Burton Group Institute – Improving the Development Process

Blogger: Kirk Knoernschild

At this year’s Catalyst conference, I led a workshop on Improving the Software Development Process. The workshop was recorded, and is now available through the Burton Group Institute. I’ve captured some excerpts from the three and a half hour session, which can be viewed in the video below. We covered a broad range of topics in the workshop, just a few of which I highlight below:

• An optimal team structure for software development
• The impact that organizational structure and dynamics have on a software development team.
• Debunking myths and talking about benefits of agile and iterative development. We also talked about the waterfall mistake, and briefly discussed some lean principles such as building quality in, eliminating waste, and delivering fast.
• The SDLC infrastructure, which included a demo illustrating how we can automate various tasks by leveraging this infrastructure.
• Requirements management, the difficulty in stabilizing requirements early, and emergent requirements.
• Continuous integration, tightening the feedback loop, project visibility and transparency, and the value in having a system that always works.

Enjoy the excerpt!