Training | Software Excellence Alliance

The 5 Keys to Crushing Technical Debt and Reclaiming the Joy in Engineering

Tech Talk, Past Presentation

The March 2023 tech talk was presented by Alan Willett and Julia Mullaney

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Abstract

Are you feeling weighed down by technical debt? Are you tired of constantly putting out fires and struggling to keep your systems running smoothly? It’s time to reclaim the joy in engineering! In this talk, we will explore the five key strategies for crushing technical debt and bringing back the enjoyment to your work. We’ll also delve into the seven types of technical debt, including gordian knots, trap doors, barnacle ware, and more, and show you how to identify and tackle each one. Join us and learn how to eliminate technical debt and rediscover the satisfaction of building high-quality systems.

About the Presenters

Alan Willett is a globe-trotting Principal helping organizations to improve the speed and power of their engines of development. Alan is the award-winning author of Lead with Speed and Leading the Unleadable.

Alan Willett was the youngest of six kids on a dairy farm in Hunt, NY, which was (and still is) about a 30-minute drive to any stoplight. In Alan’s opinion, a stop sign would be okay in that town. The stoplight is a bit of high-tech overkill. The dairy farm has been in the family for almost 200 years. In Alan’s teenage years, the farm won Dairy Farm of the Year multiple times, while other farms failed. Alan learned how to be lucky by using data, technology, hard work, and logical decision-making.

After the farm, Alan went to Rochester Institute of Technology. There, he ran track and cross-country. He actually did run across the country with his team. The team was in the Guinness Book of World Records for running a relay from ocean to ocean in record time. While at college, as a side hobby to his athletics, he received a degree in computer science, which later became a Master’s degree.

When Alan started working in the high-tech world of high-pressure product development, he found that most of the projects used data much less than they did on the farm. On his projects, he put into place the use of data and logical decision-making. His travels eventually took him to work at the world-renowned Software Engineering Institute, the think tank of the world on high-tech development work. There, he was able to work with many of the geniuses that have pushed the state of the art. He worked with and was good friends with the late Watts Humphrey.

Julia Mullaney has been involved with software excellence since starting her career at IBM in 1988. At IBM, she was instrumental in process improvement efforts, having a major role in defining and implementing defect prevention, for which she won the IBM Quality Award.

At the Software Engineering Institute (SEI), Julia was a key contributor to the Personal Software Process℠ (PSP℠) and Team Software Process℠ (TSP℠) through the development of training, certification, licensing, and applied research at leading software organizations. She was fortunate to take the first PSP class from her mentor, Watts Humphrey. Julia is currently the chair for the IEEE CS/SEI Watts Humphrey Quality Award and also sits on the IEEE CS Awards Committee.

Julia’s passion is software excellence, and she has been channeling that passion into growing the Software Excellence Alliance (SEA) as the SEA Executive Committee Leader and as a member of SEA Website & Social Media working group. She previously chaired the Working Group Training working group.

NAVAIR Process Dashboard Introduction Workshop

Learning Materials, Past Presentation

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Download Supporting Materials and Demo Software

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Abstract:

NAVAIR has hundreds of engineers/professionals using Team Software Process (TSP) or Team Integration Process (TPI) methodologies to plan and track their projects. NAVAIR teams following TSP/TPI use the Process Dashboard tool to implement the methodologies. This workshop is given by the Performance Resource Team (PRT) to introduce individuals to the Process Dashboard tool and to give them ‘hands-on’ experience in various features of the tool. Downloads are provided to allow workshop participants to exercise the features first-hand. Here are the topics covered in this workshop:

Process Dashboard Fundamentals: The objective of this topic is to understand how to use the primary features of the Process Dashboard tool when working on a TPI project. These features include:
- Selecting the active task
- Logging time
- Logging mistakes
- Completing a task
- Logging actual sizes
- Tracking your progress against your plan
Personal Projects: The objective of this topic is to demonstrate Process Dashboard changes to support the creation of personal projects (a.k.a. ‘Armies of One’)
Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) Editor Fundamentals: The objective of this topic is to demonstrate how to use the primary features of the Process Dashboard’s WBS Editor to generate a project plan. WBS Editor features discussed include:
- Relative sizing of work using Proxy Estimation Tables
- Task generation using workflows
- Load-leveling individual plans using Team Time Balancing Panel
Using PROBE with Process Dashboard: The objective of this topic is to provide an introduction to the Proxy-Based Estimating (PROBE) process, and to illustrate its use within the Process Dashboard.

