Being The Best – How You Too Can Become An Award Winning Development
Team
Linda
Larrivee
Wednesday, March 17, 3:30pm - 5:00pm
Ultimate Software delivers Web-based payroll and employee management solutions
to organizations of all sizes. In 2003, it was the only company to win two of
the prestigious Stevie Awards – Best Product Development Organization
and Best Salesperson – at the American Business Awards. This case study
will reveal highlights of how it happened – how the development team went
from an average software organization plagued with software rework, missed deadlines
and team burnout to an organization that now consistently meets or beats deadlines,
with improved software quality, and a better quality of life for team members.
This session will include information about Ultimate Software's ongoing process
improvement activities, particularly in the areas of software planning, using
real-life examples, deciding which features to include in a product release,
planning release milestones from inception to customer delivery, gaining stakeholder
and customer buy in, the iterative process of defining requirements, taking
advantage of communication tools like context diagrams, actor maps, requirements
lists, use cases, business rules and fit criteria You will take away a number
of practical tips and sample templates you can apply to your own projects and
organizations.
Java Management Extension (JMX) for Management of Application Server
Abhijit
Kumar & Sridatta
Viswanath
Thursday, March 18, 8:30am - 10:00am
Corporations and service providers are facing new challenges to manage service-driven
environments in all industry segments. The need for richer administration features,
monitoring capabilities and tools is greater than ever. However, at the same
time, the complexity of the managed systems is burgeoning! There are newer requirements
that are harder to implement. The concern for us as engineers is to keep up
with the changes and complexity; and also keep building on the same architecture;
and refactor and reuse code. So, there is a need to build an extensible, dynamic
system using the available technologies. JMX (Java Management Extensions) is
a universal, open technology for management, and monitoring ready to be deployed
across all industries, wherever management and monitoring are needed. JMX provides
the tools for building distributed, Web-based, modular and dynamic solutions
for managing and monitoring devices, applications and service-driven networks.
In this class, we will explain how JMX helps in building a powerful administration
server. We will also share our experiences in building management interface
for our SunTM Open Net Environment (Sun ONE) Application Server.
A Case Study in Continuous Integration
Kirk
Knoernschild
Friday, March 19, 10:30am - 12:00pm
Agile processes such as XP and RUP advocate continuous integration through shorter
iterations, where each iteration produces an incremental and functional growth
of the system. Agility also means that teams adjust the process activities throughout
the development lifecycle. For larger projects, it’s common to find that
the activities performed earlier in the life of the project vary significantly
from those performed later. The most successful teams are able to make adjustments
to tailor the process and maximize the strengths of the team. In this case study,
we will examine the practices in place when the team first formed, discuss where
the majority of struggles occurred, and explain how the practices and roles
were adapted to accommodate these challenges. Beginning with requirements, we
will examine the role that use cases played in the elicitation of requirements,
and how the role of use cases changed drastically as the project progressed.
Moving through design, we'll examine how attempting to design large areas of
the system early in the project proved to be a futile effort, and how the design
activities were modified to accommodate a much more agile approach. The unit
and acceptance strategies will also be discussed, before finally examining the
deployment of the application.
Making Lemonade from an Outsourced Project Gone Awry: Lessons Learned, Best
Practices Defined
Diane
Pepetone
Friday, March 19, 3:30pm - 5:00pm
Making lemonade from lemons isn't hard, but you must be able to turn the sour
juice of the lemon into a refreshing drink. The same principle is applied in
this case study of an outsourced software project gone awry. During this project,
the presenter's company learned to take the valuable part of the mistakes to
generate best practices and then provide the ingredients necessary for a constructive
result. As the case study unfolds and the mistakes and the lessons are defined,
the presenter will share the best practices her company developed in response
to each lesson. Responses included simple changes in communication styles, new
insights into outsourcing relationships, changes to the outsourcing contract,
the creation of new project roles and the creation of a new productivity tool.
For each lesson encountered, the presenter will demonstrate the resulting new
tools, changes to the contract and new project roles defined. Information from
the literature on outsourcing that supports or extends a particular best practice
will also be presented. By the end of the session, participants will have a
list of best practices in outsourcing that were developed during a real project
under difficult circumstances, showing that being open to learning and not afraid
of change made it possible to accomplish a win win result and that's what is
meant by "making lemonade".
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