Mary Poppendieck

Mary Poppendieck has been in the Information Technology industry for twenty five years. She has managed solutions for companies in several disciplines, including supply chain management, manufacturing systems, and digital media. As a seasoned leader in both operations and new product development, she provides a business perspective to software development problems. As Information Systems Manager in a video tape manufacturing plant, Poppendieck first encountered the Toyota Production System, which later became known as Lean Production. She implemented one of the first Just-in-Time systems in 3M, resulting in dramatic improvements in the plant's performance.
Today Poppendieck is Managing Director of AgileAlliance and is a Senior Cutter Consortium Consultant. A popular writer and speaker, Poppendieck’s tutorials on managing software development offer a fresh perspective on project management. Her book Lean Software Development: An Agile Toolkit, was published by Addison Wesley in May, 2003. website

Martin Fowler

Chief Scientist at ThoughtWorks Martin Fowler has written five books on software development: Analysis Patterns, UML Distilled, Refactoring, Planning Extreme Programming, Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture. website

Tom Gilb

Tom Gilb was born in Pasadena in 1940, emigrated to London 1956, and to Norway 1958, where he joined IBM for 5 years, and where he resides when not traveling. He has mainly worked within the software engineering community, but since 1983 with Corporate Top Management problems, and 1988 with large-scale systems engineering. He is an independent teacher, consultant and writer. He has published eight books, including the early coining of the term "Software Metrics" (1976) which is the basis for SEI CMM Level 4. He wrote "Principles of Software Engineering Management" (1988, now in 13th printing), and "Software Inspection" (1993). Both titles are really systems engineering books in software disguise. His pro-bono systems engineering activities include several weeks a year for US DoD and Norwegian DoD, and Environmental (EPA) and Third-World Aid charities and organizations. A new Agile Evo paper by Tom just appeared Sept 2003. website

Tom Ayerst

Tom has been building software systems for 15 years, as a member of, a leader of and a manager of small to medium sized teams doing both in house and product development. He has been practicing Agile techniques (with more and less success) for some time and is currently working at a London Investment Bank.

Tim Bacon

Tim has been writing software professionally for over 10 years in locations ranging from Switzerland to Slough. He is a self-confessed 'people person' and a passionate advocate of agile processes, software craftsmanship, and ExtremeProgramming. Tim was a speaker at XpDay, and XpDay2, and is currently working as a consultant for ThoughtWorks.

Keith Braithwaite

Keith Braithwaite began his programming career writing compilers, moved on to wireless network planning, distributed systems for finance houses, and then the "e-commerce" boom. After the bubble burst he worked on applications and OS extensions for mobile phones, and is now working at WDS Global on the server side of mobile device management. He learned about XP from the c2 wiki, and was one of the earliest adopters of XP in the UK. He has helped organisations throughout the UK learn about and gain the benefits of XP, and is a frequent speaker on XP, agile methods and object-orientation.

Rachel Davies

Rachel Davies has worked in software development since 1987, in a variety of roles from developer to manager. Rachel is interested finding ways to help teams work more effectively to achieve their goals.
To try XP for herself, she joined the team at Connextra in 2000 where she gained solid XP experience. Rachel has presented reports and workshops at international conferences on software process: OT2002, OT2003, XP2001, XP2002, XP2003 and ADC2003. A member of the DSDM-XP task group, Certified ScrumMaster and recently elected to the board of directors of the Agile Alliance. Rachel is actively involved with the XP Developer community in London, as an Extreme Tuesday Club regular. Rachel is also one of the XP Day organisers.
Now working for Amarinda, Rachel offers training in agile techniques and workshop facilitation services.

