Speakers
Tom Adams
Engineering Manager, Redbubble
Tom Adams is an Engineering Manager at Redbubble working across mobile & user engagement. Prior to Redbubble he was Principal Consultant at Cogent, and co-founded & led development at Oomph. His current interests are in technical leadership, high performance & cloud computing and functional programming.
SESSION: Career growth with impact
Rob Alford
Product Manager, SEEK
Rob Alford is a Product Manager at SEEK who works with highly-capable Agile teams to deliver great new products and experiences for people Australia-wide. He was drawn to this role because of the social responsibility and impact he could have on the everyday Australian, in helping them to lead more productive and fulfilling working lives. Having been inspired by Silicon valley icons like Eric Ries, he is now a big advocate of Lean practices across the SDLC and successfully incorporates these ideologies into new projects at SEEK.
Originally from the UK, Rob began his professional career in Australia back in 2007 and has spent the last 9 years in a variety of product development and management roles. He is now an active member of the Product Management community in Melbourne, and a popular speaker at Product meetups, conferences and events.
Invited speaker
Tim Banner
Director, Vanguard Australia
Tim Banner is a Director at Vanguard in Australia and has been working with the Vanguard Method since 2002.
During the past 10 years Tim has consulted extensively in the public and private sectors in both Australia and New Zealand. Previously, Tim spent 20 years in the UK within the Financial Services industry, and during that time he held various leadership roles.
Tim’s background includes leading change in a range of organisations from large multinationals to local government departments. He has proven experience in using the Vanguard Method to help leaders study their organisation from a customer’s perspective and as a system. Tim has helped to lead organisations to massive improvements in service, efficiency, revenue and morale.
SESSION: Rethinking performance and improvement with the Vanguard Method
Brad Bennett
Principal Consultant, Agile Coach and Founder, EPiC
An experienced Agile leader and transformation change agent, Brad Bennett has a track record of rolling out Agile transformations and making principles stick, long after he has left the building.
His energetic, yet thoroughly pragmatic approach opens business and technology communication channels to align and unite around a common vision.
Business agility is the modern commercial game of survival and with 20 years’ experience across multiple industry sectors, Brad is tuned into recognising bottlenecks and improving efficiencies across the enterprise.
Chris Bignoux
Sales and Distribution Manager – Operations, Swann Insurance
Chris Bignoux’ day-to-day role is the Operations Manager of the Sales and Distribution department of Swann Insurance. He has worked in the finance and insurance industry for the last 5 years, and before that spent 5 years in the health insurance industry. He recently had his first opportunity to work inside an IT team, tasked with filling the product owner role on a business critical project.
SESSION: You want me to do what? The journey from business person to product owner
Nicola Boyle
Business Analyst, ThoughtWorks
Nicola Boyle is a Senior Business Analyst with a strong background in Agile methodologies applied across multiple domains, including insurance, finance, and retail. She has experience working as an Iteration Manager, Agile Coach and Organisational Change Management Consultant both in co-located and distributed environments, and has strong skills in business analysis, process improvement and visual management. Nicola is passionate about building great teams, improving relationships between leaders and their employees and creating a fun, safe and innovative environment for all.
SESSION: Taking a hypothesis-driven approach
Invited Speaker
JANE BURNS
Founder and CEO, Young and Well Cooperative Research Centre
Associate Professor Jane Burns is the founder and CEO of the Young and Well Cooperative Research Centre (CRC), an organisation that unites young people with researchers, practitioners and innovators to explore the role of technology in improving mental health and wellbeing for young people aged 12 to 25. The establishment of the Young and Well CRC is the culmination of Jane’s work in suicide and depression prevention, which has focused on international and national partnerships with academic, government, corporate, philanthropic, not-for-profit and community sectors.
Jane holds a Principal Research Fellowship at Orygen, The National Centre of Excellence in Youth Mental Health and Centre for Youth Mental Health, University of Melbourne, and an Honorary Fellowship at the Brain & Mind Research Institute, University of Sydney.
She has led the youth agenda for beyondblue, was a Commonwealth Fund Harkness Fellow at the University of California, San Francisco, and was Director of International Partnerships at ReachOut.com by Inspire Foundation. Jane held a VicHealth fellowship from 2006-2013, an NHMRC fellowship from 1997-2000 and an NHMRC scholarship from 1994-1996. She holds a PhD in Medicine from the Faculty of Medicine (Public Health and Epidemiology), University of Adelaide.
Jane’s work focuses on driving positive change and development in the mental health sector, with a priority on translational research that ensures relevance for young people, the community and the mental health sector at large. She provides strategic advice to the government and NGO sector and is a member of more than 10 advisory boards and government working groups, such as the Online Safety CWG, Department of Veteran Affairs CRG and the e-Mental Health Advisory Committee.
Jane has published widely with over 50 peer-reviewed papers, technical reports and briefs, and she has spoken at over 500 conferences and community forums.
Jane was a Victorian Finalist in the 2012 Telstra Business Women’s Awards and was listed in the Financial Review and Westpac Group 100 Women of Influence in 2012. Jane is a graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors.
