Kelly L. Allan is a Senior Associate of Kelly Allan Associates, Ltd., a company with 24+ associates that has been in business since 1974. Kelly has published articles, commentary and letters in a variety of journals, including Business First, Fast Company, Personnel Journal, Marketing News, Business Marketing Association News, Nature Conservancy, Harvard Business Review, and The Wall Street Journal. Has has been featured in Fast Company, The Columbus Dispatch, Sam's Club The Source, Tanning Trends, Quality Progress, The Masterful Coaching Fieldbook, The Knowing-Doing Gap, and Abolishing Performance Appraisals.

In 1999, poor health forced Peter Scholtes (The Team Handbook, and The Leader's Handbook) to retire from conducting seminars and consulting. Peter asked Kelly to continue the seminars and consulting practice. Scholtes says, "There is much to appreciate about Kelly. His exceptional ability to combine theory with real world implementations is perhaps what clients appreciate the most."

In 2004 Kelly was 1 of only 12 people selected by the W. Edwards Deming Institute to conduct Dr. Deming's famous "Four Day Seminars." Kelly is also a member of AMA and ASQ

Ben Blanquera is the Vice President of Information Services for Progressive Medical, Inc . In his role Ben is responsible for project/portfolio management, application development, business intelligence, and business analysis. He is currently leading a wide-ranging initiative to transform Progressive’s IS group to Agile. The first pilot effort is completed successfully and now other teams are coming on-board. Progressive Medical, Inc. is a nationwide, managed care and health care cost containment company. It coordinates care for workers' compensation, auto-no-fault and personal injury protection cases. Progressive Medical is an Inc. 500 Hall of Fame company. Ben is also the founder of TechLife Columbus – a “grassroots tribe” to build connectivity and a culture of innovation and entrepreneurship in Central Ohio. Ben also writes a blog chronicling the Columbus Tech community – www.columbustech.blogspot.com

Huntington National Bank, Nationwide Insurance, Progressive Medical, and Worthington Industries

Richie Diers is the CTO of Northwoods, the developers of Compass Software. Northwoods is a 100-person, privately-held software product and professional services company located in Dublin, Ohio. Northwoods markets its products and services across the nation to state and county Human Services agencies. As Chief Nerd, Richie is responsible for setting the technical vision, strategy, and direction of Northwoods’ product offerings. He also applies his 25 years of sometimes painful experience to lead the team responsible for management of Northwoods network infrastructure and product development systems. He recently oversaw an enterprise-wide, year-long transformation to Agile, affecting each and every department and employee at Northwoods. Richie is currently leading the technical operations of a newly spun-up ‘SkunkWorks’ team at Northwoods. As you read this, he and his team are drowning in emerging mobile platforms and throwing darts at various development technologies.

Robert J. Richardson Jr. joined Worthington Industries in January of 2006 as Chief Information Officer. Since joining Worthington he has led several key efforts including a major ERP implementation of an integrated shop to the shop floor level, Disaster Recovery, and Business Intelligence and Analytics. Richardson also serves on the Oracle Services Strategy Advisory Committee providing advice and leadership surrounding customer facing support and has served as a member of the Audit Committee for the State of Ohio since November of 2009. Before joining Worthington, Richardson worked at Ashland Incorporated for nearly 9 years, in various IT management roles encompassing various aspects of the IT and business functions. In 2004, he was named as IT Director – Global Architecture & Standards, which included IT Strategy and Performance Management. Previous to this role, he served as IT Director - Computing Services Center, providing a variety of end user support services via a shared services structure to the organization. Before joining Ashland, Richardson was employed by Alkon Corporation. For over twelve years he worked in varying business roles (technology and customer facing) supporting the manufacturing solutions, customer support, system implementation, software development, system design, technical sales, project management and product management. Richardson earned his Bachelor of Science degree from Franklin University in Electronics Engineering Technology with a minor in Computer Science in 1985. He is married with two children and resides in Blacklick, Ohio.

