The CMMI Institute and the SEPG program committee are working quickly to be able to announce information on speakers, registration, and more.

Moving forward, please visit www.sepgconference.org for all information related to SEPG conferences. 

The new organization will serve as the host for SEPG Conference Series and will begin assuming management and operation of SEPG North America 2013. To allow for a thorough transition, the new host has postponed plans for a March 4-7, 2013 conference in Orlando, Florida, and aims to hold the conference in the fall of 2013, possibly co-located or combined with the annual CMMI Workshop. You can help shape the evolution of the SEPG Conference Series by sharing your vision for the future of SEPG at www.sepgconference.org.

The SEI has been honored to host the SEPG Conference Series since its inception and looks forward to being a contributor to the state of the practice of process improvement in the future. In accordance with its vision of leading the world to a software-enriched society, the SEI will continue to offer the software and systems engineering communities a range of other conferences including CERT FloCon, the SEI Architecture Technology User Network (SATURN) Conference, and the TSP Symposium. The SEI will continue to expand its SEI Webinar Series, podcasts, and series of focused workshops.

If you have questions or comments about the SEPG Conference Series, you may contact the new conference host by visiting www.sepgconference.org.

The call for participation is now open and SEPG North America 2013 presenters and abstract reviewers have a unique opportunity to inspire the next generation of process solutions. The Program Committee is seeking presentations that share ways we can integrate, innovate and motivate, inspiring the community to propel process and performance improvement into the next 25 years.

We are also pleased to offer the student poster presentation program, a valuable opportunity for full-time students to make connections, get quality feedback on their work, and explore employment opportunities.

The SEPG North America 2013 website includes more details on dates, deadlines, guidelines, and benefits of being a part of the 25th anniversary conference. Submit an abstract by September 5, 2012 for the opportunity to mark a mark on the industry.

www.sei.cmu.edu/sepg/na/2013

Visit our Flickr photostream to see the week in photos.

Jan Bosch (no relation to Bosch the SEI Europe sponsor, as he pointed out) from Chalmers University of Technology delivered an energetic keynote presentation that offered his solutions to a problem inherent in many organizations. They often face two important needs-to respond in a timely manner to customer needs and to make open innovation an organizational capability.

With that in mind, Bosch previewed three main points:

• Increasing speed trumps any other improvement R&D can provide to the company, the goal being continuous deployment of new functionality
• Software engineering is at an inflection point-from “integration-oriented” to “composition-oriented” software engineering
• Software ecosystems offer the next phase of growth for successful product platforms

Bosch underscored those takeaways by sharing some current trends in software. Using both real-world results and guiding principles, Bosch illustrated some important implications for software engineering, including the role of software architecture, the organizations of teams, and the activities needed to evolve a software ecosystem.

After stating his case for the importance of speed over efficiency, Bosch focused on the ability of open innovation to drive growth by innovating with partners and sharing in the risk and the reward. He discussed some ways that Intuit fostered open innovation in directed and integrated contexts.

He wrapped up the presentation by saying, “If you take one idea way from this presentation, it should be this: focus on speed. If you do that, you will get efficiency as an outcome.”

He also left the audience with several other implications and his shadow beliefs. Among them is the notion that data always trumps opinion and that getting first to market with new functionality that closely aligns to customer needs is a significant competitive advantage that drives growth and results in market leadership

Mario Piattini, director, Information Systems and Technologies Institute, UCLM-Indra Joint Software Research and Development Center, delivered the day’s first keynote presentation.

“Software developers are charged with decreasing costs and improving delivery, productivity, quality, satisfaction, and ROI,” said Piattini. “And to do that, they must have passion for good processes.” Piattini shared expert insights on the need for organizations to tailor software process models to fit the characteristics and needs of the organization and its customers. He used some words of wisdom from Watts Humphrey to make this case: Just as there are no two identical software projects, there are no two identical software processes in the world.

Using real-world examples related to global software development and software product assessment, Piattini illustrated that by combining product line approaches and mechanisms for process tailoring, organizations can better address the multiple contexts of use required to address today’s varied business landscape. He also talked about tool support for implementations.

He concluded by saying that it is very important to have a passion for process. But, as in life (and football), passion is not enough. To establish a sound commitment to software, we need to manage processes by playing the same game, just different variations of it. In doing so, we can offer a real global delivery model for process improvement.

