The following is a listing of the events for the 2001/2002 season including presentation abstracts and speaker biographies. Please see the 2001/2002 Season page for the details on the schedule, location and sponsor(s).
The field of software changes so fast and is so broad, how do employers evaluate if the people they are hiring know the right things? How do employees keep their skills and knowledge up to date? The American Society of Quality (ASQ) has developed the Certified Software Quality Engineer program to address the aspect of quality in software. The IEEE has developed the Certified Software Engineer program to address the aspect of applying Engineering principles to software. Find out what how these programs can benefit you and your organization.
Colette Bielech has over 20 years experience in the software development industry, in avionics, telecommunications, SCADA, and commercial environments. Her exposure to a broad scope of software products has provided her an understanding of the different quality and business issues that affect software development and processes. Colette is IEEE Senior Member and an ASQ Certified Software Quality Engineer.
Colette is currently the quality team leader for the MapGuide product at Autodesk Development Canada. MapGuide is a Web based product suite for publishing location and mapping information on the Web. The product has been selling internationally for four years.
This session is an introductory level presentation and discussion on Software Processes. Our facilitator for the evening will be Janet Gregory of Wind River Systems.
The topic of Software Processes, as described by the ASQ CSQE Body of Knowledge, comprises:
- Life Cycle Models (Definition, Development and Maintenance Phases)
- Current Standards for the Life Cycle Models
- Software Engineering Paradigms (Development Methods)
- Waterfall, Prototyping, Spiral and OO
- Defect Prevention Methods
- Documentation Standards, Cleanroom and Defect Prevention
- Formal Reviews
- Various Techniques
- Requirement Analysis, QFD, Structured Analysis, Entity Relationships
- Warnier-Orr (DSSD), Jackson System development, UML
- Maintenance Approaches
- Process and Technology Change Management
- Process Frameworks (CMMs)
- Assessments
- Barriers to Quality Improvements
Janet Gregory started out as a software developer following graduation from the University of Alberta with a degree in Computer Science, but changed directions after a few years to focus on quality. Janet received her ASQ Quality Management certification in 1999.
Janet established the first quality initiatives at EFA software and was instrumental in getting their test team going. She is currently working at Wind River Systems, a leader in embedded software, as the Q/A Manager for their Consumer Products Group in their Networks business unit. She is responsible for a working group to establish a corporate Product Life Cycle, and for a quality system that comprises a metrics program, effective testing program, and involvement of the QA team early in the development cycle.
In many ways software developers face the same ethical issues as drug companies (and we do both call our customers "users"!). What is an original piece of work? Should the fruits of our labors be tightly controlled or open to the world? What do we do if the quality of our work is not as high as might be expected? These are just a few of the ethical and professional issues we are facing. Dr. Tom Keenan will explore these issues and some of the ways in which professionalism can help us to cope with them.
Dr. Tom Keenan has parallel careers as a University professor, dean of the Faculty of Continuing Education, and broadcaster. He is an award winning teacher and broadcaster and serves as Technology Correspondent for CBC Radio and Television. At the University of Calgary, he teaches courses in Computer Security and the Social Implications of Technology, and has pioneered delivery of graduate level courses via the Internet.
A computer scientist by training, he serves on the CIPS Certification Council, the board of the Software Human Resources Council, and on several other corporate and institutional boards. With the Hon. Lorne Taylor, he is Honorary Co-Chair of the Alberta Science Literacy Association. In 1984, Dr. Keenan founded the Calgary campus of the Shad Valley Program, a unique youth education experience that combines science, engineering and entrepreneurship. He was educated at Columbia University, receiving B.A., M.Sc., M.A. and Ed.D. degrees, and did additional study at Harvard University. He is an Adjunct Professor of Computer Science at both the University of Calgary and the Asian Institute of Technology in Bangkok, Thailand.
In an industry that is supposed to be driving the future, we see many recurring patterns of dysfunction and self-destructive behavior in the planning and execution of software development projects. Many have questioned typical practices of hiring, educating, and managing software-related professionals. Many of these problems seem to be rampant. Dilbert and many other parodies illustrate the recurring symptoms, but do they really identify the problem?