Jeff Dennes, a nationally recognized leader in the online, mobile, and payments industry, has joined Huntington (NASDAQ: HBAN; www.huntington.com) as Senior Vice President, Chief Digital Officer. With nearly 20 years of experience in online and mobile services innovation, Dennes will lead Huntington’s efforts to expand its online banking platform with an increased focus on mobile and iTouch banking. Jeff’s teams support Huntington’s online, mobile, ATM and future digital channels by developing strategy and supporting the day to day operations. Jeff has been recognized as a leader in the mobile space for the past several years.
Prior to joining Huntington, Dennes managed award-winning online and mobile banking and payment services at USAA Federal Savings Bank. Dennes led the development and implementation of a ground-breaking Remote Deposit Capture feature that allows banking customers to take a photo of a check and make a deposit using their mobile device. Dennes’ extensive background also includes experience in integrated banking, investments and insurance self-service strategies and solutions. He was recently recognized as one of the “Elite 8 in Banking Technology” by Banking Technology News, and was also recognized by American Banker as the number five Innovator of the Year in 2009. Dennes earned his bachelor's degree in Management from Texas State University in San Marcus, TX.

Tim Lyons is Vice President of the Nationwide Application Development Center, a department focused on strategic application development delivery and application development practices for the Nationwide Enterprise. The Nationwide Application Center consists of over 25 development lines leveraging Agile and Lean concepts. The Nationwide Application Development Center is one of the first enterprise scale Agile departments to achieve CMMI Level III. Tim has over 15 years of senior IT leadership experience. He currently serves on the IBM Rational Board of Advisors which is an external group advising IBM on application development strategies and trends. Mr. Lyons received a B.S. in economics and business administration from Otterbein College. Nationwide, based in Columbus Ohio, has over 33,000 employees and ranks #118 on the Fortune 500 list with 2010 total revenue of $20.3 billion.

John Huston is an experienced IT leader, generalist and agilist with over 20 years of experience in the field. His passion for learning and coaching has led him to a variety of leadership roles, including Application Development, Enterprise Architecture, Quality, and Operations/Infrastructure. He has led the effort to deploy agile methods at the enterprise and team level. As a member of Pillar Technology's executive team, John balances his coaching engagements with his passion for the human development aspects of agile teams and is currently responsible for Talent, Learning and Development within Pillar.

Jon Stahl co-founded LeanDog after 18 years of experience providing IT leadership in both Fortune 500 and start up organizations. His passion is eliminating waste, optimizing the performance of IT teams and helping organizations become Lean and Agile. He openly shares his learnings at conferences and meet-ups, most recently coaching on Agile From the Top Down, Kanban and A3. LeanDog is known for Agile Transformation coaching, training, and software delivery. They also serve the community by providing a home for many monthly user group meetings and they co-organize events in Cleveland such as GiveCamps, Ignites, Startup Weekends, Code Retreats, Cleveland Agile Meet Up, Cleveland Ruby Meet Up and Great Lakes Ruby Bash.

Gene Johnson helps clients become nimble, reliable and efficient by empowering their teams and transforming their organizations. His clients include Nationwide Insurance, UBS, KeyCorp, PNC, Gap, and Standard & Poor’s. Gene is currently onsite with TheStreet.com in NYC instilling Agile and Lean values. He has 28 years of experience in software development and has presented both nationally and locally, including an appearance on “The Next Wave” television series hosted by Leonard Nimoy. Gene is certified as a ScrumMaster and is founding member of the PMI’s Agile Formation Steering Committee. He earned a Masters in Systems Engineering from Wright State University and resides in a northern suburb of Columbus, Ohio with his wife and daughter.

Michael Jones has more than 10 years of experience in the IT industry including developer, analyst, and leadership roles. He is currently a Manager, IT Applications at Nationwide and leads Agile development teams focused on building and enhancing Nationwide Financial websites. Prior to NF, Michael led the team that created Nationwide’s Customer Information Management application. He has the Professional Scrum Master certification and a Master of Business Administration from Ohio State University.

