Agile Coach & Scrum Master, Digital, CBA (Commonwealth Bank of Australia)

Over the last 3 years Sharjeel Aleemullah has been applying and innovating on Agile ways of working from the trenches of CBA, where 50 unique scrum teams are dedicated to creating iconic digital experiences that aim to enhance the financial well-being of all Australians. This includes experiences that span across the CommBank mobile app, NetBank and CommBank.com.au, touching the lives of over 6 million digitally active users.

Product Development Coach, Property Exchange Australia

Elise Aplin is a passionate technologist who quietly thinks the internet is a bit of a mess and very much in need of improvement. She employs a bunch of cool frameworks (Agile, Lean, Systems Thinking, Design Thinking and their related friends) to help companies get better at solving real problems through the delivery of digital products. Elise has previously worked as a facilitator, coach, analyst and mentor and now enjoys providing product development coaching for Property Exchange Australia (PEXA).

Technology Leader, ANZ
Activate Agile speaker

Penelope Barr is a globally-recognised, award-winning innovator, intrapreneur & technologist. Her work has been recognised with Innovation & Technology awards in 5 countries.

Project & Innovation Coordinator, Senior O&M Specialist, Guide Dogs Victoria
Sponsored by ThoughtWorks

After graduating from LaTrobe University in 2001 as an Orientation and Mobility Specialist, John-Ross Barresi worked at Vision Australia providing Orientation and Mobility training to those who are blind or vision impaired. In 2004, John-Ross began at Guide Dogs Victoria, where he has been able to further develop his keen interest in adaptive technology and how it can assist his clients to enhance their independent mobility. In his current role of Innovation & Project Coordinator/Senior O&M Specialist, he manages projects that design and implement new technologies that aim to provide greater independence for his clients.

Founder & Director, EPiC Agile
Sponsored by EPiC Agile

Brad Bennett founded EPiC Agile in 2013 to support organisations with Agile at scale adoption. For Brad, it was obvious Agile was going to take over the world.

Brad quickly learnt that for change to really stick, it needs to be embodied at all levels, and this can only be done by building build strong human connections. Brad describes EPiC as 75% human and 25% Agile and has built a company based on the human values of Empathy, Passion, Integrity & Community (EPiC).

CTO, MyXplor

Adam Boas has a long history in software delivery as a developer, tech lead, architect and manager. His career in application, web and mobile development has taken him from coding and design to architecture and team building as well as coaching and management. He has worked in consultancies and product companies in various industries.

DevOps Architect, Microsoft
Sponsored by Microsoft

Anthony Borton is a DevOps Architect on the Microsoft Global Enterprise DevOps customer advisory team. In this role, he helps organisations be more successful with their Agile DevOps transformations. Prior to joining Microsoft, he authored and delivered training around the world on Agile and DevOps. Anthony is passionate about continuous learning and is never scared to experiment so he can learn from both successes and failures.

Customer Engagement Lead, ANZ
Sponsored by ANZ

Kath Bray is Managing Director for ANZ’s Customer Engagement Portfolio, focused on building compelling customer-oriented and data-informed propositions for priority segments. Prior to this, Kath was leading ANZ’s ‘New Ways of Working’ transformation, pioneering new working practices in Agile across the business.

Head of Development, THE ICONIC

Ollie Brennan has over 12 years’ experience in the software space. Most recently, as Head of Development at THE ICONIC, he has built and led an enthusiastic engineering team during a period of hyper-growth and improvement.

When not working, Ollie spends his time organising the SydPHP user group and hanging out with his cat.

Digital Leadership Coach, Author, and CTO, Curiously

James Brett describes himself as a digital leader who is passionate about developing people and organisations to create a positive future for humanity.