Barry Fazackerley

Barry Fazackerley is Chairman of the (DSDM Consortium and Principal Consultant at Xansa, a company that transforms the business capability of its clients and operates in the UK, USA, continental Europe, India and Asia Pacific. Barry has been involved with DSDM since its inception in 1994. He has been a member of the DSDM Board of Directors since 1998 and was elected Chairman in 2001. He is an accredited DSDM Practitioner, Trainer, Examiner and Certified Facilitator and Assessor. He has had many papers published on various Application Development topics including DSDM, JAD and Offshore Development. He has spoken at several leading conferences representing DSDM and is a strong supporter and signatory of the Agile Alliance. Furthermore he has been a key architect in strengthening DSDM's profile as an agile approach. Within Xansa, Barry has implemented DSDM for major organisations in Europe and North America transforming the organisations' delivery capability. He is a member of the UK Institute of Directors.

David Leigh-Fellows

David Leigh-Fellows is a software architect and technical solutions leader for the UK's biggest internet bank. He has run half a dozen XP software projects since he came across Kent Beck three years ago. Dave has 15 years experience of software development and is a test driven everything convert.

Alan Francis

In ten years, Alan's delivered software that delivers junk mail, controls dams, produces DVDs and Digital TV and lets you buy beer in Wetherspoons pubs. Since he discovered XP, he has talked about it, presented papers and panels on it, taught courses on how to do it, and occasionally written software using it. He has mentored for ObjectMentor and eXoftware and now thinks for ThoughtWorks (and is uncomfortable talking about himself in the third person)

Thomas Granier

Thomas Garnier is an iteration manager with ThoughtWorks.

Sean Hanly

Seán co-founded eXoftware in May of 2000. As head of eXoftware's XP Training and Mentoring, Seán has trained and mentored developers at companies such as Philips (Netherlands), BBC (UK), Logica, IONA and AIB. He has spoken at many software development industry events like the Irish Software Association's XP Evening, Northern Ireland Momentum XP Day and ITAG's XP Night. He regularly speaks at the Irish XP SIGs and contributes to the Irish XP Newsletter.
He has kept his XP development and mentoring skills sharp by contributing his expertise on eXoftware's bespoke development work. Seán is a master developer, with wide-ranging technology and business skills that has taken him all over the United States, England and Australia. He has Team Lead many projects including AirTouch, BT Cell Net and Swiss Telecom, and became one of the youngest Principals at Amercian Management Systems. Sean currently lives in Dublin and is constantly exploring new ideas around developing like expressive objects, interaction design, and ideas on software craftsmanship. He holds a Honours B. Comm and a Honours MSc in Information Technology from University College Galway.

Dave Kirby

Dave runs a coaching practice under the name of The Developers' Coach, helping development teams and IT professionals to work more effectively. Before training as a life coach Dave worked as in the software development industry for twenty years, including running a successful XP team.
His dream is of a world without deathmarch projects, where developers can work together in teams that are effective, efficient, flexible and fun; where the joy of programming is not bludgeoned out of them by impossible schedules and toxic teams; and where software companies get high quality software that does what the users want, in a timescale that the managers want.

Olivier Lafontan

Olivier Lafontan has spent the last six years working in programme/project management, specializing on Customer Relationship Management business aspects. He has alternated roles from both "Technology" and "Business" sides of the fence in companies such as BT, Lexmark, Unipart and Freesbee.
Olivier currently works for Egg plc and has been using the XP Game designed by Vera Peeters and Pascal VanCauwenberghe as a tool to aid the Agile transformation egg organisation has undertaken.

Tim Mackinnon

Tim has been programming with objects for 15 years, however it was when he heard Kent Beck describe Extreme Programming at OOPSLA 98 and again at OT99 that he found a process that balances quality, delivery and happiness. Tim was a member of the team that created UML Modeler for VisualAge Smalltalk, he has also worked at Dashboards Software where he pioneered their use of Extreme Programming. He then built up the XP team at Connextra and was responsible for techniques such as Mock Objects and Heartbeat retrospectives. He is now a senior developer at ThoughtWorks where he is mentoring teams on XP and Retrospectives.

