This week, two people with wide and in-depth experience in delivering software in the real world share their thoughts on making the process more effecient and faster using better process and new tools to support that process.

• Aligning software development tools with the iterative approach - Christian Oloff
• Agile in ACTION: Solving the slow delivery of software - Tania van Wyk de Vries

Wednesday, 18 March 2009, 18h15
Bandwidth Barn
Cape Town

RSVP

Anyone is free to attend. Please RSVP by emailing YES or MAYBE via our contact form.

Venue

Bandwidth Barn
125 Buitengracht Street
Cape Town
Click here for a map

Agenda

18:15 Welcoming and Introduction
   Aslam Khan
18:20 Aligning software development tools with the iterative approach
   Christian Oloff, Centenode
19:00 Agile in ACTION: Solving the slow delivery of software
   Tania van Wyk de Vries
19:40 Closing and Thanks
   Aslam Khan
19:45 Networking & Discussion

Abstracts

Aligning software development tools with the Iterative approach

Iterative software development approaches (Agile, Scrum and the like) gets a lot of attention in the recent years. They seem to deliver well on the promise of reducing risk by avoiding bad surprises late in the implementation lifecycle.

Several types of software tools came up to support those Iterative approaches, for example issue trackers, task management and continuous integration. These tools usually target at supporting the software development process.

In contrast to this, I want to investigate and illustrate with examples how the software development itself can be supported by tools that are more in line with the needs of Iterative approaches.

Supporting the software development process better by providing better development tools seems to be in line with the values of the Agile Manifesto. As the Agile Manifesto is about finding better ways of developing software, presenting those thoughts at the Cape Town SPIN forum is probably a worthwhile exercise.

Agile in ACTION: Solving the slow delivery of software

Recognize any of the following?

• Big system developed over 7 years
• Few of the original development team remain
• Lost intellectual property
• No documentation... because we do "AGILE" :-)
• Increasing user requirements on existing functionality
• New functionality required urgently
• Delivery times slower and slower
• Quality of code and architecture decreasing

How do we solve this? In this presentation, I will talk about these and other issues that hurts my team daily. And I will talk about the actions we took to improve this - and introduce true agility.

Speaker Profiles

Christian Oloff

• Has been working for very small and not-so-small-anymore companies since 1994 in the IT industry in Germany (Planta, Algos), The Netherlands (Quintiq) and South Africa (IFS)
• Enjoys supporting enterprise processes by IT
• Designs and architects modern software solutions
• Strives at writing great code, preferably in Java
• Likes the challenges of leadership and motivation to achieve great performance
• Implements efficient software development methodologies in existing or new teams
• Has an Honours Degree in Computer Science and Economics from the University of Mannheim, Germany
• Visit http://www.centenode.com/ to find out more about his latest initiative

Tania van Wyk de Vries

Tania is currently working at Devstream as a manager in software development. Here she focuses on correcting the adoption of XP agile methodology and capitalising on XP’s benefits; correcting implemented architecture; consolidating technologies; aligning business strategy with IT strategy; formulating and implementing processes that would benefit delivery, quality and efficiency of teams; interfacing with third parties (clients, integration partners); commercialising Devstream; driving teams, technology approach and technical strategy; managing and coaching people; hand-on involvement and coaching on new development approach being implemented; translating business requirements into technical solution.

Tania believes that there is no place for mediocrity in IT and is an advocate to change the perception of poor quality and slow delivery that has labelled IT over the past few years. Although in management, Tania also tries to stay as close to technology and architecture and still participates in this hands-on. How can you manage something you have lost touch with?

Tania studied B.Com Management and Informatics at the University of Pretoria. She has been in IT for 8 years. She started out as a web developer focusing on html, scripting, asp and MS SQL (Ja, ja – all Microsoft initially). She then moved into Java web application development and - design. She had her own consultancy in IT, started and managed a business in manufacturing and for the rest of the time worked as a consultant on IT projects in positions ranging from BA, developer, systems analyst, team lead, development manager, trainer, coach.