2024 Project to Product Summit: Executive Experience

Dr. Mik Kersten

Dr. Mik Kersten is the chief technology officer at Planview, joining the company in 2022 through the acquisition of Tasktop, where he was CEO. Mik founded Tasktop and is the best-selling author of “Project To Product: How to Survive and Thrive in the Age of Digital Disruption with the Flow Framework®“. Mik’s experiences working with some of the largest digital transformations in the world has led him to identify the critical gap between business leaders and technologists, resulting in his creation of the Flow Framework® to connect strategy to delivery. He started his career as a Research Scientist at Xerox PARC where he built the first aspect-oriented development environment. He then pioneered the integration of development environments with Agile and DevOps tools while working on his Computer Science PhD at the University of British Columbia. Founding Tasktop out of that research, Mik has written over one million lines of open-source code that are still in use today and has brought seven successful open-source and commercial products to market.

Dave West

Dave West is the Product Owner and CEO at Scrum.org. In this capacity, he engages with partners, and the community to drive Scrum.org’s strategy and the overall market position of Scrum. Prior to joining Ken Schwaber and the team at Scrum.org he was Chief Product Officer at Tasktop where he was responsible for product management, engineering and architecture. As a member of the company’s executive management team, Dave was also instrumental in growing Tasktop from a services business into a VC backed product business with a team of almost 100.

As one of the foremost industry experts on software development and deployment, West has helped advance many modern software development processes, including the Unified process and Agile methods. He is a frequent keynote at major industry conferences and is a widely published author of articles and research reports. He also is the co-author of two books, The Nexus Framework For Scaling Scrum and Head First Object-Oriented Analysis and Design. 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 he served as vice president, research director at Forrester Research, where he worked with leading IT organizations and solutions providers to define, drive and advance Agile-based methodology and tool breakthroughs in the enterprise.

Steve Berez

Steve Berez is a Boston-based Advisory Partner at Bain & Company. He is a founder of Bain’s Enterprise Technology practice and has served as its Americas head. He is also a senior member of Bain’s Agile Innovation and Healthcare practices.

Steve has driven agile and digital transformations for industry leaders in health, P&C, and life insurance; healthcare delivery; pharmaceuticals; retail banking; consumer and industrial products; retail; transportation; and technology. He also has deep experience in strategy and operating model redesign for technology, data and analytics, especially in the context of digital strategy and innovation; software engineering and product management; architecture transformation and complexity reduction, including cloud adoption and core systems modernization; and digital growth strategy, including business model reinvention.

Steve is the co-author of Doing Agile Right: Transformation Without Chaos (Harvard Business Review Press; May 2020).

His recent articles include “The Agile C-Suite” (Harvard Business Review), “Agile Is Not Enough” (Sloan Management Review), “It’s Time to Rethink the IT Talent Model” (Sloan Management Review), “How Agile Is Powering Healthcare Innovation” (In Vivo), "How to Plan and Budget for Agile at Scale” (Bain.com), and “Four Myths of Digital Transformation: What Only 8% of Companies Know” (Bain.com).

Steve received an MBA degree from Stanford University, where he was named a Miller Scholar. He also earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science and Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he received the Compton Prize, MIT’s highest award. He has received agile certifications in Scrum and SAFe.

Janaki Palaniappan

Janaki Palaniappan is a Partner in McKinsey’s San Francisco office and a leader in McKinsey’s Software Product Management and Development practice in North America. She spends majority of her time serving large Software companies and fast-growth tech players on portfolio, product mgmt., engineering and product marketing topics where she is focused on helping clients from product conception to launch and achieving scale.

Janaki has an MBA from Cornell University and BA from University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) on Political Science and South Asian studies. She is a former Product Manager in benefits technology focused on building and launching private healthcare marketplaces to market after the passage of the Affordable Care Act and she is a former educator at UCLA’s Academic Advancement Program.

Andrew Sales

Andrew Sales is an experienced Agile Consultant and previously led the Agile Services Practice across EMEA for CA Technologies (formerly Rally). Drawing on his diverse range of skills and experiences from project management, software development, product management and sales, Andrew has worked with many organizations to help them successfully establish better ways of working. He is passionate about continuous improvement and provides coaching to teams and leaders, supporting them in achieving improved outcomes for their business and their customers.

Andrew is a SAFe Program Consultant Trainer (SPCT) and has many years experience in delivering SAFe implementations across a wide range of different industries. He is an accomplished trainer, regularly delivering Scrum, Kanban and Certified SAFe courses in both private and public settings.