SESSION: Towards a more inclusive workplace
Em Campbell-Pretty
Partner, Context Matters
Em Campbell-Pretty is a Partner at Australian Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) training and consulting company, Context Matters. After close to 20 years in business management roles within multinational blue chip corporations, Em discovered Agile and became passionate about the chance it provides to align business and IT around the delivery of value. Em is an active member of the global Agile community and was invited to co-chair the Enterprise Agile track for the Agile Alliance conference in 2014, 2015 and 2016. She is a recognised expert in Scaling Agile and frequently speaks about her experiences at conferences around the world. Em is also the author of Top 100 blog PrettyAgile.com.
SESSION: Failing @ Scaling: don’t panic, and carry a towel! | Mission impossible: banking on a SAFe Quick Start – Sponsored by Scaled Agile
Emma Carter
Experience Design Lead, ThoughtWorks
After running an award winning design agency in the UK and being shortlisted for The Thames Valley of Commerce Entrepreneur of the Year award in 2011, Emma Carter moved to Brisbane and joined ThoughtWorks as a User Experience Designer. She is the author of the best selling book, as voted by Amazon: Beyond The Logo. Emma has over thirteen years of experience in branding, visual design and user experience design, and she takes a user-centred approach to her work with a focus on branding, user experience, marketing, interaction, and interface design. To truly create the ‘Total Brand Experience’ Emma believes you need to combine, strategy, design, and technology. She has also conducted several Branding Workshops in the UK and Brisbane and have spoken at the Chamber of Commerce and local meet-ups.
SESSION: Design tips for the non-designer
Melissa Casey
Director of Psychology and Innovation (including Director of Agile Psychological Medicine), Monash Health
Melissa Casey is an organisational psychologist with an interest in changing command and control management processes to using a Complex Adaptive Systems approach to the design and management of human systems that lead to the delivery of transformational outcomes. Melissa worked in large systems design and change in the Australian Taxation Office and as a management consultant before moving into healthcare. Melissa completed her doctoral and postdoctoral research in neuroscience. She has recently applied her passion for designing systems that unleash the nascent potential in people – delivering a new excellence in patient care.
Pete Cohen
Business Analyst and Iteration Manager, DiUS
Pete Cohen is a senior business analyst and iteration manager at DiUS. He has helped clients ranging from enterprises to startups to understand their best opportunities to create value, and then to execute Agile software projects successfully. He frequently shares his learnings with the Agile community, and has spoken at several conferences including Agile Australia and LAST. His other passion is creating positive social impact through technology, which he has achieved through playing a leading role in Random Hacks of Kindness. More recently he co-founded Flying Robot School which teaches kids about drones and inspires them to pursue meaningful careers.
SESSION: You want me to do what? The journey from business person to product owner
Invited Speaker
Sebastian von Conrad
Software Architect, Envato
Sebastian von Conrad heads up the software architecture efforts at Envato, where he helps solve difficult technical problems for some of Australia’s largest websites. He is a former Development Manager and Developer, and was recently President of Ruby Australia. He’s spoken at conferences in Australia and abroad, including Agile Australia, RubyConf, and SATURN. A native of Sweden, Sebastian now lives in Melbourne, Australia.
SESSION: Event Sourcery
Alun Coppack
Partner, Equal Experts
Alun Coppack has 15 years’ experience in creating online applications and managing large Agile enterprise teams that deliver products to millions of customers. He was previously responsible for delivering a suite of digital production tools for the BBC, a new channel4.com and the groundbreaking 4oD online video platform. Now a Partner at EE, he is currently working on a large-scale Agile project within the UK Government, which enables more than 40 Agile teams to create innovative software products.
SESSION: Agile at scale in the UK Government
Jo Cranford
Lead Developer, Culture Amp
Jo Cranford is an engineering manager at culture analytics platform, Culture Amp. Prior to her current role, Jo worked at the likes of Lonely Planet, Atlassian, ThoughtWorks and Expedia, in roles such as Product Planner, Senior Business Analyst, Development Manager and CTO. She was also a CTO of an Australian startup accepted into Telstra’s Muru-D program. Jo is an experienced Ruby developer, a strong advocate of clean code and good tests, and has been working in Agile teams for over ten years. She is passionate about increased diversity in the tech industry. When she’s not at her computer she can be found running around the Tan, or biking along the beach.
SESSION: Data-driven culture
Duncan Crawford
Partner, Equal Experts
Duncan Crawford is a dynamic, experienced Technical Lead/Architect, software engineer and Agile practitioner. He is able to drive pressurised, large-budget projects forward with acute clarity and vision. His strong leadership, solution design and transformation skills have been instrumental in driving successful Agile at Scale.
SESSION: Agile at scale in the UK Government
Martin Cronjé
Development Manager, MYOB
Martin Cronjé is a Software Development Manager at MYOB, New Zealand. He has over 17 years in the IT industry and is passionate about working with teams to create beautiful, well-crafted software. He previously worked in South Africa as the co-founder of nReality Systems, a software engineering consultancy firm, where they coached teams ranging from hi-tech start-ups to large-scale enterprise IT. He has a long career as developer and lead on projects ranging from mobile, data analytics to high volume mission-critical systems in government and financial sectors. The most notable projects directly affected the South African economy and democracy.
