Presented by Steve Tockey

The "Agile Manifesto" (http://agilemanifesto.org/)-literally, the Declaration of Independence for the Agile development movement-was signed in February, 2001. Since then (and even before, really) there has been ongoing debate about the merits of Agile vs. Waterfall (or, more properly, "plan-based") software development lifecycles. But is this even a debate worth having? The Standish Group's most recent Chaos report, "Chaos Manifesto 2013", reveals data that strongly suggests, "probably not". Is the Agile vs. Waterfall debate possibly even distracting us from a far more important issue? The Chaos report data also strongly suggests, "probably so". 

That, ultimately, is the topic of this presentation: what really matters in software development?

Steve Tockey is the Principal Consultant at Construx Software. During more than three and a half decades in the software industry, he has worked as a programmer, analyst, designer and researcher for organizations that include Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, The Boeing Company and Rockwell Collins, Inc.

At Construx, Steve applies his deep experience in object-oriented development, model-based requirements & design, software engineering economics, development process, project management, estimation, and software quality to help a wide variety of clients apply best practices throughout development and maintenance.

Steve has a Master's of Software Engineering from Seattle University and a B.A. in Computer Science from the University of California, Berkeley. He is a Certified Software Development Professional (CSDP), and chairs the CSDP Certification Committee of the IEEE Computer Society. Steve has been an adjunct professor in the Master of Software Engineering program at Seattle University, and is the author of Return on Software, a guide for companies that want to maximize the return on their software investment.