CAI and the IT Metrics & Productivity Institute are proud to present

The 2008
Software Best Practices
Webinar Series

2008 Program

Ensuring Project Success through Automated Project Governance

August 11, 2008
11:00 am - 12:30 pm Eastern Time

According to the Standish Group, more than half of all IT projects come in over budget, over schedule, or fail outright. Why is IT continually plagued by such dismal success rates? In this webinar, Chuck Keeler proposes a solution to this problem. He will discuss an innovative new approach for automating and institutionalizing project governance best practices at both the executive and operational level.

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WEBINAR SERIES: USING ITIL TO IMPROVE APPLICATION SUPPORT BY 20 - 30% (Part #1 - Improving Application Support with ITIL Service Management)

August 12th, 2008
11:00 am - 12:30 pm Eastern Time

ITIL V3 service management provides an industry recognized set of standards for bringing process consistency and measureable improvements to your IT Application Support services. It can be used to ALIGN, MANAGE, MEASURE, and dramatically IMPROVE your Application Support function by 20 - 30%: more work or less cost!

IT Organizations are feeling pressure to continually reduce costs and improve service performance. Demonstrating cost reductions and service improvements within Application Support are key challenges faced by IT Organizations today.

This webinar is the first in a series: Using ITIL to Improve Application Support by 20 - 30%. During this webinar, we will review how ITIL's service management framework is well-suited to improve the Application Support Function. We will discuss how it can be used to achieve 20 - 30% improvements: more work or less cost, within 18-24 months.

Learning Objectives:

• The ITIL V3 Service Management Lifecycle and how it is used for implementing new services and improving existing services
• Why ITIL is relevant to Application Maintenance and Support?
• What is ITIL's value to Application Maintenance and Support?
• How do you apply ITIL to Application Maintenance and Support?

Intended Audience:

• IT Executives
• Application Maintenance and Support Managers
• Application Maintenance and Support Practitioners

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Root Cause Analysis: What Is It And How Do I Do It?

August 13th, 2008
11:00 am - 12:30 pm Eastern Time

When done correctly, Root Cause Analysis (RCA) focused on defect prevention can significantly improve the effectiveness and efficiency of an organization. RCA has different meanings to different organizations, and is often used to mean problem resolution rather than identifying how and why faults get into our requirements, design, code, and test products. In this webinar with Ed Weller, we will look at RCA as part of defect prevention and address why defects get into our work, how to identify the underlying causes of these defects, and how to create a process for doing cause-effect analysis. The enablers and barriers to effective RCA will be identified and organizations will be positioned to evaluate their readiness for implementing RCA.

Learning Objectives:

• What is Root Cause Analysis?
• What are the enablers and barriers for Root Cause Analysis?
• How do we do Cause-Effect analysis?
• Implementing solutions - the key activity in RCA

Intended Audience:

• Developers/Testers who do Root Cause Analysis
• Managers of people doing Root Cause Analysis
• Quality Assurance and process group members who facilitate RCA sessions

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Essential Measurements for Software Projects

August 14th, 2008
11:00 am - 12:30 pm Eastern Time

Measurement is essential to effective management of software projects - it is the means by which teams determine where they are relative to objectives and steer themselves toward their goals. Yet not all measurements are created equal. Measuring the wrong things is a distraction at best and may lead a team in the wrong direction. This webinar by Kurt Bittner will present a set of 4 simple measures to assess project health and help to steer the project in the right direction.

Learning Objectives:

• To understand the goals of measurement
• To understand what to measure, and how
• To understand how to use the results of measurement to guide the project

Intended Audience:

• People managing or leading software projects
• Members of software teams who need to measure project results or help develop estimates
• Managers who oversee a number of software projects

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IT Silver Bullets: Tools and Techniques

August 20th, 2008
3:30 pm - 5:00 pm Eastern Time

Over the years a number of software tools and techniques have been hailed by the IT industry as "Silver Bullets," the fast way to dramatically improved productivity or speed of delivery. But are there really any silver bullets? The ISBSG has researched Release 10 of its software project data repository of 4,150 projects to analyse the impact of a number of types of tools and techniques. In this webinar Peter Hill, the CEO of the ISBSG, will present the findings of that research and look at what works and what doesn't.

Learning Objectives:

• The tools & techniques that have been used on projects in the ISBSG repository
• The impact that these tools & techniques appear to have on the projects
• The extent of the use of tools and techniques
• What works and what doesn't

Intended Audience:

• CIOs
• IT Managers
• Project Managers
• IT Developers

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Top 10 Pitfalls in Agile Software Development

August 21st, 2008
11:00 am - 12:30 pm Eastern Time

Over the last few years, the adoption of agile methods has rapidly spread and agile methods are now state-of-the-art. Many teams, projects and even organizations around the world are using Scrum, XP, Crystal Methodologies, or other well-known or self-made agile methods. However, not every organization and project is succeeding in making agile work.

What makes an agile project successful? And how can we recognize common pitfalls or "smells" that prevent or limit success with agile?

With her experience in helping projects all over Europe establish the agile value system, Jutta Eckstein will use this webinar to highlight recurring common pitfalls that teams often fall into when applying an agile approach.

Learning Objectives:

• How to make failure transparent
• How to recognize typical pitfalls
• How to prevent failure
• How to set up teams for success
• Concrete proto-patterns for success

Intended Audience:

• Project Managers
• Change agents and promoters of agile methods such as coaches, ScrumMasters, consultants
• Project managers, product managers, development team managers
• Executives
• All participants should be experienced in applying agile methods.

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Best Practices for Determining Project Requirements

August 26th, 2008
11:00 am - 12:30 pm Eastern Time

When industry studies are done on reasons for project failures, scope creep and poor understanding of requirements are always at the top of the list. This webinar with Hans Jonasson will explore the reasons behind these issues and look at best practices for improving your approach to gathering project requirements. We will explore evolving industry standards, look at a formalized approach to requirements gathering and documentation and talk about the increasingly important role of the business analyst. There will be a deeper review of the use of facilitated sessions to capture requirements and how modeling fits into the requirements gathering process.

Learning Objectives:

• Gain an understanding of different levels of requirements and how to create traceable requirements
• Review common requirements gathering approaches and when they should be used
• Understand how to set up and run a facilitated requirements session

Intended Audience:

• Project Managers
• Customers of IT applications
• Business Analysts

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How to Effectively Lead an Offshore Team

August 27th, 2008
11:00 am - 12:30 pm Eastern Time

Over the past several years global delivery of IT application services has become commonplace. To deliver these services successfully, however, firms need to implement consistent methodologies and processes that have been adapted to handle geographically dispersed teams. While these defined approaches and disciplines help manage work between diverse locations, the best firms also have strong leadership principles to guide them through the challenges of a multi-cultural team.

In this Webinar, David Broderick, Director of Offshore Delivery for CAI, will share some facts, experiences, and insights on how to lead IT teams dispersed across different countries.

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Lean-Agile Software Development: Where To Start

September 2nd, 2008
11:00 am - 12:30 pm Eastern Time

You know that your organization needs to be transformed by using Lean-Agile software development principles and practices, but how do you actually get started down the Lean-Agile path? This webinar with Alan Shalloway will help attendees understand that it is not a question to be avoided, but one that needs to be answered. The session will give some tactics based on real-world experience that will be helpful for anyone that needs to answer the question of "how and where do we start?" This webinar is for those people who already have a general understanding of Lean and Agile principles, but need assistance on where to begin, or assurance that they've started in the right manner.