The response to undisciplined software development has been to search for a metaphor that helps the world envision a more disciplined approach to software that will produce reliable software at a predictable cost. It seems that "software engineering" is the metaphor that has stuck. Some argue that the plethora of the problems we face in our industry stem from the use of the "software engineering" metaphor. Others argue that the problems stem from the misapplication of this metaphor. Is it time for a new metaphor?
Pete McBreen is an independent consultant who actually enjoys writing and delivering software, despite spending time writing, teaching and mentoring, he goes out of his way to ensure that every year he does hands-on coding on a live project. Pete specializes in finding creative solutions to problems that face software developers. After many years of working on formal and informal process improvement initiatives he took a sideways look at the problem and realized that "Software development is meant to be fun, if it isn't the process is wrong." Pete lives in Cochrane, Alberta and has no plans to ever move back to a big city.
On the topic of Software Quality Management, Fiona will explain how quality management and software process can be applied for the benefit of projects. This includes an emphasis on planning for quality and then monitoring the progress against the plan. The session will include sharing best practices from Fiona and, hopefully, the audience.
Fiona Koether is the Process & Configuration Management Manager for a Nortel software development team that has 180 staff across Ottawa and Calgary (yes there is still a strong software community at Nortel!). She was educated in Britain and worked in a variety of software roles for companies in Britain before emigrating to Canada in 1993. She had the good fortune to work for ACTC in Calgary (well known for it's software process maturity) before joining Nortel. She has worked at Nortel for 7 years and loves her job. Nortel is project driven and Fiona's team leads Organizational Process Improvement and integrating this with the project teams.
This presentation gives a brief introduction into requirements engineering. It presents industrial data, which shows that requirements engineering is one of the most critical phases of product development. Nevertheless, it is commonly the most neglected phase, which results in projects to be abandoned, unhappy customers and a lot of rework. After defining some key concepts of requirements engineering, metrics will be given that help make requirements testable. The second part of the presentation then describes a model of the requirements engineering process consisting of elicitation, analysis, documentation and validation. Techniques and tools will be given that can be used in each one of these phases to help improve the requirements engineering process. These will include a leading software tool for requirements engineering as well as some less well-known tools that have proven to be very effective.
Dr. Armin Eberlein is an Associate Professor and the Director of the Software Engineering Program in the Department of Electrical and Computing Engineering at the University of Calgary. He teaches courses in requirements engineering, software engineering, project management and software reliability and testing. He is also a Co-Director and founding member of the Alberta Software Engineering Research Consortium (ASERC). His research focuses on the application of artificial intelligence to requirements engineering, and the development of well-defined software engineering processes. Dr. Eberlein has authored his own development methodology to support all phases of the software development life cycle based on a three-dimensional framework for requirements engineering. Dr. Eberlein has previously been employed by Siemens and has consulted for several companies in the UK and Canada.
What a great opportunity to meet with fellow quality practitioners to partake of some fine vituals, hoist a few and talk about software quality, amongst other things, I'm certain.
We will be convening in Great Room "C" at the Sandman Hotel in downtown Calgary. The Sandman is located on the NE corner of the intersection of 7th Avenue and 8th Street S.W., right beside the LRT station. Doors open at 17:30. There'll be a cash bar and buffet to sustain us throughout the evening. I'm looking for a fabulous turnout this year.
This session of the discussion group will be an introductory level presentation and discussion on Software Project Management. Our facilitator for the evening will be Robert Satnik of GE Harris.
The topic of Software Project Management, as described in the new ASQ CSQE Body of Knowledge, comprises:
- Planning
- Project planning elements
- Goal-setting and deployment
- Project planning tools
- Cost and value data
- Tracking and controlling
- Phase transition control techniques
- Interpreting and reporting cost of quality (COQ) data
- Tracking elements and methods
- Project reviews
- Risk management
- Risk management planning methods
- Risk probability
- Product release decisions
- Software security, safety, and hazard analysis issues
Robert Satnik is Project Manager, Protection Group, with GE Harris Energy Control Systems. He has over twenty-seven years experience in a wide variety of projects, the majority to do with the development of real-time embedded computer systems. He has been involved in standards development, process improvement, project development, requirements specification and technical subcontract review.