Organizations don't invest their time, energy and money to "be agile". They expect to see tangible improvements in productivity, predictability, quality, responsiveness, customer and employee satisfaction. They expect results. we'll discuss 7 metrics to drive improvement in your organization. For each, we'll show you how to calculate and interpret them; we'll discuss abuse cases that can have undesired effects and how to avoid those. Additionally, we'll discuss the applicability of each metric. Is it useful for benchmarking? Driving behavior? Correlation with leading indicators? Planning?

The aim of this session is to drive discussion on how to create and sustain a culture of measurement in organizations transitioning to Agile. We will leverage approximately 45 minutes worth of presentation material to instigate questions and comments that yield an ongoing conversation with and amongst participants.

Rather than a typical presentation followed by Q&A, we will engage the audience continuously by asking questions of the audience, and soliciting comments. We will keep the discussion moving by time-boxing each area of measurement (see learning objectives) up to 10 minutes.

Isaac Montgomery is an Agile Coach and Consultant with Rally Software. His experience includes over 15 years of project leadership, management and consulting for software development organizations in the military, energy, financial services and medical solutions industries.

Isaac's passion is focused on guiding IT organizations through their transformation from a rigid, bureaucratic cost center to a nimble, high performing value delivery engine by harnessing the power and simplicity of empowered Agile teams, and incorporating Lean principles in the organization’s management systems.

Isaac enjoys collaborating with his clients and colleagues; and experimenting with innovative approaches to increasing the value, flexibility and joy involved in delivering exceptional solutions.

Isaac is a certified PMP and Scrum Master / Practitioner. He holds a B.S. in Information Management and a Masters in Business Administration. In his free time you will find Isaac at the park with his twin sons or on the golf course destroying his self-esteem.

Ugly teams are ones that break down and fail - regardless of whether they're implementing Agile or about managing offshore teams. In the rush to be faster, better, cheaper, or super-innovative, it's possible to become trapped in organizational dysfunction, even to the extent whereby good medicine won't work. What are common sources of dysfunction today? How do you manage these difficult conversations?

In this presentation, Michael Mah will show examples of companies that have overcome barriers to success, plus a few who didn't. You'll learn how systems theory plays a role in software development, why complex communication and expert thinking are the penultimate challenges facing knowledge workers today, and how accurate and reliable metrics are key to revealing patterns so that managers can find the right path through their software development jungle.

As managing partner at QSM Associates Inc. based in Massachusetts, Michael Mah teaches, writes, and consults with technology companies on estimating and managing software projects, whether in-house, offshore, waterfall, or agile. He is the director of the Benchmarking Practice at the Cutter Consortium, a Boston-based IT think-tank, and served as past editor of the IT Metrics Strategies publication. With over 25 years of experience, Michael and his partners at QSM have derived productivity patterns for thousands of projects collected worldwide across engineering and business applications. His current work examines time- pressure dynamics of teams, and its role in project success and failure. His background is in physics and electrical engineering, and he is a mediator specializing in conflict resolution for technology projects. Michael lives in the mountains of western Massachusetts with his two children. He can be reached at www.qsma.com.

Are you a software radical? How successful are your attempts to affect and support positive change? Are you fighting for the right thing or wasting your time? In this mini-workshop we'll drawn on the group’s experience to develop a number of proven strategies and tactics successful agile guerrillas use to win the hearts and minds of their customers, teammates and management.

Viva La Revolucion!

David Laribee coaches the product development team at VersionOne. He’s logged 15 years of experience in designing and delivering software-intensive products and coaching teams toward quality and creativity. David is a frequent speaker at international events, co-organizer of the ALT.NET movement, early innovator in the Lean/Kanban community and was awarded a Microsoft Architecture MVP for 2007 and 2008. He writes about coaching teams, lightweight process and product design at laribee.com.