Learning Objectives:

• Lean-Agile as fast-flexible-flow
• Lean-Agile across the enterprise
• Quick wins
• Assessing metrics

Intended Audience:

• IT Program Managers
• Software project managers
• Software engineers
• Process improvement groups

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Project Patterns: Adrenaline Junkies and Template Zombies

September 3rd, 2008
11:00 am - 12:30 pm Eastern Time

There are many commonly recognized best practices for good health: eating a balanced diet, exercising regularly, getting plenty of rest. There are also many recognized worst practices: smoking, overeating, heavy drinking. So why don't we all arduously work on all the best practices and dutifully avoid all the worst? It's the same with IT. Over time we fall into project patterns; some are healthy and some are destructive.

In this webinar with Tim Lister, Tim will present some behavior patterns from his new book with the Atlantic Systems Guild, "Adrenaline Junkies and Template Zombies: Understanding Patterns of Project Behavior." He will supply a starter kit for you and your colleagues to discuss what you do, and don't do, and most important of all - why. You will learn how to recognize when your projects are locked in a pattern and whether that pattern is healthy or destructive.

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Making Process Improvement Work: A Concise Action Guide

September 4th, 2008
11:00 am - 12:30 pm Eastern Time

Many organizations try to improve their software quality and productivity by establishing a company-wide process improvement program. These programs often result in large amounts of process documentation which eventually become a burden or are ignored completely. In many cases, the organization is left with very little benefit to show for its efforts. This webinar by Neil Potter offers a straightforward, systematic approach to planning, implementing, and monitoring a process improvement program. Business goals, project problems and improvement frameworks are tied together to create a compelling improvement program.

Learning Objectives:

• Scope and develop an improvement plan
• Direct all improvement towards achieving business goals and solving the organization's problems
• Use improvement models or standards (e.g., CMMI, ITIL, Six Sigma) to address goals and problems
• Stay focused on running the business, not procedures and paperwork
• Derive metrics that accurately measure progress toward business goals

Intended Audience:

• Senior Managers leading an improvement effort
• Process improvement and quality staff coaching an improvement program
• Project managers and team members being asked to improve

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The Impact of Web 2.0 on Software Development, Project Management, and Process Improvement

September 9th, 2008
10:00 am - 11:30 am Eastern Time

The paradigm of Web 2.0 is that of "content" being created by customers and the entire Internet community, as well as corporations and the "mainstream" media. Sometimes this grass-roots content is aggregated and distributed by the traditional publishers; but often it exists as tiny, stand-alone creations on the Internet - such as the millions of blogs, photographs, and video clips that have sprung into existence in the past few years.

But most of all, Web 2.0 is a "strategic" issue: it requires senior corporate executives - including the CIO, senior IT managers, and managers of business units - to rethink basic assumptions about their business, their customers, their suppliers, their work-force, their revenue models, and the day-to-day processes by which they carry out their business. As these strategic issues are discussed and debated in the coming years, we may possibly see some of the same exaggeration and "hype" that occurred during the early years of Web 1.0; but when the dust settles ten years from now, we will certainly see some new "winners" who have achieved the same kind of success that Amazon and Yahoo did back in 1995.

Learning Objectives:

• Gain an understanding of what Web 2.0 is, and what it is not.
• Learn which Web 2.0 applications make sense for their business (and which do not)
• Learn how those applications should be built with new tools and development environments, as well as existing components, systems, and tools.
• Gain an understanding of the tools, products, and technology plans of several major vendors.
• Understand the current trends of Web 2.0, and how it will evolve into Web 3.0
  

Intended Audience:

• Senior IT executives
• Corporate planners
• IT project managers
• Software architects and engineers
• Business managers responsible for using the Internet to grow their business.

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Is the World Really Flat?

September 10th, 2008
3:00 pm - 4:30 pm Eastern Time

In "The World Is Flat," author Thomas Friedman describes how a "connected" world has made it possible to do almost anything collaboratively with people around the planet. This globalization has driven companies to not only to distribute low-wage manufacturing around the world, but also high-end design and knowledge work as well, like software development.

But is the world really flat when it comes to creating and designing software? Labor rates are but one dimension of outsourcing. What does a worldwide database of actual completed projects show compared to what people expect? Do apparent cost savings reflect similar outcomes for time-to-market and quality? Are companies satisfied with their ability to achieve all of their outsourcing goals? Do companies that have already outsourced intend to stay the course or switch? What are some of the implications of Agile development and outsourcing?

This webinar with Michael Mah will answer these and other important issues that senior executives need to consider when evaluating their options, using benchmark statistics compiled by recent research of several hundred companies that have made outsourcing a part of their global development strategy.

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True North Metrics

September 11th, 2008
10:00 am - 11:30 am Eastern Time

In the everyday hurly-burly bustle of business-as-usual it is all too easy for individuals to narrow their focus so they see only their immediate, urgent tasks. Dysfunction sets in, so that managers and staff lose sight of their organisation's strategic objectives, often optimising local processes at the expense of the customer's experience with the end-to-end service. Furthermore, when asked, few individuals can reliably state their organisation's strategic objectives. Nor can they explain how their own activities contribute to achievement of those objectives.

In this webinar, Grant Rule will illustrate a simple method that enables company management to define and communicate the organisation's 'True North' direction with respect to the nature of the selected customer base. Participants will learn how to construct a strategy focused on delivering the value expected by the organisation's customers. The presentation will show how plans for implementing strategy are linked, through executive-level Implementation Managers, to operations and improvement projects. The method makes it easy for all members of staff, and indeed suppliers, to align their behaviours and deliverables to achieve quantified progress in the desired direction. Operationalising the strategy makes it straightforward for all to see how their projects and activities contribute value, which results in reduced risk, higher staff morale, and engaged teams committed to continuously removing waste to maximise the value added by their processes.

Intended Audience:

• CXO-level executives, including the CIO and their peers
• Programme Managers
• Departmental Managers
• Project Managers
• Managers of performance improvement programmes and organisational change programmes
• Process and performance coaches and mentors

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WEBINAR SERIES: USING ITIL TO IMPROVE APPLICATION SUPPORT BY 20 - 30% (Part #2 -- Meaningful Service Level Agreements (SLAs) for Application Support)

September 12, 2008
11:00 am - 12:30 pm Eastern Time

ITIL V3 service management provides an industry recognized set of standards for bringing process consistency and measureable improvements to your IT Application Support services. It can be used to ALIGN, MANAGE, MEASURE, and dramatically IMPROVE your Application Support function by 20 - 30%: more work or less cost!

Establishing meaningful SLAs is one of the key challenges faced by IT Organizations today. Meaningful SLAs are a vital first step toward improving Application Support and aligning the Application Support function with the business.

This webinar is the second in a series: Using ITIL to Improve Application Support by 20 -30%. During this webinar, we will review how ITIL's Service Level Management practices can be used to develop SLAs that are meaningful to Application Support.

Learning Objectives:

• ITIL's Service Level Management Process and how it is used to align the Application Support function with the business
• Service Level Management's value to Application Support
• How to establish meaningful Service Level Agreements for the Application Support function
• How to manage and measure service level performance for Application Support

Intended Audience:

• IT Executives
• Application Maintenance and Support Managers
• Application Maintenance and Support Practitioners

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Organizational Change: 5 Roadblocks And How To Overcome Them

September 16th, 2008
11:00 am - 12:30 pm Eastern Time

How many dedicated improvement program leaders have pushed the proverbial boulder up the hill only to watch it roll back down, sometimes flattening the change agents and even the executive sponsor in the process? Why do we focus on the management of change (e.g., the models, processes, methods, plans and tactics) and fail to acknowledge and address the importance of cultural barriers and change leadership? In this webinar, Beth Layman will talk about five roadblocks to successful change: lack of alignment, siloed thinking, decision dysfunction, execution and endurance problems, and missing measurements - and what to do about them.

