SEPG 2007 Report

SEPG has come and gone. This year held in hip, happenin’ Austin, TX. Though, the weather only cooperated for maybe 1 of the 4 days, not including the Sunday on which I arrived.

Attendance was a few hundred lower than last year, but there are a number of possible explanations for this (purely conjecture on my part):

- The event was about a week later in the month than usual;

- The SEI hired an outside company to market, promote and handle much of the registration activities. By and large they did a decent job. However, one very noticeable difference was the increase in prices for everything from attending to showing at the exhibition area. Unless my memory fails me, as a speaker I don’t recall having to pay for attending last year at all. This year I did pay for all days but the one day of my presentation. If there’s one thing I can over-generalize about with little impunity it’s that the process improvement set are not the sort who part easily with their cash.

Regardless of the net number of attendees, there was no shortage of content. As for those subjects that interest me the most (and maybe you), I am happy to report that the volume of presentations dedicated to Small Settings and Agile has blossomed to require that these two tracks be separated into their own individual sections.

It was nice to see the two topics not be inseparable and to see/hear so much content that wasn’t necessarily assuming that all small settings use agile or vise-versa.
The proceedings (or some part thereof) will be available eventually from the SEI’s web site.

It was also nice to see and catch up with David Anderson whose SEPG trip report can be found here. (Terrible pic of me, by the way.)

David introduced me to Clementino Mendonca who expressed an interest in speaking with me some more about my experience with clients implementing MSF for CMMI Process Improvement and my "AgileCMMI" process architecture that might be able to be wrapped around it.

It is somehow fitting that the person coincidentally in the photo with Clementino (should you wander over to David’s blog) is a newer client of mine — showing keen interest in MSF.

Back on the subject of Agile + CMMI… Paul Nielsen, SEI’s CEO very clearly stated to me the desire for SEI to publish some sort of official "position statement" on where they stand with respect to agile methods. In particular, stating that the SEI is not opposed to agile methods nor do they advocate any sort of disparagement of agile or any expectation that agile methods be assumed incompatible with CMMI. (Or something to that extent.)

Mixed in with this discussion was a side comment by Dr. Nielsen to the effect of why the SEI has such a reputation — to which I immediately pointed out that the SEI’s marketing ability is far less powerful than the combined power of all those who walk the earth in their name. Specifically, all the appraisers and instructors. Most of whom (~90% ?) wouldn’t know agile if they saw it and if they did, wouldn’t know how to implement or appraise CMMI in an agile environment.

I’m really surprised I haven’t blogged (read: ranted) about that sooner… Maybe I have already in my FAQ. It’s gotta be somewhere.