James Bach

I started in this business as a programmer. I like programming. But I find the problems of software quality analysis and improvement more interesting than those of software production. For me, there's something very compelling about the question "How do I know my work is good?" Indeed, how do I know anything is good? What does good mean? That's why I got into SQA, in 1987.

Today, I work with project teams and individual engineers to help them plan SQA, change control, and testing processes that allow them to understand and control the risks of product failure. I also assist in product risk analysis, test design, and in the design and implementation of computer-supported testing. Most of my experience is with market-driven Silicon Valley software companies like Apple Computer and Borland, so the techniques I've gathered and developed are designed for use under conditions of compressed schedules, high rates of change, component-based technology and poor specification.

Jean-Paul Bayley

Jean-Paul is the lead consultant of Bay Spark, specialising in business agility and organisational development. He led the Agile transformation at Kaplan International and oversaw the significant growth of the development team.
He is an organiser of the Playcamp London conference, an Innovation Games Certified Collaboration Instructor and a Certified Trainer for ‘Training from the BACK of the Room! (TBR)’, which he uses extensively when running training courses on Collaboration Frameworks, Lean Change Management, Agile, Scrum and Kanban. Jean-Paul is a regular speaker at events presented by BCS and the British Library and as well as London Lean Kanban Days.

John Ferguson Smart

John Ferguson Smart is an international speaker, consultant, author and trainer well known in the Agile community for his many books, articles and presentations, particularly in areas such as BDD, TDD, test automation, software craftsmanship and team collaboration. John is the author of the best-selling BDD in Action, as well as Jenkins: The Definitive Guide and Java Power Tools. 

John helps organisations and teams around the world deliver better software sooner through more effective collaboration and communication techniques, and through better technical practices.

Very active in the Open Source community, John also leads development on the innovative Serenity BDD test automation library, described as the "best opensource selenium webdriver framework".

Jose Casal

Jose Casal is a business improvement professional and coach. Starting out as a software developer, Jose quickly realised that he loved helping others succeed using agile.

He is intensely passionate about modern management methodologies focusing primarily on Lean Kanban, agile and strengths-based leadership. Jose is both a trainer and a student, striving to learn continuously and to help introduce or support the use of agile principles in companies. He has worked with large private and public sector organisations such as The Scottish Government, Credit Suisse, Capita, Student Loans Company, NHS Choices, University of Kent and P&O Ferries.

Jose is the Founder and Chair of the BCS Agile Methods Specialist Group and the lead creator of the BCS Agile Foundation Certificate (contributing the official syllabus, exam questions and training materials). He is also the chair of the London Lean Kanban Day (LLKD) and Playcamp UK conferences.

As an experienced Agile Coach and Trainer Jose has a few certifications under his belt, here are just a few of them: Accredited Kanban Trainer (AKT), certified APMG AgilePM Trainer, Certified Scrum Professional (CSP), DSDM Advanced Practitioner, BCS Agile Trainer and Innovation Games Collaboration Architect.

Kevlin Henney

Kevlin Henney is a consultant, trainer and author with a keen interest in software patterns, architecture and agile programming practices and processes. Since his initial involvement in software development in the late 1980s, Kevlin has coded, consulted and delivered courses for software companies all around the world.

In 2000 he decide it was time for a change so he founded Curbralan with a focus on delivering world-leading consultancy and mentoring based on his own experience and best practices. Kevlin is also a keen supporter of the development community, he is a member of the ACCU, sits on the IEEE Software advisory board and is a prolific writer - having contributed to various magazines and websites including Better Software, The Register, Application Development Advisor, Java Report and the C / C++ Users Journal. Kevlin is very well known on the conference circuit and regularly delivers keynote addresses at events all around the world.

Perhaps his greatest claim to fame is the fact the he edited the very popular 97 Things Every Programmer Should Know (both the website and book) – which has now been translated into multiple languages. On a more educational note, Kevlin also co-authored two books on software architecture (A Pattern Language for Distributed Computing and On Patterns and Pattern Languages).

Klaus Leopold

Dr. Klaus Leopold is computer scientist and Kanban pioneer with many years of experience in helping organizations from different industries on their improvement journey with Lean and Kanban. He is author of the bestseller “Rethinking Agile”, “Practical Kanban” (www.practicalkanban.com) and co-author of the book “Kanban Change Leadership”. Klaus was awarded with the Brickell Key Award for “outstanding achievement and leadership” within the Lean Kanban community in San Francisco, 2014. 

Mark Summers

Mark started his agile journey as a ScrumMaster, helping his team develop great software using agile. In his 10+ years of experience he has seen the difference Scrum can make to people’s work lives - bringing people together to create innovative, valuable solutions for people’s problems, and that can be a lot of fun.

This made Mark want to help more people and more companies embrace Scrum’s principles. He has led teams, coached them and trained another generation of ScrumMasters and leaders to carry on the transformations that helped his team succeed.

Mark has been working with individuals, teams and organisations to help them achieve agility since 2006. As someone who has seen Scrum from both the trenches and the dugout Mark’s stories and experiences are based on implementing Scrum in lots of different environments.

Mark is an active member of the Scrum community, having organized the UK’s first Scrum Coaching Retreat. He is also a regular speaker at agile conferences in London and Europe.

Matt Roadnight

Matt is an Agile Coach and Trainer with 25 years of broad technology delivery experience with blue chip organisations in change management, product development, operational support models, IT strategy, cost justification and solution delivery.

Since 2004 Matt has been using his breadth of experience to assist clients apply Agile techniques to projects, programmes and organisations. As a trainer Matt is passionate about facilitating learning through experience and simulations, ensuring participants both understand agile concepts and have fun whilst learning. 

In addition to providing both bespoke and certified Scrum Alliance training courses, Matt spends much of his time working with clients coaching them on a range of topics including; executive personal coaching, relationship & team coaching and helping  teams to improve their delivery success using Agile principles and techniques.

Michael Bolton

Since 1998, I have travelled more than a million miles to provide training and consulting services in testing and quality for companies, teams, and individuals.

Since 2006, I have been co-author (with James Bach) of Rapid Software Testing and Rapid Software Testing for Managers.

We're aligned with the Context-Driven School of Software Testing, a community of people who believe that testing should respond first and foremost to the needs of the organization and the project, rather than to "best practices" that may not be best at all in the given context. You can read about my recent work here. 

From 2006 through 2009, I was Program Chair of TASSQ, The Toronto Association of System and Software Quality. In 2008, I was the Conference Chair for the Conference for the Association for Software Testing. In 2013, I was Programme Chair for the EuroSTAR, Europe's largest testing conference.

I do a little programming, mostly in Ruby these days. In the past, I've worked with Visual Basic C and C++, and I've done extensive work in Excel. I've also done rather a lot of technical writing.