Meet the Scrum.org Staff

Ken Schwaber co-developed the Scrum framework with Jeff Sutherland in the early 1990s to help organizations struggling with complex development projects. One of the signatories to the Agile Manifesto in 2001, he subsequently founded the Agile Alliance and Scrum Alliance. He founded Scrum.org in 2009 in order to execute on his mission of improving the profession of software development. A 30-year veteran of the software development industry (from bottle washer to boss), he has written four books about Scrum: Agile Software Development with Scrum, Agile Project Management with Scrum, The Enterprise and Scrum, and Software and 30 Days. He lives in Lexington, Massachusetts.

Dave West is the CEO and Product Owner at Scrum.org. He is a frequent keynote at major industry conferences and is a widely published author of articles and research reports, along with his acclaimed book: Head First Object-Oriented Analysis and Design, that helped define new software modeling and application development processes. He led the development of the Rational Unified Process (RUP) for IBM/Rational. After IBM/Rational, West returned to consulting and managed Ivar Jacobson Consulting for North America. Then as VP, research director Forrester research where he ran the software development and delivery practice. Prior to joining Scrum.org he was Chief Product Officer at Tasktop where he was responsible for product management, engineering and architecture.

Christina Schwaber is the Chief Financial Officer (CFO) for Scrum.org. She previously held the same role with Advanced Development Methods. Christina holds a BA in Chemistry from Vassar College and Doctorate in Philosophy and Pharmacology from the University of Virginia. She is also well versed in Scrum and is certified as a Scrum.org Professional Scrum Trainer (PST).

Ryan is a technologist with 20+ years of experience leading successful teams, developing quality software, and managing cloud and/or traditional network infrastructure. Ryan started his career in 1999 as a network engineer, and shortly after found an interest in software development where he has been involved in many successful projects, varying in size and complexity. In 2005 Ryan started Mantra Technology, a technology consulting company, where he helped companies like Intel improve their E-Commerce offerings. Ryan began working as a consultant (contracted CTO) with Scrum.org in 2013 and in 2018 joined the company full time as Chief Technology Officer. As CTO of Scrum.org Ryan and his team have been working hard to provide value to Scrum.org customers through the many facets of the Scrum.org infrastructure. Ryan has also been closely involved in his local development community where he has organized, volunteered, or spoken at events.

Kurt Bittner joins Scrum.org from Forrester Research, where he served as a Principal Analyst covering how enterprises are adopting Agile and DevOps practices to deliver business value faster and with higher quality. Prior to Forrester, Kurt served as CTO—Americas for the consulting firm Ivar Jacobson International, where he worked for more than six years guiding Fortune 100 companies in their Agile transformation journeys. Prior to that, he played a leadership role in IBM's Jazz Platform strategy, led requirements tool strategy and development for Rational Software, and led the early development of the Rational Unified Process. As a consultant, he has helped many hundreds of organizations improve the results achieved by their development teams. An accomplished public speaker, Kurt has presented at many conferences, and is the author of three books, including The Economics of Iterative Software Development, as well as numerous papers and articles.

Eric is co-author of UML for Database Design and UML for Mere Mortal. Eric is currently responsible for all aspects of marketing and previously held a similar role as director of marketing for INetU (now ViaWest). Before INetU, Eric was program director at IBM and Rational Software responsible for application lifecycle management (ALM), DevOps and Agile solutions Eric has held product management and marketing roles with other organizations including: Ivar Jacobson Consulting, CAST Software and Logic Works Inc. (Acquired by Platinum Technologies and CA), as product manager for ERwin.

Patricia Kong is the Product Owner of the Scrum.org enterprise solutions program which includes the Nexus Framework, Evidence-Based Management, Scrum Studio and Scrum Development Kit. She also created and launched the Scrum.org Partners in Principle Program. Patricia is a people advocate and fascinated by organizational behavior and misbehaviors. She emerged through the financial services industry and has led product development, product management and marketing for several early stage companies in the US and Europe. At Forrester Research, Patricia worked with their largest clients focusing on business development and delivery engagements. Patricia holds several Professional Scrum certifications including Professional Scrum Master, Professional Product Owner, Professional Scrum Developer and Scaled Professional Scrum. She lived in France and now lives in her hometown of Boston. Patricia is fluent in 4 languages.

Daphne Harris directs Scrum.org's Professional Scrum Trainer (PST) program. She is responsible for growing, developing, and strengthening the PST community of top-notch Scrum trainers. She particularly enjoys learning from Scrum.org's amazing trainers and creating opportunities for community-building within this network. Prior to joining Scrum.org, Daphne was part of a traditional SDLC shop. As a technical writer, she wrote detailed requirement specs for features that would later change, and end-user documentation that was rarely read. Her role in customer service taught her about security and usability challenges. And at a small non-profit she saw how traditional organizations (school districts) balked at change. She every day enjoys being part of the creative self-organized team at Scrum.org.

Steve Porter works with the Scrum.org team of experts and its wider trainer community to create and maintain its Professional Series of courses and assessments. Steve guides this collaborative process to ensure training is current and meets the needs of the professional Scrum community. Before joining Scrum.org, Steve was the product owner for TeamPulse, Telerik’s agile project management tool. He has also provided application lifecycle management (ALM) consulting services for organisations around the globe. At his core, Steve is still a developer. He taught himself how code at an early age and has spent years turning ephemeral ideas into functioning software. It's the joy of this craft that Steve brings to all his interactions at Scrum.org.

tbd

test text

Joel is an experienced full-stack software developer with a diverse background in web, mobile, Windows, database, and cloud development. Previously he has worked with Telerik to create TeamPulse, an agile project management tool, with D2L to build their industry leading learning management system, and as a consultant with Imaginet to work on anything and everything. Joel has become known as a highly flexible developer who gets things done quickly and with high quality. He has a passion for the craft of software engineering and shown a strong commitment to delivering value to stakeholders. In addition, Joel holds a bachelors degree in Computer Science from the University of Manitoba and a number of Microsoft technology certifications.