Patrick Kirwan announced the winners for the best paper submission as decided by the IEEE Software article review committee. Radouane Oudrhiri and Fabrizio Pellizzetti of Systonomy LTD in the UK received the award for their paper “SPC, Six Sigma, and CMMI: Integration and Deployment Challenges.”

Congratulations!

Following the Exhibits Opening Reception, delegates boarded a bus and traveled to the Patio de Cristales at the Casa de la Villa. The Casa de la Villa originally served as both a prison and Town Hall, and the building still has two entrances that point to this dual function.

Ignacio Fernandez, chief executive officer of the Madrid Visitors and Convention Bureau, welcomed the group to Spain’s capital city. Fernandez expressed his desire for all SEPG Europe 2012 delegates to feel at home in Madrid and his gratitude for choosing Madrid as the host city.

Paul Nielsen addressed the crowd and shared what a diverse group of delegates we have–all continents are represented with the exception of Antarctica. “We are a true global community,” Nielsen said, “and we have felt very at home in Madrid.” He shared his thanks to the city of Madrid for hosting the reception and making everyone feel very warmly welcomed.

While many people think of cars when they hear Rolls-Royce, keynote speaker Andrew Nolan shared that many of the company’s 13,500 software engineers work to provide integrated power systems for aerospace and marine applications. There was not a car in sight in his six-minute opening video.

Nolan spoke about the common battle between project managers whose primary focus is on early delivery and engineers who focus on maturity. “Delivery is the main point that determines the cost to achieve full product maturity,” Nolan said. “The pressure to deliver prematurely reduces maturity and increases cost.”

He proposed that many major problems that occur in the life of a project manifest themselves as technical issues, but the root cause is poor risk management. Chaos and instability will drive cost and undermine product maturity, so good management is essential to success.

Nolan left the audience with these parting words of advice: the largest and often easiest improvements will come from improved management and leadership. First bring stability, then bring performance.

Angel Jordan and Anita Carleton took the stage to deliver a retrospective of the past 30 years and a look ahead at process improvement.

30 Years of Process Improvement and Counting: A Retrospective

Jordan opened the presentation noting that before the SEI, there were very few software engineering practices that produced consistent results. Jordan revisited the origins of the SEI, beginning in 1985 when its strategic plan–supported by the U.S. Department of Defense–was recognized as a fundamental activity. The SEI has a long history of developing solutions to meet the needs of teams and organizations, and Jordan covered the inception, development, and evolution of a number of SEI work products. For example, the Software Capability Maturity Model was born out of a need for more precise definitions of the methods and models, the Software Capability Evaluation was the result of a need for Acquisition Officers to assess the maturity of their contractors, and the CERT Resilience Management Model came about when the SEI recognized that the best practices of some organizational challenges could best be managed with a capability maturity model.

Before he turned the microphone over to Carleton, Jordan spoke about the far-reaching, global adoption of CMMI: it has seen implementations in 74 countries on six continents. In conclusion, Jordan commented, “We can make the broad claim that the SEI has made seminal contributions to managing not only software and its development, but also related services, including resilient systems.”

The Future: How Good Are We at Predicting It?  

Spam will be a thing of the past … computers of the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons … there is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home … Carleton used these past predictions to illustrate how difficult it can be to determine what’s next in the industry. However, Carleton noted, we do get some things right. There were several threats to the future of software and systems development that were correctly identified in 1984. We predicted it–so why can’t we fix it? Carleton quoted the late Watts Humphrey who offered an eloquent perspective: “While technology can change quickly, getting your people to change takes a great deal longer. That is why the people-intensive job of developing software has had essentially the same problems for 40 years.” 

Carleton shared that the SEI’s vision and strategy for the future of process improvement includes efforts to innovate software for competitive advantage, advance quantitative methods for engineering software, and secure the cyber infrastructure. “Looking ahead, the SEI will continue to look at how architecture, measurement, and cyber security can work together in an integrated, interconnected way,” Carleton concluded.

Paul Nielsen opened the SEI’s portion of the program by noting that CMMI has become the de facto standard for process improvement best practices. Although CMMI has set the gold standard, Nielsen noted, the model continues to evolve to meet the needs of practitioners from around the world.

“This timely translation makes CMMI more accessible to Spain and countries in Latin America, and it deepens the understanding of the principles CMMI embodies,” Nielsen said. “The model will continue to expand its influence throughout the world.”