Andrew possesses an excellent balance of technical and business acumen and has Masters degrees in both Philosophy and Software Development and is part of the MBA program at Warwick Business School.

Laura Barnard

Laura has been a driving force behind the integration of PMOs and Project Management into organizational strategy for 25 years. Starting in 1999 with the creation of her first PMO, she spent 15 years as a PMO and strategy delivery leader, gaining invaluable experience in driving sustainable change within organizations. Over the past decade, her company PMO Strategies has been dedicated to helping organizations maximize their returns on investment by unleashing the full potential of project management and PMOs. Laura has developed a powerful system for helping organizations achieve high-impact outcomes for every project.

In 2021, Laura was named the World PMO influencer of the Year, the only award of its kind, by the PMO Global Alliance, for her many accomplishments in positioning the PMO as the most valuable strategic asset for organizations to deliver their strategy. You can learn more about this on her popular PMO Strategies Podcast and as a part of the longest running PMO-specific virtual conference, the IMPACT Summit. Laura welcomes you to learn more about how they can help you make a bigger IMPACT at PMOStratetgies.com.

Alok Uniyal

I am an outcome-oriented business leader with an entrepreneurial mindset, having cross-cultural and global experience. Proven track record in building/scaling IT Process Consulting Business as a P&L owner, consulting organizations in transforming to ‘new ways of working', leading major change initiatives, driving thought leadership/crafting new value propositions, and interfacing with CXOs & Analysts. Having 28+ years of industry experience across IT Consulting & Enterprise Quality Management.

I have extensive experience in consulting global enterprises on Lean-Agile-DevSecOps-SRE led transformation with business value realization and in partnering with Sales & Delivery on IT Outsourcing programs. Demonstrated industry thought leadership (writing papers, articles, conducting CXO roundtables, webinars, engaging with analysts). I bring forth a good blend of strategic and operational thinking, guided by the OKR philosophy and people-centric approach.

Keith Buehlman

With over 25 years of experience as a Product and Agile Executive Leader and Business Transformation Leader, Consultant and Coach, I have honed my skills in leading businesses through transformative changes, aligning Customer Journeys, Value Streams, and their Lean Agile Portfolios by using Product and Agile principles with corporate strategies to drive significant improvements in efficiency, customer satisfaction, and revenue growth.

As a Senior Director at NTT DATA Launch, I lead an Enterprise Business Agility & Value Stream Management capability within the Launch Product Centric Value Delivery practice that within 2 years established a global award-winning service for Business Value, Flow, Agile, and Product transformations all around the disciplines of Value Stream Management, Enterprise Business Agility and Flow.

“Bringing emerging technology to the table is a must also, but as we work with our clients to bring these valuable capabilities to unlock flow and value delivery, we need to stay focused on the business and value that is realized by our clients and customers. Value is the lifeblood of any business, defining its success and growth. In the complex ecosystem of modern markets, understanding and ensuring customers perceive value is an art. It separates the good from the great.”

Mike Carr

Michael Carr currently serves as Chief Technology Officer at Vanguard. Prior to his current role, Mike led several other groups in Vanguard IT, including Retail Systems, Global Technology Operations, and Institutional Systems. He has also held other leadership positions in IT and Corporate Strategy.

Prior to joining Vanguard in 1998, Mike was a director in Verizon’s IT Division, focusing on customer care and contact center technologies. Mike started his career as a nuclear risk analyst at PPL Corp.

Mike earned a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Pennsylvania and has also participated in the Wharton Advanced Management Program.

Sejal Amin

NYSE: SSTK, TRI; Operating large-scale global technology engineering organizations, I build high performing teams who deliver great experiences to customers and growth to the businesses I support. I am innovative and agile in managing complex situations and operational transformation. My ability to foster collaborative environments and strategically build deep relationships has been key to how I have consistently delivered results.

Matthew Siegel

Senior professional advisor with track record of improving client financial performance. Experience focused on strategy-back organization transformation helping clients align their cost structure with business priorities. Track record of realizing revenue and profit objectives with responsibility for sales and delivery.

Carol Houle

Carol is a builder and renovator of strategic businesses for companies seeking to focus on Business Value Led Digital Transformation using modern and emerging technologies. For over 30+ years she has demonstrated the proven ability to build high performing organizations with modern digital capabilities.

Known for delivering successful business results for Fortune 500 clients. Unique blend of both technical and business acumen and understanding of why and how people change behaviors. Carol is an expert in the shift from Project to Product and is a strategic partner to Planview.