Learning Objectives:

• Understand the difference between managing and leading change efforts
• Discuss the symptoms of barriers to change, the root causes, and how to address them
• Learn how to perform a critical assessment of "change readiness" and use the findings to plan for the change
• Learn how to tailor your improvement plans based on organizational readiness and maturity
  

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Mastering Service Based Project Leadership

September 17th, 2008
11:00 am - 12:30 pm Eastern Time

Your project management services compete on a global basis. Your services are becoming, if not already, a commodity for organizations to purchase when and where they want it.

As practitioners we must ensure our services are distinguishable and provide unique value. This is a challenge in an industry that is being commoditized by the conversion of individually-held tacit knowledge into organizational knowledge, by increased standardization of terminology and processes, by globalization and by the availability of highly-educated low cost workers.

This webinar by Jack Ferraro will define a bold new type of practitioner — the service-based program leader. Their role is to lead and sustain transformation by creating experiences that initiate the transformation of people — starting with themselves — then the transformation of systems and ultimately, of the organization.

The qualities that make them unique are efficiency (ability to focus on high value work); customization (tailoring methods and tools to meet stakeholder's needs); foresight (leading as opposed to reacting); and finally, connectedness (the ability to work together with project team members, stakeholders and customers).

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Balanced Scorecards for Software Development

September 18th , 2008
11:00 am - 12:30 pm Eastern Time

Application of the Balanced Scorecard to software development processes allows alignment of organizational objectives and goals with the software development life cycle. The balanced scorecard assumes causal relationships between measures of organizational learning and growth, internal business processes, customer perspective and financial measures. Each area is represented by Key Process Indicators. The identification and definition of those KPI's becomes an important step if the software development organization wants to deliver product within cost, schedule, and good quality.

Learning Objectives:

• Understand the connection between balanced scorecards and software development
• Learn how to align software development strategy with organizational goals
• Discover how you can obtain important feedback for developing a process improvement strategy

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The Software Project Manager's Bridge to Agility

September 23rd, 2008
11:00 am - 12:30 pm Eastern Time

This webinar with Michele Sliger is specifically aimed at traditionally trained software project managers who are new to Agile, and who would like to be able to relate the Project Management Institute's (PMI) best practices to their equivalent practices in Agile. As a result of being able to associate many of these new Agile ideas to things that are already familiar, the listener can begin their Agile journey with a new shared lexicon and knowledge of general Agile concepts. In addition to the mapping of the PMBOK Guide® knowledge areas to Agile practices, there is also focus on how the job of the traditional project manager is re-defined into a new—and often more important—role in the Agile development process.

Learning Objectives:

• Learn about Agile by relating Agile concepts to project management concepts you are already familiar with
• Understand how your role as a traditional project manager will change in an Agile environment

Intended Audience:

• Traditional software and IT project managers PMO managers and executives
• Any software professional who would like to learn more about Agile practices and how they compare to traditional practices

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Using Measurements for System Testing Success

September 24th, 2008
11:00 am - 12:30 pm Eastern Time

To achieve success in system testing—efficiently preventing important defects from reaching users —technical excellence is necessary but is not sufficient in itself. Even more important are the skills to influence the project team attitudes and behavior in a manner that prevents defects from even reaching the system test phase in the first place. In this webinar, Nathan Petschenik shares his experience and insights into the technical aspects of collecting and interpreting measurements for system test. In addition, he explains how system test leaders can and must use measurements to drive certain types of Software Process Improvement in order to impact the quality of the software that reaches the system test team. Among other recommendations, Nathan explains how to use "accountability studies" based on user problems reported to get both testers and developers to get better at their jobs. By nurturing front-loaded quality—quality designed in and built in, not tested in at the end—system testers can multiply their efforts and help ensure that users receive high quality software. The material for this Webinar is drawn from Nathan's book "System Testing with an Attitude" (Dorset House 2005).

Learning Objectives:

• Specific needs that measurements fulfill in system testing
• The measurements that should be collected by system test team
• How each of these measurements address the specific needs of system testing
• How measurements can be used to nurture front-loaded quality as an integral part of achieving system test success
• How to use measurements as a basis for identifying and harnessing key learnings for continuous process improvement

Intended Audience:

• System Testers System Test ManagersProject Managers
• Software Process Improvement/Quality Assurance specialists

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5 Core Metrics to Guide your Software Endgames

September 25th, 2008
11:00 am - 12:30 pm Eastern Time

By its very nature, the Endgame of software projects is a hostile environment. Typical dynamics include tremendous release pressure, continuous bug & requirement discovery, exhausted development teams, frenzied project managers and "crunch mode" - a PC term for overtime. In this webinar by Bob Galen, you'll learn how Project Managers can focus the entire team on a few key performance metrics to improve the overall endgame experience and increase the probability of delivering on-time. And yes, to also survive yet another Endgame.

Learning Objectives:

• How to provide effective traffic direction for the incoming defect "stream"
• Why keywords are a great way to focus project releases
• Highlighting defect repair performance characteristics without alienating development
• How to provide powerful Pareto guidance into project risk areas
• Why developing a set of Metrics Analysis Questions (MAQ's) can help your analysis.

Intended Audience:

• Attendees from functional management, project management, software engineering and software testing will benefit by learning a set of techniques and heuristics for successfully reading, influencing, and interpreting their application defect metrics to guide their focus within their project endgames. You should have at least 3 years of experience contributing within technology product development teams.

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Ensuring Project Success through Automated Project

September 30, 2008
3:30 pm- 5:00 pm Eastern Time

According to the Standish Group, more than half of all IT projects come in over budget, over schedule, or fail outright. Why is IT continually plagued by such dismal success rates? In this webinar, Chuck Keeler proposes a solution to this problem. He will discuss an innovative new approach for automating and institutionalizing project governance best practices at both the executive and operational level.

Click Here to Register!

Requirements Engineering is MAD

October 1st, 2008
10:00 am - 11:30 am Eastern Time

There are two distinct processes within the discipline of Requirements Engineering; namely, Requirements Management and Requirements Development. These two processes generally run in parallel, have quite different objectives and often an unclear interaction. Drawing upon his extensive experience using the CMMI framework, Dr. Simon Wright will fully describe these two processes in this webinar, and will place particular emphasis on the relationship between them.

Learning Objectives:

• To provide an understanding of the process of Requirements Development
• To provide an understanding of the process of Requirements Management
• To provide an understanding of the interface between Requirements Development and Requirements Management
• To provide an understanding of the interface between Planning and Performing the processes

Intended Audience:

• Executive who define organizational policy for processes
• Project managers who plan the requirements engineering activities
• Stakeholders who have to write or fulfill requirements
• Developers who have to analyze or change requirements

Click Here to Register!

The Economics of Thin Clients

October 2nd, 2008
10:00 am - 11:30 am Eastern Time

The last 25 years of computing technology can be characterized by the rising dominance of "client computing". In this era Microsoft provided increasingly elaborate software that supported a complexity that previously could be delivered only by means of mainframe computers. Personal computers have now became devices that require megabytes of memory and gigabytes of disk space to support individual computing.

Offsetting such rising powers are the rapidly rising operating maintenance costs and the increasing vulnerability to attacks on the hundreds of millions of lines of software code residing within Microsoft operating systems. Though firewalls and virus protection countermeasures have been installed to protect computing, hard to contain human errors remain the causes of most security compromises.

With improvements in communications it is now possible to support personal computing by means of "thin clients" that depend on the processing power of central servers to deliver application services. Instead of protecting each of the millions of personal computers against information attacks at a huge cost, it is now feasible to concentrate defenses into thousands of high-performance servers where protective measures are more affordable and manageable.

The objective of this webinar with Paul Strassmann, former CIO for the US Dept. of Defense, is to describe the current implementation of "thin client" configuration by a number of vendors, to demonstrate the economic advantages of centrally managed computing and to explain how "thin computing" offers safeguards against security compromises.

Learning Objectives:

• How to evaluate the placement of "thin clients" on a corporate network in comparison with other available options.

