KEYNOTE SPEAKERS

Michael Mah

Excess Friction:  When Deadlines Kill Process and Ruin Your Life

Michael Mah is a managing partner with QSM Associates Inc., and a senior consultant with the Cutter Consortium.  He is a contributing author of "IT Measurement, Advice from the Experts", Prentice Hall ©2003, and the upcoming book, "Optimal Friction."™ Michael also publishes his writings on-line through the Cutter Consortium as part of the Agile Software Development & Project Management Advisory, the Business-IT Strategies Advisory, Sourcing & Vendor Relationships Advisory, and the Business Technology Trends & Impacts Advisory Services. His experience is in organizational development, IT negotiation, software project estimation, productivity benchmarking, outsourcing, risk management, and project “runaway prevention.”

Michael has been a keynote and featured speaker for events such as the Carnegie Mellon Software Engineering Process Group Conference, the Cutter Summit series, the Better Software Conference, and numerous Project Management Institute and SEI SPIN chapter meetings.

He has a degree in electrical engineering from Tufts University with a focus on electromagnetic physics and Far Eastern history. He is trained in mediation and conflict resolution from the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study.

Stasia Iwanicki

A CIO's Perspective on Process Improvement

Stasia Iwanicki is currently the Chief Information Officer for a division of Capital One Financial based in Boise, ID. Her career began in banking 17 years ago. She has led many large process improvement initiatives with companies such as; AT&T, Fleet Bank, JP Morgan Chase and Capital One. Her passion is continuous improvement and the achievement of world class people, process, and technology. 

Stasia’s passion for process began with Total Quality Management in 1992 and has only grown since. She is a certified Project Management Professional with PMI, a Six Sigma Black Belt, and has been working to bring organizations to higher levels of the Capability Maturity Model since 1998. She led the effort to define formal project offices in several fortune 200 corporations including their systems development lifecycles (SDLCs). She believes strongly in the co-existence of many improvement initiatives such as: Business Process Management, industry benchmarking, LEAN process engineering, and CMMI to achieve lasting results.

In her current role, the organization is on target to achieve CMMI Level 2 later this year. Over the last two years the organization has gone through a transformation to stabilize the environment, improve technology delivery, and grow the infrastructure to handle 10 times the current volumes. Recent survey results indicate the organization is experiencing benchmark highs in the most important areas of Customer Satisfaction (86%) and Associate Satisfaction (77%), compared to mediocre ratings of just a few years ago. 

Stasia is on the board of directors for Consumer Financial Solutions, a non-profit organization focused on assisting people through financial education. She is an active volunteer in the community, a devoted mountain biker, skier, and enjoys reading. She is dedicated to a life of learning and raising her son, Jack.

Dr. Jack Ferguson

The SCAMPI Appraisal Program

Dr. Jack Ferguson is manager of the SEI SCAMPI Appraisal Program. He retired from the Air Force, where he worked in the DoD space program and was the Program Manager for the SEI in its formative years. He led development of the SA-CMM and the CMMI Product Suite, and was the Director of Software Intensive Systems for OSD from 1999 to 2001. Jack has a Ph.D. in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin.

TRACK ONE SPEAKERS: IMPLEMENTING CMMI

Ron Weidemann

CMMI and Process Improvement and Results: A Global Corporation - Software Organization Perspective

Ron Weidemann is currently the Quality Director for NCR Corporation. Mr. Weidemann held a number of previous IT positions including programmer, systems analyst, software development manager, and quality consultant. He has a Bachelors in Business and minor in Information Systems from the University of Redlands. Ron is an SEI CMM Lead Assessor, SEI SCAMPI Candidate Lead Appraiser, ISO Lead Assessor, and Internal Malcolm Baldrige Examiner. Ron has extensively spoken to groups all over the world on software process improvement topics.

David Rothenberg

A Case Study: Moving a Large Organization to CMMI Level 2

David Rothenberg is the Director of the PMO at the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation. David has 25 years of experience in the Financial Services industry, the last 17 being with the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC).  He has an M.B.A., is a CQA, and is a member of the New York City chapter of the Software Process Improvement Network (CITYSPIN).  David has presented at the QAI and other professional conferences.

Kuria Njenga

A Case Study: Moving a Large Organization to CMMI Level 2

Kuria Njenga is an Area Process Specialist at the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC) and previously worked with the PMO and was a QA analyst.  Kuria’s been at DTCC for 9 years and is a graduate of SUNY at Purchase.  He also is a member of the New York City chapter of the Software Process Improvement Network (CITYSPIN) and has spoken at the QAI.

Anil Midha

Process Commonality and Extensibility

Currently, Anil is Manager, Engineering Process at the CNIR, BAE Systems, USA working on the CMMI Initiative. Anil has over twenty eight years of diversified international professional experience in management, process improvement and assessments, software architecture, design, development, training, and consulting.  Prior to joining BAE Systems in 2003, Anil has been with AT&T Bell Labs or AT&T Labs for twenty years where he led a Software Process Consulting and Assessment Services team for last four years.  He is a SEI-authorized Lead Assessor for Software CMM and was a member of the CMMI-SE/SW v1.0 Product Development Team at SEI. He is a subject-matter expert in software change and configuration management, reuse, CMM, and CMMI.

