The Central Ohio Agile Association presents:

The Path to Agility

and featuring The Path to Craftsmanship

May 24 + 25, 2023
Columbus, Ohio

Speakers

Keynote Speakers

Featured Speakers

Speakers

Jennifer Bleen

Show Me the Money: Adding Profitability to the Agile Mix

Jennifer Bleen, MBA, PMP, ACP, PSMI, PSPO, PSD, PST brings a unique blend of technical expertise and business acumen to her clients. Throughout her 22-year career, Jennifer has successfully managed large-scale programs and led organizational change initiatives, enabling businesses to adapt and thrive in rapidly evolving environments. She has a deep understanding of corporate culture and leverages agile values and continuous learning to empower teams and individuals to reach their full potential. Her passion for conscious capitalism and sustainable enterprises shines through in all aspects of her work.

As the founder of Peer to Peer, LLC., Jennifer has created the E.V.O.L.V.E. RoadmapTM framework, a groundbreaking approach to leading digital transformations. Jennifer’s coaching and mentoring practice connects like-minded innovators, CEOs, and entrepreneurs, fostering a collaborative environment of growth and inspiration. She is a licensed partner with Applied Frameworks’  Software Profit StreamsTM helping clients increase the profitability of their software enable solutions as a trainer and profitability designer. Additionally, she serves as an Emeritus Board member of the Central Ohio Agile Association and active Entrepreneur Organization Accelerator Board Integration Chair.

Antoinette Coetzee

It's Not Only HOW You Say It ....

Antoinette has been part of the Agile movement since working with the pioneers in 1996. She spent several years as Agile team member developing software products. She became an Agile mentor in 2005, then started her Agile Team Coaching career with the Agile Coaching Institute in the US in 2009. Her affinity for coaching as a tool convinced her to start her training as professional coach in Organisational and Relationships System Coaching in 2012. She went on to certify as Enterprise Agile Coach in the first Enterprise Agile Coaching cohort in the US in 2014/15. Since then she has focused on growing agility across and at the enterprise level with a strong focus on leaders at all levels growing their inner agility. She believes change is at its most powerful and lasting when it is brought about by those inside an organisation and defines her work as the development and support of internal leaders to transform and develop their own organisations. Although coaching sits at the heart of achieving this objective, her years of Agile and Lean experience in many different industries and organizational levels helps cocreate new possibilities for organisations wanting to grow their agility.

Antoinette collaborates extensively with the front-runners in Agile coaching and leadership world-wide to train and develop Scrum Masters, Team Coaches, Enterprise Coaches and Agile Leaders. She is a coach of coaches, through training and mentoring, as well as one-on-one coaching. In line with that aim she often helps organisations set up internal coaching competencies. She loves her home continent, Africa, and is also very active in community initiatives to grow coaches and facilitators.

Her training as professional coach extends her repertoire to working with teams in non-Agile contexts. Her forte is changing leadership culture and growing high performance in leadership teams, including teams in conflict. She is a certified Leadership Circle Profile coach.

Antoinette is an accomplished speaker and regularly delivers talks and workshops on agility, leadership and transformation at local and international conferences.

Matt Eakin

Test Strategy: The Best Friend You Never Knew

Over 25 years ago Mr. Eakin left a career as City Planning to go into the world of IT. He hasn’t looked back since. His journey has covered roles in all aspects of the SDLC; from being a PO and Analyst, to a developer in more programming languages than he can count, to an Agile Coach, to covering nearly every testing role. This extensive experience has enabled Mr. Eakin to become an effective Test Strategist, Test Architect, Test Director and Manager. The last 10+ years have seen Mr. Eakin become an active Agile practitioner and coach. He has coached numerous teams on how to “become more agile” and has talked extensively on Testing Strategy, Gherkin Scripting, Behavior-Driven Development (BDD, my favorite subject), and ATDD (Acceptance Test Driven Development). 

Todd Hallowell

Breaking Bad Agile: Disrupting Frameworks that Constrain

Todd Hallowell is a rebel at heart and loves to push the boundaries on what is expected and accepted. He has been called a brilliant disruptor. He has learned the importance of disruption in an industry that preaches it but struggles to embrace it. He believes in principles over practices and chasing the value in every situation. He believes agility exists in us naturally; it is about getting back to our childlike sense of wonder, and curiosity.

He is an accomplished agilist with Insight Enterprises, with 10+ years experience across a variety of roles from Project Manager to Coach. Todd holds certifications in LCM, Scrum, M30, and IC Agile. Currently he is collaborating with Ron Quartel to design the first FAST training classes.

