When: 5 August 2010, 6PM

Venue: Bandwidth Barn

Cost: Free

Sign up for this exciting event here.

Topic: Requirements Management: Beyond tools, frameworks and methodologies.

The presentation will focus on basic fundamental skills that all individuals who manage requirements can easily implement and internalize in order to improve the delivery of the correct requirements, creating maximum business benefit.

About the Speaker

Mohamed is a versatile analyst who can span the analytical spectrum from Business to Systems and Test. Mohamed has been part of large-scale enterprise wide projects and has the ability to move through the project SDLC. He has a solid footing in systems analysis and has a good understanding of object orientated and UML software analysis and design.

Mohamed is an evangelist and co-ordinator for BB&D’s Business Technology Unit (BTU) which is responsible for researching and adopting best practices in Analysis (Business & Systems), Project Management, Consulting and other core non-technical areas of BB&D’s business offering. BTU provides a professional platform for analysts to come together and share knowledge in order to grow the analytical competencies within the organisation.

Mohamed plays an active role in the IT industry by being part of the International Institute of Business Analysis South African Chapter (IIBA-SA). The IIBA is the largest professional body for analysts world-wide. He is the current Chairman of the Western Cape region. His responsibility is to deliver knowledge sharing and networking events in order to promote and enhance the Business Analysis profession.

Slides are now available here

When: 3 June 2010, 6PM

Venue: Allan Gray Portswood office in the Presentation Room on the third floor. You can download a map here. Everyone parking in the Portswood parking area will have to pay for their own parking tickets. There is also parking available in Beach road.

Cost: Free

Sign up for this exciting event here.

Topic: Turning Technical Debt into a Reasonable Cost for Software

Most people like the predictable nature of time-boxed delivery of software. However, a situation that I see far too often is that the box starts feeling tighter as the software grows bigger. Sure, you can get a bigger box, but that feels like going up a trouser size. Often the decision is to “chunk up” the software and roll out more teams. Great, but the volume has not changed; it’s just spread out. It’s now costing more than before. It’s actually worse. Each chunk is simultaneously growing inside it’s own box. Better get a few more trousers that are one size up.

Yes, some people call it technical debt. I just call it broken software, and broken things left alone cause more problems. The simple truth is that overweight software costs money. In this session, we explore what it means to establish a reasonable cost of software, and what it takes to keep it at a reasonable level. Note that the names of classes, variables and namespaces have been altered to avoid association with those that are lying in various version control repositories many, many commits ago.

About the Speaker

Aslam Khan has spent more than half his life creating software. He still believes the truth is in the code that gets executed, but that belief is soberly balanced by his other core perspective that people write code for others. As a software master at factor10, Aslam spends his time helping teams build software better, while having fun doing it, and making worthwhile friendships. He is also an editor for the architecture community at DZone.com. You can read his blog at http://aslamkhan.net.