ThoughtWorks' Quarterly Technology Briefings

Forging a New Alliance: Cutting-edge software innovations to power the Business/IT relationship

Today's businesses need to derive much more value from their IT investments. Accelerating business cycles and increasing cost pressures are stretching existing IT practices and organisational models to the breaking point.

There are a number of well-documented trends that illustrate the current stagnation in business/IT innovation: slow time to market for new technology projects, bloated platform software that fails to deliver on it's promised business value, and difficulty in hiring new personnel who want to work in a highly compartmentalized way.

Quantum leaps in the business value of technology are only possible by redesigning the way that businesses engage with their IT colleagues. Fortunately, we're seeing many positive innovations that change not just the technology itself, but the ways that business people view, shape, and deploy technology.

Over the last few years, we've worked with various organisations to help bring IT groups closer to the businesses they serve, taking advantage of some positive developments in software technology that have emerged. Some of these developments include: shorter release cycles that produce working software quicker, the web steamroller that values continuous innovation, a renaissance in software craftsmanship using fit-for-purpose toolsets and closer attention to quality, and smaller teams of collocated, polyskilled individuals.

Our speakers

Martin Fowler, Chief Scientist, ThoughtWorks
Martin Fowler is an author, speaker, consultant and general loud-mouth on software development. Mr Fowler concentrates on the design of enterprise software and looks at what makes a good design and what practices are needed to enhance it. He has been a pioneer of object-oriented technology, refactoring, patterns, agile methodologies, domain modelling, the Unified Modelling Language, and Extreme Programming. He is the author of five books on software development, which have some 750,000 copies in print in a dozen languages. He regularly adds yet more words to http://martinfowler.com

Scott Shaw, Director of Services, ThoughtWorks Australia
Scott Shaw is a manager and technologist with over 15 years experience building large-scale, distributed software systems for a variety of business domains.  In his current role, Scott oversees project delivery and people in ThoughtWorks’ Australian consulting practice.  Through wave after wave of technological innovation, Scott has crafted robust technical solutions that deliver value without waste or unnecessary complexity.  He anxiously awaits the next revolution in business software systems.

Calgary

8.00am - 9.30am, Tuesday 16 September 2008, Hyatt Regency Calgary Hotel, 700 Centre Street SE
Register here

Toronto

8.00am - 9.30am, Thursday 18 September 2008, Park Hyatt Toronto Hotel, 4 Avenue Road
Register here

If you are interested in attending this briefing, simply register online through the links above.

If you are unable to register here, please email Patricia Merkel, pmerkel@thoughtworks.com, specifying which event you would like to attend.

Be sure to tell us who you are, where you are and your job title, as well as leaving a number so we can call you if we need to. You can always call us on 403.619.3713.

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