Invited Speaker
Nigel Dalton
CIO, REA Group
Nigel Dalton has over 25 years of IT-related experience across multi-nationals and start-ups. In 2007 he joined travel publisher Lonely Planet as General Manager of Information Technology, becoming Deputy Director of Digital (web and mobile businesses) in 2010. Most recently, he co-founded a consultancy, Luna Tractor, to help organisations apply systems thinking, lean and agile software development techniques to all aspects of business. Previously, Nigel held roles with AXA Australia, online human resource startup ePredix in the USA (now owned by SHL), as well as Silicon Systems and Mitsubishi Electric in New Zealand.
SESSION: How a blues band taught me to build Agile teams that rock!
Megan Dell
Head of UX, 99designs
Megan Dell cut her teeth in the field of user experience working at Suncorp, designing online insurance quoting applications for Australia’s largest personal insurance brands. It was at this stage in her career that she was introduced to Agile, and struggled with this new way of working. After a sojourn into agency-land where she also worked as a designer, Megan has since worked in-house at Agile companies such as MYOB, Australia Post, REA Group, and now 99designs.
SESSION: Coming to terms with ‘near enough’
Robyn Dunn
Workplace Experience Program Manager, Atlassian
Robyn Dunn is a Global Workplace Experience Program Manager who is focused on creating workplace environments and experiences where Agile team values can thrive.
For over 10 years she has been working at Atlassian across HR, marketing, real estate and program management functions. She believes that employee engagement and performance can be actively shaped and influenced by both the physical and intangible work environment. She has created and delivered unique employee experiences and environments to create high-performing Agile team situations.
Robyn believes that we are at a crucial intersection between technology and place, and that by focusing on human interactions within both of those elements we can create the greatest workplaces.
SESSION: Moving towards an Agile workplace
Shari Elle
Trainer, Facilitator and Coach, The Communication Group
Shari Elle is one of the first professional practitioners of Collaborative Communication (based on Nonviolent Communication) in Australia with over 15 years’ experience. She has studied extensively with its founder, Dr Marshall Rosenberg. Shari and her team work with organisations to create clear open processes to support human connection. She mentors, trains, facilitates and coaches individuals and business executives and has over 15 years’ experience in human interpersonal training. Shari’s main ambition is to help organisations and individuals to become aware of and fulfil their life-serving purpose.
SESSION: Using Collaborative Communication for teamwork and transparency
Invited Speaker
Adrian Fittolani
Program Director, Envato
Adrian Fittolani is a father, a runner, a developer, a guitarist, a handyman, a speaker, a sports coach, a dressmaker, a husband, a mechanic, a trainer and the Program Director at Envato. He considers himself to be good at only three of these things. A different three, depending on the week. For all of them though, for his 16 year career in software, and for being a member of Melbourne’s tech and agile community, he also considers himself about the luckiest person around.
SESSION: Better project forecasts without estimates – The Monte Carlo
Invited speaker
Håkan Forss
Agile Coach, King
Håkan Forss is an Agile Coach at King, the makers of Candy Crush Saga. He is also a public speaker and author. Håkan coaches, mentors and teaches Lean and Agile thinking, methods and tools to leaders, teams and individuals. He develops people’s ability to continuously learn and improve how work is done. Håkan has an extensive background in developing software both as a system architect and as a system developer.
Håkan is an active member of the Toyota Kata, Kanban, Lean and Agile communities. He is an Accredited Kanban Trainer (AKT) and a Kanban Coaching Professional (KCP). He was nominated for the Brickell Key Award 2013 and 2014.
Håkan is also known for his all LEGO presentation style.
SESSION: Kata – Habits for Lean learning
Dr Jennifer Frahm
Chief Conversation Starter, Conversations of Change
Dr Jennifer Frahm (PhD Mgt) is the founder of Conversations of Change and an experienced change management practitioner, communications professional and executive coach. With a deep understanding of communication, change management and human behaviour, Jen uses her expertise to help companies bring about lasting change. Jen’s work with IABC, the Organisational Change Management Practitioners Group and the Change Management Professionals has placed her at the forefront of world developments in change management. Listed in Change Source’s the Top 20 Change Visionaries You Need to Know, she is a Solo Change Agent with the Change Agents Worldwide network.
Invited speaker
Lisa Frazier
Digital Executive and Advisor
Lisa recently relocated to San Francisco and is currently a Senior Advisor to FinTech startups and large Financial Services companies. Lisa led elements of the recent launch of Citi FinTech, a new division of CitiBank in New York.
In her former position at the Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA), Lisa led teams responsible for CBA’s digital businesses in retail banking, wealth management, small business, and self-directed investing, including the design and development of CBA’s mobile apps and digital experiences. Lisa led CBA’s successful at-scale Agile transformation, moving ~1000 people to Agile in a matter of months. Lisa drove CBA’s position as a leader in technology and innovation in the area of mobile.
Previously, Lisa was a Partner at McKinsey & Company in New York and San Francisco, where she focused on digital businesses in media and entertainment. Lisa also founded and operated a digital journalism start-up in partnership with The New York Times.
Lisa has an undergraduate Chemical Engineering degree from the University of Melbourne, Australia and an MBA from the Kellogg Graduate School of Management, Northwestern University, Illinois, USA.
