August 3 Meeting
Construx Software, 10900 NE 8th St Suite 1350, Bellevue, WA
Food & networking from 5:45 to 6:15 (pizza, salad, soda )
Announcements from 6:15 to 6:30
Presentation from 6:30 to 7:45
Q & A from 7:45 to 8:15
Doors close at 8:30
We start presentating earlier now to allow for questions within the 8:30pm meeting time.
The Many Levers of Software Productivity
Productuvity in software development is not merely a matter of process. There are a variety of tools and methods that serve quicker, better results. This presentation is about reviewing these and exposing new ideas that you may not have seen yet. Areas to be touched on include:
- People and Organizations - Humans and teams are by far the primary determinant in success, so how people act is an important ingredient in getting results and evolving your organizations capability. How you Hire, Develop, Train, Manage, and Retain has to be part of your approach.
- Process - There are many canned processes, but none are an out-of-the-box solution. Lean, SixSigma, Scrum, XP, UP, and others are ultimately guides in looking at how you approach yoru own process. Your choice of tools need not salute any particular model - we ultimately must address our project and organization needs, and weigh the trade-offs as we evolve.
- Technical Leverage - Technology, Tools, and Techniques also come with Tradeoffs. Too often we pick the first answer without weighing options intelligently. Design and architecture are not linear and straightforward - Understanding the range and combinations of available opportunities ongoing can yield great breakthroughs - in product and productivity.
- Information - We generally live in the world of IT. But the focus is too often on the technology, rather than the best creation and delivery of information. A wiki, blog, or knowledge base do not automatically solve problems - and just adding another tool can introduce more problems than it solves. We manage a lot of information and yet are starved for fast, correct, actionable information.
This presentation will address the range of tools at your disposal and present ways of looking at your toolset in improving performance. There is a lot of conceptual content, but bring your own organizational productivity challenges as well. The presentation is meant to help you bring new ideas into your own work situation - specific questions and examples are welcome.
Bio
Jeff Smith is an ALM* Consultant at Northwest Cadence. He is an advocate for software process improvement and has been a primary process advisor and developer for Dell Computer, BearingPoint, Boeing, LexisNexis, IBM, assorted startups, and other organizations. He has a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from Texas A&M and did post-graduate studies in Computer Science and Business Administration at the University of Texas - Arlington and University of Texas - Dallas. He has almost three decades of hi-tech and software development experience with a range of organizations, industries, and roles. He is a Six Sigma Greenbelt and a Certified ScrumMaster, and is also ITIL Foundations Certified, ATSQB Certified(CTFL), and Lean+ Certified. He is the current chair of SeaSPIN and has served on the boards of the Austin SPIN, Association for IT Professionals - Austin Chapter, and Agile Austin.
* ALM - Application Lifecycle Management