SolutionsIQ Instructors
Valerie Morris
Agile Consultant
SolutionsIQ
Valerie is a ScrumMaster and Agile coach. With over 20 years of experience in software development as an analyst and project manager, she has depth of experience in the telecommunications and financial services industries. She is passionate about collaborating with clients and helping them achieve their goals.
As a change agent, Valerie is skilled in helping large companies adopt Agile and scale it throughout the enterprise. She is certified as both a Certified Scrum Practitioner (CSP) and Project Management Professional (PMP), and also holds Six Sigma Green Belt. Valerie holds a Bachelors of Science in Marketing.
Dhaval Panchal
Agile Consulting Coach, Certified Scrum Trainer
SolutionsIQ
Dhaval has consulted with organizations ranging from mid-sized product companies to the Fortune 100, including 30 Scrum Project teams during enterprise-level rollouts. With a background including software development, business & functional analysis, lean office implementations, organizational change, system architecture, business intelligence and Agile project management, Dhaval has successfully leveraged his skills to deliver dozens of Certified ScrumMaster and Product Owner training courses.
With a BS in Engineering from Mumbai University, India, Dhaval is one of our three bi-lingual instructors. Working internationally and within the US, he’s effectively coached people-centric, high-performances teams while writing about software development and coaching on his blog at: http://dhavalpanchal.com.
William Rowden
Software Development Coach, Scrum Process Coach, Certified ScrumMaster
SolutionsIQ
William Rowden brings a love of languages—especially programming languages (including BASIC, QBasic, Pascal, Visual Basic, S+, FORTRAN, C++, make, VBScript, Bash, VBA, Visual Basic.NET, HTML, Python, XAML, Perl, SQL, R, C# 3.5, and Java)—to his work as a delivery manager and Agile coach for SolutionsIQ.
William has been a co-founder/CTO of an Agile software company (Gray Hill Solutions), software engineer, consultant, and transportation engineer. He developed traffic.511.org, an Advanced Traffic Management System, and a transit route analyzer. As Agile coach at SolutionsIQ, his expertise is in Enterprise Agile Adoption, assisting clients in learning and adopting the technical and engineering practices vital to Agile software development. His recent clients have been in the U.S., Mexico (where he used his Spanish), and China (where he began learning Mandarin).
Vibhu Srinivasan
Agile Consulting Coach, Certified Scrum Practitioner
SolutionsIQ
Vibhu is an expert technologist with over 14 years of experience in Agile practices. As an Agile coach and Certified Scrum Practitioner, he works with customers organizations of all sizes to enhance Agility and Scrum Project Management. An expert in team development and scaling agile, Vibhu most recently established and led a team of sixty developers, mentoring and coaching throughout the entire engagement.
As a senior technologist, he has performed as a Chief Architect, Business Analyst, Technical Lead and Developer across multiple industries. His extensive technical background covers Virtualization in the cloud, Semantic web, Online gaming .NET stack, J2EE stack, Web 2.0, Enterprise Application Integration and various Software Development Methodologies. He’s also dabbled in the rails stack and loves test driven development.
Vibhu earned his Strategic Management MBA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Business in 2006, complementing his technical expertise with business acumen. He earned his Electronics Engineering degree in 1995 from Karnataka University, India. When not conducting one or more training programs, Vibhu is typically working on a business concept, blogging, running or playing with his children, or acting as the CTO of his new startup. Learn more about Vibhu at http://vibhu.info/about and http://agilefaq.net.
Bryan Stallings
Director and Principal Consultant, Professional Services, Certified Scrum Trainer
SolutionsIQ
Bryan Stallings leads the efforts of the Professional Services Consulting team to maximize the benefits that agile methods present to SolutionsIQ’s software development and agile consulting clients. He is an experienced leader of Agile adoption initiatives, both as a consultant and as an internal change advocate. Before joining SolutionsIQ, Bryan defined and led the enterprise agile adoption programs at two previous companies where he was employed. A Certified Scrum Trainer, Bryan regularly leads Certified ScrumMaster and Certified Scrum Product Owner training courses.
Bryan is known for his skill at facilitating collaboration with senior leaders and within empowered project teams—across organization, geographies, and cultures—to foster productive relationships and achieve critical business results. During his 15 years of international and domestic experience in information technology, financial services, and manufacturing, Bryan has worked with the full spectrum of companies from large multinationals to small growth firms. A graduate of the Moore School of Business at the University of South Carolina, Bryan has an MBA in International Business. He also holds a Six Sigma certification and is fluent in Spanish.