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The Business Value of Application Software Quality

October 7th, 2008
10:00 am - 11:30 am Eastern Time

IT executives are continually pressured to prove the business value of their applications and costs. This webinar with Dr. Bill Curtis will explore how continual vigilance toward an application's quality improves its business value and reduces its lifetime costs. Case studies will be used to demonstrate how application quality issues have been addressed by best practice companies and the business benefits they achieved.

Learning Objectives:

• Describe 6 trends that are accelerating the importance of application software quality
• Relate different sources of business value to different aspects of software quality such as robustness, maintainability, security, and other such measures
• Discuss the processes that need to be deployed in order to address the application software quality issues that most affect business value
• Understand how quality roles can be incorporated into the existing structure of application development and maintenance functions

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General Principles of Cost Estimation

October 8th, 2008
10:00 am - 11:30 am Eastern Time

Estimating the number of people and the amount of time it will take to develop software is an integral piece of effective project planning. This webinar presentation with Dr. Brad Clark discusses approaches to estimation, from the simple to the complex, with examples. Brad then delves into the Achilles' heel of any estimation method: sizing the work to be done. Finally they will discuss the impact that speeding up a project has on staffing requirements. By the end of the webinar, you will understand all of the challenges in creating a credible estimate.

Learning Objectives:

• Discuss the three approaches to software project cost estimation
• Discuss the impact that product quality has on estimation
• Discuss analyzing the feasibility of the estimation results
• Discuss approaches to sizing the work to be done (the most challenging task!)
• Explain the impact of compressing a project's schedule.

Intended Audience:

• IT Program Managers
• Software project managers
• Software engineers
• Process improvement groups

Click Here to Register!

Ensuring Project Success through Automated Project Governance

October 9, 2008
11:00 am- 12:30 pm Eastern Time

According to the Standish Group, more than half of all IT projects come in over budget, over schedule, or fail outright. Why is IT continually plagued by such dismal success rates? In this webinar, Chuck Keeler proposes a solution to this problem. He will discuss an innovative new approach for automating and institutionalizing project governance best practices at both the executive and operational level.

Click Here to Register!

WEBINAR SERIES: USING ITIL TO IMPROVE APPLICATION SUPPORT BY 20 - 30% (Part #3 - Reduce Application Incidents with ITIL Service Management)

October 10, 2008
12:30 pm - 2:00 pm Eastern Time

ITIL V3 service management provides an industry recognized set of standards for bringing process consistency and measureable improvements to your IT Application Maintenance and Support services. It can be used to ALIGN, MANAGE, MEASURE, and dramatically IMPROVE your Application Support function by 20 - 30%: more work or less cost!

Application Software Incidents are a significant cost to the business and the IT Organization. Reducing business interruptions and costs associated with Application Incidents is a key challenge faced by all IT Organizations today.

This webinar is the third in a series: Using ITIL to Improve Application Support by 20 - 30%. During this webinar, we will review how ITIL's Incident Management and Problem Management processes can be used to meet these Application Support challenges.

Learning Objectives:

• ITIL's Incident Management Process and how it is used to minimize disruptions to the business' software applications
• ITIL's Problem Management Process and how it is used to reduce Application Software Incidents
• How to reduce the costs associated with Application Software Incidents
• How to know when you have successfully reduced Application Software Incidents

Intended Audience:

• IT Executives
• Application Maintenance and Support Managers
• Application Maintenance and Support Practitioners

Click Here to Register!

Lines of Code - Statistically Unreliable for Software Sizing?

October 14th, 2008
10:00 am - 11:30 am Eastern Time

Software projects are notorious for costing too much, arriving too late, and not meeting customer needs. Under funding and tight schedules are often portrayed as the culprits when any post mortem or lessons learned is conducted. Software functionality, expressed in lines of code is seldom a leading suspect of estimation error. Often times software engineers express their product size in the context of lines of code as if, more implies more functionality and value for the customer.

Measures recorded from PSP courses developed by the Software Engineering Institute provide an insightful if not shocking potential for investigating an overlooked root cause of variation in estimates. Please join webinar presenter Joe Schofield as he explores what the data is screaming to tell us.

Learning Objectives:

• Is there a relationship between the number of lines of code and the functionality / features of a software product? Are some languages better than others in correlating to delivered functionality? How reliable is "backfiring"; that is, comparing lines of code (LOC) to Function Points? Why don't we have more data to illustrate the integrity (or lack thereof) of LOCs? What makes the PSP environment such a reliable source of measurement data?
• Is there evidence that one software engineer likely outperforms others?

Intended Audience:

• Software project managers Software developers
• Anyone who uses a software services group that talks in LOC-speak
• Anyone who uses lines of code as a basis for estimation
• Anyone who uses lines of code to measure progress for project status

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Agile Legacy Reengineering

October 15th, 2008
11:00 am - 12:30 pm Eastern Time

Many organizations depend upon legacy software systems that were designed and implemented in the 1970s or earlier. These systems have operational procedures, critical business rules and workflow embedded which are difficult to replicate and are typically not recorded anywhere else within the organization. This webinar by Dr. Tom Love describes an innovative process for reengineering these applications using state of the art software technology and agile methods. The approach outlined allows such reengineering to be largely financed with the savings derived from more efficiently managing legacy systems.

Intended Audience:

• CIOs
• CFOs
• Technical IT Staff involved in the support of legacy applications

Click Here to Register!

Project Management Methodology: 6 Activities for Successful Introduction and Use

October 16th, 2008
10:00 am - 11:30 am Eastern Time

Methodology implementation represents the introduction of a standard and repeatable process for conducting project management in the organization. An effective methodology solution will distinctly increase project management capability and even improve business performance when properly implemented. In order to achieve the full range of benefits from methodology use, it is important to ensure that essential actions are performed in conjunction with project management methodology selection, development, and implementation. This webinar with Gerard M. Hill, PMP, will provide participants with an examination of 6 prominent activities that will influence the success of methodology introduction and use within the organization: Methodology Team Formation, Methodology Selection, Methodology Development or Adaptation for Use, Methodology Transition Planning, Methodology Implementation, Methodology Maintenance.

Learning Objectives:

• Identify fundamental steps that can be used to guide methodology selection, development, and rollout in their organization
• Plan methodology implementation with more realistic timelines that account for the accomplishment of essential activities
• Gain insight to the key steps for planning and conducting the transition of projects and people from current methods to a new project management methodology
• Examine a checklist of preparation activities that need to be accomplished when introducing a new project management methodology to users across the organization

Intended Audience:

• Program and PMO managers who need to gain a quick understanding about the complexities of planning and conducting methodology implementation
• Individuals who need additional insight to performing preliminary methodology selection and platform development activities
• Managers having responsibility or otherwise involved in methodology process rollouts
• Managers at any level who have responsibility for formulating an organizational strategy for centralized project management oversight, control, and support  

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Large Scale Adoption of Agile Development: Lessons Learned

October 21st, 2008
11:00 am - 12:30 pm Eastern Time

Agile practitioners are aware of the business benefits that can be derived from faster and more effective software delivery. At the same time, companies in many industries are facing increasing regulatory compliance issues. How do you apply agile practices that treat documentation as "barely sufficient" and "just enough" and rely on tacit communication in an audited, regulated industry? Compliance audits are fundamentally documentation reviews. How do you put more value on an undocumented process with good interaction of people on the team over a documented process but with perhaps hostile interactions?

Since November 2005 presenter Eugene Levin has been involved in the definition and rollout of Citi's Disciplined Agility process. This process has been piloted on almost 30 completed and 115 active projects. In his presentation Eugene describes the challenges related to using a light-weight agile methodology in a regulated industry, the experience of defining Citi's Disciplined Agility process, and the lessons learned from the large-scale rollout of agile development.