He is familiar with a large number of requirement and design methodologies and has made use of a number of CASE tools. Bob has been recognized internationally for his work with methodologists and has participated in US Defense Department workshops on development Q/A standards. He has been involved most recently in Process Improvement, particularly with the SEI Capability Maturity Model (CMM) and has been trained as as an assessment/appraisal team member for both the Software and Systems CMM.
The champagne is long gone and the blush worn off your project launch. Your project is finally finished. It came in close to on-schedule, nearly on budget, pretty much in scope of the original requirements and exuded other characteristics indicative of project success. Well, consider yourself lucky.
Between 1996 and 1999, the US spent $250-$275 billion each year on IT application development of 175, 000 - 200,000 projects. The Standish Group further qualifies their project statistics with:
- 42% of projects deliver the requirements as originally defined
- 31.3% of projects are canceled before they ever finish
- 52.7% of projects cost 189% of their initial estimate
- only 16.2% of projects finish on time, on budget
The question is - why do some brick-and-mortar companies realize better than projected returns on investment for Information Technology (IT) projects than others? The answer may lie not in the technology implemented, but rather in how the successful companies manage the people side of change.
Susan Cramer is a senior Project Manager with Burntsand, Inc. She successfully brings together over 20 years of information systems background with sound business knowledge, enabling her clients to benefit from solutions designed to meet their business needs while utilizing the best technological implementation plans. Ms. Cramer has proven competencies in maintaining strong working relationships with the client, vendors and other external contractors. Her education credits include a certificate in Business Data Processing from the University of Alberta and the coveted Certified Systems Professional designation from the Institute for Certification of Computer Professionals in the United States. She is currently working toward a degree in General Studies with a focus in Communication Studies at the University of Calgary AB.
Burntsand is an eBusiness Solutions Integrator focusing on SellSide, BuySide and InSide strategic internet-enabled applications. Burntsand's Services encompass the strategy, technical, and creative disciplines required to define and implement these strategic eBusiness solutions. Headquartered in Toronto, Burntsand operates from eight North American locations. The company trades on the Toronto stock exchange (TSE) under the symbol BRT, Burntsand's website address is www.burntsand.com.
So why is there so much interest in the human resource side of IS projects? We increasingly are coming to the realization (after a few bruising projects) that better technology does not guarantee success. We also come to conclude that it is people who perform project work that is often the weakest link in the pursuit of project success. This leads to insightful project practitioners to ask if our teams have the right competencies, and indeed, if we have the right mix of project participant competencies. The central question of this research is "what are the competencies that lead to project success?" A secondary research question is "what are those characteristics of team members that would get that person removed from the team?" Greg will share with you the results this pragmatic and timely research, and we will discuss how these results reflect our own experiences and observations. Greg interviewed and surveyed almost three hundred experienced project participants, many of which are internationally recognized experts in their respective fields. Some of the findings will confirm your ideas of which competencies are desirable for successful projects. However, some of the findings uncover new insights, and perhaps a few surprises. And thus, together we will discuss the good, the bad and the ugly of project participant competence.
Greg Skulmoski B.Ed. M.B.A. has project experience in government, health care, retail, and, oil and gas sectors. Within these, Greg has functional and project experience in information systems and finance. Greg is studying under the direction of Dr. Francis Hartman in the Project Management Specialization Programme at the University of Calgary. His Ph.D. research is about IS project participant competency. He has also taught project management at the University of Calgary in the Faculty of Management and in the Faculty of Engineering while completing his studies. Greg regularly publishes his research in journals and presents at conferences including the Association for Project Management, Association for the Advancement of Cost Engineering International, International Project Management Association, the International Research Network on Organizing by Projects, and the Project Management Institute. Greg was a member of the PMBOK Guide® 2000 Update Team. This team published the world's de facto project management standard. Greg is also working with the Organizational Level Control Initiative that has brought together the leading project management researchers and practitioners from five continents to develop the basis for a Global Body of PM Knowledge. Greg's presentations are engaging, lively and pragmatic.