Michael Tardiff
Scrum Team Lead, Agile Coach
SolutionsIQ
Michael has been working with teams to deliver software and services for over two decades, in large enterprises and small startups on both coasts and in Europe. He has a background in operating systems development, enterprise portals, web-based B2B e-commerce, data communications networks, web presence and telecommunications products.
“Hearing development happen” as teams collaborate, pair-program and resolve issues is one of Michael’s joys, and with expertise in product, program and project management at a director level, he has delighted and been successful in no position more than ScrumMaster and Agile coach. He currently blogs on agile topics, and helps coordinate the monthly Agile user group, Beyond Agile.
David Wylie
Director of Agile Development
SolutionsIQ
David is responsible for the delivery efforts of SolutionsIQ’s Agile development teams to several key clients. Over a career of 27 years, David has worked as a software developer, tester, analyst, project manager, and consultant. He has been a principal in two consulting firms dealing with technology project management. He regularly participates as a co-trainer on many of our courses, including our Certified ScrumMaster and Certified Scrum Product Owner training and Introduction to Agile for Executives.
During the last 19 years, David has been focused on consulting to a wide variety of industries on effective implementations of technology. He has a BS and an MBA.
Monica Yap
Agile Consulting Coach, Certified ScrumMaster
SolutionsIQ
Monica is an Agile coach and ScrumMaster, focused on mentoring, building and leading successful Agile teams for outsourced projects. With over 18 years of development and 8 years of leading agile teams experience, she helps customer produce quality products through continuous refactoring, unit testing, pair programming, small releases, and an evolving architecture.
Monica has worked with distributed Agile teams over the past 4 years in the US, UK and Singapore. While doing so, she and her teams have demonstrated tremendous successes; 90% of all iterations are delivered on time, typically exceeding customer expectations.
A regular presenter at national though leadership conferences - including Agile2005, Agile2006, Agile2007, and Agile2008 – Monica also leads volunteer technical and process groups including Agile Open Northwest, Seattle Agile user group, Seattle Java user group, and Beyond Agile.
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Guest Instructors
Brent Barton
Partner, Sterling Barton; Agile Coach; Certified Scrum Trainer
Sterling Barton, LLC
As a former CTO at SolutionsIQ, Brent brings nearly two decades of software delivery expertise as a consultant and mentor to any Scrum engagement he takes part in. With a focus on delivering greater value to customers through supporting them in Agile adoption, Brent is recognized as an international leader in Agile consulting. Having successfully implemented Agile in multiple organizations, Brent tries to bring a pragmatic nature to Scrum. “I shine best”, says Brent, “when I’m making ordered chaos out of just plain chaos.” Brent doesn’t believe Scrum is about solving chaos, but about controlling it just enough to get the job done; too much control defeats the natural entropy that allows for creativity in a constructed environment.
Certified as a Certified Scrum Trainer in 2005, Brent has trained and mentored more than 1000 people in effective Agile practices. Brent is one of the originators of "AgileEVM" (the mathematically proven bridge between traditional practices - Earned Value Management - and agile practices), presented at the Agile 2006 conference and published in IEEE. Brent is a graduate from San Jose State University with a degree in Mathematics, focus on Computer Science.
Roger Brown
Founder, Moonrise Consulting; Agile Coach; Certified Scrum Trainer
Moonrise Consulting
Roger Brown is an independent Agile Coach, providing training, consulting & coaching services in Scrum project management and enterprise agile adoption. He also provides coaching & mentoring in agile engineering practices such as Test-Driven Development, automated acceptance testing and continuous integration.
Possessing all of the certifications granted by the Scrum Alliance including Certified Scrum Trainer and Certified Scrum Coach, Roger is a member of the Scrum Alliance, the Agile Alliance and the Agile Project Leadership Network (APLN). He's also a founding member and certification board member for the Certified Scrum Coach program.
A veteran software engineer, Roger is an expert technical project manager and people manager. He has worked with both large and small companies in many industries, and his work experience includes Dartmouth College, Vicinity Corporation, Microsoft and TeleAtlas. Roger is focused on helping companies and individuals find their own best approaches to the use of agile methods.
