4.YOUR reality: Agile for PMs
– small and medium corps, large corps
5.Q&A
Philippe Kruchten
Prof. Kruchten, Ph.D., P.Eng., CSDP is
professor of software engineering in the department of electrical and computer
engineering of the University of British Columbia, in Vancouver, Canada. He
joined UBC in 2004 after a 30+ year career in industry, where he worked mostly
in with large software-intensive systems design, in the domains of
telecommunication, defense, aerospace and transportation. Some of his
experience is embodied in the Rational Unified Process (RUP) whose development
he directed from 1995 till 2003, when Rational Software was bought by IBM. RUP
includes an architectural design method, known as “RUP 4+1 views”. His current
research interests still reside mostly with software architecture, and in
particular architectural decisions and the decision process, as well as
software engineering processes, in particular the application of agile
processes in large and globally distributed teams. He is a co-founder of Agile
Vancouver, a Professional Engineer, and a senior member of the IEEE.
Eugene Nizker
Dr. Nizker spent more than 30 years in software
development – in trenches writing code, in senior exec room as CIO and CTO, and
as strategic consultant.His business
acumen, technical knowledge, and abilities to build winning relationships help
him to bridge the gap between business and technology.
He successfully uses this experience in his consulting and
coaching.Dr. Nizker is frequently
writes “CIO Magazine” as one of their Experts.He is also a member of Agile Vancouver board.Dr. Nizker is a winner of “Executive of the
Year” and “Product of the Year” awards and was a finalist for both the “CIO/CTO
of the Year” and “Team of the Year” awards.
Steve Adolph
Steve has been creating and managing software development
projects long enough to remember Fortran and OS/MVT JCL. His professional
career includes many exciting and critical projects including designing call
processing software for digital switches, design and development of leading
edge network management systems, and taking a leading role in the creation of
Creo’s (now Kodak). One of the projects Steve is most nostalgic about is when
he worked at Alcatel as a team lead for the design of the Vancouver Skytrain
Vehicle Control Center (VCC), a safety critical component that guides automated
rapid transit trains. Steve also spent four years in Europe as project
engineer creating the largest pre-paid billing cellular telephone systems in
Europe (32 million subscribers)
Steve Is the author of numerous articles and a book on
software requirements, and an expert when it comes to teaching others about
business modeling, requirements analysis, software architecture and design, and
proper testing. He is active in the agile community and is the co-founder of
Agile Vancouver and track chair for Agile 2009 in Chicago.
Agility Situated
Abstract
There are
little doubts about the intrinsic value of agile practices: well applied by the
right people, they do wonder, on the right problem. But are they always suited
to the task? Software projects and software development organizations cover a
wide spectrum. I will contend that most of the value of any software
development practice depends on its context; and that Agility for an
organization is not defined by simply embracing a labeled set of practices, nor
even by a level of conformance to the agile manifesto. Agility should be
defined relative to the value it brings to the business, namely the capacity of
an organization to react and adapt faster than its environment can change. How
agile an organization is, or can afford to be, will depend not on the practices
alone, but on the context in which they are applied: how fit to that context
are they. How do we define "context"? What elements or attributes of
this context have a bearing on the selection of the set of practices an
organization should adopt, and therefore how 'agile' it should strive to be?
I'll share some experience of applying agile practices far from their sweet
spot, leading to the concept of situated agile processes.
Dr. Nizker spent more than 30 years in software
development – in trenches writing code, in senior exec room as CIO and CTO, and
as strategic consultant.
Steve has been creating and managing software development
projects long enough to remember Fortran and OS/MVT JCL. His professional
career includes many exciting and critical projects including designing call
processing software for digital switches, design and development of leading
edge network management systems, and taking a leading role in the creation of
Creo’s (now Kodak). One of the projects Steve is most nostalgic about is when
he worked at Alcatel as a team lead for the design of the Vancouver Skytrain
Vehicle Control Center (VCC), a safety critical component that guides automated
rapid transit trains. Steve also spent four years in Europe as project
engineer creating the largest pre-paid billing cellular telephone systems in
Europe (32 million subscribers)