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April 01, 2008
Pumped Up About the May 7th Summit Workshop
Just finished creating a brand new workshop that I 'm teaching at the upcoming Cutter Summit conference. The cool thing will be "gestalt-ish" role playing - the exercises put attendees into simulated roles with difficult choices. (Unlike the real world, heh heh.) Seriously, the case study scenario is an amalgam of real company situations from recent clients (names changed to protect the innocent). It's already about 3/4 full from advanced registrations.
It will be good therapy. Here's the write-up; if any of you good folks want to join in on the fun, click here. For those of you already registered, get ready :) Here are a few photos of our illustrious curator Tom DeMarco, Prof. Rogelio Oliva of (Mays Business School and before that Harvard Business School), and Ed Yourdon, from last year's Innovation conference. For a look at our entire photo album, click here.
How to Collect and Use Metrics in Agile Software Development Environments
If you're implementing or considering agile methods in your organization, how do compare productivity and quality against waterfall projects? Join Michael Mah to understand both agile and waterfall metrics, and how to communicate differences in the ways they behave to key decision makers.
In this tutorial you'll learn how to move from a project whiteboard to create project trendlines on productivity, time-to-market, and defects using your own data. Get an inside look at agile measurement by seeing this in action using real case studies. Learn how to replicate these techniques to make your own comparisons on time, cost, and quality. And discover how to leverage these methods to make the case for change with your management teams at your company.
During this hands-on session, you'll use your laptop to capture metrics and do productivity calculations. You'll be paired two-by-two, and together learn to use metrics data capture templates provided by Michael. As an added benefit, you will also be offered an option for follow-up project collection after the Summit, including one-on-one metrics calculations via webinar with Michael.
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Posted by Mike at 01:13 PM | Comments (0) |
« Cutter Summit 2007 – Lynne Ellyn; Is Innovation Relevant to IT? | Main | Easy As Implementing a Package … Part 2 »May 04, 2007
Cutter Summit 2007 – Tom DeMarco’s Wrap-up
Well, a moment many of us have been waiting for has arrived. Tom’s wrap-up of the conference is a time when we get to go on a guided tour of “connecting the dots” as seen through Tom’s lens. Seeing Tom prepare his index cards at the front of the stage blows me away; the man is a quintessential pro at pulling it all together and saying it with a clarity and cohesiveness that allows us to make sense of it all - with a twist - in one amazing hour. [This wrap up is giving me deja-vu from the years... more...Posted by Mike at 04:44 PM | Comments (0) |
« Cutter Summit 2007 – Paul Robertson; Art and Paradox of Leadership | Main | Cutter Summit 2007 – Tom DeMarco’s Wrap-up »May 03, 2007
Cutter Summit 2007 – Lynne Ellyn; Is Innovation Relevant to IT?
Lynne is VP and CIO at DTE Energy. She and I have enjoyed much of this conference sitting together in the back row, and she now takes the stage. Her IT operation is nearly 850 employees and is responsible for [get the stats from her slide]. In a nutshell, Lynne’s answer to this question is an unqualified yes, and she shows a timeline showing IT’s role in various industries over a 40 year period. Innovation has been there all along. Within DTE Energy, she cites examples like neural networks to optimize and forecast power demand, price analysis for electricity, and... more...Posted by Mike at 03:59 PM | Comments (0) |
« Cutter Summit 2007 - Volkswagen Case Study | Main | Cutter Summit 2007 – Lynne Ellyn; Is Innovation Relevant to IT? »May 02, 2007
Cutter Summit 2007 – Paul Robertson; Art and Paradox of Leadership
Paul Robertson leads us into this subject; fascinating that for 35 years he was Founder and Leader of the world-acclaimed Medici Quartet. As we were gathering to start the session, he treated us to wonderful melodies on the solo violin - Bach I believe. Along the lines of the theme “Pursuing Perfection,” he is guiding us through some music history. We are listening to him describe the master violinist Jascha Heifitz, now seeing some archival video of an actual performance. What an INNOVATIVE way of addressing the subject of leadership at a conference dedicated to the subject of innovation. It’s... more...Posted by Mike at 01:55 PM | Comments (0) |
« Cutter Summit 2007 – Rob Charette on Risk | Main | Cutter Summit 2007 – Paul Robertson; Art and Paradox of Leadership »May 01, 2007
Cutter Summit 2007 - Volkswagen Case Study
