Topics in demand in 2006 for general/technical audiences include these:
2006 Short talks and presentations
Conrad Weisert is a frequent speaker at
professional society meetings, user group meetings, and trade shows.
These presentations take between 45 and 90 minutes, depending on
audience participation.
Mainly technical topics |
Mainly managerial topics |
| Design patterns for computation -- exploiting numeric objects and type safety (based on the book) | UML: "Unified Modeling" or "Unstructured Muddling" Language? |
| The Dark Side of Java -- Restoring the balance. | The Collapse and Rebirth of Information Systems Infrastructure -- ACM Chicago Chapter meeting January, 2001 |
| Pseudo-classes, Quasi-Classes, and Object-oriented Fiascos | The Role of a Phased Life-Cycle in Object-Oriented Software Development: and vice versa. |
| Tutorial: Java for computation -- Making the best of a Java weakness. | Reusable components: Will object-oriented technology finally break down the barriers? |
| A Look at Program Quality | The Participative Approach to Methodology Development and Dissemination |
Survey topics |
|
| Legacy Systems of the Past, Present, and Future | Forty Years of Major Dramatic Breakthroughs in Software Development Methodology |
Also see some of IDI's single-session courses. For information about other topics, call (1-773) 736-9661 or E-mail cweisert@acm.org.
A few years ago nearly everyone agreed on the wisdom of planning and contolling a major software development project as a sequence of discrete phases. At the end of each phase the project team produces a set of results or deliverables, which form a basis for both:
Today, the status of a formal phased life cycle is uncertain and surprisingly controversial. To minimize risk of failure today's major software development project needs a modern life cycle methodology -- one that is:
Is such a modern and enlightened life-cycle feasible? If so, how do we integrate it with our other methodology components, in particular with
What organizational infrastructure is required to make it all work? What skills will our professional staffs need, and how can they acquire those skills? Is object-oriented analysis a sufficiently mature discipline to drive the early phases? Is there really such a thing as the waterfall approach?
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"A software development organization drawing on mature libraries of subroutines, macros, data structures, and other packaged components can enjoy huge advantages in the productivity and manageability of its projects and in the reliability and maintainability of its end products. Indeed of all the tools and techniques of a modern development methodology, the heavy use of existing modules offers by far the greatest benefits. So far, however, only a minority of organizations are routinely exploiting those benefits. "
That paragraph was written in 1975. At that time the structured revolution was to be the key to the long-overdue taming of reuse especially in business applications.
It could have been written again in 1995. Now object-oriented technology was going to give us easy reuse. Most of us are still waiting.
What accounts for these repeated disappointments? Is the concept of reuse somehow flawed? Does reuse not lend itself to today's applications and platforms? Is reuse sound in theory but too hard to set up and manage? Are today's languages and tools so powerful that repeated redevelopment has become easier and cheaper than tracking down and incorporating an existing solution? Are today's managers so hopelessly undisciplined that any systematic approach is doomed? Do contract development firms deliberately reject reuse so as to inflate their billings? Should we give up, or are we now on the threshhold of the long-awaited breakthrough?
Conrad Weisert will put forth his own explanations and offer practical advice on how to exploit this promising but elusive approach, both with and without object-oriented technology.
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Although Java offers attractive benefits, it is being aggresssively oversold as an ideal solution to a vast range of needs. In fact, Java presents a number of serious obstacles to:
Conrad Weisert's presentation attempts to restore balance to the topic, showing some of the prices an organization is likely to pay after embracing Java as a major development tool, and offering practical criteria for choosing between Java and alternatives. (This material is also the second half of the half-day seminar, Introduction to Java for Experienced C++ Programmers.)
See related article The Dark Side of Java
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Once an organization makes a commitment to disciplined software development, it faces choices in how to choose its best practices and how to communicate those choices to its professional staff. Two common approaches that rarely if ever work well are:
Instead experience in both large and small organizations confirms the effectiveness of a high degree of participation by the professional staff in all phases of methodology administration. The participative approach works especially well in a decentralized organization that allows its individual areas a great deal of autonomy in customizing their methods. Conrad Weisert will describe the organizational and documentation infrastructures for methodology administration, and will examine the costs and the human factors.
