Ricardo Jorge Lopez

Collaboration and communication: growing and sustaining ultra large scale (ULS) systems

Mission- and life-critical Ultra-Large-Scale (ULS) systems are increasingly prevalent and networked in many domains, including business, aviation, communication, defense, finance, health, and public utilities. Such systems are often too complex for generally centralized methods to work well for such tasks as requirements discovery, development, system integration, test, deployment, configuration, operation protection, and evolution. Yet today we lack sound methods and technologies for distributing these tasks across large ecosystems of system production. What technical, legal, contractual, and cultural frameworks are needed to enable global partners with independent, sometimes conflicting agendas, to function effectively in the execution of such tasks? Can a competitive and collaborative distributed design ecosystem deliver value and robustness over time consistent with demands for quality, intellectual property protection, and other such requirements? Join this panel of industry experts and academic researchers who will share and debate their perspectives and lay out a vision for the future.

The ultra challenge: software systems beyond big

How can the ultra large systems (ULS) of the future be built if they will have the complexity of trillions of lines of code, maintain continuous 24x7 operations with no downtime, and live in a hostile environment with unpredictably changing requirements? This panel will discuss and debate the challenges posed by ultra large systems in terms of their design, growth, deployment and dynamics.

Challenges in outsourcing and global development: how will your job change?

If you are a software professional, your job is changing. Outsourcing and global development affect many things in our work environment: what and where we build, how (and when) we communicate, and how we prepare ourselves for the future. Outsourcing and global development inherently create challenges with long-distance communication, cultural differences, and crossing organizational boundaries. For example, how do software interface contracts help or hinder system integration? How can a team in one country extend or maintain software built by developers in another country? This Panel will appeal to anyone whose job is affected by outsourcing and globalization. Panelists will present and discuss both social and technical issues.

Escaped from the lab: software practices in large organizations

What are some of the common practices for taking new ideas and converting them into products? What are the key obstacles that cause the failure of research prototypes turned into commercial products? This workshop examines the practices that have worked well and the approaches that can help developers and managers avoid customer problems.