Christopher Niven

Chris has over 20 years successfully managing software projects for Energy, Metering, Construction Data, and Government markets. An early adopter of SCRUM, Chris implemented it for projects at several companies in 2008-2010, and has since used it exclusively. Prior to his work in SCRUM, Chris saw grew up in a Waterfall world, where he guided over 20 projects to on-time, on budget deliver (over 85% success). When considering the question, is agile is better, he feels that great leaders with great teams who understand the business need will be able to succeed with multiple methodologies; but that agile and SCRUM in particular better provides the business the ability to reduce risks and recover from past decisions. Chris has owned multiple start-ups, delivering software services to the call accounting industry as well as creating ground breaking applications including the ODBC Intercept debugging tool and Office Suite Online, the first SaaS spreadsheet, contact management, and calendaring tool available for use online using a subscription model. In addition Chris has worked in operations, moving applications to new infrastructure to support consolidating data centers. In his current position at Landis+Gyr Chris works with 25 scrum teams at 5 development centers in three countries. As a SW Development Leader, Chris works intimately with the business, architecture and Firmware engineering teams to organize the backlog, coordinate teams, and reduce risk. He has integrated multiple new teams and recognizes transparency and communications as the bedrock of continued success. Chris earned a MS in CIS from the University of Florida as well as degrees in business and engineering. He is certified as a CSM as well as a CSP.