Application Lifecycle Management

If you long for greater agility in your process-oriented or CMMI world, this session is for you. Paul McMahon shares how organizations can integrate agile approaches with CMMI and its key process area requirements. He discusses the advantages and disadvantages of different approaches taken by two organizations-one a CMMI Level 3 and the other a Level 5-to embrace agile principles and practices. To ensure your organization doesn't jeopardize its CMMI compliance with agile methods, Paul shares an approach that uses techniques such as asking key questions to focus objectives, pruning your processes, using the CMMI less formally, and keeping your "must dos" packaged separately from guidelines. He describes and discusses examples of each technique. Learn why the two organizations took different approaches, why one achieved its goals, and why the other fell short.

Establishing IT governance and compliance practices is essential for organizations that have regulatory or audit requirements. The good news is that you can be agile and still comply with Sarbanes-Oxley, CFR 21, HIPAA, and other regulatory imperatives. Done well, IT controls actually help you improve both productivity and quality. Bob Aiello describes how to implement IT controls in frameworks such as ISACA Cobit and ITIL v3 that many regulatory frameworks require-while maintaining agile practices. Bob's guidance includes specific examples of establishing IT controls: separation of duties, work-item to change-set traceability, physical and functional configuration audits, and more. Bob explains how these practices help government, defense, and corporations scale agile practices where audit and regulatory compliance is a must.

Due to its ongoing rise in popularity 'Agile' methods are now being used on a wide range of projects, varying in size and complexity. As a result it's not uncommon for key project areas, like development, testing, UX, etc to be outsourced to 'on' and 'off-shore' companies. And although the decision to outsource is sometimes the right one for a project, outsourcing also comes with its own inherent risks. Using real world examples based on personal experience, Ade Shokoya will be sharing the do's and don'ts of agile outsourcing. Attendees will leave this session knowing how to identify and avoid the common outsourcing problems that could quickly derail your agile projects - and potentially cost you your job. Armed with this knowledge you'll be better positioned to improve your personal power and influence at work, and achieve your career objectives.

What do poker, Greek oracles, an Italian mathematician from the Middle Ages, and the path of hurricanes have in common? Given the title of this presentation, chances are it has something to do with estimation, and you'll have to attend this session to get the full connection. Kent McDonald explores the challenges and realities of trying to estimate software-related knowledge work-analysis, testing, development, and the entire project effort. A major challenge is that there are no guaranteed ways to arrive at perfectly accurate estimates, which not surprisingly is why they are called estimates. Kent introduces and gives you a chance to practice quick and practical estimating techniques that will work in different situations-guesstimating, break it down and add it up, and planning poker.