2009 SEPG Conference

The 2009 SEPG Conference kicked off yesterday with a day of tutorials. This year I had the pleasure of moderating the Risk Management tutorials. There were two half-day tutorials. The morning session was "New Directions in Risk: A Success-Oriented Approach" by Audrey Dorofee, a senior member of the technical staff at the Software Engineering Institute. This was a very interesting tutorial presenting a pratical approach to managing risks based on risk drivers as opposed to focusing on the Top Ten List of Risks. There were also three exercises providing the attendees hands-on experience using this new, practical, and easy to understand technique. The presentation can be downloaded from www.sei.cmu.edu/msce/presentations.html

The afternoon session was "Avoid V-Nosediving or Spiraling Out of Control with the Incremental Commitment Model" by Barry Boehm, TRW professor of software engineering and director of the Center for Systems and Software Engineering at the University of Southern California and the originater of the Spiral Model. Barry spoke to the audience about the Incremental Commitment Model (ICM) and how it builds on the strengths of phased models (such as the V-model and the Spiral Model) and incorporates a risk-driven approach. There was a lot of information packed into the 99 slides presented over the two 1 1/2 hour sessions for this tutorial. It will take a lot of studying to understand and implement this new approach. Apparently, the software engineering students at the University of Southern California are using the ICM and there is growing evidence of its value and benefit. You can read more about the ICM at http://csse.usc.edu/ and look for Technical Report 2009-500.