Growing up, Jay had a passion for reading Science Fiction, solving puzzles, and competitively swimming. Those passions taught him to see possibilities where others see barriers, tirelessly seek creative solutions, and never forget to blow air out of your nose on a flip turn.
Jay’s applied these principles to craft software solutions in increasingly better ways throughout a development career that has spanned more than two decades in organizations such as American Airlines, Sabre Airline Solutions, and Travelocity.
In 2001, Jay led the use of eXtreme Programming (XP) on a number of successful projects and has been hooked on Agile ever since. He has over eight years of experience as a mentor, coach, and change agent enabling teams and organizations to apply Agile principles to create the conditions necessary for agility.
With video games, sports, and school, I built my love for challenge and competition. Am I the best at what I do? No. But I learn to accept failure, to learn and improve from my mistakes, and to keep on fighting. Speaking of fighting, I am a Fightin’ Texas Aggie class of 2008! I initially chose to go to A&M not because of its tradition, my friends, or a girl, but for my education and my career in engineering.
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Mike graduated from Oklahoma State University with a degree in Management Science / Computer Systems. His first job out of college was selling and installing small business computer systems. He then moved on to Braniff Airlines, EDS and American Airlines as a systems engineer for local and wide area networking. It was in 1992 at American Airlines when he began his software development career. Through the years he developed software applications in C, C++ and Java languages.
In 2001 he got his first taste of developing software using Agile methods. He was part of a development team that adopted (grass roots) eXtreme Programming (XP) practices and principles. It was then that he became a true believer that there are better (more humane) ways of developing software.
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I was born and raised in a small town in southern Minnesota. It’s the kind of place where everyone knows your name. In an effort to get out and see the world, I headed off to Ripon College in Ripon, Wisconsin (good luck finding that on a map). Ripon is a very small college; it had less than 700 under-graduate students when I was there. By my senior year, I had classes with only two students in them – me and one other person. Just try skipping the reading assignment in that situation. Despite its small size, or maybe because of it, Ripon was a great place to learn. Students weren’t taught a bunch of facts, but were taught how to research, dig in, and figure things out for themselves. We were encouraged to explore the world and get out of the comfort zone. With the encouragement of my parents and professors I finally left the small town behind to study at the Sorbonne in Paris.
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Highlights from Rick’s career include Texas Instruments (TI), ParcPlace Systems, ObjectSpace, and Valtech Technologies. Prior to joining Improving, Rick was the Director of Transformation Services for Valtech Technologies responsible for the agile practice. Rick has worked as a developer, technical lead/architect, project manager, business analyst, QA manager, agile coach, mentor & trainer, ScrumMaster, and program manager.
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I love software that provides an exceptionally elegant experience for its users. More and more, I find elegance in simplicity—not just in software, but in all areas of life.
And along the way, I learned that a career in software wasn’t about green screens and isolation at all. To the contrary, it’s really about people.
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Travis Isaacs is a designer who specializes in bridging the gap between visual & interaction design, information architecture, and web development. Depending on the day, you’ll either find him dreaming up big ideas with the design team or writing code with his development team.
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Mr. Newsom co-founded Improving Enterprises in August, 2004. Mr. Newsom is a seasoned technical professional with successful startup experience and an industry recognized technical expert. Mr. Newsom is a highly sought-after Microsoft Certified Architect (MCA), Microsoft Certified Trainer (MCT), and Microsoft Certified Professional Developer (MCPD). Before co-founding Improving, Jef was a Principal Technologist at Geniant, FPix, and ObjectSpace.
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In his role as VP of Learning Solutions at Improving Enterprises, Don McGreal is a hands–on agile consultant and instructor.
As a consultant and certified scrum professional, he has fulfilled whatever role is most needed at the time: developer, business analyst, scrum master, and process coach.
As an instructor and certified scrum trainer with Scrum.org, he has authored and taught classes for thousands of software professionals around the globe, specializing in Agile, Scrum, Acceptance Testing, Object–Oriented Design, and Test–Driven Development.
On projects and in the classroom, Don is known for his enthusiasm and dedication. He has published articles for both the Scrum Alliance and the Agile Journal and is co–founder of TastyCupcakes.org, a comprehensive collection of games and exercises for accelerating the adoption of agile principles.
Devlin Liles is a Principal Consultant at Improving Enterprises and a passionate technologist. Devlin prides himself on staying a generalist, but his passion in development is data and its interactions. These passions gained him the recognition of Microsoft as an MVP of Data Platform Development awardee.
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Latish is a .NET consultant with Improving Enterprises and very passionate about software development and solving customer problems. He also leads the Dallas C# SIG. He can be reached via his blog or twitter.
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For over 15 years Zain has been teaching and consulting on the latest Microsoft technologies. He’s been a Consultant and Microsoft Certified Trainer since 1995 and holds all major Microsoft certifications.
He is the creator of Virtual World Evangelism (VWE) which is an effort to build communities in virtual places like Facebook, Second Life, and OpenSim. He is not only a proponent of the community aspect of virtual worlds but also is a supporter of the myriad business applications that these new mediums offer. Zain’s efforts have been featured by eWeek, Redmond Developer News, and many others. He has been interviewed by Forrester Research, ThinkBalm, UgoTrade, Gartner, and the Science Channel for his work with virtual world communities. He is a frequent speaker at events in Second Life, Facebook, and other virtual worlds. And lectures world-wide to evangelize the future of this exciting new medium.
