startup from inception to launch. More recently David has coached teams on Lean, Kanban and Systems Thinking at BBC Worldwide in the UK.

David currently works for Thoughtworks as a principal consultant and is a Systems Thinker, Lean practitioner, Kanban coach and certified Scrum Master. He recently received the Lean SSC Brickell Key award for outstanding achievement and leadership.

His Lean and Kanban blog is at leanandkanban.wordpress.com.

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Holger Kaufmann | Solutions Service Line Manager, Ajilon


Holger Kaufmann photo Holger Kaufmann is a highly proficient software development and IT service delivery manager, with over 10 years' experience in the industry. He has introduced Agile development practices to software companies in Germany and Australia since 2003 and successfully delivered multi-million dollar projects and large programs of work using Agile practices.

As Service Line Manager for Ajilon's Software Solutions, Holger has been responsible for the development and roll out of Ajilon's Agile software delivery methodology, A2b

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Martin Kearns | Agile Practice Lead, Renewtek


Martin Kearns photo Martin Kearns has recently become a Certified Scrum Coach. He is one of the first three coaches to be certified in the world. Martin works with Renewtek, an Australian information technology company which uses leading edge tools and technologies. He consistently uses the Scrum framework in conjunction with Agile methodologies where appropriate. Martin joined Renewtek in 2005 where he has responsibility for designing training courses around Scrum/Agile and leads the promotion of Agile principles within Renewtek and to their diverse client base. He offers consulting services to organisations on the creation and implementation of Agile delivery.

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Steve Lawrence | Agile Practice Lead, Solnet Solutions


Steve Lawrence photo Steve Lawrence has 17 years experience in IT with seven years using Agile, including three years as an Agile coach. Steve is the Agile Practice Lead at Solnet Solutions. He regularly delivers presentations to NZ corporate and government clients on the benefits of Agile and enjoys practicing what he preaches on real projects. He is a committee member of the Auckland chapter of the Agile Professionals Network. Steve is passionate about taking Agile forward and delivering maximum value to clients.

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Kane Mar | President, Scrumology


Kane Mar photo Kane Mar has been developing, coaching and leading software projects for the last 20 years. He has been an active member of the Agile software development community since 2001, when he first had the opportunity of working with Ken Schwaber. Kane has training and coached software teams throughout North America and Northern Europe.

Kane was the founder of the very first Scrum Users group in Seattle, WA and has been active in the Agile community for the last 10 years. He is a frequent speaker at conferences and has spoken at Agile Australia, Scrum Gatherings and QCon.

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Andy Marks | Consultant, ThoughtWorks


Andy Marks photo Since 2002, Andy Marks has worked at ThoughtWorks in a variety of roles and within a variety of different organisational cultures. Andy has helped introduce Agile into organisations both large and small and spent considerable time working within established Agile environments of various levels of maturity. Andy brings a passion for high quality software development to his work, accompanied by a strong mentoring background.

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Josh Melville | Transformation Manager, RGA Australia


Josh Melville photo Josh Melville is currently managing a transformational program of work to facilitate business change across people, process and technology dimensions.

Introduced to the benefits of Agile as a Change Leader on an Agile change program, Josh was forever changed by the experience. Captivated by the highly interactive, dynamic working environment Agile promotes, he is particularly passionate about Agile as a behavioural framework for improving team effectiveness and cohesion.

Prior to commencing at RGA, Josh held leadership roles in change management, strategy, project and portfolio management.

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David Musson | Manager Revenue Performance, Jemena


David Musson photo David Musson has over 18 years experience in the Australian energy industry in a range of roles from IT to marketing. David is currently responsible for the IT program of work supporting Jemena’s NSW gas network and has been involved in a number of key application developments driving organisational capability.

David holds a Bachelor degree in Information Technology, and has subsequently completed a MBA and a Master of Law and Legal Practice.

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Chris Mountford | Senior Developer, Atlassian


Chris Mountford photo Chris Mountford started programming when he was eight years old on a Vic-20, tediously typing in games in BASIC and wishing for a cassette drive. Since then he has worked on a range of development projects from startups to multinationals, from finance to education and currently works on JIRA at Atlassian in Sydney.