He is the creator of the growing blog Dr.Frankenagile’s Laboratory; a place to challenge the status quo and push boundaries on how we work and think.

Kyle Jenkins

What Is Your Working Genius?

From Blind Trust to Real Trust: Practical Steps for IT Teams

Kyle Jenkins is a full stack developer, avid video gamer, and senior consultant with Improving, a software development consulting and training company in Columbus, Ohio. He assists with organizing the DevOpsDays Columbus conference. While working directly with clients to accomplish projects, he always strives to improve the quality of code and life for the team.

Warner Moore

Navigating Security, Compliance, and SOC2 as a SaaS Company

Warner Moore is a strategic executive leader and manager with a
background in technology and information security. He has focused his
career in working with entrepreneurial growth organizations where
technology is their business and product. Within these organizations,
Warner has an accomplished record of building successful cybersecurity
programs and high performing teams who embrace DevOps culture and
practices.

As an international speaker, Warner has been invited to present to
university students, technology professionals, and business leaders in a
classroom setting as well as at conferences such as Startup Week,
CloudDevelop, Path to Agility,  InfoSec Summit, CodeMash, Security
BSides, DevOpsDays, and Abstractions.

Warner is passionate about culture, innovation, and community. His
commitment to these values is demonstrated through his work leading
organizations such as OLF Conference, LOPSA, and Toastmasters. The
culmination of this work is the founding of Tech Community Coalition in
2016, a non-profit organization whose mission is to enable the greater
tech community.

After building security and privacy capabilities for numerous
organizations across industries including healthtech, fintech, and
insuretech, Warner founded the cybersecurity strategy firm Gamma Force.
Through Gamma Force, Warner serves as a fractional executive (CISO and
CTO) and advises startups to scale them through concept and growth
phases

Brad Nelson

The Velocity Trap

Sustainability in Coaching at Scale: the Dilemma Between Burning Out and Missing Out

Brad Nelson is an industry-recognized product strategy and agility professional within Insight Consulting Services. His range of expertise brings people together to enhance Insight’s capabilities as a Solutions Integrator that partners with organizations to achieve their business goals. Brad has repeatedly demonstrated his ability to grow high-performing teams across domains and industries and has instructed countless people from kids to seasoned professionals. He is a creator of content marketing and offerings for Insight in Agile, DevOps, and Product. He co-hosts The Agile For Agilists Podcast, is an experienced public speaker, and has instructed countless people from children to seasoned professionals.

Tiffany Scott

Reboot Your Teams With Flow Metrics

Tiffany Scott is an Agile Coach and Scrum Master with Nationwide Mutual Insurance Company in Columbus, Ohio. Over the past ten years she has worked in the financial services, insurance, healthcare, transportation, and aviation industries in the Columbus, Ohio area in coaching, Scrum Master, and analysis roles. As an agile coach, Tiffany spends her time using interactive exercises to jump-start new Scrum Masters and infrastructure teams on their journey towards agility with a blend of Scrum and Kanban philosophies. Tiffany holds Professional Scrum Master (PSM I), Professional Scrum Product Owner (PSPO), Professional Scrum with Kanban (PSK), Certified ScrumMaster (CSM), Advanced Certified ScrumMaster (A-CSM), and Kanban Management Professional (KMP) certifications. In her free time, she enjoys watching cartoons with her husband and two children.

Vidhya Sriram

What Do You Need to Know About Corporate Innovation to Influence Business Agility

Vidhya is a driven product leader and innovation coach helping organizations create products and experiences that become the lever of growth, differentiation, and loyalty.  Her experience spans startups, IPO-bound high-growth companies, and enterprises across diverse industries.

She has created and scaled innovation programs to increase the velocity of innovation, unlock growth engines and create differentiation to lock in a competitive edge.  She is a thought leader and has co-authored a white paper on digital transformation for The Open Group, consulted by Forrester to operationalize high-impact customer research in organizations.

Vidhya believes in the power of trustworthiness and candor to nurture relationships, create influence, and build high-performance teams.

Chris Steele

Breaking Barriers through Better Communication: Transforming Tech Teams

Chris Steele grew up in Pataskala, OH, and received his Bachelor’s in Computer Information Systems (CIS) at DeVry University and his Master’s in Information Systems Management (MISM) at Keller Graduate School of Management – all while working full-time. Now with over a decade of industry experience, Chris is the Application Modernization Practice Lead for Improving Ohio where he focuses on modern cloud-based solutions and leading a high-performing team. Chris’ passions include web and cloud technologies, professional development, teaching/growing/mentoring others, fitness, and his family of 6.