January 15 SeaSPIN - Taking Software Development to the Next Level January 15, 2013

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Monthly SeaSPIN Meeting
January 15
Free and Open to the Software Engineering & IT Community

Vertafore, 11724 Northeast 195th Street  Bothell, WA 98011
Food & networking from 5:45 to 6:15 (pizza, salad, soda )
Announcements from 6:15 to 6:30
Presentation from 6:30 to 7:45
Q & A from 7:45 to 8:15
Doors close at 8:30
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Taking Software Development to the Next Level
by Alan Shalloway, Founder & CEO, NetObjectives


Things have changed considerably in the last 15 years for software development. In every area of the organization – development, QA, management and the business side. Between design patterns, TDD, ATDD, refactoring, emergent design, eXtreme Programming, Agile, Scrum, Lean and Kanban, new methods have dramatically enlarged our knowledge about how to develop software.


While some still claim software development is complex and we should be using black-box frameworks, this talk presents the idea that we now know enough to dramatically increase the productivity of the industry. The issue is no longer not knowing how to develop great software. The challenge is getting people to incorporate known practices into their development methods. Getting behavioral change is much more complicated than understanding what the change needs to be.


This talk introduces three concepts that we can use to help us take software development to the next level:
- The Technology Gap – the difference between what we know and what we do
- Trim Tabs – the concept that some activities have more than leveraged impact but change the environment within which we work
- The Pickup Sticks Model - for deciding the order of introducing new concepts


While there is a creative aspect to software development, there is a science to it as well. We must embrace this dual nature and increase our capabilities. The time is now.


Speaker Bio
Al Shalloway is the founder and CEO of Net Objectives. With over 40 years of experience, Alan is an industry thought leader in Lean, Kanban, product portfolio management, Scrum and agile design. He helps companies transition to Lean and Agile methods enterprise-wide as well teaches courses in these areas. Alan has developed training and coaching methods for Lean-Agile that have helped Net Objectives' clients achieve long-term, sustainable productivity gains. He is a popular speaker at prestigious conferences worldwide. He is the primary author of Design Patterns Explained: A New Perspective on Object-Oriented Design, Lean-Agile Pocket Guide for Scrum Teams, Lean-Agile Software Development: Achieving Enterprise Agility and Essential Skills for the Agile Developer. Alan has worked in literally dozens of industries over his career. He is a co-founder and board member for the Lean Software and Systems Consortium. He has a Masters in Computer Science from M.I.T. as well as a Masters in Mathematics from Emory University.