SOFTWARE EXCELLENCE ACADEMY - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- Vice President and CTO of Namcook Analytics LLC
Capers Jones is currently Vice President and CTO of Namcook Analytics LLC. They build advanced risk and estimation tools. Our web site is www.Namcook.com. Formerly President of Capers Jones & Associates LLC. This is an international consultancy dealing with software metrics, software measurement, software quality, and litigation support. Worked at IBM from 1965 until 1978. Left IBM with 40 others to form a new software laboratory for ITT in Stratford, CT. Capers also founded Software Productivity Research (SPR) in 1984. SPR was a pioneer in software cost estimating, software assessments, and software benchmarks.
Capers is the author of 17 books, most of which deal with assessments, estimating, measurement, and project management. His latest book is "The Technical and Social History of Software Engineering", Addison Wesley, 2014.
Colin Hammond has been in the IT industry since 1987. In his career, he has been involved with over a hundred software projects in over 30 organizations. He is qualified in Project Management and sizing using both IFPUG and COSMIC methods and in the last 3 years has been working on developing a business around the tool that he has created that automates sizing and QA of written requirements.
Diana Alt is a connector and problem solver who loves to use the skills she's learned in her 20+ years in corporate product development roles to help people manage their careers and business. Diana helps people get out of their own way so they can unleash their awesomeness on the world. Some of her favorite words are grok, kaizen, and why, and she is guided by the principle that work should feel GOOD, not like a long slow march towards oblivion.
Diana is a Certified Career Coach as well as a Certified Scrum Professional for both Product Owner and Scrum Master disciplines. She has also attained PMC - III certification from the Pragmatic Institute.
Dr. Mark Paulk teaches software engineering at the University of Texas at Dallas and is a consultant and author in software engineering, software process improvement, high maturity practices, agile methods, and statistical thinking. Dr. Paulk was a Senior Systems Scientist at the Institute for Software Research at Carnegie Mellon University from 2002 to 2012, co-authoring the eSourcing Capability Model for Service Providers. From 1987 to 2002, Dr. Paulk was with the Software Engineering Institute at Carnegie Mellon, where he led the work on the Capability Maturity Model for Software. Dr. Paulk received his PhD in industrial engineering from the University of Pittsburgh, his MS in computer science from Vanderbilt University, and his BS in mathematics and computer science from the University of Alabama in Huntsville. He is a Fellow of the ASQ and a Senior Member of the IEEE.
Judy Alter is a public speaker, mentor, and Senior Business Systems Analyst with 16 years of experience in Business Analysis. The last 7 years were working with Scrum and SAFe Framework. Judy was employed at Mutual of Omaha for over 35 years and retired as of March 1, 2020.
Job Titles:
- Software Development and Quality Trainer and Consultant
Khaldoon Aqel is a software development and quality trainer and consultant. With two decades of experience in designing, building, and testing world-class software products with experience in the US, Europe, and Jordan. Khaldoon's experience covers the complete development life cycle including requirements management, software architecture and design, coding and testing, test automation, test management, Agile and eXtreme programing. His experience included leadership of technical teams, both in startup and enterprise organizations, creating winning products and promoting technical excellence, compliance, and quality.
Khaldoon holds a set of professional certifications including ASQ-CSQE, PMI-ACP, IC-Agile, and IIBA-CBAP
Job Titles:
- President of the Westfall Team
Linda Westfall is the President of The Westfall Team and one of their lead consultants and trainers. Her specialties include Software Quality Engineering, Metrics, Project & Risk Management, Requirements Engineering & Management, Peer Reviews, Testing, and Process Definition & Improvement.
Prior to starting her own business, Linda was the Senior Manager of Quality Metrics and Analysis at DSC Communications. Linda has more than forty years of experience in real time software engineering, quality, project and risk management, agile and metrics. She has worked as a Software Engineer, Systems Analyst, Software Process Engineer and Manager of Production Software.
Linda and her husband Rob also have an active fireworks hobby.
Robin F. Goldsmith, JD is an independent consultant that partners with the Software Excellence Academy as a trainer. Robin helps you get right results right by advising, training, and working directly with business, quality, and project professionals on requirements/business analysis, quality assurance/testing, REAL ROI, project and process management and improvement.
Robin is past President and current Vice President of the Software Quality Group of New England (SQGNE) and chaired two record-setting ASQ Boston BOSCON annual quality conferences. President of Needham, MA consultancy Go Pro Management, Inc., he is author of Discovering REAL Business Requirements for Software Project Success and the forthcoming Cut Creep-Write Right Agile User Story and Acceptance Test Requirements.
Scott Duncan has been working in software since 1972 as a developer, technology transfer researcher, process consultant and trainer in domains such as book distribution, Law & public safety, mainframe database, and natural language query products, credit card transaction processing and telecommunications (14+ years in Bell Labs, Bellcore, and Telcordia).
He has also been an internal ISO 9001 Auditor and CMM assessor and former member of ISO & IEEE Standards Committees. Since 2004, he has been working in various Agile contexts, coaching and training with Scrum, XP, and Lean/Kanban (including 2 years as a Scrum Alliance Board of Directors member). His most recent full-time coaching work was for a company that created software for the design, construction, and operation of "big things" as the enterprise coach for 144 Scrum teams in the US, India, Israel, UK, Germany, France, and Canada).