Learning Objectives:

• Challenges of Developing Software in a Regulated Environment
• Defining Agile Development
• Overview of Citi's Disciplined Agility Framework
• Citi's Agile Rollout Approach
• Pilot Projects Selection Criteria
• Lessons Learned

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Organizational Politics for People Who Hate Politics

October 22nd, 2008
10:30 am - 12:00 pm Eastern Time

Have you ever felt powerless to implement an important new idea? Have you ever been "blind sided" at a meeting? Have you lost two good employees because you could find no way to keep them from attacking each other? These are some of the issues of organizational politics. Many of us have from time to time become enmeshed in politics. But we've also known some people who seem to be able to engage and prosper. How is that done? In this webinar, Rick Brenner will present some lessons learned from his own experience and the experience of many clients.

Learning Objectives:

• Challenges of Developing Software in a Regulated Environment
• Recognize that workplace politics is not a game
• Understand how politics and games are different
• Increase your awareness of politics and its role in day-to-day interactions
• Ten devious political tactics and how to deal with them
• How to make person-to-person and email communication more effective
• Ten failure modes for meetings, and where to sit in a conference room

Intended Audience:

• Managers and project managers who participate in resource allocation decisions
• Team members who want to contribute more effectively to team decisions
• Leaders who want to make their organizations' political culture more constructive
• People who want to learn defensive tactics for toxic political environments

Click Here to Register!

Scope Management for Adults - a 12 Step Recovery Concept for IT Programs

October 23rd, 2008
11:00 am - 12:30 pm Eastern Time

ICT projects are an especially troublesome lot: over 2/3 are either cancelled, over budget, or delivered late according to current research. Combine that with 60-99% of software defects attributable to poor requirements and 40% of project time spent on rework - there has to be a better way. This webinar with Carol Dekkers introduces scope management for adults - a proven 12-step program for ICT projects that is customer centric, fair to suppliers, and creates a cohesive project management environment. Building on the success of two acclaimed concepts: southernSCOPE at the Victorian Government in Australia, and northernSCOPE from the Finnish Software Measurement Association (FiSMA), this webinar session presents lessons learned and introduces the 12-step scope management program for ICT projects.

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Planning & Tracking a Software Project at the "Right" Level

October 28th, 2008
11:00 am - 12:30 pm Eastern Time

This webinar by Bob Galen speaks to techniques and approaches to plan and track software projects successfully. It will examine the anti-pattern of too fine granularity planning which includes:

• Planning at too low a level (small tasks, mini milestones, too much time & detail)
• Tracking at too fine a level - daily updates & milestones
• Impacts to the team (micromanagement, impacts to leveraging "their" abilities, morale)
• Missing what is truly important - above the minutia (risk, key requirements, overall quality proposition, release criteria)

The webinar will also explore the converse anti-pattern of too high level planning, which includes:

• Having too high a level plan (large tasks, broad milestones, too little detail and no "substance")
• Tracking at too high a level - weekly+ updates and infrequent and meaningless milestones
• Impacts to team (macromanagement, not assisting and guiding the team, perceived indifference or lack of importance)
• Missing the important details - below the big picture (detailed risks, team dynamics, building on success)

In the end, Bob will outline a set of planning heuristics for good planning within a software development effort.

Learning Objectives:

• Anti-pattern attributes of over planning & under planning
• Tracking work completion by Earned Value
• To look to Agile Methods (XP and SCRUM) for approaches for tracking progress and gathering status
• How to effectively leverage your team in your planning efforts
• What are the key deliverables to maintain the "right" planning level and focus

Click Here to Register!

Are Agilists the Bonobos of Software Development?

October 29th, 2008
10:00 am - 11:30 am Eastern Time

The chimpanzees and the bonobos are the animals whose genetic make-up is closest to that of human beings, but their "cultures" (and, yes, these animals definitely have well-defined cultures) are very different. The chimpanzees are aggressive, and operate in a strict, alpha-male-dominated hierarchy, while the bonobos are gentle and promiscuous! In this webinar with Linda Rising, Linda discusses the tie-in that this may have for those of us who favor agile development over plan-driven development.

Learning Objectives:

• Learn the impacts of chimpanzee culture on organizations
• Learn how bonobo culture can improve organizational practice
• Discover how to be more effective when you operate in sync with your hardwiring
• Hear how powerful the benefits of pairing really are.

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Enterprise Measurement- What Makes it Useful to All of Us?

October 30th, 2008
10:00 am - 11:30 am Eastern Time

Most organizations need information about status of the work underway, progress to internal management goals, and level of success with organizational strategies. The information needs vary at project, program, organization unit, and executive levels. Satisfying those diverse needs might result in an ineffective collection of measurement programs that are separately launched to deal with individual needs, if they are started at different times, by different groups, for their own individual reasons.

For most organizations, a single coordinated program is more efficient and effective than a disparate set of programs. Unless the single program is well-structured and regularly reviewed against the organizations needs, though, it can become unwieldy and hard to manage, and the results can be inconsistent across projects and/or organization units.

In this webinar with Joyce Statz, we discuss some industry practices for enabling enterprise measurement work to be efficient and useful, relying on a minimum amount of data gathering and analysis. We also look at some common inhibitors of enterprise measurement, to identify methods to reduce the impact of those inhibitors.

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WEBINAR SERIES: USING ITIL TO IMPROVE APPLICATION SUPPORT BY 20 - 30% (Part #4 - Improve Application Support with ITIL Continual Service Improvement)

November 3, 2008
11:00 am - 12:30 pm Eastern Time

ITIL V3 service management provides an industry recognized set of standards for bringing process consistency and measureable improvements to your IT Application Maintenance and Support services. It can be used to ALIGN, MANAGE, MEASURE, and dramatically IMPROVE your Application Support function by 20 - 30%: more work or less cost!

Businesses are seeking to reduce IT spending and are expecting IT Organizations to continually control costs and improve service performance. Demonstrating value and managing the business' perception of Application Support as a strategic asset are key challenges faced by IT Organizations today.

This webinar is the fourth in a series: Using ITIL to Improve Application Support by 20 - 30%. During this webinar, we will review how ITIL's Continual Service Improvement practices can be used to meet these Application Support challenges.

Learning objectives:

• How the consistent use of standard work processes is necessary to collect accurate Application Support performance data
• How to use resource performance and work data to achieve visibility into the Application Support Function
• How to identify and implement improvements to the Application Support Function
• How improvement initiatives within the Application Support Function can be used to achieve 20 - 30% more work or less cost, within 18-24 weeks.

Intended Audience:

• IT Executives
• Application Maintenance and Support Managers
• Application Maintenance and Support Practitioners

Click Here to Register!

The Defense Department's Approach to SOA

November 4th, 2008
10:00 am - 11:30 am Eastern Time

The distinguishing characteristic of systems constructed over the past 50 years was their approach to supply each application with its unique databases, custom-made communications and handcrafted code. Although attempts were made since 1990 to simplify the architecture of such systems, it did not succeed. Enterprise systems attempted to streamline information systems through the construction of an all- encompassing database that would then feed all of the applications. Although such systems succeeded where the environment was relatively stable and predictable, the "enterprise solutions" failed because they could not accommodate rapidly changing circumstances. Most importantly, the "enterprise solutions" were focused on managing information assets within the boundaries of a single firm while global commerce called for increased interoperability across multiple enterprises.

The Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) is a design to overcome former limitations by disaggregating databases, communications and applications into separate "services". Under such an arrangement each of the major components of a corporate system is a stand-alone module constructed with interfaces that are subject to international standards. In SOA any component can call on services by any other component over a shared network. In the case of global commerce, the interconnectivity is managed via Internet using agreed protocols.

The objective of this webinar with Paul Strassmann, for DoD CIO, is to describe the current implementation of SOA solutions in the Department of Defense and to show the economic advantages of distributed computing. Since SOA is more vulnerable than previous solutions, safeguards against security compromises will be also discussed.

