Events
Current & upcoming events
All Presentations and Additional reference material associated with Ivar Jacobson visit can be downloaded here.
31 May-28 Jun 2012 [Topic A: Developing Mobile Apps for Windows 7] » Register
In 2012 the JCSE is presenting several short courses run over a number of weeks as an Evening School. Most courses will be presented jointly with JCSE Partners and will cover topical issues in software engineering.
Join the JCSE and partner OPSI Systems for the 3rd of our popular Video Evenings. Topic to be announced soon.
Cloud computing represents a major shift in the technology landscape, for all users and stakeholders. However, cloud computing means many different things to different people, including elastic resources, software-as-a-service etc.
Join the JCSE for an in-depth, balanced talk on cloud computing. Experts from both Microsoft and IBM will both be sharing views on the topic.
Past Events
The topic for this video evening was: The Art of Algorithms – including topics such as Google’s Page Rank Algorithm, cryptography algorithms, data compression, etc.
The slides can be downloaded here.
Custom Domain-Specific Language's (DSL) have been around for a long time, and over recent years they have become increasingly popular. The speakers explored how DSL's can be used within your environment to improve the quality of the systems engineering efforts.
The past several years has seen the emergence of several next-generation software development frameworks, such as Scrum and XP. These frameworks are focussed on improving delivery, increasing agility, and creating sustainability in software development. For decades, the use of Kanban has enabled Toyota's Lean, Just-In-Time processes, which are world-renowned. This technology has been adapted for use in software development, as well as other domains. The presentation covered the Kanban philosophy, what Kanban is, how it differs to other major frameworks for development, and how it can help your organisation.
3-4 Sep 2011 [PHD at Wits University]
Dr David L Parnas - one of the world's most eminent pioneers of software engineering - visited South Africa in August/September 2011. In an event hosted by the JCSE he presented a 1-day tutorial on the topic "Preparing Precise Software Reference Documents". This was followed by a weekend workshop (limited to 10 participants) in which he guided delegates through the steps of developing precise documents using the methods described in the 1-day tutorial.
Parnas' visit to South Africa provided a unique opportunity for local software engineers to learn from one of the top international experts.
Behaviour-Driven Development: Taking Unit Testing to the next level
More than a great technique for creating and organizing unit tests, BDD is also a wonderful way to communicate with your customers and users about the software being created. This session explored effective ways to create software; Started with solid Agile requirements and moved all the way through to automated testing which proves the success of those requirements. The session demonstrated some techniques and tools you can use to start delivering software with BDD and to determine if it is applicable for your next project. Demo's were based on C#
Scrum is a methodology that has seen a huge upswing in adoption in recent years. While there is a lot of focus on the scrum master, there is certainly less focus on product ownership.
Often, books, articles, and presentations begin with phrases such as “now that the requirements are complete”, ”now that the testing process is defined”, “now that the team is fully staffed”, or other similar statements. However, most of us live in a world in which these foundations of our work are often not available. Lee Copeland described a pragmatic approach to testing when your world is messy.
Presentation slides are available => Download
19 May 2011 [PDH, Wits East Campus]
Lee Copeland, the 2011 JCSE "Distinguished International Lecturer" presented this one-day tutorial covering key aspects of his widely used book "A practioner's guide to software test design".
Presented by Lee Copeland
SOFTWARE TESTING INNOVATIONS
As a consultant, Lee Copeland has spoken with thousands of software testers in hundreds of different organizations. Generally, he comes away from these discussions depressed with the state of testing. Many organizations neither know about nor have adopted recent important innovations in our field. Lee discussed nine of the important innovations in testing—the context-driven school, test-first development, really good books, open source tools, session-based test management, testing workshops, freedom of the press, virtualization, and testing in the cloud. Delegates joined Lee for his list, and proposed others they liked. The keys to innovation were discussed and delegates took a test evaluating their organization’s innovation quota.
SOFTWARE TESTING as CO-DEPENDENT BEHAVIOUR
DOWNLOAD PRESENTATION (110KB)
Vague requirements, undocumented design, poor code, and impossible schedules – the typical complaints of today’s developers. Who’s fault is it? It’s “theirs,” of course, clients, users, and managers. But could it also be ours? Could we be part of the problem? Codependent behaviour is defined as “a way of getting needs met that doesn’t get needs met. We do all the wrong things for all the right reasons.”
