Risk Management is Project Management for Adults

Tim Lister

8:30am - 9:30am

When matters go less than perfectly, usually it is not that your plan went wrong. It was something that you didn't plan on happened to you. Don't you get it? Something always happens! Software development is naturally a risky business. Hoping that problems won't happen appears to be the norm for risk management for our industry. We can do much better.

GENERAL SESSION:

Getting Started in Process Improvement: The First Five Years Are the Hardest
Ken Dymond
10:00am - 10:50am

Many companies embarking on a process improvement program, especially following a capability maturity model™®, find it takes years before progress kicks in.  Just as choosing the best life cycle – and what steps to do first – is important to a successful engineering project, so understanding how you start matters for your change program.   But improvement projects are not engineering projects, and making what seem to be the obvious moves at the outset can postpone visible progress for years.

CMMI Overview & Q/A Session
Joseph Billi
10:50am - 11:35am

What is CMMI? Why does it exist? Do we care? Everyone has many questions about CMMI. This is your chance to get yours answered.   The first half of this session will be a presentation of an overview of CMMI by Joseph Billi.  For the second half of the session Ken Dymond will join Joseph to answer any questions from the audience.

SPI 101 TRACK: JUMP STARTING YOUR SPI PROGRAM:

Process Improvement in a Commercial Environment
Kimberly Fix
12:45pm - 1:30pm

Based on the experiences of the author at a large global financial institution and based on observations while providing consulting services at other commercial organizations, this 45 minute presentation will discuss the observed “peculiarities” of effecting organizational and corporate-wide process improvement in non-DOD organizations.  To change agents in the commercial world, DOD standards that require organizations to achieve and maintain high maturity levels in order to win contracts sounds like nirvana!!   

Why can’t the commercial industry be as focused and disciplined?  What drivers in the commercial environment make this harder?  Easier?  This presentation will discuss issues that negatively impact effecting change and what can be done to proactively manage them (or to ensure SPI survives till a better day!!).

o        Funding

o        Lack of management buy-in

o        Reorganizations, mergers, takeovers

o        Downsizing

o        Focusing on SPI for the WRONG reasons

o        Focusing on SPI with a “reverse engineered approach” also known as  “backassward” 

Supercharge Your SPI Results Through Focused Team Training
Lori Gottshall
1:35pm - 2:20pm

Organizations attempting culture change such as movement to the CMM often wonder why good training classes just don’t seem to be working with their staff.  If ‘what gets measured gets done’, then organizations must adjust how they measure training in order to achieve the desired results.  However, traditional methods of software project management and open-enrollment training do not lend themselves to easy capture of appropriate metrics.  This presentation explains how to plan and organize training in order to maximize the results.  This brief set of tips will help you supercharge your SPI efforts to get the results you want. 

How a Large Financial Software Department Found its Way to Level 2
Carl Hagelin
2:25pm - 3:10pm

Learn how a small group of software developers looked to the experts and ultimately themselves as they navigated the SPI maze.  Hear about the false starts, pitfalls and misdirected efforts the team struggled through and how, at the 11th hour, the voice of reason spoke: "It's the software managers and practitioners that make level 2, not the SPI team."

Maturing the Corporate Culture for Process Improvement
James J.Vill
3:40pm - 4:25pm

This presentation consists of a brief history of an actual SPI Program during which the methods for effecting the culture change were developed and practiced.  Following this SPI Program description are descriptions of some of the methods employed, including where in the SPI Program they were employed. The presentation concludes with the observed benefits of these methods and some short testimonials from stakeholders who participated in the SPI Program and have first hand experience working within a maturing culture.

A Practical Approach to Process Improvement
Larry Medici
4:30pm - 5:15pm

This presentation will be helpful to anyone starting a process improvement program within his or her organization.  Rather then focusing on the contents of the CMM, the presentation focuses on the operational aspects of implementing process improvement.  The attendees will be given insight in how to assess their organization’s process needs and how to communicate those needs.  Skills to look for when staffing the SEPG and what to consider when determining the size of the SEPG will be discussed.  Various approaches to performing process development will be examined along with the advantages and disadvantages of each approach.  Information will be presented on ways to conduct process training, the deployment of developed processes and providing ongoing support of deployed processes.

SPI 201 TRACK: ADVANCED TOPICS ON SPI

Six Sigma and Software Process Improvement
Stephen Janiszewski
12:45pm - 1:30pm

Over the last five years Six Sigma techniques have been used to achieve major improvements in product quality and productivity in manufacturing.  However, the introduction of these techniques into design engineering and especially into software engineering has been more limited. Software development is quite different from manufacturing.  A successful deployment program must begin by recognizing this fact.

Trustworthy Software Analysis for Software Reliability
Larry Bernstein
1:35pm - 2:20pm

You will learn how the reliability equation and be used to understand project investments in tools, staff and software simplification.  Ways to bind the execution domain based on Sha’s work will be presented and related to software productivity.  The talk includes an overview of Software Fault Tolerance, trustworthy software and case studies.

The Team Software Process (TSP):  Meeting The Need For Agility
Alan Willett
2:25pm - 3:10pm

The programming job is to transform poorly understood and rapidly changing needs into precise machine instructions.   In this talk, Alan Willett discusses the nature of software as creative process in the context of its complex business environment.  He introduces how the Team Software Process (TSP) is used to create an agile response to those demands.  He then provides illustrative stories of real teams using the TSP and how this affected the quality and productivity of their projects. Mr. Willett will conclude with how TSP fits in an organization's process improvement program.

Using PSM to Implement Measurement in CMMI-Based Process Improvement
Paul E. Janusz
3:40pm - 4:25pm

Two of the common causes of failure of new measurement programs are excessive cost and resistance from the people who must implement the process. These hazards become more intense when an organization-level Measurement and Analysis (M&A) process is implemented as part of a CMMI-based process improvement program. The Practical Software and Systems Measurement (PSM) process provides managers the means to avoid both causes of failure by:

1) Controlling the level of change that is required to implement a new measurement program, and
2) Gaining the support of the members of the organization.

This presentation will review practical lessons learned in using PSM to implement measurement as part of CMMI Level 3 implementation and how they can be applied to any project.

Return on Investment Using Software Inspections
Don O'Neill
4:30pm - 5:15pm

Managers are interested in knowing the return on investment to be derived from software process improvement actions.  The Software Inspections Process gathers some of the data needed to determine this.  Software Inspections are structured to serve the needs of quality management in verifying that software artifacts comply with the standard of excellence for software engineering at each stage of the life cycle. These are formal reviews held at the conclusion of a life cycle activity and serve as a quality gate with exit criteria for moving to subsequent activities.
The presentation will examine the defined measurements used to form the derived metric for return on investment including additional cost multiplier, defect detection rate, cost to repair, and detection cost. The presentation will further examine the behavior of these measurements and metrics for various software product engineering styles.