Hidden in all of the debates about XP is the idea that XP is an optimizing process. Extreme Programming is being actively tuned and adjusted to make it more effective. But is this really a good idea? Should we really seek to create an optimum process or should we be seeking a different goal?
This talk looks at:
- What does it mean to optimize a process?
- What is Extreme Programming attempting to optimize?
- What other aspects might it be useful to optimize?
- How does optimization affect agility?
- Is Extreme Programming optimizing the aspects that your projects and organization value?
Pete McBreen is an independent consultant specializing in assisting small teams in the development of object-oriented software. With over 17 years of experience, Pete has been working with C++ since 1989 and in the last few years has specialized in helping teams transition into Java and object technology. He is a course designer, teacher, and coach in object technology. Pete has delivered tutorials at TOOLS USA and OOPSLA and regularly teaches Use Case and OO Design courses.
Every year Pete works as a developer in a project team to ensure that what he talks about actually works in practice. In recent years this has included enhancing an airline's website to increase the volume of reservations made over the web, writing message oriented middleware and being the technical lead for a stock exchange workstation. These experiences have confirmed for him the value of well written use cases, test driven development and frequent releases to the user community.
Over the course of his career Pete has worked in many different mission and performance critical domains including Credit Card Authorization, Stock Exchange workstations, Airline Websites for reservations, Manufacturing Resource Planning and Job Scheduling, Time and Attendance and Payroll Systems.
Mr. McBreen has been quoted as saying "If Software development is not fun, there is something wrong with the process". This reflects his personal philosophy that "the software development process must support the ways that people naturally work. Software systems are such a fundamental part of any corporation that the sustained ability to enhance and extend systems is what matters most. Truly incremental object oriented development processes are a means of achieving this goal."
His new book, Software Craftsmanship is Pete's contribution to the ongoing debate about how to improve software development. Software Craftsmanship has been named as a finalist for the 2002 Jolt Awards.
The topic of Software Inspections is part of the Verification and Validation (V&V) section of the (new) CSQE Body of Knowledge, and comprises the following components:
- Reviews and Inspections
- Types
Define, describe, and use various types of reviews and inspections, including desk-checking, walk-throughs, Fagan and Gilb inspections, technical accomplishments, resource utilization, future planning, etc. (Application) - Items
Identify, describe, and use various review and inspection items, including proposals, project charters, specifications, code, tests, etc. (Application) - Processes
Define, describe, and use various review and inspection processes to examine objectives, criteria, techniques, methods, etc. (Application) - Data collection, reports, and summaries
Define, describe, and use terms related to data collection, including preparation rates, defect density yield, phase containment, etc. (Application)
- Types
Christine Bovaird has worked in the Software Industry for the past 6 years in the following areas: Quality Assurance, Test and Process. Experience ranges from small entrepreneurial companies to major service providers within the Oil and Gas Sector where Christine has setup Software and Data Test Teams and practices.
In the past year, Christine moved to Nortel Wireless Division in order to experience Software Process on an International scale. Her focus has been the experimentation and implementation of formal code inspection processes, including development of an inspection effectiveness metrics program and standards.
Designers, Architects, Developers and Testers of IT systems can create a better product by understanding and considering concepts and guidelines for the creation of the application interface. The technical perfection of an application is irrelevant if it is not usable and useful to the client. This session is intended to provide an overview of the topic and give the participant new ways to consider interface designs.
The following topics will be discussed:
- User Characteristics - concepts of Human Perception
- Characteristics of Superior Interface
- Color
- Menus and Controlling Dialogues
- Data Entry and Validation
- Messages
Tammie Fulton is a Project Manager / Senior Analyst, currently employed with xwave, who has worked in the Information Technology industry since 1983.