SESSION: Agile Leadership: an approach for leaders in large-scale and start-up companies
Georg Friedrich
Director of Engineering, RedBubble
Georg Friedrich’s experience spans 15 years of software development roles in industries ranging from printing to online fundraising and e-commerce. In 2007 he co-founded betterplace.org, which quickly became Germany’s biggest online donation platform. He joined Redbubble in 2009 and helped to establish a lean delivery approach. He has continued to play a key role in its implementation as the team has undergone rapid growth.
SESSION: Career growth with impact
Invited Speaker
Leonard Garvey
Technical Lead, REA Group
Leonard Garvey (Len) began his software career 14 years ago with a military subcontractor on a project using a language named for the year of his birth. This hands-on waterfall experience led him to do his undergraduate thesis focusing on Agile methods for remote teams. For many years he oscillated between systems engineering and web development before finding joy with Ruby and Rails. Since the dark times he has worked with startups and consultancies through to his current position as Technical Lead at REA Group. In his spare time he moonlights as President of Ruby Australia where he helps to organise and coordinate events for the Ruby community.
At REA Group Len helps lead the effort to overhaul the backoffice of an ASX 100 company using modern technologies, microservices, and much willpower.
SESSION: Smashing the monolith
Rob Gaunt
Principal Consultant and Agile Coach, EPiC
Rob Gaunt has helped many clients to successfully plan and execute their Agile transformations in order to make good on their strategic business agility objectives.
With over 20 years’ experience in project management (Agile and Waterfall) including the last 5 years as a Consultant, Agile Coach and Agile Practice Lead for one of Australia’s leading project management consultancies, Rob has had the good fortune to work with some of the biggest names in the Australian corporate market.
Rob has witnessed first hand the good, the bad and the EPiC in Agile Transformation across the region.
Stewart Gleadow
Principal Consultant and Developer, Bilue
Stewart Gleadow is developer and consultant with Bilue. His passion is in building great mobile experiences for apps and on the web, and in how to combine Agile methods with innovative product and delivery teams. He has extensive experience in Agile software projects, at Bilue and previously at REA and Thoughtworks. His areas of focus are sustainable mobile architectures, APIs, maintainable iOS apps and automated app testing, as well as exploring emerging experiences on smartwatches and TVs. Stewart is a regular speaker on mobile and Agile software development.
SESSION: Apps and APIs: best friends forever
Olga Goloshchapova
Developer, ThoughtWorks
Olga Goloshchapova joined ThoughtWorks two years ago and has been a shining example of skilled technical practice and client interaction. Olga has a deep understanding of how technology affects the lives of end-users.
Olga has spoken internally to ThoughtWorks colleagues, runs and speaks at health and community-minded meetups, and has experience in teaching. This is her first conference speaking opportunity.
SESSION: Developers and Designers Demo
Cameron Gough
General Manager – Digital Delivery Centre, Australia Post
Cameron Gough joined Australia Post in mid-2012 as the General Manager of the newly formed Digital Delivery Centre (DDC). Cameron is passionate about unlocking the enormous potential that sits in most organisations through moving to Lean/Agile delivery models. The DDC was established as the proving ground for this drive within Australia Post, with the transformation effort now extending more broadly throughout the organisation. Prior to Australia Post, Cameron worked in strategy, delivery and consulting roles at PricewaterhouseCoopers and Accenture, before moving to Head of Technology roles at ANZ’s Retail Bank and Commercial Bank.
SESSION: Scaling as the tide turns
Karen Greaves
Agile Coach, Growing Agile
Karen Greaves believes the best way to engage people at work is to make sure they are having fun, making a difference, and getting better at the things they do. Karen helps people to build great teams and deliver great software. Her entire career has been in software development, with a significant focus on Agile approaches, and enough experience with waterfall to understand its limitations. She has worked with XP, Scrum and Kanban in many different environments. Today she trains and coaches individuals and teams in being Agile.
SESSION: Coaching product owners effectively
Robert Harrison
Lead Business Analyst, Air New Zealand
Robert Harrison has 20 years’ experience in business analysis, in a variety of project roles and industries. He has experience working in several of the largest global consulting companies, software development houses through the full SDLC and most recently as the Lead Digital Business Analyst for Air New Zealand. Robert’s specialties include: Analysis during the ideation and concept and design phases; establishing hypotheses; facilitating ideation; identification of minimum viable products; story mapping; and user story definition, including using BDD and Specification by Example. Robert loves working with teams, drawing on a variety of techniques and collective experience to deliver real business value.
SESSION: Taking a hypothesis-driven approach
Invited speaker
Peter Heslin
Associate Professor, UNSW Business School
For over 20 years, Peter Heslin has facilitated professionals, managers, and executives in framing their challenges in ways that enable them to discover and pursue productive ways forward. Since completing his PhD on managers’ mindset dynamics, leading academic journals have published Peter’s stream of rigorous research on the role of managers’ mindsets in effective performance appraisals, employee coaching, employee engagement, career success, and facilitating employees “going the extra mile.”
Peter has won a number of teaching awards, most recently the 2014 UNSW Business School’s AGSM MBA Programs Teaching Excellence in a Core Course award.
Since 2002, Peter has relished the opportunity to continually present, adapt, and refine this renowned mindsets workshop in leading organisations across the US, Europe, Brazil, and Australia.