Learning Objectives:

• How to compare DoD SOA architecture and plans with corporate alternatives.

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A Process Approach to Benchmarking

November 5th, 2008
10:00 am - 11:30 am Eastern Time

Organisations that have carried out benchmarking exercises, have found that in many cases the experience is less than satisfactory. Many of them do not fully understand the results and often seek help to understand them. Few organisations understand the complexities that may surround like-for- like comparisons, the implications of different types of benchmarks and the effects of changing work balance. Most organizations start the benchmarking activity without a clear expression of their information needs. The benchmark provider is constrained to provide a 'standard' product which may not meet their true needs. In this webinar with Tony Rollo, Tony will explain how the use of a process based approach can ensure that the requirements of the organisation are clearly expressed and understood by the benchmark provider as well as the staff of the organisation being benchmarked.

Learning Objectives:

• Be aware of different types and scope of benchmark
• Appreciate the need to understand their information needs
• Understand the approach necessary to express the information need
• Be aware of the existence of the ISBSG Standard Process for Benchmarking
• Contrast benchmarks against peer groups as well as disparate organizations

Intended Audience:

• IT Programme Managers
• Senior managers who may be Benchmark Sponsors
• Engineers/project managers responsible for benchmark projects
• Process Improvement groups

Click Here to Register!

Communication in Global and Distributed Teams

November 6th, 2008
10:00 am - 11:30 am Eastern Time

Virtual teams are now officially the way of things. Nevertheless, everything about such projects or operations is more difficult than face-to-face teams. The people of virtual teams are dispersed geographically, they meet infrequently or never, and they might even come from different cultures. And these three factors conspire to make what's usually easy, difficult — and what's usually difficult, impossible. This webinar by Rick Brenner will help people who sponsor, lead or participate in virtual organizations by focusing on communication within global and distributed teams.

Learning Objectives:

• Building and maintaining trust
• Planning communications for dispersion
• Accounting for socio-cultural, linguistic and political differences
• Allocating the work with dispersion in mind
• Dealing with telemeetings, voicemail and email in virtual teams
• Making face-to-face meetings count

Intended Audience:

• Leaders who sponsor global or distributed teams
• Managers, project managers and team members who participate in global or distributed teams
• Project managers who plan for communication needs in distributed teams
• Enterprise leaders who want a better understanding of costs and risks associated with distributed teams

Click Here to Register!

Agile Techniques for the Health Care Industry

November 11th, 2008
11:00 am - 12:30 pm Eastern Time

The United States Healthcare Industry is probably the least "computerized" of all major industries in this country - behind the taxicab industry, small and large manufacturing plants, and even the waste disposal industry. This failure to adopt appropriate "automation" is considered by some experts to be the primary reason why health care costs have been rising well above the rate of inflation and the quality of care is not improving. So the requirement now exists to change this situation, not from the federal government but from pure economic forces.

But we cannot just rush into hospitals with our heavy weight development processes, expensive developers, complex project plans, and high probability of project development failures. We need to have "evidence based software development projects" which work the vast majority of the time and if a project fails, we must make changes before starting a new project.

Similarly we can't expect to spend a few hours interviewing hospital staff in a conference room, write a lengthy "requirements document" and proceed to implement what we (as IT contractors or internal IT staff) have "imagined". It has to be a tight loop of continuous user involvement to understand the relevant business areas of the hospital, how automation can help, and precisely what can be built in short development cycles that will provide documented business value.

Said differently, the healthcare industry demands Agile development methods. This webinar with Dr. Tom Love will describe some successes and challenges that were faced helping the Department of Veteran Affairs (VA) enhance and reengineer their electronic medical records system, called VistA. It will also describe how a precursor of Agile methods was developed at VA in the 1980's and was responsible for the success of Vista.

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Leveraging Measurement in your CMMI, Process Improvement, and Compliance Initiatives

November 12th, 2008
9:00 am - 10:30 am Eastern Time

IT executives face many challenges today and need quantitative indicators of their organization's performance so they can demonstrate compliance, show improvements over time, and make decisions about how to invest and what initiatives to fund. Performance indicators can also help management anticipate and reduce the impact of risks in application development and delivery. This session explains how measurement can play a powerful role at both the IT project/application and at the organizational level and outlines a roadmap for establishing a solid measurement program, based on the concepts of a book called Practical Software Measurement, which has been used as a basis for both the Capability Maturity Model Integrated (CMMI) and ISO standards.

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10 Fallacies About Software Project Metrics

November 13th, 2008
11:00 am - 12:30 pm Eastern Time

You have limited resources for testing your next software release. Since you cannot test all the components thoroughly it makes sense to concentrate your efforts where you know there have been problems during development. That sounds reasonable and it is consistent with what software engineering gurus preach. But actually, it is a fallacy. This webinar with Dr. Norman Fenton will highlight a number of common fallacies in using software project metrics. These fallacies arise because traditional metrics approaches have ignored causal factors in the software development process. This webinar will show how causal models avoid these problems and can provide software managers with the quantitative information they need for risk assessment and decision-making.

Learning Objectives:

• Fallacies of software metrics
• What are causal models (Bayesian nets)
• Why causal models provide a more complete solution for software risk assessment
• How causal models help with software defect prediction
• How causal models provide risk management by modeling trade-offs between, resources, time, quality and functionality

Click Here to Register!

How to Get More Out of Your PMP

November 18th, 2008
11:00 am - 12:30 pm Eastern Time

In this webinar with Jack Ferraro, you will explore three critical leadership competencies that project managers must be keenly aware of to move beyond the PMPR to true Project Management Professionalism. With your PMPR certification as a solid foundation, you will learn how to overcome predictable project leadership roadblocks through these leadership competencies:

• Building Trusted Relationships
• Advising on Projects
• Developing Courage

You'll leave this talk with a road map to start fresh with the right balance of leadership competencies. You will leave with a renewed passion for your project management profession. Attend this webinar to discover whether or not you have the courage to make the leap from the PMPR to Project Management Professionalism!

Learning Objectives:

• Identify the basic components of building trust-based relationships on projects, the benefits of such relationships and the practical applications of building long-lasting trust-based relationships.
• Use practical applications to advise team members, customers and sponsors in order to achieve buy-in, commitment to act, and generate positive energy.
• Overcome obstacles, and develop the courage needed to manage change in your professions and measure leadership competencies that really matter in your career

Intended Audience:

• Software project managers
• Software developers
• Anyone who uses a software services group that talks in LOC-speak
• Anyone who uses lines of code as a basis for estimation
• Anyone who uses lines of code to measure progress for project status

Click Here to Register!

Root Causes of Project Slippage

November 19th, 2008
9:00 am - 10:30 am Eastern Time

Schedule slippage is an unfortunate reality during many complex software development projects. And while one instance of slippage may be tolerated, repeated surprises are an entirely different matter. In this presentation by Dr. Brad Clark of Software Metrics, Brad will discuss an approach to finding the root-causes of schedule slippage. He will describe a cause and effect model that can be applied to any software development project to stabilize progress and prevent surprises.

Learning Objectives:

• Discuss the common methods used to track project progress
• Discuss what you can do when progress starts slipping
• Describe an approach to finding the root causes of slippage
• Discuss setting up a monitoring program to prevent future occurrences of slippage

Intended Audience:

• Executive and senior managers
• IT Program Managers
• Software project managers
• Technical staff 

Click Here to Register!

Cost and Business Impacts of Service Oriented Architecture

November 25th, 2008
11:00 am - 12:30 pm Eastern Time

A Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) takes advantage of networking capabilities to integrate applications in a way that is independent of architecture, programming language, development platform and vendor. Through a set of standard interfaces, services are made available to any consumer willing to follow the rules for interface and consumption. This webinar with Arlene Minkiewicz describes what a SOA is and how it can be used to improve business practices within and beyond organizational boundaries. It presents a discussion of cost issues and business challenges that must be understood and accounted for before a business ventures down the SOA path.

