Thursday, December 6, 2012

Methodologies, Standards, Maturity Models, and Project Success


'Methodologies, Standards, Maturity Models, and Project Success' is the topic of my session at International Conference on Software Engineering and Mobile Application Modelling and Development (ICSEMA 2012),  19-20 Dec 2012, Chennai, India.

Several software development methodologies, standards, maturity models, etc., have emerged in our industry over the past decades. The plethora of such entities has created several opportunities as well as challenges. Gone are those days when monolithic IT systems were developed and maintained by exclusive communities of IT professionals confined to technology-savvy regions of the world. The challenges of software engineering during the 21st century are quite different and multifold because of factors such as globalization and technology evolution. Global software engineering (GSE), which involves virtually distributed teams working across time zones, is a growing area of practice and research. While GSE enables our industry to leverage the skills and competencies of software professionals across the globe, it poses several challenges with regard to time differences, communication, coordination, and cultural issues.

Meanwhile, the evolution of IT in terms of programming languages, databases, tools, platforms, devices and methodologies demands that IT professionals cope with emerging technology areas and paradigms while also holding down their day jobs. Development during the past decade have presented such new platforms and paradigms as virtualization, service orientation, cloud computing, and agile software development. With the popularity of GSE and evolutionary methodologies, it has become imperative for IT professionals to stay up to date with a very high level of team spirit and a collaborative attitude in order to deliver desired results time and again.

In this complex context how can we deliver successful projects? The objective of this session is to explore the meaning and relationship among these entities, and understand how they contribute to project success.

Let me ask you this.  How do you deliver successful projects? Any thoughts?