Friday, October 25, 2002

Meeting Topic:

How to Improve Processes Every Day - 10 Years Later

Presenter: Stan Rifkin, Master Systems Inc.

Abstract

This talk is an expanded version of Mr. Rifkin's SEPG 2002 Keynote Address

From 1988 to 1990 Priscilla Fowler and Stan Rifkin researched and wrote the Software Engineering Process Group Guide (SEPG Guide) and the Software Engineering Institute published it in 1990. The SEPG Guide is about how to improve processes every day. Many of the observations reported in it have proved useful over the years of application. Additional information would have added significantly to its applicability, particularly:

• One size does not fit all
• The importance of process improvement "by stealth"
• How we are misled by psychology and should pay attention to sociology
• What patterns of adoption look like
• A fresh look at "resistance"
• How engineers might approach the subject of deployment

Meeting Coordinator: Leitha Purcell - PurceLe@mail.northgrum.com

Your Presenter: Stan Rifkin is a principal with Master Systems, an advisory services firm he started in 1984 at the request of the National Headquarters of the American Red Cross. He worked at the Software Engineering Institute for three years, reporting to Watts Humphrey. His specialties then and now are deployment, implementation, and technology transition. Stan's professional practice centers on getting best practices into actual practice. He helped to start the first SPIN ever, in Washington DC, and he has been instrumental in starting the San Diego SPIN. He has attended every SEPG Conference and was the chair of the 2002 one.

He has a Cal State Northridge BS in business administration (quantitative methods), a UCLA MS and ABD in computer science, and is working on a PhD at George Washington University. He is a member of the IEEE, ACM, Institute for Operations Research and Management Science, Academy of Management, Foundation for the Empirical Study of Programmers, Project Management Institute, Society for Chaos Theory in Psychology and Life Sciences, System Dynamics Society and the editorial board of "Empirical Software Engineering".

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MANY THANKS TO THE GENEROUS SUPPORT OF OUR SPIN CO-SPONSORS:
NORTHROP GRUMMAN, RAYTHEON, TRW