Esther Derby
Founder, AYE Conference & Board Member, Agile Alliance
Esther Derby Associates, Inc.
Esther Derby works with individuals, teams, and organizations to improve their ability to deliver valuable software. Esther is recognized as a leader in the human-side of software development, including management, organizational change, collaboration, building teams and retrospectives.
She's been a programmer, systems manager, project manager, and internal consultant. She currently runs her own consulting firm, Esther Derby Associates, Inc., in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Esther has an MA in Organizational Leadership, is the author of over 100 articles and co-author of Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great and Behind Closed Doors: Secrets of Great Management. At the moment, she's working on a book about managing in team-based organizations.
Diana Larsen
Board of Directors, Agile Alliance
FutureWorks Consulting, LLC
Diana Larsen sparks the creation of workplaces where productive teams focus on frequent delivery of high value software and display resilience in times of change. Drawing on fifteen+ years of experience working with technical professionals, Diana consults with leaders and teams to create work processes where innovation, inspiration, and imagination flourish.
Diana co-authored Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great! and writes articles and blog posts at futureworksconsulting.com/blog. She is a partner in FutureWorks Consulting, LLC, in Portland, Oregon.
Current chair of the Agile Alliance Board of Directors, Diana co-founded the "Agile Open Northwest" conference and the international "Retrospective Facilitators Gathering".
Jeremy Lightsmith
Agile Coach
Independent Consultant
A seasoned agile coach, trainer & facilitator, Jeremy excels at creating environments where teams can discover how they work best. He has a deep understanding of agile, and is constantly looking for better ways to share knowledge and collaborate. As a presenter, Jeremy favors interactive and group techniques and pulls from disciplines as diverse as Theatre Improv. and Montessori.
An independent consultant in Seattle, most of Jeremy’s 11-year career has been spent at companies like ThoughtWorks and Pivotal. He is currently writing a book about Facilitation Patterns.
Larry Schuiski
Senior Management Consultant, President & CEO
AGILEAN Corporation
Larry is an expert in leading operational change. As President/CEO of AGILEAN Corporation, Larry helps clients use Agile and Lean techniques to successfully guide, manage, and innovate their day-to-day operations; the result is a stronger bottom line with less stress and risk. Larry has hosted the course “Lean Thinking for the Information Worker” 50+ times.
Previously, Larry took on the role of Senior Vice President of Worldwide Product Development and Technical Support (Attachmate Corporation), managing an organization of 400 people in 6 office worldwide. His experience also includes Senior Management Consulting aligning operational and IT strategies, Vice President of a startup division for a Fortune 500 company, Managing Director for a UK workflow software company, and Operations Director for a consulting firm specializing in work flow analysis.
Greg Smith
Senior Project Manager, Certified ScrumMaster, Instructor
Bellevue College
Greg Smith has over 20 years of experience as a program manager, project manager, business analyst, and product manager. Greg's focus has been on iteratively migrating a company to Agile and actively involving the development team in the migration process. This background has given Greg insight into what it takes to sustain an Agile culture and process over time. Greg is also co-author of Becoming Agile in an Imperfect World and producer of the Agile Adoption stage at the 2009 Agile Conference.
Chris Sterling
Partner, Sterling Barton; Certified Scrum Trainer
Sterling Barton, LLC
Chris has more than 15 years of experience working with clients as an Agile Coach, Certified Scrum Trainer, and Technology Consultant. A previous member of SolutionsIQ’s Agile Consulting team, he has excelled as an enterprise architect, development manager, developer, and project manager. Chris’ extensive technology, process, and consulting background allows him to work with a diverse set of clients and teams, bringing real-world experience and deep passion for software development into his engagements. In so doing, he enables others to grasp important points and always take away something of value.
Chris has created and continues contributing to multiple open source projects, and has been a speaker at many conferences and group meetings including Agile 2007-2009, SDWest, Scrum Gatherings, PNSQC 2009 and others. He has been a coordinator of multiple Puget Sound area groups including International Association of Software Architects (IASA), Seattle Scrum, and most recently Beyond Agile . Chris is currently teaching the “Advanced Topics in Agile Software Development” class at the University of Washington Agile Developer Certificate extension program and writing a book with publisher Addison-Wesley on software architecture.
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