SA ICT Sector Wow's the SEI's SEPG Conference
Prof. Barry Dwolatzky, Director of the Joburg Centre for Software Engineering (JCSE) delivered a keynote presentation at the Software Engineering Process Group North America Conference today and wow'ed the audience with a presentation of the vibrant South African ICT industry
23 March 2010
The SEPG Conference, held this year in Savannah, Georgia, is the Software Engineering Institute's big annual process improvement bash. It has evolved to become the premier learning and networking event that brings together industry leading organizations who are putting CMMI, People CMM, TSP, PSP, Agile, Six Sigma, ITIL and ISO standards, and other process management methods together to perform at a higher level. "When I attended my first SEPG 5 years ago there were close to 2,000 delegates. This year there are just over 1,000 - a clear sign of the really tough economic times!" he says.
Prof. Dwolatzky's presentation was part of a plenary session, entitled "Process Improvement on a Regional Scale", that opened the Conference. He was part of a panel of 3 speakers each talking about process improvement initiatives in our own country. The other panellists were Rafael Salazar Chávez Director of the Mexican TSP Initiative and Wan Peng Ng Chief Operating Officer, MDeC in Malaysia. As part of his presentation he showed a 5 minute version of a new video commissioned by the dti that focuses on the SA ICT sector, CMMI and TSP.
"I've had really positive feedback. Lots of people said that: they liked it very much; that they were "amazed" to hear about the IT industry in South Africa; and that they thought the movie "is stunning". A delegation from Columbia came to formally ask me for a copy so that they could show it in Columbia.