Better Software Conference & Expo 2008 brochure

cOncuRRenT cLasses WednesdaY, june 11, 12:45 W8 ManaGinG proJeCts anD teaMs W12 testinG Bandages or Tombstones? distinguishing Between Minor setbacks and impending doom Payson Hall, Catalysis Group, Inc. Are the challenges confronting your project normal and treatable setbacks or signs of something more serious? Can we treat them with a Band-Aid® and a kiss? Should we call the ambulance? The undertaker? Payson Hall shares patterns he’s observed while consulting on dozens of large software development and systems integration projects—executive sponsors distancing themselves from your project, ebbing morale, aggressive schedules, and more. Although good project teams react to adversity and try to get the job done in spite of troubles, their adaptive behavior can lead to a loss of perspective. Sometimes, teams become desensitized to the warning signs of degrading project health and are slow to respond to significant issues. Learn the symptoms of project problems and regain perspective as you identify the causes and find the remedies. early defect detection for software analysis and design Vladimir Pavlov, International Software and Productivity Engineering Institute For large software development projects, the most important decisions—and the most expensive mistakes—are made at the beginning of the project. At the same time, the initial quality assurance activity is minimal but grows as development moves forward. This results in costly rework (often hidden) in the later stages of the project. Vladimir Pavlov explains how to reduce delays between bug insertions and bug fixes by allocating quality activities over the entire project in proportion to the importance of potential errors. Vladimir describes practical techniques to discover and fix critical analysis and design mistakes almost immediately after their introduction—not in the late phases where they are the most expensive to resolve. He also explains how to integrate these techniques into software development lifecycles including Rational Unified Process, Open Unified Process, and Microsoft Solutions Framework. To increase quality and lower total project costs, establish early defect detection procedures for your projects. W9 aGile ManaGeMent pragmatic agility: principles, not dogma Andy Hunt, The Pragmatic Programmers You’ve got questions. Andy Hunt has answers. What is agile software development all about? Why the sudden popularity of agile? Why is it fundamentally different from other approaches? Will it work for my organization and me? Join Andy, one of the seventeen original signatories of the Agile Manifesto and a founder of the Agile Alliance, for his pragmatic take on the answers to these and your other questions. Look at the foundations of agile software development and see what problems agility seeks to address. Don’t be distracted by dogma as you take some time to explore the core aspects of agile development. Andy presents a brief overview of the major agile methodologies and walks you through a typical day in the life of an agile developer. Find out what’s really important about the agile approach and take back new ideas to help you transition to agile while avoiding common stumbling blocks. Join Andy to find out how to make agility work for you. W1 reQUireMents answer the call: help product Owners define and prioritize Requirements Kent McDonald, Knowledge Bridge Partners Numerous software development methodologies are available to provide project teams excellent guidance on how to build systems right. But how do we know that we are building the right systems? We often ask product owners to define and prioritize their requirements—without offering them a great deal of guidance on how to do so. Understanding what the software needs to do and the value that it will add to the organization will help them decide the importance of each requirement. Kent McDonald explains how you can employ a value model based on the project’s purpose, costs, benefits, considerations, and its relation to the organization’s overall strategies to help product owners define and quantify the value delivered by a project. He will also show how you can use a regular reevaluation of this value model to decide what requirements should be completed and in what order. More importantly, you can empower product owners to determine what requirements should be changed or dropped as the project proceeds. W10 aGile DeVelopMent collaborative card play: a fun Way to Learn agile Modeling Jeff Patton, Independent Consultant While sophisticated modeling tools may produce high quality drawings, it takes a different set of tools and skills to produce high quality discussions that result in a useful model of your software. Using index cards, sticky notes, and markers, it’s relatively easy to create simple, agile models that improve communication and foster common understanding of what you are trying to represent. Join Jeff Patton to learn the essentials of card modeling and avoid those monotonous, unproductive meetings. In hands-on exercises, you will work with others to elicit, distill, prioritize, and communicate new information. Learn to employ a variety of simple models and walk away with ideas for using collaborative card play within your project team and with cross-functional teams. W14 speCial topiCs The give and Take of design criticism Rebecca Wirfs-Brock, Wirfs-Brock Associates Have you ever engaged in a design discussion where people didn’t play fair? Do you have trouble giving advice that sticks or accepting criticism of your own work? Do you know when you should take up an argument and when is it better to let things slide? Every software engineer needs skills at giving, absorbing, and reacting appropriately to criticism. We should know when to pick our battles and how to spot and counteract faulty reasoning. We should be able to give advice so that others get it, and if they don’t, determine why. Join Rebecca Wirfs-Brock to explore how design teams can engage in more effective conversations while eliciting and exchanging constructive criticism. Rebecca surveys the biases that underlie reactions people commonly have to new information and how to overcome those biases. Practice techniques for organizing and presenting constructive criticism as you learn to recognize different types of criticism and the appropriate responses. W11 proCess iMproVeMent deception and estimation: how We fool Ourselves Linda Rising, Independent Consultant Cognitive scientists tell us that we are hardwired for deception. It seems we are overly optimistic, and, in fact, we wouldn’t have survived without this trait. With this built-in bias as a starting point, it’s almost impossible for us to estimate accurately. That doesn’t mean all is lost. We must simply accept that our estimates are best guesses and continually re-evaluate as we go, which is, of course, the agile approach to managing change. Linda Rising has been part of many plan-driven development projects where sincere, honest people with integrity wanted to make the best estimates possible and used many “scientific” approaches to make it happen—all for naught. Re-estimation was regarded as an admission of failure to do the best up-front estimate and resulted in a lot of overhead and meetings to try to “get it right.” Offering examples from ordinary life—especially from the way people eat and drink—Linda demonstrates how hard it is for us to see our poor estimating skills and helps us learn to avoid the self-deception that is hardwired in all of us. Red Rocks Canyon, Nevada To regisTer call 888-268-8770 or 904-278-0524 or visiT www.sqe.com/bscereg 19 http://www.sqe.com/bscereg

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Better Software Conference & Expo 2008 brochure

Better Software Conference & Expo Brochure Contents Conference At-A-Glance Special Events Conference Speakers 49 In-Depth Pre-Conference Tutorials 4 Keynote Presentations 42 Concurrent Classes Event Location and Las Vegas Highlights What Our Delegates are Saying Sponsors and Exhibitors Registration Information

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