Nicholas Ho
Agile Coach, ING Direct Australia
Nicholas Ho is an Agile Coach at ING Direct Australia. He has over 15 years’ experience working in industries such as finance, utilities and defence and is passionate about empowering teams, fostering collaboration, and catalysing continuous improvement in organisations. He is the co-organiser of Sydney Lean Coffee, holds a Masters’ degree in Project Management from the University of Sydney and a BSc in Computing Science from the University of Alberta (Canada). Nicholas facilitates and presents Agile training to both large and small groups.
SESSION: Using Collaborative Communication for teamwork and transparency
Aaron Hodder
Lean Testing Delivery Lead, Assurity Consulting Ltd
Aaron Hodder hails from Wellington, New Zealand where he works for Assurity Consulting Ltd to develop and deliver new and innovative testing practices to better suit the demands of modern day software development. Aaron is a passionate software tester with a particular enthusiasm for visual test modelling and structured exploratory testing techniques. He regularly blogs and tweets about testing, and is a co-founder of Wellington Testing Workshops.
SESSION: Towards a more inclusive workplace
Ben Hogan
Visual Management Mentor, AgileBen
Ben Hogan has been helping teams visualise their work since 2003, building team walls, information radiators and project war rooms. Ben has an enduring passion for awesome stationary and can perform magic with index cards. He is a veteran of introducing visualisation to many IT projects, IT operations teams and business teams including marketing, HR, finance and customer service. At the enterprise scale Ben has introduced visualisation practices in industries such as higher education, insurance and start-up training organisations. He is one of the first people to teach Kanban in Australia, is a Lean Kanban Coach and is a participant in the Kanban Leadership Retreat.
Invited speaker
David Joyce
Customer Centricity Specialist and Author, ThoughtWorks
David Joyce is a leading authority on organisational change, and on both the theory and practice of the application of “Lean” to service organisations. He is also a well-known international public speaker and author of the book “Theories of Work: How we design and manage work”.
Prior to emigrating to Australia, David worked as a leader in various organisations in the UK. Today, as an interventionist, he works with Executives, Senior Managers, and Front-Line teams, helping them to understand and improve organisational performance from a customer’s point of view.
With particular focus on the service industry (which he differentiates from manufacturing), David’s ideology, the Vanguard Method, has enabled results that are nothing short of remarkable: organisations have seen their Net-Promoter Scores jump by 60 points or more, efficiency increase by as much as 40% and sales improve by similar amounts.
SESSION: Rethinking performance and improvement with the Vanguard Method
Invited speaker
Nicole Koster
Advisor for Buurtzorg Netherlands
Nicole Koster is an advisor for Buurtzorg and for Ecare Services, an ICT firm providing software, data-warehousing and data-analyses in home healthcare, nursing care and social care. She is a Co-founder of the Dutch Omaha System Support foundation. The Omaha System is a health terminology that can be used in software to smarten care processes and support users. Nicole is a part-time PhD candidate researching population characteristics and client needs in home healthcare and also has a background as a Physiotherapist. She has earned a Master of Science in public health; Health Services Innovations, cum laude. Nicole guided the implementation of the Buurtzorg model in other organisations, developed Buurtzorg’s Electronic Health Record, including the Omaha System, with programmers, nurses and nurse assistants. This health record, the ‘Cliëntkompas’ and the accompanying standardised careplan-programme won the 2013 Spider Award for most innovative and effective ICT project in the Netherlands. It was competing against runner up ColonIS from RIVM, a system designed for nationwide management of early detection of colon cancer. Nicole also developed EHR’s for companies in the mental health and social care sector with end-users. She is an advocate for client-focussed, holistic care and a delivery model based on trust, craftsmanship and relationship-based care.
The Buurtzorg Foundation was started in 2007 by Jos de Blok with one team and four nurses – delivering community and home health care with a philosophy of putting humanity over bureaucracy. In the following years, new teams started forming throughout the Netherlands on a weekly basis, rapidly growing to the Netherlands’ largest homecare company. In 2015, 9700 Buurtzorg nurses work in 850 self-organised teams without a management structure. Due to an Agile organisation and software, only 45 staff members are needed at the back office and 15 coaches are needed to support the teams. Nicole: ”from both an organisational and an ICT point of view; it doesn’t get more Agile than this in healthcare”.
SESSION: Simply Buurtzorg: adaptive agility for individual and local needs
Samantha Laing
Agile Coach, Growing Agile
Samantha Laing’s personal motto is ‘be brave’, and she embodies this by taking on challenges one small step at a time. Most of her career has been in the IT industry, specifically software development. Nowadays she finds herself guiding and mentoring others with a passion for Agile. This year her focus has been on experimenting and learning from her failures (and successes).
SESSION: Coaching product owners effectively
Corey Lewis
Online Project Director, Australian Tax Office
Corey Lewis is the Release Train Engineer for the Online Services delivery unit at the Australian Taxation Office (ATO). This involves managing diverse teams of specialist resources that deliver business-prioritised changes to the suite of online services offered by the ATO, including ATO Online, myTax and ATO Portal services. The team that Corey leads was one of the first to apply scaled Agile processes to software development in a large Federal Government agency.
