Webinars

Advanced Agile: Beyond the Low Hanging Fruit
Speaker: Mary Poppendieck, A popular writer and speaker, Mary continues to bring fresh perspectives to the world of software development.

Date: Thursday, January 13, 2009-2:00 PM ET / 11:00 AM PT / 19:00 GMT (Duration: 1 hour)

The widespread adoption of agile software development is a double-edged sword. On the one hand agile teams have reported impressive gains in productivity. On the other hand, these gains seem to plateau after a while, leaving a disquieting suspicion that something might be missing. This webinar will cover a few things that might be missing. It will help you look at your software development process and find leverage points for sustained improvement.
The webinar will look at:
• Failure Demand – what it is, what causes it, and why you have to get rid of it
• Workflow – how it’s different than scheduling and why it’s more important than deadlines
• Waste – how policies can actually cause waste
• Relentless Improvement – taking retrospectives to the next level

Building Smarter Products: A new approach to conducting system engineering trade studies.
Speaker: Dr. Graham Bleakley, is currently a principal consultant in IBM Rational where, when not consulting, he works on Model Based System Engineering Process definition and Architectural Frameworks, being one of the lead architects on the OMG UPDM submission.

Date: Wednesday December 2, 2009-11:00 PM ET / 8:00 AM PT / (Duration: 1 hour)

If your project is like most, then you are probably facing a confusing
myriad of requirements and constraints. Finding the best solution to meet
these needs is key to ensuring delivery of your project with lower cost and
risk in the face of ever shrinking time to market demands. Fully exploring
the design space, early in the lifecycle, can reveal an optimal solution
that meets the project goals for both customers and business, but your
challenge is even greater if you do this using traditional document-driven
techniques.

During the Webcast, we will discuss the:

Main stages of the system engineering process
Main stages of utilizing a trade study
Weighted objectives method
Steps involved in performing trade studies using a model-driven approach
Identification of key system functions identification of potential solutions
Identification of assessment criteria or key performance parameters
Analysis of trade study results.

IEEE Computer Society Computing Now Webinar Series Presents:
Software G Forces: The Effects of Acceleration
Speaker: Kent Beck, is the founder and director of Three Rivers Institute (TRI).

Originally Aired: Tuesday, November 3 2009-2:00 PM ET / 11:00 AM PT / 19:00 GMT (Duration: 1 hour)

Agile software development is generally most valuable when used to reduce the release cycle. The key advantage of agile development is being able to more closely track changing business and market needs. The costs and risks of applying agile development are most productively applied to becoming more responsive.
Assuming you are going to release more frequently, what is likely to happen? In this talk I present sketch quarterly deployment, monthly deployment, weekly deployment, daily deployment, and finally hourly deployment, including the technical, social, and business implications.

Kent Beck answers more questions.

IEEE Computer Society Computing Now Webinar Series Presents: Right-Sizing Agile Development
Speaker: Steve McConnell, CEO of Construx Software. Steve is the author of Code Complete, Rapid Development, and other software industry classics.

Originally Aired: Wednesday, October 1, 2008-2:00 PM ET / 11:00 AM PT / 19:00 GMT (Duration: 1 hour)

Don't miss the opportunity to hear this live presentation by development methodologies expert Steve McConnell. Agile development has now been in use for almost a decade. Why use Agile methods? What are the strengths of Agile? What are some common failure modes? What other lessons has the software industry learned about Agile development? In this talk, Steve McConnell draws on Construx's extensive consulting work to dissect Agile development.
McConnell names the Agile practices that have worked well for Construx's clients, describes the failure modes of Agile practices that have failed to live up to the hype, and explains how to right-size Agile development for your organization.

Standardizing Your Software Process Improvement Initiatives
Speaker: Susan K. (Kathy) Land, Principal Software and Systems Engineer, MITRE Corporation

Originally Aired: Thursday, March 27, 2008-2:00 PM ET / 11:00 AM PT / 19:00 GMT (Duration: 1 hour)

Process improvement methodologies do not tell users "how" to satisfy their criteria as they are typically descriptive. These methodologies do not describe how to accomplish their goals but describe the criteria that the end results should support. Standards, however, are prescriptive. Standards describe how to fulfill the requirements associated with effective organizational process improvement and software project management. They are effective tools for the definition and managed improvement of the software development process.