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Chris Murphy | Managing Director, ThoughtWorks Australia


Chris Murphy photo Chris Murphy is Managing Director of ThoughtWorks Australia. Chris has over 15 years experience in the ICT industry, in a diverse range of technical and business roles including as a computer science instructor, software developer, technology & intellectual property lawyer, and in senior commercial and leadership positions within the information technology industry.

Following his initial Agile “Eureka moment” on his first day at ThoughtWorks six years ago (which simultaneously filled him with hope - and invalidated his entire frame of reference and career achievements to that point), Chris has worked extensively with ThoughtWorks consultants, clients and the Agile community to break-down traditional legal, commercial and governance models and reinvent them appropriate to more business focussed Agile approaches.

Chris holds Bachelor degrees in Science and Law from the University of Melbourne, Master degrees in Information Technology and Law (Intellectual Property) from Monash University, and is qualified as a solicitor in Australia, England and Wales.

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Paula Ngov | Senior Consultant, DiUS


Paula Ngov photo Paula Ngov has a diverse background in the technical and business space of the IT industry which has led her to become a modern-day, multi-skilled Senior Business Analyst. She has strong skills in stakeholder management and the facilitation and gathering of business requirements and processes.

Paula is passionate about continuous learning, quality and the more collaborative approach that Agile provides. As a certified SCRUM Master Paula plays a key role in implementing Agile practices on client sites. Paula also heads up a competency within DiUS helping to mentor, foster and grow the analysis capability in line with these Agile practices.

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Todd Porter | Manager, Online Service Integration, Smart Service Queensland


Todd Porter photo Todd Porter works to get government services online in Queensland and introduced Agile practices to do so. From an isolated Aagile project five years ago, Agile now underpins our entire online service development program.

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Sharon Robson | Knowledge Engineer, Software Education


Sharon Robson photo Sharon Robson is a Consultant specialising in Software Testing and Agile practices for Software Education. Sharon has over 18 years experience in information technology, software testing, and business analysis, Sharon consults, develops and delivers training courses at all levels - from Introductory to Advanced. Sharon is a frequent speaker on software testing and certification at industry events. Sharon has been published many magazines. Sharon is a board member of the Australia New Zealand Testing Board (ANZTB) and is the chairperson of the Marketing Working group for the ISTQB.

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Craig Smith | Delivery Coach, Suncorp


Craig Smith photo Craig Smith has been a software developer for over 15 years, specialising in a large number of technologies in that time. He has been an Agile practitioner for the last eight years, is a Certified Scrum Master and a member of both the Scrum Alliance and Agile Alliance. He is currently working within Suncorp's Business Services division as an Agile Coach, fulfilling technical lead, iteration manager and Agile coaching roles on technology and business projects. He has presented at many international conferences including Agile 2008, Agile 2009, Atlassian Summit 2010 and the Australian Software Engineering Conference. He was also the lead reviewer and technical proof-reader on the recently released book from Manning Publications called "Becoming Agile".

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John Sullivan | General Manager, Online Directory and Search, Sensis


John Sullivan photo John Sullivan works for Sensis, Australia's leading Information and Directory Company, as the General Manager of Online Directory and Search. He is responsible for the delivery and support of software projects for the major directories and search platforms: Yellow.com.au, WhitePages.com.au, Sensis.com.au, and BidSmart.com. In his three years at Sensis, John led the Directory arm on a journey of implementing Agile techniques, transforming the corporate organisation from using traditional waterfall processes to using Agile techniques for project management, requirements gathering, software delivery and application support. John led the evolution of the Agile process from an initial small trial project to the transformation of both the IT and business side of the organisation. Within John's group, Agile techniques are used to deliver projects ranging from small prototyping work to large 20 - 30 person, multi-year teams. Agile techniques are used to deliver projects for web platforms, back of house integration, organisation automation and management tools.

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Nick Strybosch | Product and Technology Manager, Aconex


Nick Strybosch photo Nick Strybosch works for Aconex, who provide a SAAS-based construction project collaboration platform. He hopped on the Agile bandwagon in 2006, after quitting a business analyst role at a bank because he was sure they were doing requirements wrong, without knowing what right was. Right, as it turned out, has something to do with index cards and sharpies. He's been scribbling ever since, joining Aconex on day one of their transition to scrum in late 2008, and is currently part of a team building the first product outside of the core platform.

