Last Year’s Keynotes
Even as the world at large becomes more fluid, software teams continue to struggle with overly rigid practices that are not well-suited to software. One core flaw in these practices is how they deal with uncertainty. Software projects are beset by uncertainty in requirements, technology, technical designs, staff capabilities, business conditions, and numerous other factors. In this talk, the award-winning author of Code Complete presents models for understanding how uncertainty affects software projects and dives into means of addressing uncertainty effectively.
The so-called Spotify model of Agile scaling has become well known, with its emphasis on autonomous squads, tribes, chapters, and guilds. The initial model described in a white paper in 2012 supported Spotify in scaling to 30+ teams at four sites on two continents. But a lot has happened since then, and as Spotify has grown to close to 200 teams the model has grown with it. This session will explore key attributes of the evolved Spotify model including “aligned autonomy” and “the Spotify Rhythm” (a framework for strategy deployment to align the many autonomous squads). For purposes of this presentation we will put aside the “bubblegum and unicorns” of the Spotify Engineering Culture and talk openly about what doesn’t quite work at Spotify and the steps Spotify is taking to evolve.
Software development lends itself to remote work, and distributed teams are becoming commonplace. Being able to hire developers from anywhere is a competitive advantage … if you can make it work. Failing to manage a distributed team is a strategic risk. The core principle to making it work is trust. Technologies such as video chat and group messaging help, but if there isn’t trust, there won’t be results. In this talk David Copeland briefly describes the benefits of distributed teams and why trust is critical to their success. He then presents several actionable steps you can take to effectively build and manage a team of distributed programmers.
Mars has long been of interest to people on Earth, having been identified by the Egyptians as a wanderer, or planet, more than 3,500 years ago. Mariner 9 in 1971 was the first mission to Mars. Viking 1 and Viking 2 were the first to land on Mars in 1976. The focus of the presentation will be Mars exploration and the rockets that got the spacecraft and landers there, from Viking to Mars Science Laboratory, InSight, and Mars 2020. This talk describes the engineering and mission-planning challenges that must be overcome for successful space exploration.
How can we apply technology to drive business value? For years, we’ve been told that the performance of software delivery teams doesn’t matter―that it can’t provide a competitive advantage to our companies. Through four years of groundbreaking data collection research, Jez Humble and his colleagues found a way to measure software delivery performance―and what drives it―using rigorous statistical methods. This talk presents the findings of that research, including how to measure the performance of software teams, what capabilities organizations should invest in to drive higher performance, and how software leaders can apply these findings in their own organizations.
Why attend the Summit?
At past Summits, 95% of participants have held titles of VP, Director, CTO, or higher.
All participants should have multi-project responsibility for software development at the organization or enterprise level. In most organizations, leaders at this level will have staffs of 50-100 or more. (In smaller organizations the total staff can be slightly smaller).
Attendees will be assigned to discussion groups based on profiles submitted prior to the Summit. Construx reserves the right to limit participation to attendees who meet this description.
“Most valuable? All of it. Peers, speakers, topics, very good. Money well spent.”
“As always the summit was awesome. It is by far the most educational and rejuvenating professional event of the year for me. The discussions with peers are invaluable.”
“As always, the best conference I know of!”
“I established a great network of peers — I gained many valuable insights.”