How We Screw Ourselves: Misunderstanding the Economics of Software Development
Michael Schrage, MIT, Research Co-Director
Monday, September 26, 12:30pm – 1:30pm -- new day & time

Perverse incentives and misunderstood risks conspire to undermine both our individual and organizational abilities to develop cost-effective software cost-effectively. The creative application of simple Economics 101 techniques can have an enormous positive impact on minimizing these pathologies of unproductive programming. This keynote address will offer both diagnoses and prescriptions for healing self-inflicted software wounds.

Real World Trends Impacting Software Best Practices
Per Kroll, Manager Commercial Methods and Author, IBM
Monday, September 26, 5:30pm - 6:30pm

This presentation will discuss trends in the market place and how they impact the way in which we need to develop software. Over the last few years, IBM has worked with large numbers of software executives and development teams to analyze trends and compile a profile of software development priorities that capture modern patterns of success. We will cover these patterns of success that characterize successful software projects, as well as the anti-patterns. We will also discuss topics such as the future role of agile development, service-oriented architectures, business-driven development and open source software.

Truth and Circumstances: Advice for Dealing with Real Project Dynamics
Jerry Weinberg, Industry Renowned Author & Consultant
Tuesday, September 27, 12:30pm – 1:30pm -- new day & time

This keynote will elaborate on a question Jerry was asked in a Software Development magazine interview: http://www.ayeconference.com/Articles/SDManagerAdvice.html

SD magazine: In your opinion, why do so many software projects go over budget or fail to meet their original requirements?

Jerry: There's no single reason, but here are probably the top three:
1. The original budget, schedule and requirements were totally unrealistic, due to the inability of people to speak truth to power.
2. The original budget, schedule and requirements were totally unrealistic, due to the inability of people to understand and acknowledge their own limitations (which we all have).
3. Even in those rare cases that people pass those first two hurdles, they lose emotional control during the project when something goes wrong -- and something ALWAYS goes wrong. In 50 years, I've never seen a project where something didn't go wrong. When it does, the project's success is determined by the leaders' ability to manage themselves emotionally.

In his keynote address, Jerry will illustrate how to cope with these management problems using three common project dynamics:
1. The Liar's Contest Dynamic, the most common cause of unrealistic budget, schedules, and requirements.
2. The Piling-On Dynamic, the most cause of burnout of key project people.
3. The Addiction Dynamic, which explains why we don't do projects the way we know we should do project

Managing the Software Lifecycle
Randy Miller, Lead Program Manager, Visual Studio 2005 Team System, Microsoft
Wednesday, September 28, 12:30pm- 1:30pm

Software development is hard. Teams work in isolation not just geographically but in their own offices. It is sometimes difficult to pass information between project managers, architects, developers and testers, and even harder to pass that information to IT. We spend our time in meetings, on the phone and in email, and many of our projects are delayed, over budget or don't meet our original requirements. Microsoft looked at how we could change this, how we could use the most productive developer tool, Visual Studio, and expand it to include further roles, providing stronger support for your software development lifecycle. This session provides an overview of how you can reduce the complexity of delivering modern service-oriented solutions that are designed for operations.

Agility and Architecture
Robert C. Martin, President, Object Mentor, Inc.
Thursday, September 29, 12:30pm- 1:30pm

Do agile methods abandon architecture for speed? Do they replace good design decisions with mindless testing? Are agile methods just another way to hack-and-slash systems together without the appropriate discipline, due-diligence, and documentation? In this Keynote Robert C. Martin describes how the principles of Agile Software Development lead to rich and robust architectures, high degrees of discipline, due consideration of design and architecture, and all appropriate levels of documentation.