Mission to Mars: A Harvard Business School Case Study by Alan MacCormack 

In this highly-participatory session, Harvard Business School Associate Prof. Alan MacCormack asks you to evaluate the reasons for the failure of two successive missions to Mars that were launched under NASA’s "Faster, Better, Cheaper" program -- and why the program didn't work. This case, which MacCormack co-wrote with Jay Wynn, will help you better understand the relationships between risk, budget, and schedule in the development of complex technology-based projects. Mission to Mars examines changes the space agency made that followed a faster, simpler approach to program design. » Full description

Uncovering the Hidden Meaning of Things: Why Design-Driven Innovation is Central in Technology-Intensive Organizations 

Roberto Verganti's keynote will focus in particular on the role that new technologies have in redefining the meaning of products and services, and consequently on the role of design-driven innovation in technology-intensive firms and technology suppliers. » Full description

90-minute keynote is followed followed after lunch by a 90-minute panel debate featuring Roberto Verganti, Peter Hanke, Richard Harris, and Borys Stokalski.

Lunch Break

Ten Things an Architect Does 

One of the questions Mike Rosen, Director of Cutter Consortium’s Enterprise Architecture Practice, often gets asked is "What does an architect do?" In this interactive discussion, Mike will go beyond the day-to-day activities like attending too many meetings, and get to the heart of how architects bring value to their organization.

Where Do We Go From Here? 

The thing about lessons learned is that they are usually discovered at the end, when they’re not easily applied to the project at-hand. In this session, we borrow the Agile Retrospective practice: Tom DeMarco reviews what’s been discussed and debated, and reveals his insight into the strategies, themes, and ah-has that have emerged from the previous sessions -- establishing a framework for approaching Wednesday’s sessions and applying those lessons.