Alexandru worked in software development for more than 10 years, both locally and abroad. He is currently a Software development consultant and trainer working in partnership with Mosaic Works, helping customers develop high quality software and working to improve the quality of the software developed in Romania. He studied in the recent years the influence of human factor in software development and continues to work to find ways to improve the software quality. He is an active promoter of the Software Craftsmanship movement in Romania.

Parvu, Lucian – Romania
Project Manager at Luxoft Romania (former ITC Networks)

Lucian is Project Manager at Luxoft Romania (former ITC Networks). He has more than eight years of experience in Software Development focused on Networking and Telecom.

He discovered Scrum three years ago when he switched from a Waterfall approach to Agile. He faced the cultural changes that are involved in such a transition, the typical answer “This won’t work in our case” being history. Now Scrum feels so natural and nobody wants to go back to Waterfall.

Lucian has experience with implementing Scrum in large distributed teams, with more than 30 Engineers in three countries, where communication is the key factor. He created tools for “Release Tracking” and “Quality Metrics” that helped everybody to “Feel the Projects”, including Engineers, Product Managers and Senior Management team.

Mihnea, studying Informatics at University Bucharest, is working Agile/Scrum in UberVU team. In summer of 2008 he worked as Software Engineer Intern at Google Mountain View. During high-school and University he participated in many programming contests. When having time, he participates in English-debate contests throughout Europe.

Scrum And Startups – Mircea Pasoi & Mihnea Giurgea from Ubervu @ OpenAgile Romania 2009

Pasoi, Mircea

Software Engineers at uberVU – http://www.ubervu.com/

Mircea, co-founder at balaur.ro, vicepresident and co-Founder at infoarena.ro, is working Scrum in UberVU team. In summer of 2008 he worked as Software Engineer Intern at Google and in summer of 2007 he worked as Software Developer Intern at Microsoft.

He is co-author at Fundamentele programarii – Programming manual for high-school. In the last few years he gained multiple awards, two of them being Gold Medal at International Informatics Olympics, Merida (2006), Mexico and Silver Medal at International Informatics Olympics, Nowy Sacz, Polonia (2005).

Scrum And Startups – Mircea Pasoi & Mihnea Giurgea from Ubervu @ OpenAgile Romania 2009

Negrean, Ovidiu – Romania
http://www.linkedin.com/in/ovidiunegrean
http://www.negrean.ro/

Ovidiu, owner of www.Lucrez.in/IT, is a young software developer, online entrepreneur and new marketing enthusiastic. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science and is now also studying Business Management at Babes Bolyai University in Cluj.

Ovidiu gained experience developing software for more than 6 years in companies from Cluj Napoca where he worked on the development of different enterprise solutions. He created a CRM software for dental practices – www.DentalPerform.ro. At the beginning of 2009, driven by a personal vision of how the industry will evolve, by using Agile methods of work he launched www.Lucrez.in/IT the first business social network for Romanian IT professionals and IT companies, recognizing the need for better communication between the players of the IT industry.

Haines, Corey – USA
http://www.linkedin.com/in/coreyhaines
http://www.coreyhaines.com

Corey is currently a freelance developer and journeyman, traveling around to pair-program with other developers. He is an active member in the software craftsmanship movement, focusing his attention on post-apprenticeship activities. He started programming in the early 80′s by cheating at video games (they weren’t compiled back then) and fell in love with development as a teenager. He currently specializes in Ruby, but will pair in just about any language you want.

Corey Haines talk on Software Craftsmanship at OpenAgile Romania 2009

This was the beginning of Software Craftsmanship in Romania – as you can see on http://www.agileworks.ro

The Life of a Tester in An Agile Team – Corey Haines @ OpenAgile Romania 2009

Exclusive interview with J.B. Rainsberger and Corey Haines

About how they started programming, education for software developers, technical practices and others.

Part I:

Part II:

Part III:

Register now at the 2010 edition of the conference.