This afternoon is a treat here at the Summit. Prof. Rogelio Oliva is leading a fantastic Harvard Business School (HBS) like case study for our group, using a real world situation at Volkswagen of America. Rogelio was on the HBS faculty for Technology and Operations Management, and is now on the faculty at the Mays Business School. He has a PhD in Operations Management and System Dynamics from MIT. What a treat here! Rogelio is dynamic and fast-paced, and how he engages the audience makes everyone feel like they're sitting at HBS as fellow classmates. The case deals with real... more...Posted by Mike at 05:17 PM | Comments (0) |
« Cutter Summit 2007 - Stowe Boyd on Web 2.0 | Main | Cutter Summit 2007 - Volkswagen Case Study »Cutter Summit 2007 – Rob Charette on Risk
Rob Charette is going into an area that most people might not think about when they think of risk (which usually evokes feelings of worry). The UPSIDE of risk. It will be interesting to hear how he frames this conversation. Most people when they think about risk fathom the downside. Images that follow are photos of a hurricane, then a view above the clouds from the cockpit of an airplane. Rob is using a success case study of Rockwell Collins Avionics (disclosure: Rockwell had been a longtime client of QSM in the 1990s, using the SLIM suite of software estimation... more...Posted by Mike at 12:32 PM | Comments (0) |
« Cutter Summit 2007 - Rob Austin on Learning from Expert Innovators | Main | Cutter Summit 2007 – Rob Charette on Risk »April 30, 2007
Cutter Summit 2007 - Stowe Boyd on Web 2.0
Stowe Boyd is taking the stage on Web 2.0. He describes it as a very important revolution in the space of social apps that is itself transformative. He says that taking up blogging towers over everything else he has ever done in his career. It trumps his getting a degree in computer science, or all the years of working for large corporations. Being part of a large global network has been personally transformative for him. Stowe talks about social applications as being one of the most important things in industry. Innovation as iteration is the subject now. Innovation isn’t always... more...Posted by Mike at 03:02 PM | Comments (0) |
« Cutter Summit 2007 - Day 1 | Main | Cutter Summit 2007 - Stowe Boyd on Web 2.0 »Cutter Summit 2007 - Rob Austin on Learning from Expert Innovators
“The future belongs to those who know how to create new things.” - Rob Austin, Harvard Business School. At the opening keynote for the Cutter Summit 2007 conference, this tag line is what caught my eye in Rob Austin’s assertion for a Cutter Council Opinion entitled, “The Future of IT Value Creation in a Global Economy." Rob’s is taking the stage right now, and his keynote is on “Learning from Expert Innovators.” I always have loved Rob’s engaging style; it’s a great way to launch the Cutter Summit. Innovation is the theme of this year’s conference. He starts by saying... more...Posted by Mike at 09:30 AM | Comments (0) |
« More Thoughts on Ireland's Software Industry | Main | Cutter Summit 2007 - Rob Austin on Learning from Expert Innovators »Cutter Summit 2007 - Day 1
Well, here I am at the Cutter Summit once again, which promises to be a fantastic program on Innovation. The event is being held at the Royal Sonesta hotel in downtown Cambridge overlooking the Charles River with the Boston skyline in all its splendor. I can't believe how this area has evolved over the years. I remember being a student here over 25 years ago, and it was a run down warehouse district. Like Hoboken and Jersey City across from lower Manhattan, this has become a hip place after all these years. Here's a view from the hotel.
I also clipped a conference description off the Cutter website:
Innovation has become the new business-IT obsession. But really, what is "innovation"? And what does it mean for your enterprise? At Cutter, we believe innovation is a reliably repeatable process — one that is required to develop novel markets, product, services, and strategies that provide real economic value to the organization. At the 11th annual Cutter Consortium Summit conference, you’ll discover:
* How you can nurture an innovative culture in your organization
* How you can be a Risk Entrepreneur and use risk as a catalyst to innovation
* How one company has been able to make its enterprise architecture investment pay huge innovation dividends
* How to become a leader who not only has passion, but who can make a lasting impact
* How you can put the headline-making Web 2.0 technology and social trends to work for your enterprise, and
* How CIOs can balance cost-cutting pressures with the need to innovate.
The annual Cutter Consortium Summit is unlike any other conference you've ever attended. It provides a live venue for IT and business professionals to meet and debate with one another and noted experts in the IT field. The intellectual give-and-take is second to none. Discover why business and technology professionals return each year — and why you should join them!
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Posted by Mike at 08:36 AM | Comments (0) |
« Ireland As the World's Largest Exporter of Software | Main | More Thoughts on Ireland's Software Industry »April 06, 2007
A Conference NOT to miss...
