Tutorials

1. Software architecture and agile software development: an oxymoron? (morning)

Philippe Kruchten, University of British Columbia, Canada (conference keynote speaker)

Software architecture is taking a bad rap with the agilists. According to proponents of agile and lean software development approaches: “BUFD big up-front design”, “YAGNI You Ain’t Gonna Need It”, “massive documentation”, “smells of waterfall”; it is pictured as a typical non-agile practice. However, certain classes of system, ignoring architectural issues too long “hit a wall” and collapse by lack of an architectural focus. “Agile architecture”: a paradox, an oxymoron, two totally incompatible approaches? In this tutorial, we will review the real issues at stake, past the rhetoric and posturing, and show that the two cultures can coexist and support each other, where appropriate. We define heuristics to scope how much architecture a project really needs, to assign actual value to an otherwise invisible architecture; and we review management and development practices that do work in the circumstances where some significant architectural effort is needed, when you are actually going to need it.

2. The delicate art of release planning or: What colour is your backlog? (afternoon)

Philippe Kruchten, University of British Columbia, Canada (conference keynote speaker)

Release planning is the decision process by which we decide what we are going to do next in a software project, for the best of its stakeholders, and in face of all the uncertainties inherent to such endeavour. While a simple strategy can focus at all on “delivering value”, this rapidly becomes much more complicated when we take into consideration dependencies, value and cost, software architecture work, defects, technical debt, the uncertainties on estimation, multiple stakeholders to satisfy and the impact of time. In this tutorial, we present a gradually more and more sophisticated strategy, drawing on various established techniques to deal with this delicate problem.

3. Components of effective process definitions or: How to ensure your process assets “make sense” to their users (full day)

Judy Bamberger, Process Solutions, Australia

In the nearly 30 years(!) I've been in this industry, I’ve been privileged to work with many high-maturity organisations. Even at “Level 5” (or however “maturity” is rated), the effectiveness and usability of process definitions vary widely.

Being independent, I’ve seen many different types of process definition techniques, some extremely effective and usable (determined by the organisations’s process measurements and user feedback), and many that are neither effective nor usable.  We are able to learn from all.

Repeatedly, a common set of “success criteria” emerge: criteria leading to process assets that are more effective, more usable than others.  These criteria would not surprise any process-definition or process-improvement professional.

The value of this tutorial is that it packages these criteria into a series of templates and checklists that participants can use to: (a) Define their processes (if just getting started); and (b) Appraise their existing processes (using the results for improvement).

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