Summit 2003 In Review

Cutter Consortium Summit 2003 was a genuinely inspirational event, loaded with contrasting views, lively arguments, and insights.

Cutter Consortium Summit 2003 boasts a unique format in which 90-minute in-depth keynotes are followed by 90-minute panel sessions, featuring vigorous discussion and debate of the IT issue at hand. Panelists and attendees have the opportunity to challenge the views of the keynote speakers and engage in informal and illuminating discussion. Summit moderator Tom DeMarco's ability to enhance debate by crystallizing concerns and identify emerging themes continues to win praise at the Summit every year. Get to the bottom of the controversial issues, challenge opinions and offer your own viewpoint: it's all encouraged at Summit 2003.

Agile Development and Open Source Erich Gamma on Eclipse: A Large Scale Open Source Development Project -- What We Can Learn From Open Source Is Eclipse the "silver bullet" we've all been yearning for? Erich Gamma will share his insight on the Eclipse Project -- an open source software development project dedicated to providing a robust, full-featured, commercial-quality, industry platform for developing highly integrated tools -- and show you how your organization can benefit from the best of breed integrated tools that are bound to emerge from this effort. Plus, Erich will reflect on the best practices for managing such a large project, involving distributed teams that include open source contributors working on wildly flexing requirements in a tough competitive market.

Innovation through IT Juan Enriquez on How the Genomic Revolution Will Change Computing The digital revolution was just the beginning. According to Juan Enriquez, author or "As the Future Catches You," the genomics revolution will be far more powerful. In his enlightening keynote presentation, Enriquez will reveal why gene research is the single most important driver of new computers and software in places like IBM, Compaq, and Sun Microsystems, why cosmetics companies are hiring molecular biologists, why energy companies are thinking about very different ways to generate renewable fuels, and how seed companies have become information-processing companies. You will discover how biocomputing could make genomes the world's most powerful and compact coding and information systems, blending the genomic revolution with the computer revolution.

IT Governance Christine Davis on Best Practices in IT Governance As IT organizations embrace flexible architectures, customer-centric support, globally distributed systems, inter-company application integration, and adaptable systems to replace monolithic ones, IT will be forced to evolve significantly different governance models than the current centralized, control-oriented ones. In her keynote presentation, Christine Davis will provide you with insight into why establishing some form of IT governance is essential for ensuring that vital resources are aligned with the overall business goals and for serving short and long term interests, and how, as companies distribute, their IT governance models must change. You'll discover how your organization can extract more value from its IT investments by adopting a leading edge IT governance model.

Risk Management Tom DeMarco and Tim Lister on Balancing Risk and Value What's wrong with this picture?: Your marketing department wants a new system delivered in no less than one year and definitely costing no more than $2.5 million. The justification for the system is direct from the Marketing VP's mouth: "We gotta have it!" You are being urged to use risk management to meet cost and schedule targets. What's wrong here is that the expected precision (and degree of control) for cost and schedule is tight, but the offsetting value is specified in only the vaguest way. Effective risk management makes risk taking possible, but the amount of risk you should be willing to take is a function of the value to be realized. When value is controlled only loosely, it makes no sense to strive for rigorous control of risks. (If the value is We gotta have it, a correct assessment of cost and schedule is It's gonna cost a lot and take a long time.) In this keynote, Tom DeMarco and Tim Lister (authors of a forthcoming Risk Management book from Dorset House) put value assessment and risk assessment in context and show a technique for managing both.

Web Services Tom Welsh on Web Services: Childhood's End?
Throughout its fifty-year lifespan the software industry has struggled to meet expectations. One likely culprit is diversity. We have had too many operating systems, too many programming languages, and definitely too many types of middleware. Today, however, the whole industry seems to be united in the cause of Web services. Led by IBM and Microsoft, all the major software vendors and many end-user organizations are pooling their efforts in consortia such as W3C, OASIS and WS-I. Difficult technical challenges remain, but with such an array of talent and, so far, no dissenting voices, failure seems unlikely. Tom Welsh will take a skeptical but openminded look at the past, present and future of Web services, their current limitations, and likely future trends.

Funding Technology Innovation Lou Mazzucchelli on Nursing the Hangover: Funding Technology Innovation in the Post-Bubble Economy
The Internet bubble - and its bursting - has had a great affect on the economics of innovation and the formation of new companies. In his keynote presentation, Lou Mazzucchelli will give you a glimpse into the macro issues at hand and why he believes this situation is not positive. He'll also reveal some of the interesting implications IT managers will face down the road as a result of this reduced competitive environment.

Wrap-Up In his closing keynote, Tom DeMarco "wraps up" Summit 2003 by identifying the themes that have emerged throughout the conference. The resulting live, "take-home lesson checklist" helps you define both your corporate business-IT strategy and your personal professional growth strategy.

Summit 2003: Buy the Audio
Summit 2003 Sessions CDs

Summit 2003 In Review