Todd Kaufman is a developer, leader, manager, and cheerleader of IT projects large and small. He has 15 years of experience in software development and has released production software to various clients using Agile techniques with languages like Java, Ruby, .NET, and everything in between. Todd has presented to passionate geeks like himself at a variety of user events and regional conferences, as his huge ego needs to be stoked on a regular basis. Todd is currently surrounded by passionate agilists and craftsmen at Pillar Technology.

Leon Gersing has been bringing value to clients large and small for over ten years, and has a passion for technology, art and community. He has experience using technologies ranging from ASP.Net and C++, to Objective-C, Ajax, and Actionscript – and of course, Ruby and Rails. A believer in building strong communities, Leon spends time presenting on a wide variety of development topics at events and user groups in the region. He loves nothing more than to be around other developers, working together to create something unique and fresh; something that has never been done before. He believes there is no challenge that can't be overcome with passion and creativity. He spends his spare time with his wife, two beautiful girls, two sweet kitties, and his ukulele.

Jon Kruger is an independent consultant in Columbus, OH where he provides technical leadership for software development projects. Jon has over 10 years experience in various different programming languages (mostly C#/.NET) and is always looking for ways to create better quality software and speed up the software development process. Jon is the creator of TDD Boot Camp, a comprehensive test-driven development training course in .NET (tddbootcamp.com). You can follow Jon on his blog (jonkruger.com) or on Twitter (twitter.com/jonkruger).

Jeff "Cheezy" Morgan has 24 years of experience in IT, holding various roles including Senior Developer, Manager of Application and Enterprise Architect, Director of Technology and most recently Chief Technology Officer.
He has been an evangelist for the Agile Software Development movement since 2003 and is a frequent speaker at Agile focused organizations, conferences, and technical events. He has taught numerous courses on technical practices designed to enable software developers to produce higher quality applications. He has also spoken internationally at conferences on topics related to open source software development. In early 2004 he founded the company that is now called LeanDog and since then has spent the majority of his time coaching teams and companies in the adoption of Agile methods.
He is passionate about the Cleveland IT community and his company currently sponsors and hosts 6 technology group meetings each month in downtown Cleveland. His company also plans to sponsor GiveCamps to build and donate software to local non-profit organizations.

Jim Holmes is a Father. Husband. Geek. Veteran. Around 25 years IT experience. Co-author of “Windows Developer Power Tools.” Coffee Roaster. MVP for C#. Chief Cat Herder of the CodeMash Conference. Diabetic. Runner. Liked 5th grade so much he did it twice. One-time setter, middle blocker, and weakside hitter. Blogger FrazzledDad.com. Director of Quality at Telligent, makers of neat social software. Big fan of naps.

Tim Wingfield has been involved in web design and development for over 12 years and is a Software Craftsman with Pillar Technology, a consultancy focused on agile software development and business transformation in Ohio, Michigan, and the Southeast. Tim has a wide range of knowledge in .Net but focuses on the user interface and the user experience in ASP.Net applications. Recently he has put more time into practicing lean development processes and how to more efficiently create quality software. He also has a budding love affair with Ruby, and has done a cannonball into the Rails pool. In what time is left over, Tim enjoys coaching his sons’ hockey teams, playing a little hockey himself, and traveling with his family.

Let's assume that we have a large and shiny nail. What is the best tool for the nail? Hopefully, the answer is obvious to most of us. Now, let's assume that we have a development team and a "shining", promising, cool new agile development process/practice. Most likely the hammer will not help.

According to latest surveys, >70% of organizations adopt agile practices and stick with it. During the last 10 years, agile methods hurdled from nowhere to the peak, such rapid adoption demands new tools and practices.

Join us for a conversation on what concrete processes, principles, practices, and tools agile teams implement and use to deliver working software with focus based on the highest customer value.

Tim Hibner is the Manager of Application Development at Quick Solutions where he leads a large team of passionate geeks in agile software development. He has over 13 years of IT industry experience in software development in .Net and various web technologies. Tim has worked in the research and development industry as a product developer and user interface architect. Tim is actively involved in the Application Development and Agile community in Central Ohio.