About the Presenter

Brad Hodgins is a computer scientist and has been supporting Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR) for 36 years. He has over 20 years’ experience developing simulation and avionics software. He has spent the last 16 years as a project planning and tracking coach and instructor for the Performance Resource Team (PRT), actively coaching project teams in the development of high-quality products for on-time, on-budget delivery to the fleet.

Brad has expertise and a national reputation in process improvement. During his time with the PRT, Brad gave over two dozen presentations at symposiums and conferences, and authored/co-authored half a dozen published articles and papers, all sharing the great things NAVAIR has been doing. Brad was given a Navy patent in 2008 for the Learning Applying Mastering Perfecting (LAMP) model for team process implementation evaluation and improvement. He was awarded the Michelson Laboratory Award in 2010, and he became a NAVAIR Associate Fellow in 2013. Brad earned a Doctorate in Computer Science from Colorado Technical University in 2015. He retired from government service in 2019, but continues to support NAVAIR as an employee of Saalex Solutions Inc.

Brad is a Taurus and likes surfing (just kidding about the surfing).

Team Process Integration: Half-Day Course

Learning Materials, Past Presentation

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Abstract:

This half-day course covers all aspects of the Team Process Integration (TPI) framework. The TPI methodology integrates disciplined project practices that can be applied by many product teams (e.g., software, systems, and test). It is a framework that provides fundamental engineering processes for the following areas: planning, tracking, quality, measurement and metrics, as well as communicating team status. The TPI method is used at the project level and is applied by individual members of a team to guide daily work.

This course includes the following topics (each individually available on YouTube):

About the Presenters

Dr. Brad Hodgins is a computer scientist and has been supporting Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR) for 36 years. He has over 20 years of experience in developing simulation and avionics software. He has spent the last 16 years as a project planning and tracking coach and instructor for the Performance Resource Team (PRT), actively coaching project teams in the development of high-quality products for on-time, on-budget delivery to the fleet.

Brad views the SEA as an incredible venue to share best practices for planning and tracking software projects and to brainstorm solutions to problems currently affecting the Software Community. He is currently serving as the SEA Membership Coordinator and a member of the SEA Executive Team; he is also a member of the Next-Gen Tooling standing committee.

Jeff Schwalb is a computer scientist and has been supporting Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR) since 1984. He has over 20 years of experience developing and acquiring real-time embedded software systems for avionics, weapons, and range instrumentation systems. He also began collaborating with the Software Engineering Institute (SEI), learning and applying CMM key practices, becoming a certified Personal Software Process℠ (PSP℠) instructor and then a certified Team Software Process℠ (TSP℠) coach. Over the last 25 years, he has taught and consulted with hundreds of scientists and engineers in various forms of personal engineering processes and has coached dozens of projects in the launch and operations of team project planning and tracking.

In 2017, Jeff connected with the SEI on the establishment of the organization we know today as the Software Excellence Alliance (SEA). Today, Jeff continues to work within the SEA to identify and establish pragmatic, value-added solutions to problems currently affecting the software community. He is currently serving as a member of the SEA Executive Team and as a supporting member of SEA working groups in areas such as Membership, Agile Community Networking, and Knowledge Transfer.

David Saint-Amand is a Performance improvement coach with the Process Resource Team of the Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR). His previous positions include DCS Corporation Section Manager, Naval Operations Research Analyst, Engineering Geologist, and Seismic Safety Consultant.

He holds a B.A. in Geology from the University of California at Santa Barbara with a secondary emphasis in Computer Science. He is a Defense Acquisition University Certified Level III Life Cycle Logistician, a Software Engineering Institute (SEI) Certified Personal Software Process (PSP) Developer, an SEI-Authorized PSP Instructor, and a NAVAIR Internal Team Software Process Coach.

