— documentation, reverse engineering, mentoring

Speaker: Steve Bockman, founder, North Bay Agile SIG
Meeting Date: Thursday, October 1, 2009
Time: 6:00 pm Networking; 6:30 pm Management Forum/Guided Networking; 7:00 pm dinner; 7:30 pm Presentation
Location: RAMADA Silicon Valley, Sunnyvale

 
Summary:
Management Forum / Guided Networking: Bring Your Management Challenge; Arrive by 6:30 PM to join this exciting Management Forum. Following informal networking is a guided discussion typically related to the topic of the evening’s after dinner talk, or of general Technology Management interest.
Light Dinner: This month we’re continuing with our light dinner format — typically sandwiches, salad, drinks, and cookie or similar light dinner.

Presentation: The Knowledge Transfer Bottleneck
In project development there are many ways to transfer the knowledge about how to build a product to the people who do the actual building. Production can be severely hampered, however, if that knowledge is being produced more rapidly than it can be consumed. This is the knowledge transfer bottleneck.

In this highly interactive workshop we will explore three different methods for knowledge transfer (documentation, reverse engineering and mentoring) by employing them to construct a fleet of aircraft of unusual design. We’ll compare and contrast the results, draw analogies between manufacturing and software development, and learn how to remove the bottleneck.

Bio:
Steve Bockman is an independent software developer and certified ScrumMaster who began his career in 1977 in a utility position, installing software packages for a manufacturer of business computers. Since then he has worked in the fields of speech recognition, terrain analysis, computer graphics, desktop publishing, industrial automation and web applications.

Steve’s first exposure to anything Agile occurred in 2000, but his involvement began in earnest in 2005 while participating in the development of a client/server application where changing requirements were part of the ground rules. Steve was responsible for introducing many Agile principles and practices to the project, and has been an Agile coach and innovator since that project’s inception.

As the founder of North Bay Agile, a special interest group dedicated to the pursuit and study of Agile software development in the San Francisco North Bay, Steve continually strives to communicate the essence of Agile development to novices and advanced practitioners. He has given presentations on estimation, test-driven development, pair programming and refactoring at North Bay Agile, BayXP, BayAPLN , BAADD and Agile Open California 2008, as well as at the Agile2007 and Agile2008 conferences.