Dr. Subhas C. Misra

Agile software development (ASD) is an emerging approach in software engineering, initially proposed and promoted by a group of seventeen software professionals who practice a set of “lightweight” methods, and share a common set of values of software development. They consolidated their thoughts, and defined these methods as “agile”. The approaches are based on experiences and best practices from the past by the above-mentioned group of seventeen software professionals. ASD practices give importance to development around motivated individuals, give them the freedom and flexibility to make them productive, and “think outside of the box”. The agile philosophy believes in project implementation around motivated individuals. Motivated individuals should be provided the environment, and support needed for them to make them successful. As an emerging approach of this century, agile software development has undergone limited number of empirical studies. In this keynote lecture, I advance the state-of-the-art of the research in this area by conducting survey-based ex-post-facto empirical (quantitative) studies by identifying the success factors from the perspective of software practitioners in agile software development projects. In this keynote lecture, I also suggest a ranked list of changes required and challenges involved in adopting agile software development methodologies by projects practicing plan-driven software development.

Norbert J. Kubilus

Five years ago, Nicholas Carr penned his Harvard Business Review article "IT Doesn't Matter” in which he argued that information technology no longer gives businesses a competitive edge. Carr called IT managers impatient, wasteful, and passive, and he criticized the hype about the so-called strategic value of IT. A year later, he expanded his thesis into a book titled Does IT Matter? Carr’s primary argument is that IT has become a commodity, like electricity, that confers no competitive advantage upon its business users. Among business leaders who have adopted Carr’s hypothesis, the result has been a de-emphasis of the role of IT in their companies. Such is the case in companies where the IT function has moved in the corporate organization to Sales or Marketing … or back to Finance and Accounting. Gartner and IDC studies tend to show that IT does matter. Companies that invest wisely in IT continue to increase revenues much faster than those that invest unwisely, too little, or not at all. A company that invests poorly in IT doesn’t increase revenues as quickly as its competitors. One that invests unwisely soon goes out of business or is acquired. This presentation addresses what technology leaders need to do to help their organizations make these wise IT investments.

Dr. Peter Arzberger

Science and its conduct are being changed fundamentally by cyberinfrastructure. Researchers have (the potential of) unprecedented access to instruments (lab, field), data and information, computational resources, as well as other fellow researchers and the public, without regard to distance and location. Our awareness of common global concerns has grown as well. The problems themselves are more complex. To address global problems of complexity will require teams of individuals, with multidisciplinary backgrounds. The value of cyberinfrastructure is that it allows for virtual teams and communities to address these problems together.

In this talk, examples will be provided of these teams and the problems they address. I will also share some characteristics that we feel are essential for their success. Furthermore I highlight the opportunities and the challenges in international research and education. Finally, as a team, we hope to challenge both the academic and industrial communities into building stronger bridges to support international research and educational experiences.

Todd Walter

Hardware, OS, Database and Application development technology are all changing very quickly today. Simultaneously, the expectations on a data warehouse and analytics platform are climbing quickly in directions only imagined a few years ago. The future role of a data warehouse manager or administrator will be quite different as a result. This session will talk about those trends and about the impact they will have on management and operations.