Software Processes - Are they Working for You or Against You? Jeff Smith, BearingPoint Austin

This presentation will look at a range of process issues and alternatives, and provide tools to help you realize the team effectiveness you desire. It will review various approaches and philosophies and discuss the issues and advantages with each.

It will also help you square off with your biggest challenge - The engagement of your own people. Contrary viewpoints are abundant in software development and everyone has rationalized his position... Is there common ground? Can we address long-term and short-term? Can we have happy developers and happy project managers? (Not to mention happy customers....) Can we get quality without sacrificing schedule?

This meeting will begin with a presentation... But it will encourage you also to question your day-to-day project approaches. If you are CMM/CMMI, RUP, or XP focused - are you doing it right? Can these co-exist? Do any of these really making the most of your team and your own opportunities? You should leave this meeting with new ideas and new tools... and a more open process mind.

About the Speaker:
Jeff Smith is a senior consultant and quality assurance lead at BearingPoint Austin. His experiences include hardware and software development and consulting work at Trilogy, Dell, IBM, Amdahl, LTV Aerospace & Defense, the Texas Attorney General's Office, and scattered smaller enterprises. An advocate of tools over process, people over dogma, flow over compliance, and an opponent of "best practices"... One who would dissect and understand why "good process" goes bad and challenge others to do the same. He is a believer that quality happens by being fast, smart, and couragious.