SESSION: Scaled Agile: a Federal Government implementation – Sponsored by Accenture
Sandy Mamoli
Director of All Things Agile, Nomad8
Sandy Mamoli is an Agile enterprise coach and consultant at Nomad8 with a focus on culture and leadership. From working in Amsterdam and Copenhagen to becoming one of New Zealand’s leading coaches, she brings her practical European flair and passionate advocacy for all things Agile to businesses around the world. Sandy is a former Olympian, a geek, a gadget junkie, and an international public speaker. She recently published a book with co-author and colleague David Mole, Creating Great Teams – How Self-Selection Lets People Excel.
SESSION: Creating great teams – how self-selection lets people excel
Nicholas Martin
Change Management Lead, ME Bank
Nicholas Martin is a skilled change manager who makes the complex simple. Nick sees his role as relationships facilitator – building relationships between people and between individuals and their own experience of change. As you’d expect from a part-time yogi, his ability to connect the dots and grasp the broader context is adeptly balanced with a keen eye on the human response to change. Prosci and SDI accredited, Nick currently works on IT and HR programmes across the private and not-for-profit sectors, drawing on his earlier experience as a project manager and trainer in both private and government roles.
Ryan McKergow
Lead Consultant, Elabor8
Ryan McKergow is passionate about Agile and challenging the norm. With over 6 years of Agile experience, Ryan has worked with numerous Agile teams as a business analyst and iteration manager. Ryan works for the team at Elabor8 as a Lead Consultant. He is currently consulting at Monash University on one of their first Agile transformation programs. He is sharing his passion for retrospectives and continuous improvement and looks to instill this ethos with all of his teams. Prior to Monash, Ryan worked on Agile and digital projects at the REA Group, SEEK, the Suncorp Group, and UniSuper.
SESSION: Continuous improvement at scale
Robert McKinnon
Public Sector Solutions and Services Senior Manager, Accenture
Robert McKinnon is the portfolio manager for Accenture’s online projects with a large Federal Government agency. This involves managing diverse teams of specialist resources that provide user-centric design and large-scale Agile delivery for web applications and digital services. In addition to delivery work, Robert is also involved in professional communities as a project advocate and champion for Agile delivery and user experience design.
SESSION: Scaled Agile: a Federal Government implementation – Sponsored by Accenture
David Mole
Agile Coach, Nomad8
David Mole coaches, consults, and presents about Agile processes, teams, and motivation. He recently led an Agile transformation at Trade Me where, building upon the work of Spotify’s culture, he created dozens of high-performing Agile squads. He is a highly regarded public speaker and author for InfoQ. A former professional poker player, David works for Nomad8 helping teams and organisations to perform better. David recently co-authored a book with Sandy Mamoli, Creating Great Teams – How Self-Selection Lets People Excel.
SESSION: Creating great teams – how self-selection lets people excel
Dipesh Pala
Agile Capability Leader – Asia Pacific, IBM
Dipesh Pala is the Asia Pacific Agile Capability Leader for IBM. In addition to leading IBM’s transformation journey to grow the Agile capability across this region, Dipesh pursues his passion for enabling organisations of all sizes to optimise solution delivery through the pragmatic use of Agile, Lean and traditional methods. His diverse background includes delivery roles in Software Engineering, Project and Portfolio Governance, and Agile Consulting across a variety of industries. Over the last decade, Dipesh has helped organisations and project teams in many countries to continuously improve and find better ways of working.
As an on-the-ground Agile Consultant, he has been instrumental in rolling out Agile at scale in many organisations, and is currently coaching and mentoring today’s Managers and Executives to become the Agile Leaders their teams need. In addition to being a top-rated speaker at industry conferences and seminars, Dipesh is also a seasoned facilitator who is able to drive out the best outcomes from any project-based or strategy workshops.
Many organisations draw upon his extensive facilitation experience to plan and run Agile project workshops to increase participation and embrace collaboration. A keen advocate of simplicity, Dipesh offers simple, practical yet powerful ways to address the challenges team members and managers in Agile environments face today. He continuously pushes individuals and teams beyond the practices and principles to move a step further in their Agile journey.
SESSION: 7 things that Agile executives and leaders do differently
Invited speaker
Daniel Petre
Partner, AirTree Ventures and Philanthropist
Daniel Petre has been a leading player in Australia’s technology industry for more than 25 years, and has held leadership positions in technology-based businesses in Australia and the US. Daniel is currently a Partner at AirTree Ventures, a new $60m growth stage fund launched in July of 2014. Daniel’s previous experience includes seven years as Chairman of netus (technology investment firm), six years as Chairman of eCorp (a subsidiary of PBL), five years on the PBL Board and nine years with Microsoft Corporation, where he served as Vice President of the Workgroup Division, Director of Advanced Technology and Director of the Asia Pacific Region.
AirTree Ventures, netus and eCorp were founded on the basis of understanding global online business models and then either bringing them to Australia, investing in innovative local businesses or building them from the ground up in Australia.
Companies founded or invested in Australia by netus and eCorp include ninemsn, eBay Australia, ReachLocal, Ticketek, Allure Media, Downstream Marketing, Travel.com and ePredix. Netus returned 4 times cash on cash for invested funds as did eCorp.
Daniel holds an Hon.DBus (UNSW), MBA (USYD) and BSc (UNSW) and he is currently an Adjunct Professor in the Business School at UNSW and the University of Sydney. Daniel is also the author of 3 books on Fatherhood and balancing work and life.
