PMINJ 2013 February Meeting

Abstract

Agile concepts are becoming prevalent in the systems development community today and in practice have achieved some impressive results, due in large part to their capability to address the rapid rate of change and ever shorter delivery timeframes needed to be competitive in the marketplace today. While the basic concepts are not difficult to understand (indeed, it has been said that there is nothing really new in Agile) the challenge remains: how to effectively implement Agile in the Financial Services sector where Regulatory and Compliance, Risk Management and Data Security considerations are everyday constraints.

This presentation, based on the actual experience of a practicing Scrum Master and Project Manager Professional, will take a look at the objectives of Agile Project Management and Development and discuss how they may be implemented in the enterprise as a whole, within the context of existing system architectures, and without the need to extensively re-engineer established processes and controls. The presentation includes a brief introduction to some Agile Development methods, including an understanding of the Iterative approach that is the foundation of Agile, but does not seek to educate the audience in depth on any specific Agile method or process. The focus is on the frameworks that need to be present for Agile to add value to the enterprise. Agile, like almost any other project management or development tool is no “silver bullet”; while it is easy to understand it is not easy to use and implement effectively. It will not bring order to chaos.

Speaker

Bio:
John is a Manager in the Information Systems group of the Individual Life Insurance division at Prudential Financial, responsible for providing Project Management services to the Sales Illustrations, Term and Variable Policy Administration and Actuarial systems support teams. John is chairperson of the Agile Working Group within Prudential and has been a leader in the introduction of Agile technologies across multiple business units. He is currently working with the Systems and Business Leadership teams within the Individual Life Insurance division to establish a new SDLC based on the Agile SCRUM framework. John is a member of the Software Engineering Institute at Carnegie Mellon University and for many years has followed and applied their work on Systems Development practices including a role as a CMM Appraiser.
Prior to this John was a Director and principal at EuroComm Software providing Client Relationship and Project Management services to Bluestone Capital Partners LP (a Venture Capital group), overseeing the development and installation of a proprietary Global eBusiness Securities Trading platform at client sites around the world; including Standard Chartered Bank and International Bank of Asia in Hong Kong, ABN Amro in Johannesburg, South Africa and the Bank of Butterfield in Bermuda and the Cayman Islands.

In total John has over 35 years experience as a systems development professional in roles as a Systems Engineer, Programmer, Systems Analyst and Project Manager. He is a Project Management Professional and Certified Scrum Master and is actively engaged today as the Scrum Master on a multi-year, multi-million dollar software development project. He holds a BS (with Honors) in Computer Science from Loughborough University in the United Kingdom.

19 February 2013 - Morristown - Hyatt

PDP Information

Abstract

Speaker

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