Nielsen also acknowledged the vital support of all organizations that contributed to the success of CMMI and made the translation possible. “The SEI is proud to have played a key role in the development of CMMI,” Nielsen remarked. “But the SEI is only a steward of this information; the global software community contributes greatly to its success.”

Anita Carleton added that it is because of the strength and commitment of the worldwide community of practice that CMMI has become the global model for process improvement. She expressed her pride in the Spanish translation which will join the Chinese, Dutch, French, German, Japanese, and Portuguese versions. Carleton noted that Arabic and Korean translations are soon to come.

Rusty Young, manager of CMMI, commented that Spain and Latin America are growing areas of adoption and he recognized the large amount of work that went into the translation effort.

Among his various remarks, Angel Jordan issued a challenge to the 100-plus members of the audience. With the CMMI-DEV V1.3 Spanish translation now complete, he encouraged the group to work on the CMMI-SVC and CMMI-ACQ translations efforts.

If you are not attending in person in Madrid, you can still follow along. All week, the SEPG Europe 2012 staff will be sharing news here on the SEPG Conference Series blog and on the @SEPGConferences Twitter account (conference hash tag: #SEPGEU).  If you are not a Twitter user, you can easily see a summary of the key learnings on the SEPG Europe 2012 homepage.

June 5-7 are in red in my calendar since 1 year ago when we knew in Dublin that SEPG Europe, the annual event in the CMMI and SEI space, would come to Madrid in 2012 for the first time ever. We were glad (although we had campaigned for Málaga). This would mean that Madrid, capital of Spain, one of the most active countries in the CMMI world, would become the host, the center, the showcase, the meeting point for the CMMI network, powered by the SEI.

Madrid is a multicultural, dynamic, passionate city with an active entrepreneurship spirit and full of opportunities where improvement professionals can help to companies with current challenges.

Accenture is sponsor of the event, and will be presenting two interesting topics:

-Next Generation Process Models (Innovations track), with Preetha Bedi on Wed 6 at 14.00

-Increase the Value of Your Project Management While Reducing the Cost with CMMI and Lean Six Sigma (High Maturity track), with Ricardo Panero (ex Accenture) and myself on Tue 5 at 11.50

Hope to meet a lot of CMMI friends and fans and share ideas and experiences!

Buenos días Amigos!  The grand feria SEPG Europe 2012 of June 5-7 is almost upon us!  But before we don the traditional Castizo dress (Rick Hefner, are you listening?) and gorge ourselves on barquillos (rolled wafers), buñuelos (fritters) and rosquillas (donuts), let’s complete our Top 5 Reasons to be there, shall we?

Here we go with Reason #1.

Drum roll please …

Reason #1: SEPG Europe is where you can live your passion.

This year’s host city for SEPG Europe, Madrid, Spain, is a model for living ones passion.  I really encourage you to experience it.

After reading Suyash Kumar Chopra’s beautiful post Spain:  A Traveler’s Oyssey to Discovery, I was inspired.  What colorful images!  I wanted to go NOW!

Although I had lived in Spain in the early 1980s, I have not returned since then. In those days I was an orchestra musician, playing with the symphony in Sevilla.  A lot has changed since then, but after reading Suyash’s post, do you know what did I did? I changed my plans and now I’m leaving TODAY (May 31st), to spend some extra time taking in the sights.  I’m in a taxi right now on my way to the airport (thanks Verizon 4G).  My son, my business partner, and I will be heading from Madrid to Sevilla via Spain’s famous AVE “Bullet Train” where we will spend the weekend in the former home of the patron of novelist Miguel de Cervantes, and then we’ll take the slow train to Granada, then back to Madrid for the conference.  After the festivities are over it’s on to the plains of la Mancha to tilt at windmills and follow in the footsteps of Don Quixote. Whew!

Living one’s passion means different things to different people.  In our world, whether your interest is multi-model, practical process improvement, high maturity, agile and CMMI, or any number of other disciplines, you’ll keep busy with a broad selection of technical sessions, designed to equip you with implementable solutions that can help you make your company better.  But you’ll have some free time, too, and really must do some exploring – I insist!

Here are five memorable experiences awaiting you in Madrid:

Fiestas de San Isidro – Not to distract you too much, but the conference occurs during the month-long holiday honoring the patron saint of Madrid.  With concerts, open-air dances and outdoor celebrations (including bullfights) Fiestas de San Isidro are the liveliest parties in Madrid.

