A critical and challenging aspect of any development project is the way in which requirements are gathered, captured, and used during product development. Do this part right, and the project has a much better chance at succeeding. Fail to set up the development project correctly, and you could end up struggling for the entire project, missing schedule and budget. The classic Gannt chart-style of project management just might be orthogonal to managing the development of features in an application. In mid-1990s, I still clung to my use of Gantt charts – from an engineering perspective – to attempt to run software projects. As it turns out, it did not make as much sense to drive every activity that the team was doing to build features into the project plan. In most projects, progress is measured through completing a task (is the wall painted yet?). In software, progress is measured through a more complex concept of completing a “feature” for the client to be able to use. Come and learn about a solution that combines traditional project management for classic tasks and for “outer loop” management with development cycles.

SPEAKER: Jon Kern, Compuware

Jon Kern is an author of the seminal work: The Agile Manifesto for Software Development. He has over 20 years of experience, from doing Defense-related R&D (including real-time flight simulation and research in fighter agility -- the genesis of the "agile" in Agile Development), to architecting IBM's Manufacturing Execution System product, to leading TogetherSoft's development and QA teams (in St. Petersburg, Russia). He now serves Compuware to evangelize agile development with pragmatic, model-driven architecture. Check out his blog: http://www.compuware.com/blogs/jkern/ and newsletter: http://frontline.compuware.com/javacentral/straight-talk/default.asp

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