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Keynote Speakers:
Neal Ford
 Neal
Ford is Software Architect and Meme Wrangler at ThoughtWorks, a global
IT consultancy with an exclusive focus on end-to-end software
development and delivery. He is also the designer and developer of
applications, instructional materials, magazine articles, courseware,
video/DVD presentations, and author and/or editor of 6 books spanning a
variety of technologies, including the most recent The Productive
Programmer. He focuses on designing and building of large-scale
enterprise applications. He is also an internationally acclaimed
speaker, speaking at over 100 developer conferences worldwide,
delivering more than 600 talks. Check out his web site at
http://www.nealford.com. He welcomes feedback and can be reached at
nford@thoughtworks.com.
Scott Conley
As
Chief Strategy Officer, Scott Conley contributes vision and leadership
to the realization of emerging technology innovations relevant to
ThoughtWorks' global business and enterprise customers. Scott's
diversity of talent has delivered higher performing teams, stronger
delivery mechanics and tens of millions to the business. In almost a
decade with ThoughtWorks, his expertise has been shared with Fortune
1000 companies across an array of industries. Scott's extended
background includes executive and technical roles with premier
organizations, from dot-com with startup NetImpact to building his
early career with consulting giants PWC and MCI Systemhouse. Scott
earned a BSBA (CompSci) from the University of Florida's Warrington
College of Business and is a lifelong Florida Gator.
Abstracts:
Keynotes
Neal Ford | Why, Not How | 8:30 - 9:30
We have all figured out that Agility works, but have you ever investigated why it works so well? This keynote investigates some Agile practices and explains why they work (when it seems like they wouldn't). Disparate stuff like cell phones, brain theory, toys, and other stuff appear when least expected. And what about RPS?
Scott Conley | Platforms: Innovating in the Google Era | 1:00 - 1:45
Today's
business leaders are facing an unusual challenge: how to boldly step
forward while operating under the legacy of the recent economic
correction. This talk argues that seizing the initiative in today's
evolving markets requires two critical bits of leverage: operational
and informational advantage. Further, we investigate some thinking
around the definition of platforms, how to harness them, and ultimately
how they may be practically applied to the solution space that
enterprise IT executives live in.
Business Track
Courageous Leadership in Challenging Times | Carl Ververs | 9:45 - 11:00
With the seemingly worsening economic climate, companies and especially IT departments are battening down the hatches and are reducing their risks to the absolute minimum. True leadership takes a backseat to keeping the lights on. In doing so however they are forfeiting opportunities for dramatic optimization of everything they do. Using real-life examples, this session will present a case for IT departments to seize the moment and reinvent themselves, to come out fighting once the inevitable upturn arrives, to overcome fear and get innovation moving again with minimum risk.
Budgeting and the Financial Implications of Agile | Ross Pettit | 11:05 - 12:00
Every year, we forecast what we're going to spend, and what we're going
to deliver for the money we spend. Business environments and Wall
Street expectations change quarterly, and we need to be able to adjust
our spending quickly. How do we do this in an Agile world? It means
delivering dynamic solutions frequently and truly engaging the business
as a partner. It gives us unprecedented visibility into what's going
on. Agile practices maximize IT's business impact at any given time,
while giving the businesses better financial control.
The Essential and Incidental Complexity of Software | Saleem Siddiqui | 12:05 - 12:45
"Software" can be an emotive word, inciting feelings ranging from wonder and incredulity to resentment and even fear. Most of these feelings are rooted in the understanding -- even if it's vague or superficial -- that most software is complex. Does this have to be true? Is simplicity in software unachievable? Or has it merely proved to be elusive because of the way we write software?
In this talk, I'll explore some of these ideas by examining both the essential and the incidental causes of complexity in software. I will explain my position that methods that reduce the latter type of complexity have a more profound effect in simplifying software than those that purportedly tackle the irreducible aspects of complexity.
Redefining Application Development with Offshore Agile | Greg Reiser | 3:05 - 4:45
ThoughtWorks' industry-leading "Offshore Agile" approach provides a high level of visibility that eliminates the surprises that are all too common with offshore development. In this presentation, Greg describes ThoughtWorks' Offshore Agile approach, reviews specific practices that make Offshore Agile successful, and answers the question: "Is offshore development compatible with high-value high-complexity projects?".
Technical Track
Interchangeable Parts: Development Environment | David Vollbracht | 9:45 - 11:00
Maintaining a consistent development environment across all developers'
machines can be very painful. Even if dedicated machines are used,
environmental differences inevitably creep in over time. We'll start by
discussing the advantages of keeping all development machines totally
in sync. Then we'll explore several options for keeping machines
identical as the development environment evolves over the life of a
project. With the right tools, cruft can easily be kept at bay and
changes can be propagated to all machines with minimal effort.
Incorporating Cloud into Agile Software Development | Anthony Pitluga and Ali Aghareza | 11:05 - 12:00
Cloud computing offers agile teams the potential to realize considerable gains through dynamically-provisioned environments. This presentation will cover how our team applied Amazon Web Services' products to improve testing practices and to augment existing production infrastructure- with immediate value to our productivity and team agility. We will further weigh considerations of deploying to the cloud and discuss some tools and techniques we leveraged.
Adaptive ALM | Jeffrey Zook and Matt Quagliana | 12:05 - 12:45
Join Jeffrey Zook and Matt Quagliana for an introduction to
ThoughtWorks Studios' Adapative ALM. Learn how Adaptive ALM is helping
organizations streamline and automate the entire software development
life cycle by incorporating engineering best practices --such as
Continuous Integration and Test-driven development-- resulting in
significant improvements in productivity and quality.
Web Application Test Driven Development | Graham Brooks | 2:00 - 3:00
Test Driven Development is a proven development technique that has been in widespread use for some time particularly for class level testing. Web application testing techniques have traditionally proved to be complex and difficult to do. Recent innovations have made test driven web development a reality. This presentation is part experience report on applying test driven development techniques to web development in general and to Java web applications in particular.
Code Metrics & Analysis for Agile Projects | Ram Singaram | 3:05 - 4:45
What do code and methodology have to do with one another? Everything!
This session is a survey of tools and metrics that allow you to
determine the quality of your code along with strategies to "wire it"
into your agile project. I talk about the Hawthorne effect, analysis
tools, useful metrics, tools for generating metrics, and how to analyze
raw data into actionable tasks. The metrics I cover include: cyclomatic
complexity, efferent and afferent coupling, the Chidamber/Kemerer
metrics suite, CRAP4J, and all the metrics covered by Panopticode.
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