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Rules of Engagement: Getting Past the Rhetoric to Truly Effective Software Process Improvement
Kevin Weiss
CEO of The Capability Group & Philip Crosby Associates
Introduction:
You've heard the ancient saying, “every battle is won before it is fought”; is your software process improvement effort positioned for success or is your team fighting valiantly for a lost cause? Successful change agents work hardest to define the rules for change because they provide their teams an often overwhelming advantage. However, most process improvement leaders ignore this critical element, letting the organization continually redefine the nature, location, and pace of change.Before blaming organizational resistance on a lack of management support, change leaders must assess whether they have firmly established these basic protocols that dramatically improve the odds of success. Learning Objectives:
In this session, you will learn:·
- Why a common language is critical for successful process improvement
- The protocols that must be in place before successful improvement begins
- Why supportive management can be worse than no sponsorship at all
- How to continually assess the organizational terrain and align your team for success
- How improvement teams too often sabotage their own success.
As with any change effort, organizational skirmishes will occur and unforeseen issues will arise, but the proper rules of engagement limit their effects and allow your team to ultimately succeed. By understanding these critical rules, you can focus your energy on winning the few, important battles that lead to successful process improvement.
Biography:
Kevin Weiss is the CEO of The Capability Group and Philip Crosby Associates, firms that help organizations achieve increased profitability and customer loyalty through organizational change and process improvement. He has been at the forefront of improving performance in transaction and service environments, and has consulted for a variety of companies including General Electric, Shimano, Seagate Technologies, American Express , Sony, Oracle and the American Society for Quality.
Prior to founding The Capability Group, Kevin served as a Quality Leader and Master Black Belt at General Electric Power Systems, a US$6 billion manufacturer, installer and servicer of Power Plants and Power Generation Equipment. There he designed and executed a Six Sigma Quality Strategy for a US$140 million global business unit with 300 employees, served on the company's Quality and Information Management Councils, and coached cross-functional teams executing large-scale process improvement projects in the areas of Finance, Human Resources, Engineering, Information Technology, and Risk Management.
Kevin led the first large-scale project to redesign a commercial process using Six Sigma principles at GE Power Systems. He developed the methodology to integrate process and information technology improvements within a single project, and directed a team of 30 full-time people and several hundred part-time members to execute the plan. The project redesigned 77 business processes that spanned 5 geographic sites and 4 functional areas, created direct annual savings of US$25 million, and provided a platform for significant top-line growth.
Kevin completed GE's Financial Management Program and held a number of finance positions at General Electric in both manufacturing and service environments. He also served in the United States Navy's nuclear propulsion program, where he lead an engineering division of a nuclear submarine.
Kevin is a Cum Laude graduate of the University of California , Berkeley with degrees in Economics and Statistics. He is a member of the corporate board of G. Loomis, Inc., a subsidiary of Shimano America Corporation.
 
Advanced Process Quantification
Tom Gilb
Independent Consultant
Introduction:
Advanced Process Quantification : 10 Practical Principles for determining your critical-few objectives for process improvement. How to measure, estimate, and evaluate the effects of a process improvement effort for critical stakeholders"
Outline:
- Introduction:
- You should not seriously tackle your process improvement unless you have stated and agreed your long term improvement objectives quantitatively. Process improvement is the ‘means'. To manage it meaningfully, to sell it to top management, you must develop and present a clear ‘bottom line' verifiable trackable notion of the ‘ends'
- You not only need to realistically set your ambition levels, but you need to be able to estimate the projected impact on those objectives of your investments in process improvement. You also need to measure quickly and continuously your progress towards those goals
- Most process improvement programs are not good at any of this. They are therefore doomed from the start to fail and be discredited
- This talk will show you how to quantify, measure and estimate – and will illustrate with real case studies and examples
Learning Objectives:
- Learn how to quantify any process improvement objective
- Learn how to deal with the critical set of your process improvement objectives: many simultaneous objectives
- See varied examples of process improvement quantification
- Get the basic idea: a process improvement is only as good as the measurable lasting effect it has on your official objectives in practice.
Biography :
Tom Gilb is a freelance consultant, teacher and author serving clients in Europe and the US. His newest textbook, Competitive Engineering: A Handbook For Systems Engineering, Requirements Engineering, and Software Engineering Using Planguage", was published in the US August 2005. He has also written “Principles of Software Engineering Management” (in 20 th printing) and is Principal author of “Software Inspection” (in 13 th Printing). He specializes in software quality design and management. He lives in Norway, when he is not travelling.
He has taught and consulted with Medtronic, Cray Research, United Defense and other companies in Minneapolis. With Ericsson and Nokia in Dallas. Motorola in Austin. His methods are also in use at Hewlett Packard, Intel, GE, IBM, Citigroup, Symbian, Philips Medical Systems, Microsoft, Ericsson, Nokia, DoD and many other companies.
Executive Eye: What does CMMI Level 5 mean for the CIO
Venguswamy Ramaswamy
Director of Sales and Delivery for the Global Consulting Practice at Tata Consultancy Services
Capability Maturity Model® Integration (CMMI®) is a process improvement approach that provides organizations with the essential elements of effective processes. It can be used to guide process improvement across a project, a division, or an entire organization. CMMI helps integrate traditionally separate organizational functions, set process improvement goals and priorities, provide guidance for quality processes, and provide a point of reference for appraising current processes.
This keynote presentation will present a direct view from the prism of Executive lens.
Learning Objectives/Outline:
The session will focus on the following facets of Enterprise Quality transformation:
- How is the foundation of a Quality culture laid for the organization
- What are the building block components
- How is the quality program architected
- How to lead and manage ‘Change'
- The business benefits of a Quality driven organization
As with any change effort, organizational skirmishes will occur and unforeseen issues will arise, but the proper rules of engagement limit their effects and allow your team to ultimately succeed. By understanding these critical rules, you can focus your energy on winning the few, important battles that lead to successful process improvement.
Biography :
Venguswamy Ramaswamy is the Director of Sales and Delivery for the Global Consulting Practice at TCS. Prior to this role, he was heading the Process Consulting Group at TCS.
As Director of Sales and Delivery Support - Global Consulting, Venguswamy Ramaswamy, has the responsibility to take TCS' consulting offerings including Software Quality Solutions, Six Sigma Solutions and Creativity & Innovation Solutions to the large customer base of TCS. The practice is responsible for defining and developing various process solutions that can be accepted and implemented across different organizations globally.
Swamy spent a significant period of time leading the Six Sigma Program as a Quality Leader for the TCS-GE Relationship, SEEPZ, Mumbai, India. Swamy has been the TCS-GE relationship manager and has been responsible for managing TCS relationship with General Electric.
A certified quality analyst, his focus shifted towards leading the Six Sigma Quality Initiative for the relationship. In this role, he has led a team of Master Black Belts and Six Sigma deployment leaders within the relationship. His other responsibilities were, leading the Center of Excellence initiative and the Digitization efforts of TCS. Swamy holds a Masters in Computer Applications from University of Madras, India .
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