Learning Objectives:

• Discover what a Service Oriented Architecture is
• Learn the building blocks for a Service Oriented Architecture
• Understand the technical and cost impacts on IT as they transition from building software solutions to creating architectures that use existing solutions
• The importance of business agility as an organization adopts this new technology
• The roadblocks and pitfalls that can be avoided with the right information

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Ensuring Project Success through Automated Project Governance

December 1, 2008
11:00 am - 12:30 pm Eastern Time

According to the Standish Group, more than half of all IT projects come in over budget, over schedule, or fail outright. Why is IT continually plagued by such dismal success rates? In this webinar, Chuck Keeler proposes a solution to this problem. He will discuss an innovative new approach for automating and institutionalizing project governance best practices at both the executive and operational level.

Click Here to Register!

Output Based Contract Management

December 2nd, 2008
10:00 am - 11:30 am Eastern Time

Globalisation continues apace, and organisations have ever-more choice regarding where they source their information systems and services. The rationale for outsourcing is, of course, that it is better to off-load activities that are not essential core competencies to external suppliers. This enables the customer organisation to leverage and benefit from the professionalism and performance of the supplier organisation, for whom the outsourced activities are core competencies. However, even amongst dedicated IS/IT suppliers, the performance achieved by relatively similar software development projects ranges over more than two orders of magnitude. Clearly, if you want to ensure value for money, the old adage of 'caveat emptor' continues to apply in this technological age.

In this webinar with Grant Rule, you will learn how Output-Based Contract Management methods can greatly simplify the task of managing, and pricing, the development, enhancement and support of software functionality for both customers and suppliers.

Learning Objectives:

• Identification of some pitfalls that customer organisations can fall into when negotiating an outsourcing contract or bespoke development with a supplier more experienced than themselves
• How Output-Based Contract Management methods can simplify and speed-up negotiations
• The role played by an independent, objective 3rd party Scope Manager
• How to ensure your organisation obtains value for money from your software suppliers

Intended Audience:

• CXO-level executives, especially those considering sourcing software development from external suppliers
• CIOs
• Members of an organisation's Retained IT Organisation
• Programme & Project Managers whose projects use external sub-suppliers

Click Here to Register!

The Professional Certified Scope Manager (CSM) - a New IT Job Role

December 3rd, 2008
11:00 am - 12:30 pm Eastern Time

Scope management is an emerging concept whereby a "scope manager" works with software acquirers and software suppliers to alleviate the scope management related ills that plague the majority of software development projects as highlighted by such studies as the Standish Group CHAOS report and others. Scope management creates a level playing field for both customer and suppliers and facilitates an equitable contracting and payment arrangement that is flexible enough to allow for customer driven scope changes at the same time as providing payment for work completed by the software supplier, by introducing unit pricing for software delivery.

In this webinar, join 4SUM Partner, Director and Quality Plus Technologies President Carol Dekkers and find out what is involved in the formalized northernSCOPE concept and how software development programs and projects throughout the world are gaining remarkable benefits based on its processes and best practices

Click Here to Register!

The Software Baby Boomer Risk

December 4th, 2008
11:00 am - 12:30 pm Eastern Time

The computer industry developed and radically expanded just as the "baby boomers" were entering the workforce in the late 1960's and 1970's. As a result, many of the legacy systems that enterprises critically depend upon were built by "Boomers" using technology and processes that were current or even leading edge at that time. Consequently, 1970's legacy systems are most likely to have been written without the benefit of the ideas which: radically reduce the complexity of the code itself; e.g., structured programming; make testing of the code more complete and efficient; insure that the code is properly documented internally and externally; cause the code to be inspected by peers; carefully control the changes made to the code (configuration management) and the process by which builds are made.

How many enterprise systems are critically dependent upon these Boomers to maintain and enhance those systems? If the Boomers are no longer available, can the systems continue to function at an acceptable level.

If your organization is critically dependent upon the Boomers, what can you do to ameliorate or even eliminate this risk? What will that cost and how long with that take? Would it make more sense to reengineer the legacy system or replace it with a COTS solution instead of making a sizeable investment in cleaning up, documented and stabilizing 10 million lines of code written in a 1960's programming language which is now defunct. Have you planned on spending $55 million for this reengineering effort in the next three years?

The purpose of this Webinar with Dr. Tom Love is to understand the Boomer risk, to explore the questions that need to be answered, and to consider the alternatives and their associated costs and risks.

Click Here to Register!

A Practical Guide to Project Planning

December 9th, 2008
11:00 am - 12:30 pm Eastern Time

Project management skills are key for meeting performance, cost and schedule requirements on projects. Nevertheless, many new models are failing due to an excess of details and a framework that is too strict. In this webinar, Ricardo Vargas, CEO of Macrosolutions and author of 9 books, including "Practical Guide to Project Plan," will present a practical method for improving your project planning skills using the framework proposed by the Project Management institute's PMBOK Standards.

Learning Objectives:

• Templates: How and why to use them
• The roadmap for staying simple and focused
• How to setup a project plan
• Best tools are a key factor for best results
• What works and what doesn't

Intended Audience:

• Project Managers
• Team Leaders
• Resource Managers
• CIOs

Click Here to Register!

Application Knowledge Capture: A Method for Preventing the Loss of Critical IT Knowledge

December 10th, 2008
11:00 am - 12:30 pm Eastern Time

If IT professionals do not do something quickly, critical application support knowledge will go the way of the Dodo Bird - EXTINCT!

The baby boomers are retiring at an ever increasing rate, critical IT application knowledge is moving off-shore at an ever increasing rate, and the work force is more mobile now than it has ever been.

The IT industry is experiencing an unprecedented "Brain Drain" particularly within the application support environment.

Who is going to be left behind to mind the store? Where will all the application support knowledge go that has been accumulated over many years?

This webinar by Nick Spanos, Senior Consultant at CAI, will outline a methodology for capturing such knowledge before it is too late.

Learning Objectives:

• What is the business risk of application knowledge loss
• What is Application Knowledge
• What is the process for capturing critical application knowledge
• What are the major components of a knowledge capture process
• What does application knowledge look like

Intended Audience:

• IT Executives
• Application Support Managers
• Application Support Technical Personnel

Click Here to Register!

Agile Requirements: Not an Oxymoron

December 11th, 2008
11:00 am - 12:30 pm Eastern Time

Traditional approaches of requirements seem to contradict how agile teams might approach requirements. Misconceptions abound about how agile projects develop requirements and whether they even do analysis. In practice, agile projects use requirements as the basis for planning, development and delivering business value. In this Webinar, requirements expert and agile coach Ellen Gottesdiener will describe how agile and requirements combine to form a sound and sensible union.

Learning Objectives:

• Understand  the agile method of developing requirements
• Describe agile adaptations to 'traditional' requirements practices
• Define the value of requirements analysis on agile projects
• Enumerate the ways requirements form the basis for planning on agile projects 

Intended Audience:

• Project managers, business managers, scrum masters
• Subject matter experts, product owners, and agile coaches
• Business and data analysts, business architects, developers, application architects
• Anyone on an agile project who is involved in defining and deciding what to build or translating those needs into working software 

Click Here to Register!

WEBINAR SERIES: USING ITIL TO IMPROVE APPLICATION SUPPORT BY 20 - 30% (Part #1 - Improving Application Support with ITIL Service Management)

2009 Program

SOA in Practice

February 5th, 2009
11:00 am - 12:30 pm Eastern Time

SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) is moving from hype to mainstream. In this webinar, Nicolai Josuttis will present some of the most important steps and traps involved in bringing SOA into production. This webinar is based on Nicolai's broad understanding of large and distributed systems is interlaced with important insights based on his own professional experience.