Retiro Park – Parque del Retiro is one of my favorite spots in all of Madrid, and one of the most popular daytime destinations in the city.  The grounds span more than 350 acres of natural beauty.  And there are places to sail, skate, snooze or snack.

Plazas – You’ll find great people-watching at the city squares around Madrid, like the Plaza Mayor, Puerta del Sol and Plaza de Santa Ana.  I love the plazas’ ornate design and artistic layouts.  I find it exhilarating to stroll among their cafes, bars, restaurants and shops.

Architecture – Madrid, like many cities in Spain, is a swirling realm of architectural contradictions. Modern, post-modern and avant-garde buildings stand beside ancient cathedrals.  Did you know, Madrid even has an ancient Egyptian temple?  It’s the Temple of Debod, built in the second century B.C.

What this means is that you can expect to spend three days in Spain with real life, practical and implementable solutions .  After the sessions you’ll do cool things with cool people in cool places.  And you’ll find your passion for process improvement.

What’s not to love?

Click here to register.

OK, I’m ready.  Please pass the buñuelos.

Jeff Dalton is President of Broadsword Solutions Corporation and Chairman of the SEI’s Partner Advisory Board.  He is a SCAMPI Lead Appraiser whose blog can be read at www.asktheCMMIAppraiser.com.  He can be reached at appraiser@broadswordsolutions.com

Buenos días Amigos!!  The matadors are brooding in their cafes.  The crowds are lining the streets and it is almost time for the bulls to start running toward SEPG Europe 2012 on June 5-7.  Yes, the world-renowned CMMI feria is almost here, and that must mean it’s time once again for my Top 5 Reasons to be there.

Come close to the railing.  You won’t want to miss a moment of the action as we get on with our list of Top 5 Reasons to attend SEPG Europe 2012.  And away we go with Reason #2!

Drum roll please …

Reason #2: SEPG Europe is where you can promote what you are passionate about.

What?  Self-promotion?  I can hear the click-click-click as people madly try to x-out of this blog post.  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” they say aloud.

But wait.  I know few things have the power to make an engineer more uncomfortable than self-promotion.  I realize that many of you would rather submit yourself to 100 process mandates, or 50 days without Jolt Cola, than utter a single boastful word.

The good news about SEPG Europe is, you’re among friends here.  We don’t think it’s boastful to share success stories.  Indeed, we are here to find out from each other what’s working.  So if you are doing something with the CMMI that is really helping put your company on the path to greatness, your peers would love to hear about it.

Remember, folks at SEPG Europe are coming from a variety of backgrounds.  Some are Certified Lead Appraisers seeking to get better at guiding their customers.  Some are CMMI program sponsors who are looking for innovative and creative solutions for delivering on-time, high-quality software to their customers back home.  Others are just learning how to spell “CMMI” for the first time.

What we all share is a common interest in process, performance, and organizational improvement.

And here’s a shocker.  Some of the conference attendees are actively looking for a potential SEI Partner.

If you are an SEI Partner, it would probably be a good idea to be at least a little bit visible, would you agree?

One great option is to take advantage of the sponsorship or exhibiting opportunities SEPG Europe offers.

Another option is simply to take the bull by the horns and talk with folks about what you do.  One time at an SEPG conference, when I gave a presentation called “The Agile SCAMPI: Taming the Savage Beast.”  There was a decent crowd (drawn, perhaps, by the free hats and books I was giving away) and I hope they received some good information about making Appraisals simpler and more Agile.

One company in the audience was in the process of tackling a large-scale, multi-site process improvement program.  They needed help with planning, training, and conducting a multi-site SCAMPI Appraisal.  They had already zeroed in on a small set of Partners to choose from but after my presentation they added me to the list.  Just like that!  I ultimately started working with them and it was a win for everyone involved.

You know what I’ve been saying ever since?  Come to SEPG conferences for the technical sessions, but stay for the networking.  You never know when you’re talking with your next big client – or your next Partner.

SEPG Europe 2012 is a great place to promote your passion.  And that’s no bull. Olé!

Click here to register.

Need one more reason to go?  Check back soon for Reason #1!

Jeff Dalton is President of Broadsword Solutions Corporation and Chairman of the SEI’s Partner Advisory Board.  He is a SCAMPI Lead Appraiser whose blog can be read at www.asktheCMMIAppraiser.com.  He can be reached at appraiser@broadswordsolutions.com.