Agile Open Northwest

Agile Alliance is a nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting the concepts of Agile software development as outlined in the Agile Manifesto. With nearly 47,000 members and subscribers around the globe, Agile Alliance is driven by the principles of Agile methodologies and the value delivered to developers, organizations and end users. Agile Alliance organizes and supports events to bring the Agile community together on a global scale.

Agile Panache helps you gain not just the appearance but the benefits of agility. We provide guidance and expertise to leadership and teams to make the necessary mind shifts, role shifts, and operational shifts. Complementing this organizational focus, Agile Panache brings leading- edge expertise in software engineering and deployment practices, coupled with a deep understanding of legacy systems and architectures. Agile Panache is proud to be based in the Pacific Northwest. We look forward to learning how we can help you thrive in today’s fast-paced business environments.

AIM Consulting is an award-winning industry leader in technology consulting and solutions delivery. We solve business critical challenges for our clients, as we are uniquely positioned to help our partners delight customers, empower employees and drive disruptive and impactful innovation. Founded in 2006 with offices in Seattle, Minneapolis, Denver, Houston, and Chicago we are ranked among the fastest growing private companies and the best companies to work due to a long track record of success with our partners and consultants. Our flexible engagement model allows us to deliver on expectations, execute on roadmaps and drive technology initiatives. In addition, we are known for our deep bench and powerful network in delivering subject matter expertise with bleeding edge technologies.

Apex Learning is a digital curriculum company powered by smart people passionate about learning and motivated by results. We create award winning educational software guided by the Agile methodologies principles, mainly employing the Scrum framework. An industry leader with deep expertise in digital instruction, Apex Learning works closely with school districts across the country to implement proven solutions that increase on-time graduation rates and create opportunities for student success in school and beyond. The company is driven by the understanding that supporting the needs of all students – from struggling to accelerated – strengthens schools and creates stronger communities, brighter futures and a more equitable world.

Parametric partners with advisors to build portfolios focused on what’s important to them and their clients. A leader in custom solutions, we help investors access efficient market exposures, solve implementation challenges, and design portfolios that respond to their evolving needs across both equity and fixed income asset classes. We also offer systematic alpha and alternative strategies to complement clients’ core holdings. Headquartered in Seattle and with offices in Minneapolis; Boston; New York City; Westport, Connecticut; and Sydney, Australia, Parametric has been providing investment advisory services since its formation in 1987.

Plaster Group is dedicated to partnering with our clients to identify Agile solutions that accelerate the delivery of business value and enable our partners to maintain or gain a competitive advantage in the marketplace. Whether you are just beginning the Agile journey, or are struggling to make existing Agile practices more effective, our experienced and knowledgeable consultants are passionate about identifying and implementing strategies for your success.

At Premera, we make healthcare work better. By focusing on improving our customers’ experience purposefully and serving their needs passionately, we make the process easier, less costly and more positive. Through empathy and advocacy, we change lives. Premera, a not-for-profit organization, is proud to serve more than 2 million people—from individuals and families to members of Fortune 100 employer groups. As the largest health plan in the Pacific Northwest, we provide comprehensive, tailored services to customers in Washington and Alaska that include innovative programs focused on wellness and prevention, disease management, and patient safety. We deliver these programs through health, life, vision, dental, stop-loss, disability, workforce wellness, and other related products and services. We’re committed to controlling rising medical costs while ensuring access to quality care for our members.

Qumulo is the leader in hybrid cloud file storage, providing real-time visibility, scale and control of your data across on-prem and cloud. Qumulo’s real-time analytics enable customers to understand their storage at a granular level, detect bottlenecks and accelerate performance. Built to scale across data center and cloud, Qumulo enables programmatic configuration and management of usage, capacity and performance. Qumulo’s innovative approach continuously delights customers with new capabilities, 100 percent usable capacity and direct access to experts. See storage made simple at qumulo.com.

Founded in 2001, Scrum Alliance® is the largest, most established and influential professional membership and certification organization in the Agile community. Scrum Alliance is a nonprofit association that has certified more than 750,000 practitioners worldwide. Its vision is to help “Transform the World of Work” with a mission to guide and inspire individuals, leaders, and organizations with practices, principles, and values that create workplaces that are joyful, prosperous, and sustainable. For more information, please visit scrumalliance.org.

Personal connection at global scale. Across the US, UK, and Canada, Slalom teams have autonomy to move fast and do what’s right for our clients, making us more personal and nimble than traditional consulting firms. We care deeply about helping you tackle your biggest agile adoption and transformation challenges and turn your vision into reality. With Slalom, it’s never just about the engagement at hand. It’s about building trust and enabling your long-term success. We meet you where you are on your transformation journey, embed our people with yours, and share our skills every step of the way.

Unify Consulting is a magnet firm for experts without arrogance. Across all our practices, we have the patience to understand each client’s culture, the curiosity to decipher business problems, and the technical chops to tailor people-powered, data-driven solutions that last. Bring on one of us and get the best of all of us. Within our Lean and Agile practice, we are respectfully disruptive, passionate about pragmatic innovation, and obsessed with delivering lasting outcomes to clients. Our compassionate candor is how Unify is reshaping the management consulting industry of the west coast. If you’re tired of canned approaches and recycled ideas, and want real-world insights tailored to your people, let’s talk.

