DePaul University, CTI Building
Egan Urban Center (CTI Rm 9101)
243 S. Wabash
Chicago, Illinois

Friday, February 27th, 2004 6:00pm - 8:00pm

Mary Poppendieck is President of Poppendieck LLC, Managing Director of the Agile Alliance, and a Senior Consultant with Cutter Consortium. A seasoned leader in both operations and new product development with more than 25 years' of IT experience, she has led teams implementing solutions ranging from enterprise supply chain management to digital media, and built one of 3M's first Just-in-Time lean production systems. As Information Systems Manager in a video tape manufacturing plant, Poppendieck first encountered the Toyota Production System, which later became known as Lean Production.

A popular writer and speaker, Poppendieck’s tutorials on managing software development offer a fresh perspective on project management. Her book Lean Software Development: An Agile Toolkit (Addison-Wesley, May 2003), brings lean production techniques to software development.

Topic - "Increasing Software Development Productivity"

Income growth of workers in any economic sector is directly related to productivity growth. In the past, the productivity of the technology sector grew not because technical workers were becoming more productive, but because technical capability was growing so fast. Unfortunately for the incomes of software development professionals, this is no longer the case. Future income growth will be related to our ability to increase software development productivity.

How can software development productivity be increased? Through the same approaches used in operations: a focus on customer value, a short, effective supply chain, healthy discipline, and innovation. Mary will discuss techniques that businesses have used for decades to jump-start an increase productivity, and show how they can be used to increase software development productivity.