Warning! Warning! Managing software projects may be accompanied by continued bouts of nausea-brought on by unmet expectations, process churn, late deliveries, and worse. In their attempt to conquer these problems, many managers stiffen their resolve, create stricter schedules, and install rigid processes to guide development from inception to production. Howard Deiner demonstrates that better results come from fundamental changes in the way managers and the organization approach problems. Drawing on W. Edward Deming’s "14 Obligations of Management," Howard reprises (with volunteers from the audience) Deming's famous Red Bead Experiment on its 30th anniversary and draws conclusions about how our approach to problem-solving affects our day-to-day work. Expect to get up on your feet and have a lot of fun "working" in a simulation of a modern workday environment, leading and managing the development efforts.

Development teams often fail to recognize the complex group interactions and multi-person relationships that are critical to build and maintain a highly productive team. Instead, they adopt follow-the-crowd practices such as stand up meetings or Kanban boards without understanding the underlying fundamentals. Michael Wolf introduces group interaction patterns of highly productive development teams to provide a framework for understanding group interactions and a vocabulary for discussing ways to improve. Michael demonstrates a simple tool-based on nine keystone patterns-that you can use to observe and understand your team members' interactions. He shares case studies that illustrate successes, failures, and turnarounds he's observed and explores how they relate to the different group interaction patterns.

According to the Standish group, 64 percent of features in systems are rarely-or never-used. How does this happen? Today, the work of eliciting the customers' true needs, which remains elusive, can be enhanced using data-driven requirements techniques. Brandon Carlson introduces data collection approaches and analysis techniques you can employ on your projects right away. Find out how to instrument existing applications and develop new requirements based on operational profiles of the current system. Learn to use A/B testing-a technique for trying out and analyzing alternative implementations-on your current system to determine which new features will deliver the most business value. With these tools at hand, you can help users and business stakeholders decide the best approaches and best new features to meet their real needs. Now is the time to take the guesswork out of requirements and get "Just the facts, Ma'am."

Advances in technologies-virtualization, cheap storage, high-speed networks-and a growing comfort with the Internet's security and reliability are leading to widespread adoption of cloud computing. Still, traditional software development methodologies are unable to make full use of the power and flexibility cloud computing offers. Yash Talreja describes how he helped his clients implement lean and agile software development methodologies to take full advantage of cloud computing. Find out how a social networking site and a branded instant messaging company combined the ease and economy of cloud-based system installation, management, and maintenance with the speed of lean and agile practices. They were able to simplify the deployment and upgrade process offered by the cloud, and combine the benefits of a tight feedback loop between developers and end-users.