Before joining AT&T Bell Labs in 1983, Anil worked in India , The Netherlands, and USA on several software design, development, and consulting assignments in the Tata Consultancy Services, an international software and management consulting company. Anil holds a Masters degree in Computer Technology and a Bachelors degree in Electronics and Communication engineering.

Dr. Lisa Meisenbacher

Requirements Engineering Tool Integration

Dr. Lisa K. Meisenbacher is a member of Technical Staff at Siemens Corporate Research in Princeton, NJ. in the Software Engineering Department. Her current research interests include requirements engineering, UML modeling, model driven development, process metrics and improvement, and software design quality. She has previously spent fifteen years in the pharmaceutical industry in IT management, engineering and research positions of increasing responsibility.

Jerome J. Guld

Friends in Small Places-The CMMI Works for Small Organizations, Too!

Jerry Guld has more than 20 years of experience in the software industry, in positions ranging from software development to project management to process architect to improvement rollout and training. Mr. Guld is a Software Engineering Institute-authorized Lead Appraiser for CMMI-based assessments (SCAMPI), with years of experience using the CMM and CMMI for process improvement in a range of organizations, as well as a multitude of consulting engagements.

TRACK TWO SPEAKERS

David Herron

Performance Modeling-Understanding and Measuring the Benefits of Process Improvement

David Herron is an acknowledged authority in the use of metrics to monitor the impact of Information Technology (IT) on the business, on the advancement of IT organizations to higher levels on the SEI Capability Maturity Model.  He assists clients in establishing software measurement, process improvement, and quality programs and to enhance their project management techniques. He has more than 25 years experience in managing, developing, and maintaining computer software systems. He serves as a Cutter Consortium Expert Consultant.

Larry Bernstein

Trustworthy Systems Through Quantitative Software Engineering

Lawrence Bernstein teaches in the Computer Science Department at Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, NJ. For more than thirty years, until his retirement in 1996, he was a leading software executive and software project manager at Bell Laboratories. He has more than 40 years experience in developing, managing and teaching software. He saw that developers too often do not want to think about the downstream consequences of what they do. To the extent that we can teach a code of ethics, we can raise the quality of practice and reduce risks.

Irv Brownstein

Defining Metrics with Muscle-Using ITIL as a Framework

Irv Brownstein is a management consultant and principal with The Productivity Group, Inc. specializing in IT performance measurement and improvement programs. Mr. Brownstein has more than 30 years experience in the information industry with particular expertise in software tool evaluation and installation, productivity improvement and cost reduction, quality assurance and project management. He created a SAM cross-platform project plan template and assessment program, and has conducted numerous software inventory, usage and management assessments.

Linda Laird

"As good as or better than expert" Estimation Methods.

Linda Laird is currently a professor in the Quantitative Software Engineering Master’s Degree Program at Stevens Institute of Technology.  She teaches Software Estimation, Metrics, and Software Reliability Engineering.  Prior to Stevens, she managed and developed large software systems for Lucent, AT&T, Bell Labs, and Telcordia. Her textbook on Software Estimation and Metrics will be available in late Fall of 2005.

Paul Byrnes

Using Six Sigma in a CMMI World

Mr. Byrnes has over 20 years in leadership positions delivering advanced process management tools and techniques to organizations. He was formerly the SEI CMM^® Based Appraisal (CBA) Project Leader prior to founding ISD in 1994. He was responsible for, developing all published versions of the SCE method, as well as the initial CBA IPI method. He was a principal developer of the CMM^SM Appraisal Framework (CAF). Mr. Byrnes is the principal architect of the Comprehensive Appraisal Method (CAM V1.0), a draft version of which was an input method to SCAMPI^SM V1.1. He is a recognized expert and leading authority in appraisal technology, technology change management, and process improvement. He was included in the 1995 Edition of Who’s Who in the East, the 1998 Edition of Who’s Who in Media and Communications, the 1999 Edition of Who’s Who in America, and the 2000 edition of Who’s Who in the World. Paul has led or participated in over 50 baseline appraisals (utilizing CAM , SCE, CBA IPI, and SCAMPI^SM), 26 of which were Level 4-5 scope.

TRACK THREE SPEAKERS

Steve Hunsberger

Outsourcing Failure Analysis

Steve Hunsberger is currently VP of Program Management at McGraw-Hill. He is responsible for the successful delivery and execution of IT projects. Prior to this position, he was an Information Officer at AIG. Before that, he spent 8 years as a consultant with IBMimplementing PMO offices and application development best practices throughout the world. He holds a BS in Computer Science, an MBA in IT Management and is in the process of completing his Doctorate Degree in Management Information services. The topic of his dissertation is Outsourcing Failure Analysis.

Michael Barnett

Cooperative Appraisals for Capability and Risk Evaluation

Michael D. Barnett is the Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) Coordinator at MTC Technologies, a support contractor for the Software Engineering Center (SEC) at Fort Monmouth, NJ. He has 25+ years experience in the development and monitoring of software-intensive systems, and has participated in several appraisals, both internal and external. He has a Bachelor of Arts degrees in Physics and Astronomy from the University of Virginia and a Master of Science in Computer Science from Stevens Institute of Technology.