Tammie combines a broad range of technical, personal and business skills to contribute to the growth and success of any organization. Tammie has nearly 19 years of IT experience, during which she has had the opportunity to manage and supervise IS resources and lead both small and large-scale projects. She has participated in the creation of a wide variety of business applications. Tammie brought her experience and knowledge to the classroom during her recent term as an Instructor in the Information Technology Department at SAIT. Her special interest lies in the areas of Data Management, Database Architecture, Relational Database Design, Data Warehousing, Business Systems Analysis, and Integrated Systems.
Tammie has experience in a variety of industry sectors including agriculture, oil and gas, education, manufacturing, and finance. Her experience has created an excellent range of business knowledge and managerial skills. She has worked for large corporations with detailed standards and guidelines for development projects, and for small organizations without either.
The topic of Software Testing is part of the Verification and Validation (V&V) section of the (new) CSQE Body of Knowledge, and comprises the following components:
- Test planning and design
- Types of tests [6B1]
- Test tools
- Test strategies
- Test design
- Test coverage of specifications
- Test environments
- Supplier components and products
- Test plans
- Test execution and evaluation
- Test implementation
- Test documentation
- Test Reviews
- Code coverage metrics
- Customer deliverables
- Severity of anomalies
Bio Not Provided
Testers want to deliver a perfect system. In fact, all development team members do. Developers often add "just one more feature" in an attempt to make the application better. Testers want to test every possibility, no matter how unlikely it is to happen in real life. We know that any application can fail; there is always at least one more defect. We want the application we are testing to be perfect. We don't usually consider whether or not this application really needs to be perfect. Nor do we consider whether we are the best people to decide if it should be
Some software is life critical and must be tested completely - medical software and military software, for example. Some business software is business critical; the business will not survive if it does not perform correctly. Some software can be less than perfect and simply be inconvenient - software used infrequently by a few experts, for example.
This presentation will look at these situations in terms of what is really required and how testers, and anyone with a quality focus, can handle them in order to maintain enough credibility that management will listen to us when the situation is truly critical.
Sherry Heinze has twenty years of information technology experience as a Tester, Trainer, Analyst and Technical Writer. She has a broad background in design, testing, implementation, training, documentation and user support. Sherry has worked for large corporations with detailed standards and guidelines for development projects, and for small organizations without either. Sherry is an ASQ member and an ASQ Certified Software Quality Engineer.
Together Control Center, by TogetherSoft, provides Quality Assurance features to unobtrusively help you enforce company standards and conventions, capture real metrics, and improve what you do. You can create, save, and reuse custom sets of Metrics and Audits. The availability of Quality Assurance features depends on the project language and the results of both Audit and Metrics analysis are tightly connected with the source code.
The Metrics module evaluates object model complexity to support quality assurance. The Audit module automatically checks for conformance to some standard or user-defined style, maintenance and robustness guidelines. Some of the Audit rules allow automatic correction. From the results of either module, in interactive mode, it is possible to navigate directly to diagram or source-code.
It is also possible to run QA audits or metrics from the command line, whichis useful for including QA information as part of an automated daily build or other process. In addition, Together's OpenAPI allows users to program additional audits and metrics.
Miroslav Novak joined TogetherSoft at the beginning of August 2000. Miroslav was responsible for bringing an earlier version of TogetherJ into his previous place of employment 3 years ago. Prior to joining Togethersoft, he spent 2 years as developer/analyst in the financial trading domain, where he interacted directly with clients to capture and manage requirements, as well as influence the design of the target system. Miroslav was also research technologist for several years, providing data analysis and visualization, primarily in SPSS and Excel.
Miroslav has been a proponent of extreme programming for almost 3 years, actively following developments in the area, and taking advantages of opportunities to apply its tenets. Miroslav is a Mentor at Togethersoft Corporation. Aside for continually learning new things, he currently teaches and develops workshops, and contributes to product development specification and testing.
Miroslav's current professional interests include patterns, lightweight methodologies, and instructional techniques. His personal interests include orienteering and cycle commuting. He has a Bachelor of Science with Specialization in Psychology for University of Alberta, 1992 and a Post Graduate Diploma in Object Oriented Software Technology, University of Calgary, 1997.