Independent Data Consultant and Author

Ellen Broad returned to Australia from the UK in late 2016, where she was Head of Policy for the Open Data Institute (ODI), an international non-profit founded by Sir Tim Berners-Lee and Sir Nigel Shadbolt. While in the UK Ellen became an expert adviser to senior UK government minister Elisabeth Truss on data. She has also held roles as Manager of Digital Policy and Projects for the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (Netherlands) and Executive Officer for the Australian Digital Alliance. She is an independent consultant for organisations including Data61, Knowledge Unlatched, Queensland government and the Open Data Institute Australian Network, while doing a masters in applied data analytics.

Founder and Director, Adaptive Cultures and The Leadership Retreat

Exposure to working with world leaders in her early 20’s revealed to Alison Cameron that no one (including the wisest leaders and experts) had the answers to humanity’s most challenging and complex problems. Her life has since been spent exploring how we might, as a humanity and as leaders rise to meet these challenges.

CIO, Information and Digital Services, Flinders University

Kerrie Campbell has worked in the IT industry in various sectors including banking, Utilities, Federal Government and Higher Education for the last 30 years.

Kerrie is currently CIO at Flinders University, she has a passion for implementing progressive methods to improve IT delivery and is a strong supporter and builder of positive cultures.

Director of Acceleration and Leadership Coach, Curiously

With a vision to make every hour of the workday more satisfying and productive, Marina Chiovetti is passionate about bringing Agile and Design Thinking to all IT teams across Australia. Marina is currently tasked with setting up and running the Digital.NSW Accelerator, as part of the NSW Government – a ‘Lab’ style service that shepherds projects through a Discovery-Alpha-Beta-MVP delivery model, introducing many government teams to the benefits of ‘breaking free’ from traditional delivery approaches.

With a background in Agile, Service Design, and a keen interest in how humans work, Marina applies coaching techniques to executives and teams to build long-lasting change.

Manager of Solution Architects APAC, Tricentis
Sponsored by Tricentis

David Colwell has worked within the testing industry for over 10 years. David started out his career as a data entry grunt. He rapidly got sick of the repetitive work, and discovered a test automation tool – Win Runner – during a conversation with someone in the testing team. He then automated his daily job, and was subsequently given notice. However, the test manager took David under his wing and taught him everything there is to know about testing and test automation. This experience prepared David to become Automation Mentor for One Patch.

Quality Coach, Campaign Monitor

Sam Connelly could be described as a motorbike riding, robotics obsessed, girl geek. She is a Quality Coach at Campaign Monitor; she would prefer ‘product risk investigator’ as her title with the tagline ‘I will help you find your bugs’.

Principal Designer, Atlassian

Ben Crothers is a strategist, mentor, explainer, design thinker and team leader. He has 20 years of deep knowledge and expertise in product strategy and design, user research, conceptual thinking, Agile team patterns and visualisation.

Chief Inventor, REA Group

Nigel Dalton has over 25 years of IT-related experience across multi-nationals and startups. 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.

Head of UX, 99designs

Megan Dell began working in the field of user experience back in the day when nobody really cared about the internet. It was a great time, being able to get away with some really experimental things compared to the rest of a tightly regulated insurance company. She worked on the online quoting applications for Australia’s largest personal insurance brands at Suncorp – if you are looking to buy car or travel insurance online, it is likely you’ve experienced some of her work.

Author

Tim Dunlop is the author of the internationally acclaimed book Why The Future Is Workless, which examines the impact of new technologies on the ways we work. Tim’s research into the future of work has made him a globally recognised speaker in this field, and he writes regularly for The Guardian on this topic.

General Manager, EPiC Singapore
Sponsored by EPiC Agile

Lisa Duty is a passionate culture-first agilist and reformed management consultant who loves helping clients take Agile beyond process and delivery to transform the vibration of their organisation… one team, one individual at a time.

Agile Transformation Capability Lead, Australian Bureau of Statistics

Juliet Fallace has over 20 years combined Program and Project Manager private and public sector experience. Currently employed as an EL2 at the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), Juliet is responsible for leading continuous improvement business process and transformational programs. During Juliet’s ABS career she has led service delivery programs, change management programs, strategic and operational technical and business transformation projects.

