Organisers:
In collaboration with:
Agile Business Conference 2008
September 23rd - 24th
Keynote Speaker: Peter Morowski
Peter Morowski is the senior vice president of research and development at Borland Software Corporation where he is responsible for evolving Borland’s products and technology investments into highly-innovative, next generation Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) solutions that address the company’s vision for transforming software delivery into a managed business process.
When Peter joined Borland Software 18 months ago, his organization had 325 engineers, working on a broad portfolio of development projects from 13 different locations around the world. Borland made the executive decision to transition the organization to agile as part of an effort to reduce development costs, boost efficiency and quality, and introduce more operational oversight. Peter has led the charge. Today, Borland is in “the thick” of its transformation – close to 40% of its teams are agile.
A software industry veteran, Peter has led development organizations at several top companies. Most recently, he served as vice president of software at Dell Inc. where he was responsible for creating Dell’s first enterprise software organization, setting product strategy, developing organizational structure and establishing all internal software practices for the company. Before Dell, he served as vice president and chief technology officer at IBM/Tivoli Systems Inc., vice president and director of development at Novell, Inc., and at Saber Software, Inc. Peter holds a B.S. in Engineering from Illinois Institute of Technology.
Keynote Session: Driving Agile Transformations from the Top Down
While agile practices are starting to make their way into large enterprises, in most instances this has been a “bottom up” up movement driven through grassroots efforts. But as agile success stories draw mainstream attention to the benefits of agile practices, an increasing number of executives are considering making an organization-wide agile transition. If this describes you, or your organization, you may find yourself entering largely uncharted territory.
- What does an agile transition look like when it comes as a mandate from the top?
- How do the “rules” of agile apply to a large, established development organization?
- How do you scale agile principles from a single team to an enterprise with multiple teams working on multiple projects?
Many of the books, resources, and case studies available on agile have been written for “pure” agile implementations and are focused on how to empower self-directing teams. They provide very little perspective or guidance on how to manage a portfolio – a software development business – in an agile manner.
This talk will give you perspective on how to manage a transformation as a business initiative; to apply agile principles to a complex organization. It will give you:
- An understanding of the role of management in creating an agile environment
- Insights into how to transition traditional development team roles – managers, chief programmers, product managers – to the agile model
- Suggestions on how to adapt agile practices to a multi-team, multi-project enterprise development organization – some guidance on what rules are immutable and where flexibility is crucial
- Guidance on how to manage a gradual shift to agile, and perhaps bridge “two worlds” indefinitely
- Real-world examples of how the benefits outweigh the investments in an enterprise agile transition
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