Ryan Cromwell is a Coder, Agile Coach and Microsoft ALM MVP. He has over 10 years of experience as a software engineer, including expertise in next generation interactive applications with Windows Presentation Foundation and Silverlight. Ryan is committed to the continual improvement of development practices and techniques. His expertise and dedication has brought success to numerous projects, working with Marathon Oil Company, Speedway SuperAmerica LLC, FedEx-Kinkos, Lexis-Nexis, Reynolds & Reynolds, and more. Ryan is co-founder of the Cincy Clean Coders group and has led presentations on effective team development and various topics such as Agile, Scrum, WPF, WCF, Software Patterns, and Team Foundation Server. You can find Ryan at blog.cromwellhaus.com and on Twitter as @cromwellryan.

Nilanjan Raychaudhuri works as agile coach/developer/consultant for Pillar Technology Inc. (http://pillartechnology.com/). He previously worked as a senior developer with ThoughtWorks Inc. (www.thoughtWorks.com). He has managed and developed software solutions for more than 12 years and specializes in integrated multi-tiered web and server applications. He is known for hard work, well-tested code, and clean OO design. He believes in high-discipline agile methodologies, customer focus, simple tools applied elegantly, and continuous improvement. I have a passion for the elimination of duplication in design, code, data, and most of all – effort. Nilanjan writes software for a living. But since he enjoys creating things and solving problems, he also writes software in his pastime. He is currently working on scala-webmachine (restful resource framework). In the past, he worked on other open source projects like Panopticode, scala-inline and autotest4j. When not working on projects, he plays with functional programming. He is currently writing a book on Scala programming language called “Scala in Action” from Manning publication and runs a polyglot meetup group called "Columbus Polyglot meetup group" every month.

John Dages has worn a number of hats as a software consultant. With a professional background ranging from healthcare, education, and online gaming, he has always enjoyed discovering elegant solutions to complex problems. A fervent believer in the right tool for the job, he is continually learning new technologies and methodologies to deliver maximum value for custom software products.

John is the manager of the .NET practice at Quick Solutions.

Prior to joining Improving Enterprises, Barry Rogers co-founded Expede, Inc. in 1998, that later merged into Valtech Technologies, Inc. in early 1999. He helped grow the company from a 10 person start up to a publicly held, internationally known company of more than 1,000 employees. As SVP, Mr. Rogers was responsible for the North American Professional Services Business Unit. This included the responsibility for the leadership of the Software Delivery team, which consisted of more than 100 software engineers, and the Recruitment and Sales teams.

It doesn’t matter what point you’re at in your career, you need to understand some fundamentals about good leadership. If you’re well into your career you need to know how to get the most out of your teams. If you’re just starting then you need to learn what good leadership looks like – and how to help ensure you’re getting the leadership you and your colleagues need to succeed. In this session you’ll learn basic concepts about respect, responsibility, communication, and teamwork, based on experience drawn from Jim’s years of serving in the military, playing competitive sports, and working in a wide range of jobs.

Father. Husband. Geek. Veteran. Around 25 years IT experience. Co-author of “Windows Developer Power Tools.” Coffee Roaster. MVP for C#. Chief Cat Herder of the CodeMash Conference. Diabetic. Runner. Liked 5th grade so much he did it twice. One-time setter, middle blocker, and weakside hitter. Blogger FrazzledDad.com. Director of Quality at Telligent, makers of neat social software. Big fan of naps.

• Enterprise Value Modeling
• Value Stories
• Story Mapping
• Value Streams

• Portfolio Planning and the PMO
• Finance and
• Contracts

One rarely mentioned component of building a high performing team, is optimizing their work environment. For a collocated team, what is the best possible physical environment we can create to help the team reach the next level. Is it bigger tables? Is it better lighting? Is it more whiteboard space? Is it all of these? Also, how much of a difference does a team's physical surroundings make? I was recently given the opportunity to find out. In this talk, I will walk through the typical physical environment many teams deal with and provide insight into how to go about improving that space. I will not offer a one-size-fits-all solution. Instead, I will help you identify the variables in your environment and provide tools for you to use to optimize your own space.