Presented by Lee Copeland
As a consultant, Lee Copeland has spoken with thousands of software testers in hundreds of different organizations. Generally, he comes away from these discussions depressed with the state of testing. Many organizations neither know about nor have adopted recent important innovations in our field. Lee discussed nine of the important innovations in testing—the context-driven school, test-first development, really good books, open source tools, session-based test management, testing workshops, freedom of the press, virtualization, and testing in the cloud. Delegates Joined Lee for his list, and proposed others they liked. The keys to innovation were discussed and delegates took a test evaluating their organization’s innovation quota.
Lee Copeland visited South Africa as the 2011 JCSE "Distinguished International Lecturer". The visit was supported by the CSSA SIGIST and Faculty Training Institute (FTI).
Slides used in the presentations can be downloaded as follows:
1. Today's Testing Innovations => Download
2. Black Box Test Design Techniques => Download
3. Software Testing as Codependent Behaviour => Download
4. Pragmatic Testing: What to do when your world gets messy => Download
Object Oriented Design
OO is the first development technology that really has the potential to deliver against business needs, i.e., to produce systems that are flexible, robust, reliable, reusable and extendable. However, the reality is that many Dev shops are not achieving the level of delivery that the literature suggests they should. More importantly they are not delivering against the needs of their businesses.
Demystifying the hype around NoSQL
Test driven development with practical refactoring tips
The Assurance over the quality of IT projects
Information Systems have moved from being merely used as enablers to being an integral part of the corporate strategy to support, sustain and grow the business.
As in 2010, the Architecture Forum started 2011 with an open discussion where industry professionals contributed and learnt using the open-spaces approach.
On the 25th of November forum participants were given the opportunity to share their approach to software architecture in their respective environments. The idea was for interested participants to do a 10 minute long slide- or whiteboard-driven overview of the process followed or techniques applied in their respective environments. This was a great opportunity to get input from other industry professionals on their approach or simply to learn from your peers' thinking about architecture.
4-6 Aug 2010 [Hackle Brooke, 110 Conrad Drive Craighall, Johannesburg]
8-10 Nov 2010 [Hackle Brooke, 110 Conrad Drive Craighall, Johannesburg]
HOW GOOD IS YOUR ORGANISATION AT MANAGING ITS PEOPLE
The People Capability Maturity Model®(P-CMM) is a framework that helps organisations improve their workforce management practices. This three-day course introduces those who are involved in managing people to P-CMM Version 2.0, its fundamental concepts, and the value it can bring to organizations using it.
The P-CMM is a framework that organizations can use to attract, motivate, and retain talented staff. The practices in the model help an organization be an employer of choice and ensure that the staff has the competencies and capabilities to achieve the organization's current and future business objectives.
The theme of this annual Symposium is "Process Improvement as a driver in creating software development jobs in South Africa".
The South African Service Management Proficiency Index (SMPI) reveals some interesting trends on the current gaps organisations are experiencing in Service Management and provides an in-depth guide on how to address these shortfalls. Christopher Jones, CEO of Digiterra, discussed the SMPI.
Three Gauteng-based entrepreneurs – Mikkel, David and Jarrod – have piloted two “Startup Sessions” over the past few months. The concept is a fantastic one and we at the JCSE are keen to support this initiative by providing a venue and some logistical support. We held our first “Startup Session” on the 2nd and 3rd October at Wits University.
Let’s face it: architects are high-end knowledge workers who often advance organisational understanding through detailed problem analysis and design. Yet for all of our processes, artefacts, patterns and knowledge repositories architecture is often more about our ability to empower others to shine, and use their personal creativity.
Information technology and cognitive psychology are siblings; both have their origins in the late 1950s and early 1960s, and both influence each other. In this session, we used this knowledge to shed light on the personality styles and career challenges of the architect, by reflecting upon ourselves.
LEAN manufacturing has surpassed traditional mass production techniques with higher quality, reduced costs and faster time to market. LEAN started in the automobile industry with Toyota spearheading the techniques and specific company behaviours required. LEAN has more recently shown similar positive results in other manufacturing organisations, retailers and service organisations and is now enjoying great interest in some IT-serviced companies as it improves software development and testing activities.
8 Sep 2010 [Absa Group Technology Campus - 270 Republic Road]
The lecture explored the commonalities of systems, organizational and buildings architecture. The presentation discussed architectural requirements as well as designing an architecture using architectural patterns, strategies and reference architectures. The lecture looked at architecture across levels of granularity. A core responsibility of an architect is to be able to assess and validate existing architectures. The lecture concluded with ways of assessing an architecture.
