Organizers' Biographies

Dr. Jyrki Kontio has just been appointed as a professor of Software Product Business, a new chair at the Helsinki University of Technology. His prior work experience includes 16 years at Nokia Corporation in various positions, including software process improvement, risk management, process management, quality management, and program management. Between 1994 and 1997 he was a senior researcher at the Experimental Software Engineering Group at University of Maryland. His main research work has concentrated on software risk management and it has challenged some of the traditional risk management practices in industry. His other research interests include technology and strategy management, software process management, software reuse, software architectures, requirements engineering, and research methods in software engineering. He has published ca. 20 refereed publications in these topics. He received his Ph.D. degree in 2001 and Licentiate degree in 1995, both with honors, from Helsinki University of Technology. He received his Master of Science degree in Business Administration from Helsinki School of Economics in 1987.

Magnus Höglund, M.Sc. in Computer Science and Engineering, is a Sales Director working with organizational integration and business development at TietoEnator. He also gives seminars, workshops, courses, and conference speeches on topics such as project management, software metrics, and commitment management. He is a co-author of the book "IT Measurement - Practical Advice from the Experts", Addison-Wesley 2002. Magnus has a background as software engineer, test manager, software metrics specialist, and Managing Director. Before joining TietoEnator he was an R&D engineer at Ericsson.

Jan Rydén, M.Sc. in Embedded Systems, is a Sales Director working with organizational integration and business development at TietoEnator. He also gives seminars, workshops, and conference speeches on topics such as telecom trends and commitment management. He has experience from hardware development, project management, R&D line management, and being a Managing Director.

Dr. David Raffo is currently Associate Professor of Information Systems and Technology Management in the School of Business at Portland State University. Raffo completed his Ph.D. at Carnegie Mellon University. His research interests include: Software Process Modeling and Simulation, Strategic Software Engineering, Value-Based Software Engineering and Software Product Pricing. Raffo has over thirty refereed publications in the field of software engineering. He has received research grants from the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Software Engineering Research Center (SERC), NASA, IBM Corporation, Tektronix Corporation, Motorola Corporation and Northrop-Grumman Corporation. Prior professional experience includes programming as well as managing software development and consulting projects at Arthur D. Little, Inc., where he received the company's Presidential Award for outstanding performance. Dr. Raffo teaches courses in Software Process Improvement, Software Process Modeling, Total Quality Management (TQM) and Operations Management. He has also taught in Purdue University's Software Engineering Retraining Program (SERT) through the Department of Computer Science.

Craig Larman, Craig Larman is the author of Applying UML and Patterns--An Introduction to OOA/D and the Unified Process, the world's best-selling text on OOA/D, iterative development, and the UML, translated to many languages and used worldwide in industry and colleges. He also co-authored the Java 2 Performance and Idiom Guide, and is currently writing Agile and Iterative Development: A Manager's Guide.

Craig is known throughout the international software community as an expert and coach in object technologies, OOA/D, patterns, the UML, agile modeling, an agile approach to the Unified Process (UP), combining the UP with XP and Scrum practices, and iterative agile development methods.

Craig is a popular speaker at public and private industry conferences, and presents both keynotes and tutorials. He travels worldwide to fulfill his passion to serve people through coaching, speaking, and education, helping software organizations succeed with high-impact best practices such as iterative and agile methods, design patterns, automated continuous integration, and test-first development.