Better Software Conference & EXPO 2007

PRESENTATIONS

We Need It by October: What's Your Estimate?

Letting good estimates made by smart people be overwhelmed by the strong desires of powerful people is a cardinal sin of project management. Accurate estimates are the foundation of all the critical project decisions regarding staffing, functionality, delivery date, and budget. How do we properly estimate in a world where tradition declares that the deadline is set before the requirements are even known? Tim Lister offers practical advice on dealing with this thorny issue.

Tim Lister, Atlantic Systems Guild, Inc.

Web 2.0: The Fall and Rise of the User Experience

The Web has enabled pervasive global information sharing, commerce, and communications on a scale thought to be impossible only ten years ago. At the same time, the Web dealt a setback in the user interface experience of networked applications. Only now are Web standards and technologies emerging that can bring us back to the rich and robust user experiences that were developed in the desktop client/server era before the Web came along.

Wayne Hom, Augmentum Inc.
What Better Software Means to the CEO

Today's organizations depend on software applications for their business success-and survival. When applications fail, businesses are severely damaged-revenue losses in the millions, key data stolen, brands and reputations damaged. Security vulnerabilities impact consumer trust and result in violations of customer privacy or customer lawsuits. Often the root cause of these dire consequences is an information and communication gap between development and corporate management.

Jeffery Payne, Cigital, Inc.

What Snake Oil Is Your Organization Buying Today?

As always, the snake oil bandwagons are circling your organization. But unlike snake oil, a purported health supplement of old, modern organizations bet their success on technologies with often equally dubious claims. Did your organization jump on the CORBA bandwagon? It's now dead. How about outsourcing? Have you discovered all the hidden costs and quality problems yet? Perhaps you were mesmerized by Extreme Programming-a fading religion that once had many believers but few actual practitioners.

James Coplien, Nordija A/S
When Good Numbers Go Bad

All measurement numbers begin their life with the objective of being good and useful tools. Often a combination of mistakes, misunderstandings, organizational politics, and poor usage intersect to make these "Good Numbers Go Bad." Valuable measurements act as a nexus that focuses the members of an organization on its goals. Such measurements are relevant to the organization, predictive in that they provide foreknowledge of events, and broad enough to be useful in more than one situation.

Thomas Cagley, The David Consulting Group

When Others Aren't As Agile As You Are

As agile software development methodologies take hold in the mainstream, organizations are finding that working with outside consultants poses a new set of challenges. In some instances, consulting organizations are able to work within an agile framework quite well. But in other situations, working with a consulting company can be more challenging than the project itself. Connecting outside consultants to your inside processes must be done.

Alicia Yanik, eBags
When Will the Product be Ready to Ship - a "Hurricane Tracking System"

Most test execution tracking systems are backward looking and do not attempt to quantify what remains to be done. Management, on the other hand, is forward looking-asking, "When will testing be done?" And that question itself is fundamentally flawed, implying that testing is either "done" or "not done." What management should be asking is "When will the risks be acceptable to release the product?" David Gilbert presents a unique approach to tracking and predicting the progress of testing efforts.

David Gilbert, Sirius Software Quality Associates

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