Better Software Conference & EXPO 2006

PRESENTATIONS

A Bug's Life

The quality of software is directly related to the number and severity of bugs in software when it goes into production. Inspired by the Disney® film of the same name, Lloyd Roden offers a light-hearted, humorous presentation with a serious message-neglect the bugs and they will take over! Learn about novel strategies to detect and fix bugs before they bite you. Find out ways to change your environment to make it less likely to attract bugs and easier to exterminate the ones that do invade your software.

Lloyd Roden, Grove Consultants

A Metrics Dashboard to Drive Goal Achievement

Some measurement programs with high aims fall short, languish, and eventually fail completely because few people regularly use the resulting metrics. Based on Cisco Systems' five years of experience in establishing an annual quality program employing a metrics dashboard, Wenje Lai describes their successes and challenges and demonstrates the dashboard in use today.

Wenje Lai, Cisco Systems Inc
Agile Offshore Development: An Oxymoron?

Companies that master Agile development in a multi-shore environment can benefit from reduced calendar time to implement new features, early development feedback to make course corrections, and increased development team responsiveness to changing market requirements. Multi-shore Agile development teams face unique challenges compared with co-located teams-large time zone differences, lack of proximity, cultural differences, and more.

Roger Nessier, Symphony Services
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.

Michael Mah, QSM Associates, Inc.

An Integrated Configuration Management System Revealed

Many people talk about an end-to-end software development process in which requirements are developed and transitioned seamlessly into code with tests tracing back to the requirements. Geree Streun has learned that an integrated configuration management system should be at the center of that process. She explains the criteria for evaluating and selecting a configuration management tool to support your development process and why configuration management should be implemented in an integrated way.

Geree Streun, ANS
Beat the Odds in Vega$: Measurement Theory Applied to Development and Testing

James McCaffrey describes in detail how to use measurement theory to create a simple software system that predicts with 87 percent accuracy the results of NFL professional football game scores. So, what does this have to do with a conference about developing better software? You can apply the same measurement theory principles embedded in this program to more accurately predict or compare results of software development, testing, and management.

James McCaffrey, Volt Information Sciences, Inc.

Better Software Conference 2006: Agile Development and Its Impact on Productivity

Agile development projects are different. Sure, they still have high-level business requirements, but they usually lack system descriptions, technical design documents, and system architectures. The projects tend to be smaller than those employing more traditional methods, and much of the testing occurs concurrently with development. The teams tend to be very small and often in one room, more like a group of friends than a typical development team. How do these and other differences affect productivity and the resulting products?

David Garmus, The David Consulting Group
Better Software Conference 2006: Lightning Talks: A Potpourri of 5-Minute Presentations

Lightning Talks are nine five-minute talks in a fifty-minute time period. Lightning Talks represent a much smaller investment of time than track speaking and offer the chance to try conference speaking without the heavy commitment. Lightning Talks are an opportunity to quickly present your single, biggest, bang-for-the-buck idea. Maybe you just want to ask a question, invite people to help you with your project, boast about something you did, or tell a short cautionary story.

Julie Gardiner, QST Consultants Ltd.

Better Software Conference 2006: Software Production Line Automation

Traditional manufacturing employs extensive automation for maximum efficiency and reliability. Manufacturing organizations invest heavily in tooling and infrastructure to automate production lines and reap great cost savings. For certain software applications and technologies, the software development process can be optimized if it is thought of and run like a manufacturing process. With a focused tools group made up of architects, engineers, and technicians, you can build a software product line for your applications.

C. Thomas Tyler, The Go To Group Inc
Building Secure Software with New Web Technologies

The latest generation of Web technologies-AJAX, improved client-side scripting, support for extensive DOM manipulation in browsers, content syndication, Web service APIs, and simple interchange formats such as JSON-are all driving new, powerful Web applications. Based on his work on real world "Web 2.0" applications, Ivan Krstic discusses the security implications of these new technologies.

Ivan Krstic, Harvard University

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