Jon Kern

Jon Kern, co-author of the Agile Manifesto, is a pioneering force in agile software development with decades of experience transforming how teams deliver business value. His career spans jet engine R&D, flight simulators, and object-oriented evangelism through the 90s, including co-founding TogetherSoft and their acclaimed UML modeling tools. Jon has authored influential books and established professional mentoring programs credited with driving stellar organizational success. As a sought-after speaker and coach, he combines deep technical expertise with strategic vision, helping teams eliminate organizational and technical debt while building quality-by-design solutions. His approach uniquely balances people, process, and technology perspectives, enabling distributed teams to achieve high-quality results faster while fostering excitement and capability growth that often proves more valuable than the technical improvements themselves.