Booking is now open for October’s Software East talk with internationally-renowned speaker Tim Lister on Project Patterns: Adrenaline Junkies and Template Zombies.

Synopsis

Tim Lister, a Principal of the Atlantic Systems Guild, along with five of his partners at the Guild, have been compiling project patterns from their combined 150 years of project consulting, and they have delivered them in their Jolt Award winning book, Adrenalin Junkies and Template Zombies: Understanding Patterns of Project Behavior, Dorset House, 2008.

We all talk about “best practices” but a tiny minority of organizations actually practice them all. But not to worry, think of “best practices” for human health. We know all about them, but very few of us actually practice them all. Maybe if someone did arduously practice all health practices they would forget to have a life.

Tim has come to believe that project patterns are stronger than best practices. They are the habits, the decision practices, and the corporate culture, the unstated rules, which dominate office life.

The first key is to identify your own organization’s patterns. If they are positive, how can you perpetrate them across all projects? If they are negative, how can you break the habit?

Tim will start the talk with some examples from the book project. He will then let the audience offer up some of their own patterns.

Tim Lister

Tim Lister is a software consultant at the Atlantic Systems Guild, Inc., based in the New York office. He divides his time between consulting, teaching, and writing. Tim is a co-author with his Guild partners of Adrenalin Junkies and Template Zombies: Understanding Patterns of Project Behavior, (Dorset House, 2008), He, is also co-author with Tom DeMarco of Waltzing With Bears: Managing Risk on Software Projects (Dorset House, 2003.) Both books won Software Development magazine’s Jolt Award as General Computing Book of the Year, for 2003-2004, and 2008-2009. Tim and Tom are also co-authors of Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams, (Dorset House, 1999) now available in 14 languages.

Tim is currently a member of the Cutter IT Trends Council. He is a member of the I.E.E.E. and the A.C.M. He is in his 26th year as a panelist for the American Arbitration Association, arbitrating disputes involving software and software services.

This event will take place at Red Gate Software, Newnham House, Cambridge Business Park.

Directions to Red Gate Software.

Tickets (including light buffet) £15 if booked before 5th October available at the Software East  web site.

The observant among you will have noticed that the Code Generation 2010 web site is now live.

The conference will take place from June 16 – 18 2010 at Murray Edwards College, Cambridge – the same venue as for Code Generation 2009.

A Call for Speakers will be issued next month and we expect the full programme to be announced towards the end of February 2010.

If you can’t wait until then to find out more about Model Driven Software Development then please consider joining the Model Driven Software Network in the meantime.

The SPA conference is one of my favourite events and I recommend participation.

Presenters can attend the full event for free.

Call for Participation – SPA2010 – http://www.spaconference.org 16th – 19th May 2010 – British Computer Society, London, UK.

Submissions Deadline: Monday, 26th October 2009
To submit a proposal, visit http://www.spaconference.org

We would like to invite you to present a session at this leading software development conference.

SPA2010 will continue the well established SPA tradition of learning through interaction, with hands-on sessions exploring the latest advancements in software development practice.

We’re looking for session proposals that are interactive and leading edge, possibly even experimental. They can be about technology or teams, practice or process – in fact anything to do with improving software development. They can be as main stream or niche as you like – we select proposals on their merit not on their trendiness.

We welcome submissions from everyone – you don’t have to be an expert or an experienced presenter. You’ll be supported by a well-established shepherding process which provides assistance and support to all presenters.

Presenters will receive free attendance to the conference.

To find out more, and submit a proposal, visit http://www.spaconference.org.

The submission deadline is 26th October 2009.

Not sure whether to submit a proposal? Contact us at programme @ spaconference.org

– Mike Hill & Willem Van den Ende, Programme Chairs SPA 2010.

I promised earlier that I would talk a bit about my own plans when I take part in October’s Practical Product Lines conference.

Being a co-organiser of the event I can’t be too biased but putting that aside for a moment here are the sessions I plan to take part in:

Mapping Product Line Value Streams – Marc Evers and Willem van den Ende. My reasoning – I’ve read about value streams but never applied them in a product line setting. I like getting my hands dirty in sessions and this promises to have lots of groupwork.

The challenges of implementing lifecycle management for Product Lines - Danilo Beuche. My reasoning – whole life cycle management for product lines is an emerging area. (We are also UK & Ireland distributors for pure::variants and a certain amount of loyalty must be shown…)

Productivity as a Management Tool - Peter Mazereeuw – My reasoning – I’ve never heard Peter speak and in my role as a product line consultant questions about measuring the success of the product line are key for senior management. I’m also keen to hear how other participants measure their product lines – and what sort of figures they’re seeing.

There are many other great sessions at the conference but having parallel streams always means I miss out on some good stuff. No doubt I’ll be kicking myself after I find out that people have got even more from the sessions I didn’t attend…