Michael Mah Keynotes Munich Software Conference: “How Agile Development Redefines Software Economics”

PITTSFIELD, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Michael C. Mah, managing partner of QSM Associates, will keynote the OOP 2013 conference in Munich, with new insights on Agile development. Sponsored by SIGS Datacom, the annual conference focuses on Continuous Innovation, how enterprises resolve the pressure caused by the desire for innovation, vs. the quest to deliver software quickly, vs. the need for high quality.

“This may be true, but our early research revealed mixed success. First and foremost, most organizations did not know how to measure. Once they did, some teams found faster schedules, but quality did not improve. Others found both.”

Mah’s presentation, Jan. 24 at noon (Munich time), will disclose QSM Associates’ new U.S. industry analysis, which reveals latest productivity, time-to-market, quality, and cost patterns, and will explore the factors that make a difference. With new analysis of velocity, burndown, and quality data, Mah will deep-dive into the latest productivity, time-to-market, quality, and cost patterns as this community matures.

Mah believes that enterprises may be seeing “a major economic shift in the technology industry.” Supporting that thesis, his presentation will reveal the latest research findings against the QSM SLIM industry database, with more than 10,000 completed projects (waterfall, Agile, offshore, onshore) collected worldwide.

Software guru Kent Beck, inventor of Agile XP, says that Agile success could be defined as more functionality with fewer defects, Mah notes. “This may be true, but our early research revealed mixed success. First and foremost, most organizations did not know how to measure. Once they did, some teams found faster schedules, but quality did not improve. Others found both.”

In his presentation called “Agile Redefines Economics: What Data Reveals from Recent Agile Benchmark Research,” Mah will discuss ideas to accelerate success, including how development managers and CIOs can derive their own patterns to inform their executive teams.

“With the overall conference theme of Continuous Innovation, I'd say our research puts forth exactly this concept. Agile has evolved over the 10 years since I first reported metrics on this,” said Mah. “Because it's always evolving, there's a saying that if you're doing Agile the same as a few months ago, then you're not doing Agile. The idea is you should always be challenging your own status quo. The conference theme of Continuous Innovation certainly embodies that thinking.”

Mah’s keynote address charts a decade of progress and continuous innovation. QSM Associates was the first to report on Agile innovations going back to his keynote at the Better Software conference almost ten years ago.

OOP has been one of the largest and most renowned training events for innovative issues concerning all the aspects of software development in Europe for the past 19 years. SIGS DATACOM has been organizing the OOP conference and trade fair annually at the International Congress Center Munich (ICM) since 1992. International experts hold lectures on current and practically relevant software issues.

About QSM Associates

QSM Associates, Inc. helps organizations measure, plan, estimate and control software projects. It offers the SLIM (Software Lifecycle Management) Suite of tools, so managers can benchmark and forecast Agile, waterfall, in-house, offshore/multi-shore or ERP/package implementation projects. SLIM contains statistics from a worldwide database of more than 10,000 completed projects, enabling productivity benchmarking on the desktop. Using SLIM to dynamically run "virtual project simulations,” companies can model and forecast waterfall and Agile releases to deliver on time, within budget with >90% estimation accuracy. SLIM can also derive ROI achieved by Agile methods and other process improvements. QSM Associates offers consulting, training, and coaching to help accelerate this capability. Information is available at www.QSMA.com or email info@qsma.com.

Michael Mah (Twitter: @MichaelCMah), Managing Partner is also the Benchmark Practice Director at the Cutter Consortium, a Boston-area IT think-tank. Along with Microsoft, Oracle, and Salesforce.com, QSMA is a Rally Software Strategic Partner.

QSM and SLIM are registered trademarks of Quantitative Software Management, which is headquartered in McLean, VA with partner offices and affiliates throughout the U.S., Europe and Asia.