Peggy Gregory is a Senior Lecturer in Computing at the University of Central Lancashire. She has worked at UCLAN for 14 years, having previously worked as an IT manager in an SME. Her research involves investigating how people use, organise and design technology; and understanding its social and ethical impact, with a particular focus on agile methods and eHealth. At UCLAN she works with Katie Taylor teaching the MSc in Agile Software Projects, and liaising with local businesses that use agile approaches.
Laura Plonka is a Research Associate in the Computing Department at The Open University. She has been working with agile teams since 2008 and is specialised in conducting empirical studies of agile practices in industrial settings. Her research focuses on the human factor in software development, specifically on investigating and understanding communication and collaboration in agile teams.
Helen Sharp
Helen Sharp is Professor of Software Engineering at The Open University. Her research focuses on the study of professional software practice and she has been working with software practitioners since the early 1990s. She is very active in both software engineering and UX/interaction design communities and has had a long association with practitioner-related conferences. Helen is joint author of one of the leading textbooks on Interaction Design (id-book.com) now in its third edition. She is co-editor of the Voice of Evidence column for IEEE Software, and reviews for many journals and conferences. For more information see http://mcs.open.ac.uk/hcs2.
Katie Taylor
Katie Taylor spent many years as a self-employed consultant, working on a wide range of projects. She specialised in enabling communication between different levels of staff, especially during times of radical change. She is now Senior Lecturer and Course Leader of the UK’s first MSc in Agile Software Projects within the School of Computing, Engineering & Physical Sciences at the University of Central Lancashire.