Mary Panza

Mary has filled a variety of roles in software development teams during her career. She enjoys finding ways to bring efficiency and visibility to just about any process, using Agile methods even before she knew what Agile was. Mary has been a Certified Scrum Master since 2013 and currently works for a Seattle area financial services firm helping implementation teams build better relationships with their business partners and deliver value in an iterative fashion. In her spare time, she brings her process improvement skills to bear in her volunteer time with the Seattle Mountaineers, a local non-profit outdoor community.

Michael J. Tardiff

I love hearing what people want to do and helping them see the ways in which they might do it. In doing the work, we discover the work that needs to be done.

For the last decade that’s been my story: facilitator, trainer, coach, mentor, guide, storyteller, provocateur. Happiness for me is working with a team of people who are different from me; together, we serve others better than I could alone. Along the way, I’ve held all the software roles that begin with “p” and end with “manager.” Twice I was a director at a growing startup. My early years were spent technically writing.

I write things at FeelingAgile.com. Still available on iTunes is the “The Agile Coach” podcast. @mjt on Twitter is me being short. Invite me and I’ll talk, wherever and whenever you like. Agile Open Northwest’s annual Open Space brings me joy. And I find peace sailing the waters north of Seattle.

April Jefferson

April leads with empathy and courage while partnering with others to help unlock their full potential. She believes the path to authentic growth and change begins with invitation and a people-centered approach. She favors a blended mindset of agile, lean, design thinking, open space, and improvisation when engaging. April values connecting people to ownership of their needs and goals. You may find April coaching organizations, speaking at conferences, facilitating social change as a Design Action Lab partner, or mentoring youth.

Aki Namioka

Aki has been an Agile practitioner since 2002 and a Certified Scrum Master since 2010. She specializes in Agile coaching, and has helped several organizations transform into high-functioning Agile teams, using XP, Scrum, and Kanban. Aki’s background includes Boeing, IBM Global Services, and Cisco Systems. Aki enjoys learning from others in the Agile community, and is active in BeyondAgile and Agile Open Northwest.

Ian Savage

A quality evangelist, Ian Savage is a veteran software developer, quality engineer, and manager with experience in manufacturing, financial services, construction project estimating, and software security. For more than thirty years, he has worked to improve productivity and software quality through rigorous development methods and processes and now through the pragmatic application of agile methods.

He founded/co-founded various Pacific Northwest software and quality volunteer organizations. By day he works with the Quality Initiatives Team at McAfee focusing on metrics, static analysis, and quality systems. His present interests are software security, insourcing vs. outsourcing, and quality training. Like many others, Ian looks forward to retirement or Career 2.0.

Jeremy Lightsmith

Jeremy Lightsmith spends most of his time and energy building highly performant software development teams.

A seasoned agile coach, trainer, and 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.

Find Jeremy at http://jeremylightsmith.com or @lightsmith.

Michael J. Tardiff

I love hearing what people want to do and helping them see the ways in which they might do it. In doing the work, we discover the work that needs to be done.

For the last decade that’s been my story: facilitator, trainer, coach, mentor, guide, storyteller, provocateur. Happiness for me is working with a team of people who are different from me; together, we serve others better than I could alone. Along the way, I’ve held all the software roles that begin with “p” and end with “manager.” Twice I was a director at a growing startup. My early years were spent technically writing.

I write things at FeelingAgile.com. Still available on iTunes is the “The Agile Coach” podcast. @mjt on Twitter is me being short. Invite me and I’ll talk, wherever and whenever you like. Agile Open Northwest’s annual Open Space brings me joy. And I find peace sailing the waters north of Seattle.

Nora Beyerle

I journeyed into technology via a music education. Working in the software industry since 2000, I’ve explored responsibilities of business analysis, project management, and people management. It was the agile values and principles that resonated strongest with me, and I have since focused on coaching agile development teams and championing individuals. I appreciate all the learning opportunities within our agile community of practice! I enjoy volunteering at AgilePDX, and now joining Agile Open Northwest. Additionally I am looking forward to further collaborate with Future of Work communities. I believe that people can change the world, and that we can achieve this by being curious, open, and kind.

I hesitantly tweet at @sunhiltb.

Troy Frever

Troy Frever discovered XP in 2000, after two decades as a professional software developer. Since then he has been an Extreme Programmer and Coach for a number of companies in the Seattle area, including Smilebox, Aviarc, RealNetworks, and more. He was recenlty co-founder and CTO of Blok24, and is currently having a grand time as VP of Engineering at LiquidPlanner. When he’s not writing unit tests or refactoring mercilessly, Troy enjoys backpacking and skiing with his family and playing Ultimate Frisbee. Troy is also a former organizer of the Seattle Extreme Programming Users Group (SXPUG) and a co-founder of Seattle’s Beyond Agile user group.