SATURN 2012 Awards Conferred

Since 2010, the SEI and IEEE have been conferring two attendee-selected awards at SATURN. The IEEE Software SATURN Architecture in Practice Presentation Award is given to the presentation that best describes experiences, methods, and lessons learned from the implementation of architecture-centric practices. Anthony Tsakiris of Ford Motor Company and Jeromy Carriere of eBay, Inc. received this award in 2010 and 2011 respectively.  This year’s award winner was Michael Keeling of Vivisimo for his presentation titled Creating An Architecture Oral History: Minimalist Techniques for Describing Systems.

SATURN 2012 Keynote: Andy Hunt, Agility and Your Wetware: How to Get Uncomfortable with Agile and Jumpstart Your Creativity

Agility and Your Wetware: How to Get Uncomfortable with Agile and Jumpstart Your Creativity
Andy Hunt, Toolshed Technologies

Looking back at Agile Manifesto.

Really hard problems have nothing to do with hard science. Real hard problems is that it’s us writing, or managing the people who write, code. The problem is that it is us. If we’re problem, what can we do to fix it?

by Andy Hunt, Toolshed Technologies

SATURN 2012 IEEE Software Plenary Talk: Frances Paulisch, Standardizing Speed and Security for Software-Based Systems

Standardizing Speed and Security for Software-Based Systems
Frances Paulisch, Siemens Corporate Technology

Common thematic trend at SATURN: people and culture. Change from command and control to more empowerment, autonomy, enabling people to make decentralized decisions. Conveying vision so people can make decisions in the right way is a more motivating way to work together.

Software initiative at Siemens will take on more of a governance role. Siemens has issues with embedded-system complexity. Software is not subject to law of physics. There are more interfaces with potential threats as well as benefits. As software interconnects with everything, that poses more threats, and there are more threats out there in the cyber world.

SATURN 2012 Plenary Talk: Hans Gyllstrom, Architecture-Based Transformation of a Large Enterprise

Architecture-Based Transformation of a Large Enterprise
Hans Gyllstrom, Enterprise Design Group

This talk presented observations and insights gleaned from leading transformations to a better state over the past 10 years or more.

Case study of transformation of a large Australian bank. CEO wanted to be able to say: I’ll never buy another data center, rack, server, storage, or network device; never get locked into proprietary hardware; tell teams it will be weeks to get them new hardware; pay up-front for infrastructure that may not be used; implement internal solutions for common problems when an equivalent commodity cloud solution is available. Implemented an IT agile operating model.

Transformation: from current state to target state via a migration path involving numerous intermediate state.

Architecture comprises decisions on structure. Period.

SATURN 2012 Keynote: Michael Stal, Win-Win With Agile Architecture

Win-Win with Agile Architecture
Michael Stal, Siemens Corporate Research

This keynote covered software architecture and how it can be combined with Agile in systematic way; perspectives on agility and architecture.

“Experts solve problems, geniuses avoid them” (Einstein). Architects should be geniuses.

Architecture and design are two sides of the coin. If you knew everything in advance, you could design the best architecture. Waterfall would be a perfect fit.  But the real world is not perfect.

The other side of the coin is represented by the Agile Manifesto. In software architecture, embracing change is important. However, change should be planned.

Why Attend SATURN 2012?

SATURN 2012 is only a few weeks away. If you an experienced or aspiring practitioner or technical consultant and have seen the technical program, list of courses and tutorials, and descriptions of the keynotes and plenary talks, chances are that you found something on the program that would be relevant to your interests and concerns.

But if you still haven’t registered to attend SATURN, you probably have good reasons for hesitating. You may be having difficulty convincing the people who approve your travel requests that the benefits you will derive from attending will outweigh the costs of travel, conference fees, and perhaps most importantly, time away from the office–time during which you will not generate any billable hours or be able to contribute to important projects.

Why, then, do we think that you should consider registering for SATURN despite your good reasons for hesitating?

Something for Everyone at SATURN 2012

Whether you are an aspiring software architect or an experienced practitioner, the SATURN 2012 Conference offers courses, presentations, tutorials, and talks tailored to your level of knowledge and experience.

Relative newcomers to architecture-centric engineering and development can take the introductory course in the SEI Software Architecture Curriculum, Software Architecture: Principles and Practices (SAPP) on Monday and Tuesday, May 7-8 at a discounted price. This popular course, offered each year at SATURN and taught this year by Rob Wojcik of the SEI, introduces participants to the essentials of software architecture. Also offered at SATURN this year is a half-day tutorial on Tuesday, May 8 by Peter Eeles of IBM Rational titled Software Architect 101. This tutorial (T1) provides attendees with a solid grounding in all aspects of software architecture and a framework on which they can build a deeper understanding of the role of the architect. Other Tuesday tutorials cover effective stakeholder collaboration (T2), integration of software architecture-centric methods into object-oriented analysis and design (T3), and architectural implications of cloud computing (T4).

Tutorial on Technical Debt Added to SATURN 2012 Program

The SATURN 2012 Program Committee has made a change to one of the tutorials scheduled for the morning of Friday, May 11 at SATURN. Tutorial 6 (T6) will now be Strategic Management of Technical Debt, by Robert Nord and Ipek Ozkaya of the SEI.

Nord and Ozkaya, along with Philippe Kruchten of the University of British Columbia, will conduct a workshop on managing technical debt at the International Conference on Software Engineering in June and are editors of a forthcoming special issue of IEEE Software devoted to the topic. Here is more information about the SEI’s work in shaping a research agenda for managing technical debt.

Exploring Technical Tracks at SATURN 2012

The SATURN 2012 technical committee has put together a robust program of technical sessions, courses, tutorials, keynote presentations, and plenary talks that will allow practitioners at every level to walk away with knowledge that they can use at their organizations immediately.

Choose your path at the SATURN 2012 Conference on May 7-11, 2012 in St. Petersburg, Florida. Technical sessions will be divided into 8 tracks designed around aspects of software architecture from collaboration within an organization, to large-scale systems’ use of architecture-centric engineering. Architects at any level can delve deeper into the aspects of software architecture they choose. Personalize your SATURN 2012 experience by choosing from the 8 technical tracks:

Press Release: Three Internationally Celebrated Leaders to Keynote SATURN 2012 Conference

Media Contact
Dana Hanzlik
Phone: 412-268-4793
E-mail: public-relations@sei.cmu.edu

Pittsburgh, Pa., March 19, 2012—The Carnegie Mellon Software Engineering Institute (SEI) has announced the keynote speakers for the upcoming SEI Architecture Technology User Network (SATURN) 2012 Conference to be held May 7-11, 2012, at the St. Petersburg Bayfront Hilton Hotel in St. Petersburg, Florida. Three software engineering and software architecture thought leaders will keynote the SATURN 2012 Conference: Andy Hunt, co-founder of The Pragmatic Programmers, LLC, an Agile publishing and training company; Michael Stal, principal engineer at Siemens Corporate Research and Technologies; and Douglas C. Schmidt, professor of computer science at Vanderbilt University.