Top 10 Agile and DevOps Thought Leaders to Follow

The market demand for custom application development has grown five times faster than the internal IT organization’s capacity to deliver them. There is a continuous struggle to stay proactive against competitive pressure, resulting in a development cycle that is more tactical than strategic.

Therefore, enterprises are turning to Agile and DevOps approach that assures increased speed of development and release of a product. But, how to assure that the project management and development approach followed are going in the right direction? Or how to stay updated with new processes and ideas to optimize the software development cycle?

The answer is- learn from the Agile and DevOps leaders themselves. In this digital era, we, fortunately, have the opportunity to stay connected with the experts and gain insights from their experience. 

Here is a list of 10 Agile and DevOps experts that you must follow for learning the best practices for project & team management, software development, optimized delivery, latest trends, and more.

1. Jeff Sutherland

Jeff Sutherland is the inventor of Scrum, one of the globally accepted Agile framework for managing complex software development projects. He is also the prime contributor to the Agile Manifesto. 

Follow him to learn from his experience as a consultant to the world’s leading companies. He has helped companies like Johnson & Johnson, Disney Animation, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, IBM, Twitter, Paypal, Sony, Walmart, and many more in Agile transformation. 

Jeff is the founder of Scrum Inc., Crisp AB, and Scrum Training Institute. He is the author of “Scrum: The art of doing twice the work in half the time” and co-author of books “Exploring Scrum: The Fundamentals”, “Product Mastery: From good to great product ownership”, and many others. 

Website: Jeff Sutherland

Twitter: @jeffsutherland 

2. Ken Schwaber

Ken Schwaber is the co-creator of the scrum framework along with Jeff Sutherland. He is one of the signatories of the Agile Manifesto and is the founder of the Agile Alliance and Scrum Alliance as well. 

In the year 2009, he founded Scrum.org that provides training, assessment, and certifications to improve the software delivery cycle. Compiling his 40 years of experience in software development, he has written four books about Scrum: “Agile Software Development with Scrum”, “Agile Project Management with Scrum”, “The Enterprise and Scrum”, and “Software in 30 Days”. 

Website: Ken Schwaber

Twitter: @kschwaber

3. Dean Leffingwell

Dean Leffingwell is the creator of the SAFe Agile framework. An entrepreneur and software methodologist, he is the world’s foremost authority on Lean-Agile practices.  

Today, SAFe (Scaled Agile Framework) is the leading framework for scaling Agile at the enterprise-level. Following the Lean-Agile principles, SAFe help businesses to seamlessly deliver value at the estimated schedule, on a large scale project of 50-150 team members. 

Dean is the author of two of the best-selling books for tech leaders: “Agile Software Requirements: Lean Requirements Practices for Teams, Programs, and the Enterprise” and “Scaling Software Agility: Best Practices for Large Enterprises”. 

Website: Dean Leffingwell

Twitter: @Deanleffingwell

4. Craig Larman

Craig Larman is the co-creator of LeSS, which is a scaled version of one team scrum. He is an organizational design consultant and introduces LeSS with the executive team for large scale projects. His industry experience can be discovered from his books like “Large-Scale Scrum: More with LeSS”, “Agile & Iterative Development: A Manager's Guide” etc. 

Website: Craig Larman

Twitter: @lesscraiglarman

ALSO READ: SAFe vs LeSS vs DaD: Comparing the Three Frameworks to Scale Agile

5. Mike Cohn

Mike Cohn is a scrum trainer, co-founder of the Scrum Alliance, and president of Mountain Goat Software (a company providing training on Scrum & Agile development techniques). 

With an experience of over 20 years in varied environments, Mike helps companies in adopting and improving their Agile practices and techniques to optimize the development cycle at the organization level. Sun Microsystems, Microsoft, High Moon Studios, Google are some of the companies where Mike has a contribution to advancing Agile processes. 

Website: Mike Cohn

Twitter: @mikewcohn

6. Martin Fowler

Martin Fowler is a software consultant, one of the authors of the Agile Manifesto, and is the author of nine popular books sharing the best software development practices. Some of his renowned publications include “Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture”, “Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code” and seven others. 

Martin is an international speaker who utilizes his 20 years of experience and shares the most efficient practices for Agile software development, object-oriented analysis, and design, patterns, DevOps etc. The latest updates of the software development industry can be found on his website shared below. 

Website: Martin Fowler

Twitter: @martinfowler

7. Jez Humble

Jez Humble had an interesting career with code, infrastructure, and product development in companies of varied sizes. He is the author of “The DevOps Handbook”, “Lean Enterprise”, and the Jolt award-winning, Continuous Delivery. 

Website: Jez Humble

Twitter: @jezhumble

8. Patrick Debois

Patrick Debois is known to bridge the gap between projects and operations by using Agile- DevOps techniques in System administration, software development, and project management. He is the founder of Devopsdays, a worldwide series of technical conferences covering topics of software development, IT infrastructure operations, and the intersection between them.

Patrick is the co-author of the “The DevOps Handbook” and shares his expertise, tech-updates through his blog (shared below). 

Website: Patrick Debois

Twitter: @patrickdebois

9. Sean Hull 

Sean Hull is a data, DevOps, innovation expert, and has 20 years of experience as an independent consultant. Sean holds expertise in varied domains including Docker, Kubernetes, AWS, GCP, Terraform, business continuity, PostgreSQL & Redshift DB deployments. Follow him to learn from his mastery in DevOps, cloud automation, and scalability. Sean Hull is the author of "Oracle and Open Source". You can subscribe to his website blog or to the newsletter to stay connected with him. 

Website: Sean Hull

Twitter: @hullsean

10. Scott Ambler

Scot Ambler is the co-founder of disciplined Agile. DaD is a hybrid approach to software development that extends the strategies from Agile frameworks like Extreme Programming, LeSS, Kanban, Agile Modeling, etc. 

Scott is the author of some of the best selling books focussed on Disciplined Agile Delivery, Agile software development Capability Modelling Development, and the Unified Modeling Language. 

Website: Scott Amber

Twitter: @scottwambler

I know I have missed some of the leaders for the mere fact that it is difficult to include every one of them. If you think I missed thought leaders who need to be on this list, mention them in the comments below. Also, we would love to know which thought leader are you following currently?