He is also on the board of the Sydney Theatre Company and the board of the Garvan Institute of Medical Research.
In 2005 Daniel was awarded an AO for his work in philanthropy and business.
SESSION: Towards an Agile Country
Lyndsay Prewer
Agile Delivery Consultant, Equal Experts
Lyndsay Prewer is an Agile Delivery Consultant with over twenty years experience in helping developers, teams and organisations improve their software delivery. He is currently consulting for Equal Experts at HMRC on the delivery of HMRC’s new Gov.UK digital tax services. He speaks regularly at European conferences (including Pipeline Conf, JAX 2015, Agile Tour Vilnius, Agile Cambridge, Agile Testing Days, Agile Lean Europe) and UK meetups.
SESSION: Smoothing the Continuous Delivery path: a tale of two teams
Invited speaker
Margarette Purvis
President and CEO, Food Bank For New York City
Invited speaker Margarette Purvis, President and CEO of Food Bank For New York City, will share Food Bank’s kaizen journey of rethinking and improving operations, from top to bottom. In this presentation, you will discover how Food Bank adopted kaizen — a Japanese word meaning “continuous improvement” — in their Community Kitchen and Food Pantry in Harlem in 2011-2012, and then forged a partnership with Toyota (TSSC – The Toyota Production System Support Centre) that helped transform the organisation.
You will explore the challenges of rethinking one’s own processes and developing new habits, as Margarette discusses how implementing small operational improvements has created a new level of problem solving and creativity amongst the team, to generate big results. Learn how Food Bank team members have enthusiastically made the concept of “kaizen” their own; translated Lean principles, tools, and ideas for their sector; and created a “kaizen lab” at their Food Warehouse and Distribution Centre in the Bronx to serve as a model for the rest of the organisation.
SESSION: Creating a kaizen culture proves transformative for Food Bank of New York City
Mark Richards
Partner, Context Matters
Mark Richards is a Partner at Australian Enterprise Agile consultancy Context Matters. His 25 year career in Information Technology started in software development, where he quickly became a well-known trainer, technical mentor and conference speaker. Initially attracted to Agile in the late 90’s through its focus on software craftsmanship, Mark found that as his Agile experience grew his passion for great technical practices was replaced by a zeal for enabling high-performing teams. As a coach and trainer, Mark has worked with some of Australia’s largest enterprises on implementing Agile at scale. Broadly recognised as the region’s leading expert in the Scaled Agile Framework for the Enterprise (SAFe), he works effectively at all levels of an organisation in facilitating sustainable movement towards true business agility and a culture of collaboration.
Ben Ross
General Manager – Product and Design, MYOB
Ben Ross is the General Manager responsible for product management and UX at MYOB. He also sits on the executive team at MYOB, which has transformed the culture of the MYOB business from a desktop business with slow cycles to a fast-paced online organisation. Prior to joining MYOB in 2012, Ben worked in San Francisco where he founded a startup which helps homeowners find reliable local tradespeople. Previously, Ben was a Product Management Leader at Intuit in San Francisco where he was responsible for the launch of mobile products for small business owners in Asian emerging markets. As a precursor to his product management career, Ben worked in a number of internet strategy roles with the Boston Consulting Group and Intuit.
Invited speaker
JAMES ROSS
CTO, Envato
James Ross has been leading Agile development teams for well over a decade and has long since stopped believing that Agile is the point. He has played consultant, architect and development manager roles at various organisations. His interests of late have been the Theory of Constraints, Systems Thinking and sustaining conversations with business people that the business people find interesting. James is currently CTO at Envato. He is the co-author of what he thinks is the only book that takes a test-driven approach to the teaching of fundamental computer algorithms. He hopes it’s not the only one because it’s not a very good idea 🙂
SESSION: Event Sourcery
Rob Scherer
User Experience Lead, SEEK
Rob Scherer leads a team of User Experience Designers at SEEK with a focus on creating products and services that help organisations that use SEEK to succeed in their efforts to find talent. Rob started working at SEEK back in 2000 and over the last 16 years has had experience in a variety of roles across the business. This diverse experience – together with a background in architecture, sales, and service – gives Rob a perspective that is commercially focussed and user centered. Rob gets excited about using Lean, customer centric methodologies to deliver solutions that solve complex business problems and result in engaged and passionate users. In 2012, Rob co-created Magitest – the first on-device usability test recording application for iOS devices.
Invited Speaker
Louis Simoneau
Technical Lead, REA Group
Louis Simoneau is a biochemist by training, a software developer by trade, and a technical lead by accident. His experience is primarily in the startup world, helping to build web applications like Flippa.com, BreachAlarm.com, and SitTheTest.com. Louis is currently the technical lead for the product and pricing platform at REA Group, where he oversees the implementation of a microservice architecture to enable new product and pricing strategies to be brought to market with the click of a button.
SESSION: Smashing the monolith
Greg Skinner
Designer, ThoughtWorks
Greg Skinner has been with ThoughtWorks for four years, having changed career from Architecture. He’s consulted for a wide variety of clients, from financial services and fast food. He’s worked in India and China, plus Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne – a little closer to home.
Greg has spoken at a number of groups and meetups in Melbourne, and has also presents frequently to internal ThoughtWorks colleagues.
