Conference Presentations

Mentoring for Rookie (and Experienced) Managers

In the same way that every athlete needs a coach to help him develop and perfect their skills, software managers and technical leads need mentors to help them improve his leadership and management skills. Working with an effective coach should be part of every manager's personal career development plan. With his proven track record of identifying and developing strong technical managers, Kevin Bodie discusses how to find and recruit personal mentors. He also explains how to become a great mentor yourself. Learn what you can expect from a mentor, what your mentor will expect from you, and practical techniques for mentoring and coaching others. Take away tools to build and keep leading-edge management skills and ways to assess the results of mentoring.

  • Effective selection and recruiting of coaches and mentors
  • Mentoring techniques that really work
  • How to keep developing as a manager
Kevin Bodie, Pitney Bowes Inc
Sarbanes and Oxley: Your New Partners in Software Development

Determining whether legal and contractual issues apply to your development efforts isn't always simple. There may be some obvious factors: a well-regulated industry, service level agreements, or state or federal agency oversight. However, other factors may not be so obvious. The new Sarbanes-Oxley Act is largely legally untested, subjecting your company to unknown legal issues. You have an eCommerce site that stores credit card information. Your portal collects personal information. You produce proprietary software ... and more. Does Sarbanes-Oxley apply to you? Covering legal, compliance, and audit throughout the development lifecycle, Elle Ringham discusses the right questions to ask and what to do with the answers. She provides guidelines for working with stakeholders, attorneys, and auditors. Take away audit templates, metrics to help you, and sample reports you may need to produce.

Elle Ringham, Fidelity National Financial
Unintended Consequences of a Capability Maturity Mismatch--Evidence from a Quality Audit

In this presentation Michael Harris describes the findings of a quality assurance audit (PPQA) of the offshore outsourcing arm of a major U.S. software development company in late 2005. As the executive in charge of much of the development and as a member of the PPQA audit team, the Michael has a singular perspective on the expectations and the reality of the project. This presentation explores one particular aspect of the audit findings-the manifestations of the different CMMI® maturity levels of the onshore and offshore organizations. Take away suggestions for taking advantage of this mismatch situation instead of suffering from it.

  • Review a quality assurance audit (PPQA)
  • Explore the different CMMI® maturity levels of onshore and offshore organizations
  • Take advantage of mismatched outsourcing situations
Michael Harris, David Consulting Group
Risk Managment on an Agile Project

Plan-driven software project management is very specific on how to identify and manage risks. When moving to Agile software development practices, what happens to all the risk management activities that project managers used to oversee? Contrary to what many expect, there are Agile risk management practices that reduce risk by providing opportunities for the team to identify, monitor, and control risk events. For each of the traditional risk management areas-identification, analysis, response planning, and monitoring and controlling-you will learn the corresponding Agile approach. In keeping with Agile's strengths, team involvement and collaboration are key inputs into the risk management process. Michele Sliger explains how and when to involve the team in identifying risks, analyzing the opportunities and threats, mitigating as appropriate, and monitoring these risks throughout the lifetime of the Agile project.

Michele Sliger, Rally Software Development
Introduction to the Capability Maturity Model® Integration (CMMI®)

Many organizations have achieved success in using the SEI Capability Maturity Model Integrated (CMMI®) as a framework for their process improvement program. Steven Lett describes the structure and contents of the CMMI®, including the continuous and staged versions of the model. He discusses each of the five maturity levels and their process areas, the specific and generic practices that exist within each process area, and the typical process documentation and work products required for each. Learn an effective approach that companies take in driving change across their software engineering organizations. Find out how the model is meant to be interpreted and take back examples of the successes that companies have experienced in using both CMMI® and the earlier Capability Maturity Model (CMM®). Capability Maturity Model® and CMMI® are registered trademarks of Carnegie Mellon University.

Steven Lett, The David Consulting Group
Don't Settle for Better Software - Make Truly Great Software

Too many teams create very decent products that, for whatever reason, fail to rise above the crowd and truly capture the popular imagination. They are surprised when their products are mostly ignored by the marketplace, which seems to be captivated by some other shiny geegaw that's functionally inferior and more expensive. In many product categories, from software to consumer electronics, the product with the most market share is often more expensive and less functional than the number two product. Joel Spolsky will explore why this happens and suggest some ways to design a "blue chip" product that people will love. After you get great software and products using the usual repertoire of debugging, usability testing, etc., you have to go still further and think about beauty, user happiness, and emotional impact. Let Joel help you figure out what makes truly great software-great.

Joel Spolsky, Fog Creek Software
The Complete Developer

With the global availability of talented development people there is a growing trend toward the commoditization of software development. No longer is it enough to simply be a developer with knowledge of specific languages or algorithms in order to maintain your competitive edge in the marketplace. To compete, you must become a complete developer-someone who can, for example, write some code in the morning and in the afternoon update the requirements Wiki with the results of the latest customer review meeting with your marketing team. This talk explores what it takes to be a genuinely valuable complete developer in today’s world of agile development, outsourcing, globalization, and an increasingly complex business environment.

Luke Hohmann, Enthiosys, Inc.
Agile Productivity Metrics

Enough of the stories ... Where is the quantitative proof that Agile methods like Extreme Programming (XP) deliver higher productivity and quality? Such data has been missing for years, perhaps because agile practitioners and metrics experts have never fully cooperated to crack this difficult problem. Whatever the reason, the wait is now over. Metrics expert Michael Mah will discuss how he successfully applied productivity benchmarking techniques on numerous real-world XP projects and how a company's development approach was transformed using agile methods. He'll give an overview of the projects, explain an approach to gathering "Agile Productivity Metrics," review how the data was interpreted, and show what was revealed in the time-to-market and quality numbers. Michael concludes with a glimpse of the kind of agile management and measurement that is possible-when you collect the right information.

Michael Mah, QSM Associates, Inc.
Retrospectives: Five Years Beyond the Book

Project

Norm Kerth, Elite Systems
There's Always Time for Pragmatic Project Planning

"Plan your work. Work your plan." Or, "Plan? Plan? We don't need no stinkin' plan." Which is the best approach for your software project? According to Robert Galen, neither is the right answer. Because software projects are expensive and challenging, you need a pragmatic project plan-one that is concise, targeted, useful, used, and adaptive. Beginning with a chartering process that leads to a high level project strategy, stakeholders determine the critical success factors and where to focus their planning activities. Robert describes the use of "Sticky Note Planning" workshops to develop and, more importantly, to maintain pragmatic plans as living documents. Learn from Robert what to monitor in your project, what milestones to set, and what the important drivers should be for adjusting the plan. Make planning one of the top contributors to the success of your project.

Robert Galen, RGCG, LLC

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