Appelo, Jurgen - Netherlands
http://www.noop.nl/

http://www.jurgenappelo.com/about/

http://www.linkedin.com/in/jurgenappelo

Jurgen is CIO – Chief Information Officer at ISM eCompany, rated (a while ago) as the #1 fastest growing technology company in The Netherlands. He leads a horde of 100 software developers, development managers, project managers, business consultants, quality managers, service managers and kangaroos, some of which he hired accidentally.

He is primarily interested in software engineering, quality improvement and complexity theory, from a manager’s perspective. He is a writer, having published a number of papers and articles in several magazines, like Dr. Dobb’s, Software Quality Professional, Methods & Tools, The Software Practitioner, StickyMinds, Software Development Network, Computable and Automatisering Gids.

He is also a speaker, being regularly invited to talk at seminars and conferences about agile software development, project management, process improvement, and development management. However, sometimes he puts all writing, speaking and managing aside to do some intensive programming or to spend time on his ever-growing collection of science fiction and fantasy literature.

Checklist for the Agile Manager Talk at Open Agile Romania 2009 by Jurgen Appelo

How to Use Agile on Fixed Scope Projects – Jurgen Appelo @ OpenAgile Romania 2009

Ken Schwaber

http://www.controlchaos.com/

Ken Schwaber co-developed the Scrum process 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 AgileAlliance, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the creation of Agile software. He then founded the ScrumAlliance, a nonprofit organization dedicated to expanding the understanding of Scrum.

A 30-year veteran of the software development industry (from bottle washer to boss), he has written three books about Scrum: Agile Software Development with Scrum, Agile Project Management with Scrum, and The Enterprise and Scrum.

eLiberatica 2009 – The 3rd Edition,
22nd – 23rd of May 2009 (Friday-Saturday), University Politehnica of Bucharest, Romania.

One of the biggest events of its kind in Eastern Europe, eLiberatica brings community leaders from around the world to talk about the hottest topics in FLOSS movement, demonstrating the advantages of adopting, using and developing Open Source and Free Software solutions.
Beyond this, the event try to promote these open and free concepts in other fields, covering but not limited to, media, digital civil society and education.

This year, the conference target an audience of around 500 people: IT and FLOSS personalities, young and committed specialists, guests from European Union, Romanian social and business personalities and at least two ministers.

The two days of presentations and debates will focus on Open Source in an Economic Downturn.

The conference will have multiple tracks, special events hosted (Open Agile Romania, Mozilla Event, Open Media Event, and more), surprise guests and lots of practical workshops.

For more information you can check http://eliberatica.ro/2009/ website.

Open Agile Romania – May 22-23, 2009

In addition to the bellow abstracts, we will soon announce the topics for the panel sessions inside the first Romanian Agile conference. In the next few days the presentations’ list will be completed.

Keynote speaker:  Ken Schwaber - ScrumButs: The Dangers of Customizing Scrum

Many organizations use Scrum. To do so, they have had to make adjustments to Scrum. These are called ScrumButs, and are said as follows: “We use Scrum, BUT it is impossible for us all to get together for the Daily Scrum SO we only have the Daily Scrum when we need to.” In this presentation, Ken will lightly describe the Scrum framework and the impact these variations have on the ability to build complex products when Scrum is used. Ken will also ask the audience to describe and figure out some ScrumButs with his help, so bring you Scrum but’s to the meeting.

AND

Jurgen Appelo - Checklist for the Agile Manager
http://www.noop.nl/
http://www.linkedin.com/in/jurgenappelo

Agile teams know that agile software development is all about empowerment and self-organization. But that doesn’t mean that managers have nothing to do. On the contrary. A patch of soil and seeds is also a self-organizing emergent system. But it doesn’t become a beautiful Japanese garden all by itself.

In this talk Jurgen Appelo explains why agile management is the essential counterpart of agile software development. He lists a number of topics that managers in an agile organization should concern themselves with. These topics include: motivation, diversity, alignment, organizational structure, risk management, discipline, optimization, knowledge management, and process improvement.