SESSION: Developers and Designers Demo
Craig Smith
Founder, Unbound DNA
Craig Smith has been an Agile Practitioner, Coach and one of Australia’s premier Agile Trainers for over ten years. As a co-organiser of the Agile Brisbane Meetup Group, advisor of Agile Australia, co-chair of one of the world’s leading Agile Podcasts and an Agile Editor for InfoQ, Craig is one of Australia’s heaviest contributors to the Agile community. Craig has presented at numerous conferences including Agile 2008, 2009, 2010 and 2011. He has also presented at Agile Australia from 2009-2012, as well as numerous other Agile conferences and meetups. Craig specialises in all facets of Agile training, executive coaching and technical excellence by helping teams move quality to the left.
SESSION: Coaching Nightmares: insights we can learn from Gordon Ramsay
The Spark Team
Spark is the fusion of one of Australia’s experts in high performing teams, Colin Beattie, and a renowned and well-loved improvisation troupe, Spark.
Spark is made up of Karl McConnell, Rik Brown and Jason Geary. As performers they travel the world with their gift for hilarious and moving improvised storytelling.
Both Colin and the team from Spark are passionate about the anatomy of collaboration, teamwork and high-performing cultures. They adopt a learning approach of LAUGH. THINK. ACT. This approach is highly engaging and memorable. The Spark Team has had the opportunity to showcase their different and powerful learning experience to organisations including REA Group, MYOB, National Australia Bank, Target Australia, Coles, Lander & Rogers.
With Spark, you should expect the unexpected. It is bold, different and thought-provoking.
SESSION: Making each other look good
Glyn Thomas
UX Manager, nib Health Funds
Glyn Thomas heads up the UX Design team at nib Health Funds, where for the last 5 years the company has been integrating design into Agile software development. He is driven by a desire to create highly collaborative teams that are built on trust, creativity, curiosity and the utter joy of making “something” better. Glyn does this by paying attention to what makes people tick and how people interact with the world around them, and then tries to make the world a little bit better.
SESSION: 5 sketches on whiteboards
Renee Troughton
Founder, Unbound DNA
Renee Troughton is one of the most experienced Enterprise Agile Transformation Coaches in the southern hemisphere, with extensive experience working in small to large organisations across many sectors including finance, insurance, superannuation, government and telecommunications. The author of ‘Agile Forest‘ and co-author of ‘Who is Agile Australia and New Zealand‘, she also contributes significantly to her blog at Agile Forest, is a co-chair of the Approaches and Practices stream at Agile Australia, co-chairs one of the world’s leading Agile Podcasts and regularly presents at both national and international conferences on Agile. Renee specialises in enterprise transformations, Kanban, scaled and non-software development implementations of Agile.
SESSION: Coaching Nightmares: insights we can learn from Gordon Ramsay
Kelsey van Haaster
Lead Consultant, ThoughtWorks
Kelsey van Haaster has been working with Agile approaches to software development since before they were called Agile. After an early career teaching XP to software development students in the late 1990s and early 2000s, Kelsey gained almost two decades of experience as a business analyst. Kelsey is now employed as a lead consultant with ThoughtWorks, where she works with organisations who are transitioning towards Lean and Agile ways of working. Kelsey is currently undertaking her PhD at Charles Sturt University and is conducting a study into the consequences of various approaches that organisations take towards Agile transformations. Through this work, she will be participating in the Doctoral Consortium at XP2016 to be held in Edinburgh in May 2016. She also regularly speaks at local conferences and is an active participant in the Agile community.
SESSION: Get faster everywhere – simplify then add lightness
Jacques de Vos
Development Coach, nReality Systems
With more than 12 years’ experience in leading development teams on cutting-edge software systems, Jacques de Vos is driven to build systems, teams and processes that not only address immediate project needs, but also enable clients to meet their strategic goals. Most of his experience has been in developing crucial front-end applications, specifically in the financial industries: online trading, online banking, insurance and branch banking.
Besides running tech product startups, his recent focus has been on coaching software engineering teams and businesses of all shapes and sizes on how to excel at building the right products well. This touches on a wide variety of areas like engineering practices, software architecture approach, team culture and processes.
Brett Wakeman
Iteration Manager, Carsales.com.au
Brett Wakeman joined carsales.com.au in 2008 as a Product/Project Manager, focusing on projects for car manufacturers such as BMW, Holden, and Ford Performance Vehicles. Having worked for many years as a Project Manager working in software development and dealing with the frustrations of Waterfall, the move to Agile at Carsales came as a breath of fresh air. Brett is now Iteration Manager working with both the carsales Redbook Rebuild and Insights teams as a key promoter of Agile thinking. Away from the office, Brett is an outdoor adventure instructor with the Scout Association.
SESSION: How a blues band taught me to build Agile teams that rock!
Richard Weissel
Senior Developer, REA Group
Richard Weissel is currently a Senior Developer at REA group, where his role has evolved to architecture, mentoring and coaching within a distributed Agile team. After 20 years in IT, which really kicked off in London in the late nineties, he took on a masters of primary teaching, followed by an incredibly rewarding (but exhausting) 12 months teaching grade 2 in Melbourne. This was followed by 18 months volunteering in Cambodia, building a Blood Bank Management System (2013-2015). All of this has led him to an amazing Agile workplace, where he finds the parallels with primary education remarkable.