It is recognized that software engineering is a complicated and non-physical measurement system, which needs a special quantitative measurement framework - the software metrics. The philosophy of metrology is based on a fundamental assumption that one cannot control an object or a system if one cannot measure it. The objectives of scientific and engineering measurement are to explore what we can measure and how we measure. The former identifies entities and their common attributes in software engineering; the latter develops quantitative models and methods for measuring the identified entities and attributes.
This talk presents a comprehensive software engineering measurement system (SEMS). SEMS treats software engineering measurement as a system rather than individual activities. The overall architecture of the SEMS measurement framework will cover software product measurement, software engineering process measurement, and software engineering project predictive and estimative measurement. The whole measurement system will be built on a small set of meta-measures as those of the international SI system, so that a comprehensive set of software engineering measures can be related and derived based on rigorous definitions.
This talk will focused on the following aspects of software engineering measurement:
- The historic development of software measurement and metrics
- An innovated framework of software engineering measurement system (SEMS)
- Best practices in software engineering on the basis of the SEMS metrics
- The development of an SEMS expert system supporting tool (SEMES)
A wide range of applications of the SEMS framework will be described, such as on the improvement of software quality and efficiency, and the controlling of software engineering processes by quantitative measurements in conventional, object-oriented, and component-based software engineering.
Dr. Yingxu Wang is Professor of Software Engineering at the University of Calgary. He is the coordinator of 'the Theoretical and Empirical Software Engineering Research Centre (TESERC)'. He was a Visiting Professor in the Computing Laboratory at Oxford University during 1995. He received a PhD in Software Engineering from The Nottingham Trent University, UK, and a BSc in Computer Science from Shanghai Tiedao University in 1983.
Dr. Wang is a member of IEEE TCSE/SESC, ACM, ISO/IEC JTC1/SC7, the Canadian Advisory Committee (CAC) for ISO JTC1 (Software Engineering), and the IEEE/ACM Joint Committee for Software Engineering Curricula. He was the Chairman of the Computer Chapter of IEEE Sweden during 1999-2000. He has accomplished 15 Canadian, European, and industry-funded research projects as principal investigator and/or manager. He is the author of 6 books and over 150 papers in software engineering and computer science, particularly the books on 'Software Engineering Processes: Principles and Applications (2000)', and 'Software Engineering Measurement: An Applied Metrics Framework (to appear)'. He is the Co-Chair and Program Chair of 'The First IEEE International Conference on Cognitive Informatics (ICCI'02, August, Calgary)' and Program Co-Chair of 'The 7th International Conference on Object-Oriented Information Systems (OOIS'01, Calgary)'. He has won a dozen research achievement and academic teaching awards in the last 20 years.
An experience-based look at "The Top Ten Thin Client Mistakes", covering:
- what thin client technology means,
- what some of its forms are,
- what makes it valuable,
- how it is different from "fat client" technology,
- and how those differences can spell trouble for development projects when people aren't aware of, or don't allow for, those differences.
This talk won't be strongly oriented toward software development projects per se. However, some aspects of thin client implementation projects that might challenge the traditional view of software quality and project managment will be highlighted.
Ken Wallewein is a systems and networks consultant who has been working with computers and networks for over 25 years. Yes, this means he started in the mid-seventies, before Microsoft existed -- a fact which is probably a lot less significant than it sounds.
Ken has held positions working with computer hardware, software, systems, and networks, and has obtained certifications from Cisco, Citrix, Novell, Microsoft, and the Institute for the Certification of Computing Professionals (ICCP). For about the last ten years, Ken has been an independent consultant.
One of his core business technologies is thin client software, as developed by Citrix and subsequently licenced by Microsoft for their Terminal Services product. He first started using this technology in 1995, perhaps earlier than anyone else in Calgary.
This is our annual planning session where organizers, volunteers and participants, active or otherwise, get a chance to make their mark on next years sessions. Everything is up for discussion. Bring your ideas and suggestions to make this an even better discussion group next year.
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