See related article Methodology Development and Dissemination in a Decentralized Organization.
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Most textbooks and courses on object-oriented programming (OOP) emphasize three kinds of object:
The object paradigm is equally valuable in computing with numeric quantities, where carefully designed numeric classes
Conrad Weisert will show not only how numeric objects simplify computational programming, but also how common design patterns can simplify the creation of robust numeric classes themselves. He will draw on examples from both business/commercial applications and scientific/engineering applications. Some knowledge of C++ or Java is helpful but not required.
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Despite Java's many attractive qualities, knowledgeable programmers realize that it's badly suited to numeric computation, for two reasons:
Conrad Weisert will discuss the general area of elementary numeric classes, with particular emphasis on a proposed way of circumventing the operator overloading problem. His talk combines elements of these articles found on this web site:
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The UML is enjoying growing acceptance among I.S. professionals as the preferred set of tools for "analysis and design". It is being endorsed and publicized by leading writers and teachers. It has been blessed as a standard for system modeling by the Object Management Group (OMG). It is assumed to fit especially well with object-oriented techniques.
Therefore, any organization involved with systems analysis must recognize the importance of UML and choose:
Packaged with the UML are two non-object-oriented methodology components: use cases and the so-called "Unified Process" life cycle.
Conrad Weisert will examine critically the strengths and weaknesses of UML in comparison with other approaches to systems analysis, emphasizing its suitability for capturing and organizing user requirements and documenting a rigorous system specification. He will offer guidelines for making choices.
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Segments of the so-called "object-oriented community" have given rise to a lot of folklore, circulating proposed standards and techniques that are actually extremely harmful. In one organization after another, very large project teams working on major applications have gotten bogged down in massive cost overruns and schedule slippages that ultimately served to discredit object technology in their organizations. In many such fiascos, the project team had attempted to follow ill-advised "standards" recommended by some presumed expert.
Conrad Weisert will describe several of these harmful techniques, analyze their impact on software reliability and maintainability, and suggest alternative approaches.
See related article Pseudo Classes and Quasi Classes Confuse Object-Oriented Programming
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NOTE: This 90-minute presentation is an effective guest lecture in a full-term programming course at the advanced undergraduate level.
Although we thought that many issues of program quality had been settled in the "structured revolution" of the 1970's, we still encounter just as many atrocious programs as ever. Some of the worst come from leading software vendors! Organizations are finding that their multi-tiered object-oriented applications, like the 10000 statement monolithic spaghetti code of a generation ago, are turning out to be costly and painful maintenance nightmares.
We begin by asking: "What is a good program?" With the participants help we develop a list of criteria, both easy-to-measure (objective) and hard-to-measure (subjective), pointing out that the more subjective harder-to-measure criteria have the biggest impact on flexibility, maintainability, and reliability.
We explore two broad areas in depth, illustrating both with good and bad examples:
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We generally associate the designation "legacy system" with the most inflexible and unmaintainable sort of application developed by the most unenlightened programmers for an obsolete mainframe computer. Today, however, despite decades of dramatic breakthroughs in software development methodologies, many organizations are surprised and disappointed to discover that they have replaced those old applications with expensive new ones that are just as costly to maintain. We're still developing legacy applications!
Responsibility for this alarming situation is shared by software vendors, academic programs, fad methodologists, and contract development firms. Fortunately, a remedy is still well within the reach of disciplined management in user organizations.
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Every three or four years someone announces a major dramatic breakthrough (MDB) in the tools, techniques, and methodology of software development. Some of those MDBs are evolutionary, building on current methodology, while others are revolutionary, requiring a sharp break with past practice.
Each such MDB has promised a productivity improvement between 1.5X and 10X that of "traditional" approaches. If we believe those claims, then, based on the aggregate impact, we can now expect to develop and maintain software with less than 1/1000 the effort it took in 1962. But what has been the real effect of MDBs upon productivity, software quality, and the software development profession?
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Last Updated October, 2004