Sean Heuer (CSM, CSP) began his technical career as a Java developer, but after discovering Scrum, he became a Certified ScrumMaster and has never looked back. Now, Sean is an Agile Coach/Evangelist on multiple projects for the Kroger Co., at its technical center in Blue Ash, Ohio. Sean leads the Agile Community within Kroger Co. Currently, he is co-leading the Agile Adoption Initiative in his organization. Sean has coached several project teams through their transition to Scrum and constantly challenges all stakeholders to continuously improve through Agile. He is now a Senior Consultant with Sogeti, where he is continuing his mission to help others improve, while diversifying his experience and growing as an Agile Coach.

Agile software development teams are meant to self-organize, collaborate with customers, and be cross-functional—but what exactly do those concepts mean? In this fun and interactive session, participate in a series of rapid games and simulations to explore how we interact with customers, deal with competition, and work (or don’t work) as a team.

In his role as Director of Learning Solutions at Improving Enterprises, Don McGreal is a hands-on agile consultant and instructor.

As a consultant and Scrum.org Professional Scrum Master II, he has fulfilled many roles while ensuring that the clients get the most from each engagement: developer, business analyst, and agile coach. As an instructor and Scrum.org Professional Scrum Trainer, he has authored and taught classes for thousands of software professionals around the globe, specializing in 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.com, a comprehensive collection of games and exercises for accelerating the adoption of agile principles.

You can read more about Don McGreal at improvingenterprises.com.

For continual value delivery, product stakeholders must have a shared understanding of product needs—and that requires a partnership. How do partners quickly gain a rich yet focused understanding of requirements in the backlog? How can they effectively plan and analyze backlog items so that the delivery team builds the right product, at the right time? Learn how to go beyond user stories and personas to engage partners in “structured conversations”. These conversations fuel daily work, enable backlog grooming, and provide an effective way to quickly yet comprehensively explore requirements and allocate them into delivery cycles.

EBG Consulting, Inc.’s Principal Consultant and Founder Ellen Gottesdiener helps business and technical teams collaborate to deliver products your customers value and need. Author of two acclaimed books Requirements by Collaboration and The Software Requirements Memory Jogger, Ellen works with global clients and speaks at industry conferences. As an agile coach, trainer, and contributor to the agile IIBA BABOK™ agile extension, Ellen is passionate about sharing the value of agile practices for planning and analysis, and the discipline of analysis for agile value delivery. She is co‐authoring a book with Mary Gorman on how to discover and explore product needs. Learn more from her articles, tweets and blog, free eNewsletter and find variety of useful practitioner resources on EBG’s web site. Contact Ellen at ellen@ebgconsulting.com.

Agile and Scrum techniques have typically shown impressive results compared with traditional project approaches. These techniques seek to minimize management processes, but does that mean that these are ad hoc and unstructured projects? Specifically, is a project managed with Agile/Scrum techniques less planned and managed than a project managed following traditional waterfall techniques? Does such a project run contrary to the standards found in the PMBOK? This presentation will show how Scrum projects can and do align with the PMBOK knowledge areas. It will share some of the lessons learned, tips, and tools associated with managing a Scrum project. Attendees will learn how textbook Scrum concepts have been applied in “real- world” projects. They will then be able to judge for themselves whether Agile/ Scrum is contrary to or consistent with the PMBOK.

Rick Ellis, PMP, CSM, is a Senior Project Manager with Information Control Corporation. He has 20 years experience in technology, primarily in management and project management roles. With ICC he has worked on large projects for Nationwide Insurance, Abbott Nutrition, Limited Brands, Cardinal Health, and Safe Auto Insurance Company. Prior to joining ICC he worked for JPMorgan Chase (and predecessor companies Bank One and Valley National Bank of Arizona), and as a consultant at Intel Corporation. Having worked extensively with waterfall methodologies, he made the transition to Agile in 2009, and became a Scrum Master in 2009. He holds a Master of Business Administration from the University of Arizona.