Moderator: John Strickler, JiT Technologies

Jon Strickler has focused on business strategy, process improvement, and applying technology to business throughout his over 20 year career helping local and global clients and partners. He has led management and technology professional services organizations at the big 5, large companies, startup technology companies, boutique firms and as an independent consultant. Experience includes implementing agile, lean and six sigma concepts in manufacturing, service, and software development companies.  His experience spans customers in the US, Mexico and Europe. His leadership and management skills were honed in the Corps of Engineers while serving in the US and Korea. Jon holds a Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering from West Point and a MBA emphasizing Engineering Management from the University of Missouri, Rolla.

Panelists:

Grace Goerdel, Product Manager, Graebel

Grace has over 25 years experience in Business Analysis, Project Management, and Process Improvement working on technology development projects for clients in North America, Europe, and APAC.  Grace joined Graebel, Inc. in early 2007 as Global Process Leader and has focused on developing the Product Manager / Business Analyst role within the Agile environment.  Prior roles include Director, Client Technologies for SIRVA where she was responsible for Product and Project Management across the Enterprise and Director for Kenan Systems where she mentored Business Analysts, Project Managers, and Program Managers in areas of improved process, requirements gathering, and client interaction.  Grace is still finding new ways to improve upon the Product Management / Business Analysis role within Agile for her organization and enjoys the open communication and rapid delivery of the Agile model.

Greg Haynie, Vice President – Application and Database Development, Health Grades, Inc.

Greg Haynie joined Health Grades in September 2006 where they began to implement agile practices in late 2007.  He is responsible for overseeing the development and enhancement of the Company’s eCommerce applications and data.  Previously, he was the Chief Information Officer for Alta Colleges, Inc., responsible for overseeing the information technology infrastructure for the Company.  Prior to that, he was employed by GE Medical Systems Healthcare Solutions as the Vice President – Information Systems, where he was responsible for the development, deployment and support of clinical decision support products.  Mr. Haynie has a BA in Math, Computer Science and Psychology from Augustana College.

Alicia Yanik – Project Manager

Alicia Yanik has over ten years experience managing software development projects.  Since 2004, she has focused on agile development and has led scrum implementations inside small and medium sized organizations including eBags.com, Fiserv ISS and aQuantive (a division of Microsoft). Her passion includes helping teams achieve success through the adoption of agile development practices.   Alicia is a certified Scrum Master and an Advanced Scrum Master. 

Von Rhea, Director, Corporate Express

Von Rhea has helped transition to agile at Corporate Express (CE), a large office products supplier with $4.9B in sales operating across 39 distribution centers in North America. He has led development at CE since 1998 and before that worked at Freddie Mac, and Booz-Allen and Hamilton. CE made the decision to pilot Scrum on a development effort in 2005 and has since worked toward transitioning all core development to the Scrum methodology. He is a Certified ScrumMaster Practitioner and a member of the Executive Agile Consortium. He presented last year at the Agile 2007 Conference in DC on the topic of Introducing Agile to Large Organizations.