Recently certified as a qualified Professional Scrum Master, Juliet has been leading the ABS for the past 3 years towards transforming how business delivers its products and services through the adoption of Agile practices.

Director, Customer Success Application Delivery Management, Micro Focus
Sponsored by Micro Focus

Omer Felder is a Global Director of ADM Customer Success and is charged with ensuring customers’ value realisation of their Micro Focus Application Delivery Management solutions. In this role, Omer is responsible for regularly meeting with customers around the world and driving a customer-centric agenda. In addition, he ensures that customers realise the full value of their business outcomes by using the Micro Focus ADM portfolio of products and DevOps solutions.

Senior Manager, Digital Experience and Services, Qantas
Board Member, Digital and Technology Collective

Dan Fischer is passionate about the intersection of commerce and design, and the role that emotion and context play in building winning digital experiences. Dan is also curious about how organisational design can foster a culture of innovation.

General Manager, Content Group, Envato
Activate Agile speaker

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.

Indigenous Affairs Editor, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Special advisor to the Prime Minister on Indigenous constitutional recognition
AgileAus 10th Anniversary Dinner speaker only

Stan Grant is the Indigenous Affairs Editor for the ABC and special advisor to the Prime Minister on Indigenous constitutional recognition.

His appointment to the role of special advisor to the Prime Minister in 2016 came soon after he made a speech on racism that went viral and then reduced the Prime Minister to tears during an exclusive interview with The Point when speaking about Indigenous issues.

Head of Digital Engineering, Digital Delivery Centre, Australia Post

Lambros Kallianiotis is a senior technology leader skilled at managing change in complex environments with experience leading Agile teams for delivery of digital technology solutions. Most recently, Lambros has been driving the delivery of Digital iD™ within the Digital Delivery Centre of Australia Post. Prior to this Lambros focused on building passionate Agile teams at ANZ where he led the mobile technology team.

Scrum Master, Program Coach, Lead Consultant, Elabor8
Sponsored by Elabor8

A Lead Consultant at Elabor8, Alyce Katsanos has spent the last 12 months working in the Insurance and Financial Services sectors. Her admittedly unusual career trajectory, from piano teacher, to technical writer, to Agile practitioner, brings a unique perspective and set of skills to coaching.

Scrum Master, Liberty Financial
Activate Agile speaker

Wai Ling Ko has been working in and around software delivery teams for over 15 years.
Her passion is growing teams that create software that makes a difference.
She believes that building amazing teams starts with growing individuals by developing their strengths, talents & passion and loves using games to teach concepts.

Certified Scrum Trainer, Certified Team Coach, Agile360
Sponsored by PM-Partners

Stuart Mitchell CST, CTC, is an award winning international presenter, author, and Agile thought leader and one of the most experienced coaches and trainers in Australasia and Europe. As a former global head of Agile at one of the world’s largest banks, a senior Coach to over 300 teams and a trainer of more than 3000 people, he aims to share a wealth of real world ‘war stories’ delivered with a shot of Scottish humour.

Engineering Manager, REA Group

As an Engineering Manager at REA, Peter Moran helps lead the teams building the realestate.com.au mobile apps and the personalised services that power them. Peter has been in software development long enough to remember some of the first XP projects in Australia, and has been developing, architecting or leading software delivery teams since. Prior to joining REA, Peter worked in software consulting before joining Jetstar to help build the Hooroo online hotels business. He is passionate about unlocking the potential of great teams and technical leaders.

Head of Software Engineering – Digital & Data, Tyro

Leandro Pinter has been leading product & engineering teams and helping organisations be more Agile over the last 15 years. He is passionate about helping organisations to improve the way they work by creating a culture of high alignment and autonomy.

Executive Coach and Transformation Leader, SoftEd

Pat Reed is an experienced Agile executive, coach, transformational leader and Adjunct Professor. She has proven success transforming large Agile organisations and developing world class enterprise Agile practices (including accounting, PMO, portfolio management, strategy, release, DevOps, change, performance management and adaptive career processes and practices).