Architecture in an Agile World (or maybe it's the other way around)
There often seems to be a tension that surfaces between the process (that which guides us) and the execution (that which we do). Agility and architecture also play out in this same way, and it can be a very destructive. Yet, each side needs the other to exist. The architecture that you create depends on your attitude, perception and degree of agility. From the other end, you can reach varying degrees of agility, depending on your attitude, perception and knowledge of the problem and it's architectural solution. In this session, we will turn this tension into a powerful force that you can use to achieve a balance between keeping the problem and it's solution under control.
TSP – Somewhere between Agile and Plan-driven: Report on a pilot adoption programme in SA
Some Agile practitioners tend to see the world in black and white. In their eyes software development can either be done using an “agile approach” or a “plan driven” approach. In recent years, a grey area in between these extremes has emerged. The “Team Software Process” (TSP) and “Personal Software Process” (PSP) falls within this grey area. While a TSP team follows most of the key agile practices, the role of planning, following a process and, above all, collecting and using measurements is paramount.
SEPG North America" is the Software Engineering Institute (SEI)'s big annual process improvement gathering. In March 2010 it was held in Savannah, Georgia, and was attended by nearly 1,000 process experts and software engineers from around the world. Some of the highlights of the conference were papers on Cloud Computing, CMMI and Agile, CMMI for Services and a "multi-model" approach to process improvement. There was also a forum on the upcoming CMMI version 1.3, due for release later in 2010. Barry Dwolatzky, Director of the JCSE was one of the few attendees from Africa. He presented an overview of some of the important papers presented at SEPG 2010.
ICSE encompassed a conference programme, technical tutorials and workshops, a programme of demonstrations and an exhibition along with social functions, providing an ideal opportunity to learn and network with like-minded colleagues from around the world.
The Joburg Centre for Software Engineering (JCSE) at Wits University hosted
Dr Paul Clements
from the Software Engineering Institute, Pittsburgh, USA
Paul Clements, a leading international authority on software architecture and co-author of 5 books and numerous papers and conference presentations, was visiting South Africa to attend the ICSE Conference in Cape Town.
On Friday 30th April the JCSE hosted a public lecture at Wits University. Paul Clements talked on "Software Product Lines".
We have seen the use and abuse of the architectural views suggested by different architecture guidelines, but we seldom see the usage of those guidelines yield the desired results. Often the TOGAF guidelines are flouted to present an architecture for the sake of presenting it. But do these views always answer the questions related to all apsects of a system? We have seen many times the architecture views leave too many things to be interpreted subjectively by the implementation team leading to failure during implementation. Can there be a list of architecture views which could serve as a definitive list for all system architectures? How does the Solution and Enterprise Architecture meet the Business Architecture? How do we merge these successfully?
Here is a list of views suggested to see the system architecture from different angles and leave very little for subject to interpretation:
1. Contextual Views
2. Logical Views
3. Information Architecture Views
4. Functional Views
5. Integration Views
6. Data Views
7. Security Views (component security, perimeter security, transport level security etc.)
8. Deployment Views (Hardware Topology, Software Topology, Hardware Sizing views)
Small software companies make for the majority of software companies around the world, but their software development processes are often not as clearly defined and structured as in their larger counterparts. The testing process is often the most neglected part of their software development process. This talk covers the analyses of the software testing process in a small South African company.
Ahmed Omarjee is an experienced software developer at Psybergate who has been practising agile development at both a business and technical level for the past 6 years.
Ahmed shared his practical experiences and tips on adopting Continuous Integration using Hudson (http://hudson.dev.java.net).
The JCSE and the South African Electrotechnical Export Council joined forces to bring you a workshop on Government Tax Incentives for R&D and Software Development, funding support for registering products in a foreign market and Intellectual Property: Create It, Protect It and Make Money.
In this Gauteng SPIN Prof Barry Dwolatzky (Director of the JCSE) gave a progress report on the TSP Pilot currently underway at Nedbank and Dariel Solutions.
The Architecture Forum started the new year with an open discussion where industry professionals nominated topics for discussion in the months to come.
Tania Van Wyk De Vries, software development manager at Devstream discussed the key issues that affect her team daily and talked about the actions they took to address them - and introduce true agility.
23 Nov 2009 [Cape Town]
24 Nov 2009 [Johannesburg: Hackle Brooke, 110 Conrad Ave, Corner Conrad & Jan Smuts]
This is a new one-day executive introduction to the Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) model used for process improvement.