Learning Objectives:

• Understand real benefits and drawbacks of SOA
• Learn about real-world experiences of SOA and their consequences for the concepts and business cases
• Learn where, when, and how to establish SOA in practice.

Intended Audience:

• IT Executives
• System architects, designers, and developers
• SOA stakeholders.

Click Here to Register!

Using Twitter in the Enterprise

February 10, 2009
11:00 am - 12:30 pm Eastern Time

Virtually everyone is familiar with the concepts of wikis, blogs, and social networks. But the latest Web 2.0 concept is lightweight, single-purpose "micro-blog" tools, of which the best example is Twitter. Though it had only a modest 1.6 million registered users as of May 2008, it has been growing rapidly, and has been adopted by organizations as varied as IBM, Oracle, Zappos, and the San Diego Fire Department.

But the most common reaction from IT organizations is still, "What is Twitter? Why would anyone use it? What possible value could it have for our enterprise?" This webinar with Ed Yourdon will address questions like these, and illustrates the answers with case studies and real-world examples.

Learning Objectives:

• What is Twitter? Why should I care?
• How are real-world companies using Twitter?
• What benefits does Twitter provide?
• What risks and obstacles are associated with Twitter?
• What mashups, API's, and add-ons are people adding to Twitter? (Tweetfone, Tweetwheel, Tweetcloud, Twitjects).

Intended Audience:

• Web 2.0 specialists
• Software project managers
• Collaboration/communication specialists
• Marketing, PR, and communication specialists

Click Here to Register!

Ensuring Project Success through Automated Project Governance

February 11, 2009
11:00 am - 12:30 pm Eastern Time

According to the Standish Group, more than half of all IT projects come in over budget, over schedule, or fail outright. Why is IT continually plagued by such dismal success rates? In this webinar, Chuck Keeler proposes a solution to this problem. He will discuss an innovative new approach for automating and institutionalizing project governance best practices at both the executive and operational level.

Click Here to Register!

Estimating Projects Before Requirements are Complete

February 12, 2009
11:00 am - 12:30 pm Eastern Time

User requirements are a main source of development problems for software and systems projects - even when the supplier is a high maturity software developer. Contributing to the problem is that customer organizations increasingly want solid estimates even before requirements, and use convincing arguments such as "next year's budget" to justify such demands. What's a software engineer or cost estimator to do? This webinar with Carol Dekkers outlines solid approaches to alleviate these issues and provide the software practitioner with sources of shortcuts to size measurement and requirements management that will ease their burdens at the beginning of a project.

Click Here to Register!

Prisoners of the Computer

February 17, 2009
11:00 am - 12:30 pm Eastern Time

Software systems are critical to the support of the organization and the efficient delivery of its goods and/or services. Yet all too often, the implementation of business strategy does not take proper account of the full potential of computer systems. In short, IT is still regarded as a cost center rather than a strategic enabler of growth. In this webinar, Grant Rule looks at ways and means of improving the communication between IT professionals and the business side of the organization.

Click Here to Register!

Measuring IT Program Outcomes

February 18, 2009
11:00 am - 12:30 pm Eastern Time

This webinar with Dr. Brad Clark discusses a different use of measurement: measuring the benefits and outcomes of an IT program. Typically measurement is emphasized during the control and monitor phase of a program. Outcome measures are taken in the post-deployment phase, after the application is fielded. Outcome measures are used to show the benefits obtained from the IT investment and how IT programs align with the company's business strategy. Dr. Clark will discuss a framework for creating outcome measures and use a case study to show measurement selection, resulting benefits and areas for improvement.

Click Here to Register!

3 Leadership Competencies Every Project Manager Needs

February 19, 2009
11:00 am - 12:30 pm Eastern Time

You are a hardworking project management professional, PMP. But how do you determine if it is you or your client that is blocking progress on a project? How can you really achieve project management excellence? How do you measure it? If you can't, are you at risk of becoming irrelevant? This webinar by Jack Ferraro examines these questions as well as current methods for developing the kind of competency that really matters. It presents bold ideas for what practitioners of project management must focus on to raise the performance bar and to avoid the risk of becoming extinct!

Learning Objectives:

• Identify the basic components of building trust-based relationships on projects, the benefits of such relationships and the practical applications of building long-lasting trust-based relationships
• How to use trust-based relationships to become a project advisor, and see why customers and team members want the proper advice
• How to use practical applications to advise team members, customers and sponsors in order to achieve buy-in, commitment to act, and generate positive energy
• How to overcome obstacles, and develop the courage needed to manage change in your professions and measure leadership competencies that really matter in your career

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Emergent Design: The Professional Nature of Professional Software Development

February 24, 2009
11:00 am - 12:30 pm Eastern Time

What is design? When do we do it? Is there a way to test design, to make sure it is right? If not, what do we do when we get it wrong? How much design is too much design? These are all essential questions, especially in a Lean-Agile development environment, where change to requirements is not only accepted, but expected. This webinar with Scott Bain will address these questions by examining the essential nature of software development, and by offering a view of the essential principles, practices, and disciplines a team must know and apply to work efficiently and safely in a changing world.

Learning Objectives:

• Introduction to Design as Risk Mitigation
• The natural flow of software development
• Qualities, Principles, and Practices
• Disciplines: Testing, Refactoring, and Patterns
• Emergent Design (an example)
• Resources for further investigation

Intended Audience:

• Developers
• Testers
• Technical leads
• Those who manage them
• It is assumed that attendees have a basic understanding of object-oriented code syntax and simple UML diagrams.

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Facilitating a Requirements Gathering Session

February 25, 2009
11:00 AM - 12:30 pm Eastern Time

Today's requirements gathering tends to be complex due to multiple stakeholders, conflicting priorities and complex, integrated systems. In this webinar with Hans Jonasson we will explore the role of the facilitator in the requirements gathering sessions. What does it take to be a good facilitator? How do you train for it. We will also look at tips and techniques for the facilitator.

Learning Objectives:

• What is the role of a facilitator
• What skills does a facilitator need
• Best practices for facilitation
• Tips and techniques on how to become a better facilitator

Intended Audience:

• Anyone interested in becoming a better facilitator of planning sessions or requirements gathering sessions.

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A Comparative Analysis of Process Maturity Level and Quality

February 26, 2009
11:00 am - 12:30 pm Eastern Time

This webinar with Louis Poulin addresses anomalies detected in a set of 40 comprehensive appraisals conducted over 10 years in organizations developing products and services relying on Information Technology, and spanning Europe, North America and South America. Even though correlation was observed between process maturity level and quality of resulting products and services, it was not true for all cases. Good quality products and services sometimes originated from organizations characterized by a low maturity level associated with the relatively low number of IT best practices that had been implemented. In other cases, organizations characterized by a higher maturity level generated disappointing results. Data was compiled and subsequently analyzed to better understand the factors at stake and shows that an IT organization should first identify the right processes to improve. Improving some processes will increase the organization's process maturity level, but their contribution to improving an organization's performance will be minimal.

Learning Objectives:

• Understand the rationale for undertaking a process improvement initiative
• Understand that process maturity alone is not a guarantee of success
• Recognize that CMMI practices are not all equal, given the context in which an organization operates
• Gain insight into how process maturity is related to successful IT projects
• Appreciate the benefits of process improvement initiated to reduce risk defined as undesirable events liable to happen and desirable ones liable not to happen

Intended Audience:

• Senior managers providing direction to process improvement initiatives
• Managers and practitioners involved in process improvement initiatives
• IT auditors and appraisers who evaluate IT processes

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The Marriage Between IT and the Business - Making it Work

March 3, 2009
11:00 am - 12:30 pm Eastern Time

Building a good working relationship between IT and the business is like building a good marriag