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Agile Alliance Announces New Board Members and Officer Appointments

"The Agile Alliance board of directors provides the driving force behind not only our yearly Agile conference but also is committed to advancing Agile development principles and practices," said Phil Brock, managing director of the Agile Alliance. "We have the extreme fortune this year of having a great mix of existing leadership combined with new talent which will help advance not only our organization but the Agile software development community located throughout the world."

The new board members will each serve a two-year term and replace Todd Little, Rachel Davies and J.B. Rainsberger. In addition, Hakan Erdogmus will serve as the conference chair for Agile 2011, (http://agile2011.agilealliance.org/), scheduled for Aug. 7-13, 2011 in Salt Lake City, Utah.

To help guide the organization's growth the Agile Alliance membership elected three new board members and selected Jim Newkirk as Chair of the Agile Alliance:

    --  Linda M. Cook - Cook is an independent consultant specializing in Lean
        and Agile project practices. With more than twenty years' experience in
        the IT industry, she has held positions from developer, forms designer,
        data modeler, analyst, tester, to methodology lead. Cook is a member of
        the Agile Alliance, the Agile Project Leadership Network, and the
        Project Management Institute.
    --  Pat Reed - Reed is senior director of IT delivery management services at
        Gap Inc. She is tasked with responsibilities including Agile Project
        Management, Agile Portfolio Management, IT strategic planning and
        release management as well as continuing to evolve enterprise Agile
        adoption. Throughout her career, Reed has leveraged Lean and Agile
        practices.
    --  Samuel Crescencio - With more than 16 years of experience in the
        software industry, Crescencio has been practicing and coaching Agile
        software development since 2003. He has hands-on experience in
        delivering mission-critical applications in heterogeneous and
        distributed environments - to various niche markets. He is the founder
        and CEO of OnCast Technologies, a company headquartered in Florianopolis
        specialized in outsourcing services, consulting and mentoring in Agile.
    --  Jim Newkirk- Newkirk previous chair of the Agile 2010 conference, will
        now assume chairperson responsibilities for the Agile Alliance. Newkirk
        is director of development for Microsoft's Health Care Solutions Tools
        Team. In his more than seven years at Microsoft, Newkirk has held a
        number of roles including the product unit manager for CodePlex,
        Microsoft's community open source project hosting site. He is the
        co-author of "Test Driven Development in Microsoft .NET" (Microsoft
        Press, March 2004). Prior to joining Microsoft he co-authored
        "Enterprise Solution Patterns in .NET" (Microsoft patterns and
        practices) and "Extreme Programming in Practice" (Addison-Wesley).

In addition, the Agile Alliance named two existing board members to executive committee positions:

    --  Diana Larsen - In addition to being reelected to the board, Larsen will
        also serve as treasurer of the organization. Larsen consults with
        leaders and teams to create work processes where innovation,
        inspiration, and imagination flourish. With more than fifteen years of
        experience working with technical professionals, Larsen brings focus to
        the human side of organizations, teams and projects. Larsen co-authored
        Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great! She publishes articles
        and writes occasional blog posts at "Partnership and Possibilities."
        Current chair of the Agile Alliance Board of Directors, she co-founded
        the "Agile Open Northwest" conference and the international
        "Retrospective Facilitators Gathering."
    --  Esther Derby - Derby has been elected as secretary for the Agile
        Alliance. She is well known for her work in helping teams grow to new
        levels of productivity. She helps teams and organizations make the
        transition to Scrum, and coaches technical people who are making the
        transition to management. Esther is recognized as one of the world's
        leaders in retrospectives, and is co-author (with Diana Larsen) of the
        book "Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great."

Also, two existing board members Tamara Sulaiman and Paul Culling were re-elected to the Agile Alliance board.

    --  Tamara Sulaiman, PMP, CST - managing consultant at Applied Scrum, an IT
        consulting organization and co-originator of the Agile Earned Value
        Management (EVM), a process recognized for integrating the traditional
        project management practice of EVM with the Scrum framework.
    --  Paul Culling - based in Canada is director of marketing at VersionOne
        and board member of Agile Vancouver.

The remaining Agile Alliance Board members include, Henrik Kniberg, Laurent Bossavit, Cesar Idrovo, and Phil Brock.

The Agile Alliance continues to increase its membership each year in line with the growing interest and adoption of Agile processes for software development. One key indicator of the increasing adoption of Agile practices is the continuing demand for Agile knowledge by enterprises looking to reap the benefits of the discipline. The Agile Alliance helps meet this demand by publishing content, conducting regional and international educational events and by hosting the industry's foremost event, the Agile Conference, which brings together development experts from around the globe.

About the Agile Alliance

The Agile Alliance is a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting the concepts of Agile software development, as outlined in the (http://www.agilemanifesto.org/). With nearly 6,000 members located around the globe, the Agile Alliance is driven by the principles of Agile methodologies and the value delivered to developers, organizations and end users. The Agile Alliance organizes the annual Agile Conference, the industry's leading event that attracts practitioners, academia, business and vendor-partner community members from around the globe. The Agile 2011 conference http://agile2011.agilealliance.org/ is set for August 7-13 in Salt Lake City, Utah. For more information about the organization, visit http://www.agilealliance.org/

    Media contact
    Christie Denniston
    Catapult PR-IR
    Phone: 303-581-7760
    Cell: 303-827-5164
    cdenniston@catapultpr-ir.com

SOURCE Agile Alliance