Andre Van Der Schyff lead the discussion around Lean Software Development and its comparison with Agile Development.
29 Sep 2009 [Hackle Brooke, 110 Conrad Ave, Corner Conrad & Jan Smuts]
30 Sep-2 Oct 2009 [Hackle Brooke, 110 Conrad Ave, Corner Conrad & Jan Smuts]
5-8 Oct 2009 [Hackle Brooke, 110 Conrad Ave, Corner Conrad & Jan Smuts]
Dr Chuck Myers presented THE 2009 CMMI® WORKSHOP SERIES
- 29 Sep: Acquisition Supplement for CMMI (1 day) - Official SEI course
- 30 Sep-2 Oct: IPSi's CMMI Development for System Acquirers Workshop
- 5-8 Oct: Accelerating Process Improvement Workshop (4 days)
- 12 Oct: IPSi's CMMI Bootcamp (at the Riverside Hotel on the Vaal)
In this forum the speaker presented his views on the value of governing bodies, accreditation and professionalism in the IT industry and the effect this has on project success rates in other industries such as engineering and construction.
CMMI "Constellations": Process Improvement models to support Development, Acquisition and Services. Dr Chuck Myers discussed the three "constellations" in the CMMI Product Suite (i) development of new products and services (ii) service delivery, and (iii) acquisition of products and services.
Khalid Ally Khalid discussed behavioural traits of agile teams. Having worked with a few teams now, he shared some of his thoughts regarding the personality traits required of agile team members and how they relate to the agile principles and practices.
Dr Bill Nichols and Jim McHale, experts from the Software Engineering Institute (SEI), are currently in South Africa training developers and launching two TSP projects. Nichols and McHale will address the SPIN. The plans for the TSP Pilot, and the scope for companies to join will be discussed.
12 Aug 2009 [Johannesburg, Wits University]
21 Aug 2009 [Cape Town, CITI]
24 Aug 2009 [Durban, SmartXchange]
The Department of Trade and Industry (the dti) presented several practical initiatives for improving business performance to senior management and decision makers from companies in the ICT sector.
JCSE Partners, Barone, Budge and Dominick (BB&D), Microsoft and IBM provided experts in Cloud Computing to lead a Round Table Discussion on this new paradigm for software development.
Have you ever asked yourself how you can improve your ability to plan - knowing how difficult it is to create meaningful estimates? The presentation at this Agile Forum presented an agile approach to planning that provides techniques to estimate the size of work to be delivered. These techniques prioritize the delivery of the highest value items first, and then focus on scheduling the delivery of these items in a sufficient plan. You will discover that planning is not just something that occurs at the start of a project, but is an activity that should continuously be part of the software delivery process.
There has been a lot of discussion around creating agile solutions, but unless the enterprise space is adequately linked to the solution space through true enterprise disciplines, this dream will remain a pipe dream. The JCSE's Architecture Forum in June featured a talk by Craig Martin from Knotion, who described how the 'enterprise space' and the 'solution space' link together, and how 'enterprise thinking' must drive 'solution thinking' to enable true business agility. The discussion also refered to the use of Archimate, UML and the SOA style to achieve this.
In a bid to address the economic and skills crisis, ITA in partnership with JCSE and IT Web as a media partner hosted a Skills Summit on the 19th May at Bytes Technology Group in Midrand.
Scrum was the focus of the JCSE's last Agile Forum. Arrie van der Dussen, from the company Kaizania, is one of South Africa's foremost authorities on Scrum. He, together with Lionel Bisschoff also from Kaizania, lead a discussion on what Scrum is. They introduced Scrum as an Agile Project Management framework. Which was followed by an open Q&A discussion around Scrum.
The launch of the JCSE Architecture Forum was a great success. The Architecture Forum is a community for IT Architecture professionals in the South African industry.
Delegates discussed what software engineering is all about in the 21st Century, and what it aims to do.
Agile Software Development - we have all heard of it, some of us may be actually practicing it. Many individuals joined us in a baton-based panel discussion hosted by some of our industry architects. We discussed the definition of Agile Software Development with respect to "real world" experiments and experiences.
Our first session of the year opened up with some topical discussion around personal experiences we have all had with the application of Agile in our projects. Lisa Lyhne from Dariel Solutions and Dimitri Vratsanos from Psybergate opened the discussion by sharing some of their ‘war stories' with the audience.