Chris Matts

Chris Matts works for ThoughtWorks in London as a Business Coach. He works with clients on developing business value statements for projects. Chris has been a business analyst focused on trading and risk management since 1995.

Ivan Moore

Ivan Moore works for ThoughtWorks in England, helping people deliver software using Agile methods. He has (co)authored papers published at OOPSLA, TOOLS, XP, XPUnivers conferences, reviewed papers for OOPSLA and TOPLAS and co-edited a book on Prototype-Based Object-Oriented Programming.
He is known for two open source projects, Jester (a mutation testing tool for JUnit tests) and MockMaker (for automatically creating Mock Objects).

Joseph Pelrine

Joseph Pelrine is CTO of MetaProg, a company devoted to increasing the quality of software and its development process, and is one of Europe's leading experts on eXtreme Programming. He has had a successful career as software developer, project manager and consultant, and has spoken about it at such diverse places as IBM, OOPSLA and the Chaos Computer Club. Having survived working with Kent Beck, he currently works with Dave Simmons on and in SmallScript when he's not helping his clients solve their problems.

Vera Peeters

Vera Peeters is an independent consultant. She runs her own company TRYX. She has more than 13 years experience in developing software systems, using different OO languages, such as C++ and Java, and this in high-technological environments. She has been exploring the eXtreme Programming practices for several years, and she currently spends most of her time coaching companies in transitioning their way of working. She focuses on the change from structural to OO development, on OO design, and on process changes (towards agility).
Vera Peeters has presented workshops at XP2001, XPUniverse OT2002 and OT2003. She developed the XP Game toghether with PascalVanCauwenberghe, and is the co-organizer of the Belgian XP User Group Meetings. She's in the organizing commitee of the Benelux XPDay and the Javapolis 2003 conference.

Duncan Pierce

I have a PhD in "Foundations of Software Reuse", and Bachelors and Masters degrees from Southampton University and Oxford University, and have previously worked as a System Architect for a logistics software company, a Senior XP Developer for a well-known UK XP pioneer, and a Senior XP and J2EE Consultant for a consultancy.
I co-founded Amarinda. We take a holistic view of software process optimization in which improvements in tools, processes, developer and manager skills and technologies all play a part. By instituting a series of low-risk, incremental improvements we can unblock struggling organizations and get them running at full speed. To achieve this, we offer a combination of health checks, recommendations for change, custom-written training (if needed), team coaching and even follow-up support.
This year I am Conference Chair for the XPDay conference, the UK's own XP/Agile conference, organized by the Extreme Tuesday Club. A good place to find me and the XTC regulars is the Old Bank of England pub on Fleet Street most Tuesday evenings.
Along with PaulSimmons, I developed the RoboCodeWorkshop - a chance to try the XP process while creating mayhem in a simulated arena.

Andy Pols

Andy Pols is founder of Pols Consulting, where he is responsible for training, and mentoring in project management, use cases and agile software development. He cares about people, projects and getting quality software out the door. That¹s why he practices agile software development whenever he can. He is a member of the Agile Alliance and an associate member of Cockburn and Associates - an international consortium of software professionals, led by Alistair Cockburn.

David Putman

David's role as a Senior Mentor for the Irish training and mentoring company, eXoftware, takes him to many software development organisations and he has acted as an advisor on software development to companies in three continents. His work continues to give him interesting and practical examples of all kinds of management and software development issues. An attendee of the 6th XP Immersion in Chicago David has since regularly presented papers and tutorials on the management and practice of software development at national and international events, the most recent being XP2003 in Genoa. He also currently writes the "Models and Methodologies" column for "Application Development Advisor" magazine and has had articles published in other publications including the Cutter IT Journal.
His main interests are learning organisations, the management of software development projects and how to make work satisfying to all those involved.

Mike Roberts

Mike Roberts has been professionally developing software for the last 3 years (and for fun a lot longer!), mostly in Java but switching to .NET since the beginning of 2003. Mike's spent a lot of time looking at build and deployment processes, and is always interested how best to streamline such areas in order to better enable agile software development. Mike has been working for ThoughtWorks in London (and Boston) since May 2002.

