LeadingAgile is Growing Again… Welcome Jann, Andrew, and Steve!

Hey everyone… LeadingAgile growing again.  It’s kinda crazy to think that just over a year ago LeadingAgile was a one man show. Now we have 9 consultants, a sales guy, two awesome back office support people, and four folks working almost full time as sub-contractors.  The cool thing is that I don’t even think we are done yet. Just nuts.

Anyway… wanted to introduce you to the newest members of the team. They’ve all actually been on deck for a few weeks, but I’m just getting around to announcing them.  We’ll get the website updated soon with permanent bios, but here is what I’ve got now.

Jann Thomas

Jann Thomas is a 20 year veteran of the software industry. She has worked as a developer, team lead and development manager leading teams to deliver great software. Jann has been practicing Agile development techniques in 1998 and implemented her first Agile Project in 2000.

She has a Project Manager Professional certification from the Project Management Institute, with a master’s degree in Computer Science.

In 2010 Jann delivered a 14 million dollar ecommerce replacement project with a 220 member team. The team including 95 developers working in a single codebase, pushed working code into productions every 6 weeks using an XP process. The entire 18 month project was 10% under budget, 10 % over functionality and 3 weeks later than initially planned.

Most recently Jann led a 12 person team through an agile transformation while continuing to deliver mission critical functionality. Pragmatically balancing process changes with functional development her team was able to complete features ahead of schedule and pick up high priority features from other teams.

In June 2004 she spoke at the International Conference on Software Process Improvement and In April 2008 she spoke at Software and System Quality Conference International. She was the Keynote speaker for Agile Bangalore in 2009 and spoke on Distributed Agile Delivery at Café Agil in Porto Alegre, Brazil. Jann is currently working as a Project Manager for Leading Agile in Atlanta.

Steve Povilaitis

Steve has over 17 years of industry experience as a developer, analyst, and leader at various levels. He has championed and successfully led agile adoptions across a wide spectrum of organizations, from the no-process chaos of a small startup, to the transition from a traditional waterfall methodology for a fortune 500 company.

Steve has focused his efforts on helping teams become hyper-productive by integrating agile processes with engineering practices such as continuous integration and test driven development.

He holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science, is a Certified Scrum Master and Product Owner, and is a Lean/Six Sigma Certified Green Belt.

In a former life Steve was a former Army Officer and paratrooper. When he’s not helping organizations navigate the agile waters, you will find him surfing with his family in his hometown of New Smyrna Beach, Florida.

Andrew Fuqua

Andrew Fuqua has been developing software professionally since the mid ’80s. Though it wasn’t called Agile back then, his first project used an iterative and incremental approach. After a few years of working in not-so-agile environments, Andrew began using eXtreme Programming in 1999.

Andrew is the current president of the Agile Atlanta user group, which he helped start in 2001. Andrew has held positions in management, product management and development at companies like Internet Security Systems, Allure Global, and IBM. Andrew earned a BS and MS in computer science and has an MBA from Duke University.

Please join me in welcoming Jann, Steve, and Andrew to the LeadingAgile family!