Susan is a Principal at Improving Enterprises, where she specializes in program/project management, process development, and business analysis. Susan brings a unique perspective to her clients as both a Certified ScrumMaster and a Project Management Professional. As the agile movement continues to grow , Susan takes a pragmatic approach to the application and usage of the various agile techniques. She is active in the local agile community as co-chair of the Dallas chapter of the Agile Project Leadership Network (APLN), and also serves on the board for the national APLN.
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Ken Howard is Vice President of Professional Services at Improving Enterprises. Ken has been involved in most aspects of software development for over 28 years with such languages as diverse as COBOL, Smalltalk and Java. Over the years Ken has provided consulting, training and mentoring to companies in 12 countries around the world, helping with adoption of software development best practices. He is currently also on the adjunct computer science faculty at SMU’s Lyle School of Engineering. Ken’s specialty is helping companies increase productivity through efficient practices and pragmatic organizational dynamics, which was the topic of the Addison-Wesley book he co-authored titled, Individuals and Interactions: an Agile Guide. Read Ken’s blog at Agilist.net.
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Allen Hurst is a Principal Consultant and the Assistant Director of Rural Sourcing at Improving Enterprises. As a committed Agilist and Certified ScrumMaster, Allen has spent his career learning, working, leading, and mentoring in a variety of environments, striving to recreate the positive experiences and learn from the negative ones. Along the way, Allen has found a fondness for continuous improvement, Agile values and practices, rapid delivery of quality working software, and well-designed object-oriented systems. Allen is a Computer Science graduate from Texas A&M, the leader of the Aggieland .NET User’s Group, an avid practitioner of GTD, and a producer of Improving Podcasts. You can learn a little more about Allen at ahurst.com
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Caleb Jenkins is a Principal Agile Coach with Sarbe Airline Solutions and the founder and Principal Mentor at Proaction Mentors. As an agile coach he works with developer teams around the globe to help them be more awesome.
As a long time community leader and former Microsoft Developer Evangelist Caleb is well known for his engaging speaking style, depth of knowledge and creative energy. As a Microsoft Certified Solution Developer, Certified Trainer and .Net Architect Caleb has helped to design and implement enterprise solutions for some of the largest companies in the world; Six Flags, Countrywide Mortgage, American Airlines, Sabre/Travelocity, CGI-AMS, Dollar Thrifty Automotive Group and Sunoco Inc. to name a few.
Before starting Proaction Mentors, Caleb worked as the Senior Architect for Six Flags Corporation, and helped build the Microsoft practice at Improving Enterprises. He is an active national speaker for the International .NET Association (INETA), has received the Microsoft MVP award for ASP.NET for the last four consecutive years. Caleb is a Certified Scrum Master and certified Professional Scrum Master, has worked as a technical editor and author for Wrox Press, and was a featured presenter on Adobe.TV.
He lives in the Dallas area where he continues to date his beautiful wife and busy himself playing Candy Land, Xbox 360 with his four incredible children. Occasionally he writes curriculum, speak at conferences, and write code for silly things like Twitter applications. Eventually he’ll post some of the gazillion interviews that he’s recorded on CommunityCast TV or blog more at http://developingUX.com
Gary is a Principal Consultant with Improving Enterprises Agile Practice. He entered the craft in 1986 and has played roles from Analyst Programmer to educator to CIO. Gary’s passion is centered in forming and nurturing high-performance teams, and he has found agile methods to be the perfect companion. Being an old fogey, he is witnessing the pendulum swinging back to the simpler, common-sense methods that prevailed when our industry was newer and it was fun to solve our friends’ problems with shiny new technology. His appreciation for technical excellence and higher thinking formed during his time at ObjectSpace, where he met the founders of Improving and many of the other speakers at this conference.
Gary is a Certified Scrum Master about to turn Certified Scrum Practitioner and possesses strength in product, project, requirements, and testing management.
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Barry Rogers is President of Improving Enterprises, Dallas, Texas. He is an accomplished Certified ScrumMaster and Certified Scrum Practitioner. Barry supports clients in both a hands-on and coaching capacity supporting a variety of roles including ScrumMaster, Agile adoption mentor, and human dynamics coach. Barry is co-author of Individuals and Interactions: an Agile Guide (Addison Wesley) and also facilitates leadership, agile, and scrum training sessions.
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Chris believes that effective software development is achieved through understanding the business opportunity, knowledge of current technology, and use of appropriate software development processes. Chris has consulted with companies in industries including Communications, Energy, Healthcare, Real Estate and Retail to propose, design, and implement custom solutions involving enterprise grade messaging, collaboration, and integration.
Currently Chris is primarily focused on Application Lifecycle Management and works as a Developer Technology Specialist for Microsoft, helping companies understand how to improve their ability to deliver software.
Chris Weldon is constantly committed to delivering high value on agile teams. Since 2007, Chris has been reading, loving, living, leading, and mentoring agilists and agile teams to build high quality, high value software. Throughout the year, Chris regularly carries the roles of developer, scrummaster, and mentor. Sharing his of knowledge by speaking at user groups, universities, conferences, and one-on-one with others is a passion. Chris has been a speaker for several Aggieland user groups, tech fests, AgileDotNet Houston 2011, and other conferences and technology groups alike. Chris is also the leader of the B/CS PHP Users Group, blogs at http://www.chrisweldon.net, and is an occasional contributor to Improving Podcasts.
Chris loves being a Senior Consultant at Improving Enterprises. Aside from being given the opportunity to do what he loves, he believes that delivering excellent software is the only way to roll. Although an agile purist at heart, Chris strives to strike the right balance between the ideal and the real in order to meet the team’s objectives without sacrificing the values and principles we have come to love.
Chris is a Fightin’ Texas Aggie. When he isn’t presenting at conferences and user groups, he spends time with his wife Melissa and son Tristan.
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