Newsletter Volume 27 Issue 7, Jul 2015
From The Editor
An Editorial I wrote about CMMI in the Feb 2004 Newsletter (Yes, way back then) has been receiving some hits recently, no doubt in part due to events like the CMMI® Institute Conference EMEA 2015 and Global Congress 2015. So what has changed since 2004? Maybe not as much as you might think. Back then, the “waterfall” approach was typically iterative and could include delivering production software as part of an iteration. More importantly, the SEI’s Team Software Process (TSP) was a forerunner of the distributed Agile approach and self-directed teams which global organisations are embracing today.
However, what is now making a significant difference is the CMMI® Institute’s push to raise awareness of the benefits of CMMI/Agile integration and to dispel some of the myths.
See below, CMMI and the NewAgile.
“Men account for a massive 72 per cent of the Australian ICT workforce. Add to that a marked bias towards younger workers and we have a challenge worth solving.”
In recent QESP Newsletter issues we have looked at the ongoing challenge of the ICT gender gap, e.g. Gender Gap Research Yields Unexpected Results and More Sexism in STEM. Now ICT sexism has been joined by ICT ageism as an area for concern.
See below, ICT Ageism Challenges and Opportunities.
“The lack of adherence to usability testing standards among several widely used electronic health record (EHR) products that were certified as having met these requirements may be a major factor contributing to the poor usability of EHRs”
Our April 2015 Newsletter included an article on health apps: Developers Neglect Privacy, Security in Health Apps. Now some more recent reports on electronic health records and health apps are giving further cause for concern. See below, eHealth Hazards.
“If students are not reading the textbook, they’re not getting the important material that they need. My lectures only cover the general ideas and then we do hands-on work in class,”
Our July 2015 article The Anti-Lecture Debate was triggered by the University of Adelaide’s ban on lectures and gave links to various viewpoints from academia on the value of lectures. Now some new research indicates that “College professors and instructors can learn a lot from the chapters of a digital textbook that they assign students to read.”See below, Digital textbook analytics can predict student outcomes
Current Issue
Articles in the current Issue cover:
CMMI and the New Agile
“A great deal of explicit risk management becomes unnecessary when a project uses an agile approach.”
ICT Ageism Challenges and Opportunities
“over a quarter of Australians aged 50+ experienced some form of age discrimination in the last two years. Furthermore, a full third of managers surveyed reported that they factored age into their decision making.”
eHealth Hazards
“Even after emergency physicians had acclimated to a new commercial electronic health record, they increased their tasks performed per minute by nearly 12 percent, increasing the potential for patient safety hazards.”
Digital textbook analytics can predict student outcomes
“research shows the data from digital textbooks is a much stronger predictor of student outcome than previous academic performance.”
Events
ACOSM2015 – The Australian Conference on Software Management
The QESP Australian Conference on Software Management to be held in Sydney on Thursday 19th November 2015 at the Menzies Hotel, with pre and post Conference functions.
Theme: ICT Today: New Opportunities and Threats in Software Management
Morning Forum: The New CIO.
Afternoon Forum: Women in ICT/ Women in Leadership
Further details will be advised closer to the event.
“The World’s most successful Awards Program”
Consensus (www.consensus.com.au) runs a series of Awards Programs that identify the most innovative technology designed and developed in Australia (and some in New Zealand ). Over 400 evaluations of innovation have been conducted by the 130 Judges since the Awards were started in 2000. Recent independent analysis of the Winners of the Awards shows that 9 out of 10 (90%) of the Winners of Consensus Awards have gone on to perform exceptionally well internationally. The same research showed that across the board, the companies have enjoyed over 1200% increase in sales or value since they have won Awards.
Based upon these achievements, Consensus can truly claim to be the World’s Most Successful Awards Program. A Consensus Showcase in late November 2015 will profile over 100 CEOs of previous winners. The value of the companies that will be present is in excess of $8 Billion. At the same event, Consensus will be presenting the Consensus Student Innovation Awards, Consensus IT Professional Awards, Consensus IT Writers Awards and the BigData Innovation Awards. For more information please email contact@consensus.com.au
Ted Smillie
QESP Chairman