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Bruce Taylor | Engineering Manager, Aconex


Bruce Taylor photo I am working at Aconex in Melbourne as one of the Engineering Managers. This role is essentially the typical Scrum master/Agile coach role with some responsibility for recruitment and performance management of some members of the team. Prior to working at Aconex I was an Agile BA then PM/Scrum Master at Lonely Planet for around 4 ˝ years. I was part of the original in house team that introduced Agile to the organisation and assisted in the transition from one Agile team to multiple work units, from IT right through to the Legal department.

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Dave Thomas | Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Bedarra


Dave Thomas photo Dave Thomas is Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Bedarra Corporation; which provides virtual CTO and CEO, business mentoring and seed investment to emerging companies. The recently formed Bedarra Research Labs undertakes speculative research on applications of emerging software technologies.

Dave is the founder and past CEO and president of Object Technology International Inc. (formerly OTI, now IBM OTI Labs) and led the commercial introduction of object and component technology. The company is often cited as the ideal model of a software technology company.

Dave has experience in structured documents including the design of laser printer controllers and early commercial applications of Tex. He has advised on the IBM B2B strategy, is on the MS Customer Advisory Council, and together with OLL contributed to the SCORM eLearning standard. He is Chairman of Xia Systems, Online-Learning.com (OLL), and a director of Stilo/Omnimark, Bitflash, Amikanow and Synop and several other software companies.

He was also the principal visionary and architect for IBM VisualAge Smalltalk and Java tools and virtual machines including the initial work on popular multi-language Eclipse.org IDE. OTI pioneered the use of virtual machines in embedded systems with Tektronix shipping the first commercial products in 1988. He was instrumental in the establishment of IBM's Pervasive computing efforts and in particular the Java tooling.

Dave is an adjunct research professor at Carleton University, and the University Of Queensland and is widely published in the software engineering literature. Dave remains active within the technical community including ECOOP, AOSD, Evolve, and Agile Development Conference, Agile/XP Universe and OOPSLA Onward. He is a founding director of the Agile Alliance and a founder of Open Augment Consortium. Dave writes expert columns in Otland Online in Germany, and the Journal of Object Technology in Switzerland where he also serves on the editorial board.

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Rob Thomsett | Director, Thomsett International


Rob Thomsett photo Rob Thomsett joined computing in 1968 and has been consulting and educating in the area of project management, teams and quality since 1974. Rob has published three books - People and Project Management, Third Wave Project Management and Radical Project Management. His new book Agile Sponsorship was published in 2009. After 10 years in IT project management in the Australian public service, Rob has spent the last 30 years consulting and teaching business and IT project management around the world. In 2001, he was recognised for his outstanding effort in education of business professionals by his peers and was elected a Fellow of the Australian Computer Society. He is also on the Industry Advisory Board of the I.E.E.E and the Strategic Advisory Panel that designed the University of Sydney's Master's Project Management Program (winner of Project Management Institute's best university course world-wide) with experts such as Sandy Hollway, Sydney Olympics; and Peter Watson, CEO, Transfield. He is currently consulting at an executive level around Agile governance and project management in a number of Australian and New Zealand companies.

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Andy Weir | Chief Executive, Information Technology, Bankwest


Andy Weir photo Andy Weir has 19 years experience in the banking and finance industry, which began with a graduate position in the retail network of Halifax. Andy moved into program management (playing major roles in two mergers) before taking up the position of Program Director for HBOS, managing the implementation of key strategic IT and business processing development for the HBOS Retail bank.

In 2006, Andy and his family migrated to Australia where he joined Bankwest as the Head of Change Management, leading the development, planning and execution of Bankwest's highly acclaimed East Coast Expansion Program. Following the acquisition of Bankwest by the CBA Group, Andy also took on the role of Program Director for the Bankwest/CBA Integration activity.

In January 2010, Andy moved to Perth to take up the role as Chief Information Officer. Bankwest IT is an essential member of the Bankwest 'One Team', driving efficiency through innovation and delivering quality IT solutions in one of the largest IT shops in Western Australia.

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Jason Yip | Principal Consultant, ThoughtWorks


Jason Yip photo Jason Yip has been involved with Agile since 1999. He is a committer on CruiseControl, the earliest continuous integration server, and is one of the organisers of SyXPAC (Sydney XP and Agile Club). Jason is a prolific blogger and tweeter on Agile and Lean software development. Jason is employed by ThoughtWorks as a Principal Consultant.

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