Owen Rogers

Owen is a XP developer/coach/evangelist. He works for ThoughtWorks in London doing Agile development in Java and .NET. Owen is involved in a slew of open source projects, many geared towards tools for facilitating XP development practices.

Paul Simmons

Paul has created software commercially since 1987 in a variety of industry sectors,retail banking, insurance, pharmaceuticals and investment banking. He has formal training in methodologies such as Jackson structured programming, Syntropy and object orientation. He has practised Extreme Programming since 1998 and is a keen advocate of teamsmanship. He currently enjoys introducing agile process (XP) to software engineering in a demanding investment bank environment.Paul is also one of the XP Day organisers.

Rob Styles

Rob Styles is a geek working in Internet technologies. During the dotcom boom he built reference sites for Lotus and IBM before moving to Egg plc which, as one of the leading dotcom successes, has offered plenty of challenge.Rob's current role in Egg is in the development and roll-out of an enterprise-scale Agile engineering process.

Pascal Van Cauwenberghe

Pascal Van Cauwenberghe is an independent consultant. With his company NAYIMA he focuses on project management and software process improvement. He uses agile methods, theory of constraints, lean development, and lots of other tools and techniques. Whatever works. He is one of the organizers of the Belgian XP group and has organized sessions at several seminars and conferences, like XP2001, XP Universe 2001, OT2002, Javapolis 2002 and OT2003. He designed the XP Game simulation together with VeraPeeters

Richard Watt

Richard has been around for a while. He's a slow starter, to be honest. Richard has consulted on a number of technologies in a number of business domains, and wasn't wholly impressed. On the verge of trying something completely different, he was invited to join a .com with nothing to gain but the promise of untold wealth. The money wasn't forthcoming but what he did gain was an introduction to Extreme Programming and with that the chance to imagine a world where development could be based on professional people working together towards a common goal. Imagine that.
In the last three years Richard has spent a large part of his time coaching and mentoring teams in XP and other Agile development methods, and more recently working on ideas around the place and importance of Interaction Design and Usability practices in the agile development lifecycle.
Oh, and the development of something called "Agile Enablement Patterns" with fellow Thoughtworker Dan North, and lastly a novel approach to iteration planning under the banner of "Acceptance Test Driven Development".

Nancy Van Schooenderwoert

Nancy has created software in both commercial and defense applications for 20 years covering aerospace, process control, medical devices, and scientific instruments. Dysfunctional teams being a tougher problem than any software challenge, she became interested in finding agile ways for a team to build software. As technical lead for an embedded commercial team, she introduced them to XP, playing the roles of Coach, Tracker, Facilitator, and Architect! They began pioneering team use of agile embedded practices, using 'home brew' tools. XP Embedded Co. was founded to carry on the development of extreme embedded practices, and to coachothers in them. Nancy Van Schooenderwoert is Founder, Extreme Programmer and Coach at XP Embedded Co. in USA. . Contact Nancy at: nancyv@xp-embedded.com

Joe Walnes

Joe Walnes is a consultant for ThoughtWorks in London, a systems integration company that specializes in Agile development techniques for the enterprise.
Joe's particular areas of expertise lie in:
* XP coaching for developers.
* Object oriented and component oriented design techniques to help system evolution.
* Simplifying J2EE and .NET development with open source.
In his (little) spare time, Joe works on Open Source projects, many of which can be found at www.opensymphony.com and www.codehaus.org.

Rob Westgeest

Rob has been working in IT for about 12 years. He has created software and taught and coached projects and individuals in analysis, design, programming and development methods. Recently he raised a small company called Agidem that focuses on coaching software development teams in applying agile practices

Please note the organisers reserve the right to make changes to the programme and speakers, or to cancel sessions if enrollment criteria are not met or when conditions beyond our control prevail.