Kristianne Aberer has been working for the Performance Resource Team (PRT) of the Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR) as a Performance Improvement Coach for the past 3 years. She has helped multiple engineering project teams to plan and track their work so they could deliver high-quality products on cost and on schedule while maintaining a healthy work/life balance. Her previous positions include Electronics Design Engineer, Flight Test Engineer, and Stay-At-Home-Parent. Kristianne holds a B.S. in Mechatronic Engineering from California State University, Chico. Kristianne grew up being very involved in youth sports and had many wonderful coaches. She enjoys paying it forward by coaching youth soccer teams, teaching physical education at a small Montessori school, and coaching elementary students in track and field.

Empowering Virtual Working Groups for Success

Learning Materials, Past Presentation

Watch the Recording on YouTube

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Abstract:

We’ve all worked on teams where it is impossible to find the latest files, emails get lost, people get left off (or on!) meeting notices and email chains, and worse. Things get even more chaotic when team members are all volunteers and everything is virtual.

Working groups are critical to the SEA; they are the mechanism that the Alliance uses to make progress. The SEA has created an infrastructure and a communications plan that help WGs to be successful by applying the principles upon which the Alliance is based, hence walking our talk. WGs that use these principles have made tremendous progress.

This Tech Talk will walk through the SEA working group infrastructure so we can all be effective working group leaders and members. We will also highlight the best practices we’ve found, that you can apply to support the success of other virtual/remote teams (at your work and elsewhere).

This talk includes the following topics (each individually available on YouTube):

About the Presenters

Julia Mullaney has been involved with software excellence since starting her career at IBM in 1988. Julia was a key contributor to the Personal Software Process℠ (PSP℠) and Team Software Process℠ (TSP℠) through the development of training, certification, licensing, and applied research at leading software organizations. She was fortunate to take the first PSP class from her mentor, Watts Humphrey. Julia’s passion is software excellence, and she has been channeling that passion into growing the Software Excellence Alliance (SEA) as the SEA Executive Committee Leader and as a member of SEA.

Rosalba Aguilar collaborated for twenty years as CIO, CTO, and member of the board of directors for XEROX and EDS companies, including management of all information technology areas with inter-functional teams of up to 200 employees. Since 2007, she has been at Towa Software as COO and Customer Success Manager for business software development. She drives innovation and accountability for the creation, evolution, and implementation of high-quality information systems, digital transformation ambassadors, and high-performance team building. Her teams guarantee customer satisfaction, on-time delivery, and high-quality development through co-innovation, co-creation, flawless execution processes, and agile practices. She received a BS in biomedical engineering, with an IT degree from Universidad Iberoamericana, and a Masters in Business Management from IPADE Institute.

Steve Shook, Director of Software Engineering and Quality at Ishpi Information Technologies (ISHPI), brings more than 25 years of experience in software engineering and software management. He is one of the principal architects of ISHPI’s award-winning Agile High Velocity Development℠ software development methodology. As an experienced instructor, coach, consultant, and subject matter expert, he leads and mentors software teams to achieve exceptional cost, schedule, and quality performance in order to achieve customer business goals. As part of the SEA, he draws inspiration — and hopes to inspire others — to continuously advance the state of the practice of software engineering. Stephen is currently serving as a member of the SEA Executive Team.

Mary Walker is the owner and principal of Leaf Spring LLC, a Knoxville-based consulting company that specializes in helping non-profits to intensify their impact. Before this, Mary served as the Director of Development at the Knoxville Museum of Art. She has worked previously as the National Product Manager for Caramel and Candy at Kraft Food Ingredients, as a Strategic Planning and Development Manager for Holiday Inns, Inc., and as the Marketing Manager for her family’s automotive businesses. She earned her bachelor’s degree from the University of Tennessee and her MBA from Vanderbilt University. Mary has served on several local non-profit boards including the Episcopal School of Knoxville, Cancer Support Community East Tennessee, and the University of Tennessee Haslam School of Business Management and Entrepreneurship.