On the 18th November 2008 the JCSE host a Round Table discussion on the question: "How do we develop software for computationally instensive applications?" There were presentations from Prof Colin Wright (Centre for High Performance Computing). Prof Scott Hazelhurst (Centre for Bioinformatics, Wits University), Dr Wimpie Clarke (University of Johannesburg) and Dean Redelinghuys (OPTI-NUM Solutions). Participants at the Round Table included vendors of HPC solutions, academics and members of the user community including banks and the mining industry.
In 2009 the JCSE will arrange several follow-on activities.
P2 and Rory Burke, internationally renowned author, presented this two day Master Class and developed a clear understanding of Project Methodology, together with Project Leadership skills and Project Team dynamics and discuss how both skill sets are required to manage a project to successful completion.
Prof Barry Dwolatzky, Director: JCSE at Wits University reported back on the tour to Mexico and the States to investigate the benefits of Team Software Process (TSP) and Personal Software Process (PSP).
Chuck Myers is probably the world's most experienced CMMI instructor. He has, over the past 20 years, worked closely with the SEI delivering CMMI training around the world. This 5 day course, which Chuck developed himself, focused on preparing delegates to be CMMI experts.
Dr Chuck Myers, President & CEO, Integrated Process Solutions, USA provided an overview of the need to address three different dimensions for effective implementation: technical, process and organisational.
The Process Improvement Briefing focussed on all aspects of process improvement. The Briefing introduced theTeam Software Process (TSP), the Personal Software Process (PSP) and the People Capability Maturity Model (PCMM), methods and models which have been designed to accelerate the implementation of CMMI in an organisation.
Introduction to People Capability Maturity Model (People CMM) - The People Capability Maturity Model (People CMM) is a framework that helps organisations successfully address their critical people issues. Based on the best current practices in fields such as human resources, knowledge management, and organizational development, the People CMM guides organisations in improving their processes for managing and developing their workforces.
The JCSE and QuantiMetrics presented a Master Class which discussed software sizing, estimation and benchmarking.
Aslam Khan presented on Behavior Driven Development (BDD), a framework that focuses on producing testable requirements. It addresses the problem of poorly defined stories by capturing each feature as a set of behaviors. BDD follows a strongly user-focused approach by describing contexts for business events that yield value driven business outcomes.
Download the presentation: About 5MB
Download the Source Code: About 20KB
Martin Rennhackkamp from PBT Group explained how BI capability should be positioned and be managed to align it with the business’ strategic goals and objectives.
Download the presentation
Prof. Barry Dwolatzky and Dr Pieter van Zyl from Nedbank reported back on the Software Engineering Institute (SEI) annual SEPG Conference.
Chris Naidoo from Psybergate discussed The Test Driven Development lifecycle using practical examples
The SA Electrotechnical Export Council presented this morning seminar on Intellectual Property. Don MacRobert, seasoned Patent and Intellectual Property lawyer, presented how to create it and protect it, and how to get Government funding support for obtaining patents.
Wayne Mallinson discussed the critical link between testing and successful software development.
Dr Dave Zubrow, Team Lead of the Software Engineering Measurement and Analysis Initiative from the Software Engineering Institute (SEI) at Carnegie Mellon University in the USA, discussed how to define and use measures to manage and improve software projects, products, and processes.
Prof Barry Dwolatzky, Director of the JCSE presented the SEI’s Team Software Process and Personal Software Process(TSP and PSP) methodologies.
Ernest Mnkandla presented a discussion on how to tailor your agile practices to your given project environment and still remain within the benefits of agility.
Jim Over, Team Lead of the TSP Initiative from the Software Engineering Institute at Carnegie Melon University, presented a SPIN on the benefits of TSP/PSP and his experience in implementing TSP/PSP.
Download the presentations
Presentation 1 (930 KB)
Presentation 2 (1.5 MB)
Tetyana Loskutova discussed how db4objects Inc successfully uses an XP methodology and agile processes in a team spread over 9 countries.
Download the presentation here.
Dr Chuck Myers
The first CMMI® (Capability Maturity Model Integration®) two-day symposium focussed on introducing CMMI® to the African market. The Symposium unpacked how CMMI® assists companies with process improvement, the CMMI® rating system and the business benefits of CMMI® from a local and international perspective. Follow the above link to download resources from this event.
Year Planner
The JCSE offers a variety of events, courses and skills development programs running throughout the year. We've put together a page to see what's on when, so you can take full advantage of our products.