Group Captain, RAAF

Group Captain Jerome Reid is the Air Force’s designated disruptor; currently posted as one of the two Directors of Plan Jericho, also known as the Jericho Twins.

Jerome has enjoyed a diverse career across a range of work environments, most often working in positions underpinned by a focus on enterprise level transformations, capability innovations, people development and organisational change. Until mid last year, Jerome was an Australian Army Infantry Officer. In that capacity, he has led teams in operational planning, combat operations, disaster relief and other humanitarian missions.

CTO, Envato

James Ross has been around in Agile circles long enough to remember when suggesting working in an Agile way was a career limiting move. Now that it’s a career limiting move if you don’t profess unwavering loyalty to everything Agile, James finds himself frequently spending the opportunities he gets to use a microphone to call out some of the many ways we might be getting agility wrong.

Head of Technology, ThoughtWorks

As the Head of Technology for ThoughtWorks in Australia, Scott Shaw divides his time between professional services leadership and consulting. As a consultant, he helps enterprise customers shape their technology to align with 21st century practices like cloud, continuous delivery, microservices and lean governance. As a lifelong programmer and technology professional, Scott has designed and worked on distributed systems of every imaginable size and shape. When he’s not in meetings, Scott enjoys writing Clojure code.

Delivery Manager, SEEK
Activate Agile speaker

Victoria Schiffer is an Agile mind based in Melbourne, Australia, with over 12 years of experience in Digital and Technology in Germany and Australia. Her passion lies in building thriving teams and innovative leadership who collaboratively drive towards positive business outcomes. She’s a proud mum of an #agileBaby and an #agileToddler who keep her Agile mind positively challenged.

CEO, Elabor8

John Sullivan is CEO at Elabor8, the first ever at the consultancy company, where he leads the team to help customers transform and adapt to meet the increasing demands of the Disruptive Digital and Agile world of today to gain clarity and insight into their environment; building coherence and adaptability into their processes; and developing the capabilities they need to succeed.

Iteration Manager – Digital iD, Australia Post

With over 25 years experience working in the software industry, across roles in customer service, training, programming, technical writing and project management, Brett Wakeman has seen many different ways that teams work and software is built.

Sally Warhaft is a Melbourne anthropologist, broadcaster and former editor of The Monthly magazine. She is the author of the best-selling book Well May We Say: The Speeches that Made Australia and is a regular host and commentator on the ABC. Sally has a Phd in Anthropology and did her fieldwork in Mumbai, India. Her work has focused on the question ‘What makes community strong?’

Technology Manager, THE ICONIC

As a Technology Manager for THE ICONIC, Piers Warmers has half a cerebral hemisphere in code and another half in team dynamics. As software engineer, Piers is passionate about building systems that are lean, flexible and scalable. As a team leader it’s pretty much the same thing – encouraging transformation based on best practice, the ‘right’ cadence and the unique qualities he believes that every team has.

Senior Business Analyst & Scrum Master, Digital, CBA (Commonwealth Bank of Australia)

Sylvia Yanto is a versatile, passionate and high performing Agile practitioner who has gained experience as a Business Analyst, Scrum Master and more recently Product Owner. As part of the innovation team, Sylvia is leading the practice of developing fast failing experiments to validate transformative business models. Her unique lens to how teams can deliver value to the end customer and business, has contributed to the success of the Commbank mobile app which supports over 4 million Australians each month.

IoT Director, ThoughtWorks
Sponsored by ThoughtWorks

Chen Zhu is the IoT Director at ThoughtWorks, China. Before he entered IoT the domain, he worked as a User Experience Designer, Business Analyst and Project Manager on lots of software delivery projects. As a result, he’s accumulated lots of experience in Agile methodology and currently applies it to both software and hardware development to handle the risk of innovation.