Many software project teams are not able to change their own environment. The central message of Jurgen’s talk is that, in those cases, agile managers have the responsibility to create the best environment for the teams, so that they can grow and deliver value.

Razvan Gliga - Survive in Agility Islands
IT Architect at IBM Romania
Adoption of agile development in large organizations is always a difficult process. Agile development starts in islands. Agile practices sometimes collide with different legacy procedures or organization’s standard software development processes.

In this presentation we will share experiences from the real world in order to avoid the war between agility and organizational politics.

Corey Haines - The Craftsman Developer in an ‘Agile’ world
http://www.linkedin.com/in/coreyhaines
http://www.coreyhaines.com

In this talk, I will cover the basic history of and reasons behind the Software Craftsmanship movement, leading to the Software Craftsmanship Manifesto. While discussing the manifesto, we will talk about the dangers of implementing ‘Agile’ project management methodologies without altering the technical practices of the developer to support the increased pressure of focusing on the near term. We will end by giving concrete examples of methods of practice to help developers more quickly learn new practices, allowing them to build software that they can be proud of over the long-term.

Corey Haines - The Life of a Tester in an Agile Team
http://www.linkedin.com/in/coreyhaines
http://www.coreyhaines.com

One common mistake when implementing ‘Agile’ project management processes is falling into a so-called ‘ScrumerFall’ process: taking the standard waterfall phases (development -> QA) and shortening them dramatically. This process puts undue pressure on the testing team, as they are expected to test more in less time. The Agile whole-team philosophy counters this by providing a testing presence throughout the iteration/sprint, ensuring that testers are not ‘up against the wall’ at the end of the cycle. In this talk, we will cover the phases a story goes through from planning to release, focusing on the role of the tester throughout.

Ovidiu Negrean - Agile Startup
http://www.linkedin.com/in/ovidiunegrean
http://www.negrean.ro/

The main advantages and strength of a startup come from it’s agility, agility that can be the secret of success in the dynamic world of IT. Being at the beginning gives you the power to guide your startup on the track you want with great ease. Even big companies like Google structure their new projects as startups to take advantage of these benefits.

I had such an experience launching Lucrez in IT, first Romanian business social network for IT professionals and IT companies. We’ll cover the stages of an agile startup, see tips & tricks about launching your IT company, getting users and visibility and the DO’s and DONT’s of a startup.

Let’s see how to work in short iterations and having clear goals, let’s see how to get from an idea to a functional and successful project. And all these with minimum costs and with maximum effects. We are agile!

A fun and useful presentation for all those who are planning to start an IT company or want to manage a successful IT project using Agile.

Mircea Pasoi & Mihnea Giurgea - Scrum for startups and successful software companies
Software Engineers at uberVU – http://www.ubervu.com/

&  How agile development can help a software company overcome the dreaded 90% fail rate and stay on top while maximizing their results.

Lucian Parvu - Executive Dashboard Report for Agile Projects
Project Manager at Luxoft Romania (former ITC Networks)
Moving teams from a classical Waterfall based project to a completely Agile based project is difficult. There are major cultural changes involved in the transition. The visibility and the increased dynamics of the projects are the main drivers that recommended Agile Methodologies – in our case Scrum.

Some are thinking that in Agile we have no Plans and that we should take care only about iterations – this is one of the major mistakes we faced in the beginning. Full Release View is often lost and projects don’t have the big picture. We had a such an experience when projects failed, one of the big issues being the miss-understanding of Agile. We wanted to keep in touch with the Release View after each iteration. We created an Executive Dashboard Report for our Scrum based projects.

In this Presentation we’ll cover the challenges we faced in the transition to Scrum and the basic components of the Executive Report that helped us to have an instant view of the Release Status.

AND:

Maria Diaconu & Alexandru Bolboaca

& Agile thinking – a simplified workshop for those who want to experience the Agile way, with Scrum flavors

If you want to know more, please contact us.