...is the annual Cutter Summit, which will be held on April 29-May 2 in Cambridge MA. I *never* miss it; Along with the POPTech Conference in Camden Maine, it goes on my calendar and everything else simply revolves around it. The topic this year is - Innovation, a subject that matters more than ever in today's creative economy, if your company doesn't want to be another 'also-ran.' This year the Cutter Summit is moderated once again by my dear friend and mentor, Tom DeMarco. If you've never been to an event with Sir Tom, then you simply haven't lived (yet)....more...
Posted by Mike at 03:59 PM | Comments (0) |
« Cutter Summit: Tim Lister on How To Avoid Litigation | Main | Keynote Address at the Better Software Conference »May 18, 2006
Cutter Summit 2006 – Outsourcing and Service Level Agreements
It’s been a few days since the Cutter Summit conference in Boston, and one of the sessions is still rolling around in my brain and won’t let go of my frontal lobes. It was Tim Lister’s talk on “Avoiding IT Litigation”. It was a particularly fun session because Tim made it a three-way speaker opportunity by inviting both Ed Yourdon and me to share the stage. I know I’ve already written about the talk, but it still haunts me because there are elements from it that pervade almost all software projects that I know of, even those that are not contracted or outsourced, and I still have a lot to say about it.It starts with a story by Ed, who is surely one of the master storytellers of our field. For those of you who don’t know Ed, try reading any one of his 25+ books over his illustrious and ongoing career. Ed is one of my heroes and early mentors. (The first time I met Ed, I was a young buck speaking on the topic of software project estimation in the late 1980s. Ed packed the house with 200+ attendees at his speech - a tough act to follow. For my talk, I looked out into the revved-up crowd, and hyperventilated so much that I nearly passed out. But at the Summit, I felt just fine.) more...
Posted by Mike at 04:16 AM | Comments (0) |
« The Cutter Summit | Main | Cutter Summit 2006 – Outsourcing and Service Level Agreements »May 09, 2006
Cutter Summit: Tim Lister on How To Avoid Litigation
Tim Lister gave a wonderful and entertaining talk on the software patent mess and the litigation quagmire that accompanies failed outsource projects. I always find Tim's perspective refreshing - the audience was alive and engaged in large part due to his remarkably entertaining style.I was privileged to have been invited on-stage to address the audience along with Ed Yourdon. I found it interesting that we represented 3 dimensions in the area of software disputes: Ed as an expert witness on several multi-million dollar lawsuits, Tim as an arbitrator with the American Arbitration Association, and myself as someone practicing mediation on project and outsourcing disputes. more...
Posted by Mike at 06:05 PM | Comments (0) |
« Permissible Defects? | Main | Cutter Summit: Tim Lister on How To Avoid Litigation »May 06, 2006
The Cutter Summit
Tomorrow I head to Boston for the Cutter Summit 2006 Conference. As the description says, it's a great place to meet great thinkers from around the world, to collaborate and share emerging ideas and to debate them as a group, to leap beyond the mainstream. As expected, it sold out quickly. One keynote that I think will be relevant to readers of Optimal Friction is "The Changing Nature of Work", by Ward Cunningham. The write-up says "organizational paradigm that people think of as business is changing. We've reached the tipping point, and the manufacturing paradigm no longer works. Today's emerging... more...Posted by Mike at 05:00 AM | Comments (0) |
« Film Editing on “The Producers” | Main | January 2006 Talk at the Boston SPIN »December 21, 2005
Peter O'Farrell 1946 - 2005
IN MEMORIAM
The Cutter Family mourns a deep and tragic loss.
Peter O'Farrell was the beloved husband of Karen Fine Coburn, President and CEO of Cutter Consortium in Arlington MA USA. He died - far too soon last week - in a terrible car accident while taking his son Nathan to visit a school in Maine. It was a father-son journey, something very typical of Peter, given how much he adored his children.
They say behind every great woman is a man (or something like that), and Peter was the man behind Karen. In many ways, Karen's seemingly boundless enthusiasm for creating the Cutter extended family was made possible in part by the loving attention that Peter dedicated at the home front and in his deep (yet understated) involvement with Cutter. He was not so much interested in being famous, although as my friend Ken Orr writes below - he should have been far more famous than he was. The man was brilliant, and most of all he was kind, but in a world often filled with egos, he wasn't so much interested in fame. more...
Posted by Mike at 01:26 AM | Comments (0) |
