Presentation: "Soup to Nuts - Harnessing Lean to break through the local optimisation"

Time: Wednesday 12:05 - 13:05

Location: Franciscan I & II

Abstract: We've spent 10 years now breaking a fundamental rule of Lean Thinking. By chasing increased, and valuable, agility in software development we've often forgotten that the actual development is only one small part of the software delivery system. In many ways we're all guilty of local optimising for the problems we were left with in actual software development, and largely ignoring the harder problems of how to improve the whole software delivery pipeline such that we define and deliver more real value.

But it's not all bad news. Through lean thinking and visualising the whole system of software delivery there are now real tools and practices appearing that bring the whole system of software delivery together. This talk will share the secrets of how lean thinking and the emerging Agile Operations practices of DevOps and Continuous Delivery are to bring continuous improvement to the whole software delivery system.

Russell Miles, Managing Director of Open Credo

Russell Miles

"Never a dull moment" describes Russ pretty well. While working as a full-time Technologist for a defence contractor Russ also completed writing 2 books ("AspectJ Cookbook", "Learning UML 2.0" for O'Reilly Media) and obtained a BSc and then an MSc in Software Engineering from Oxford University. This multi-tasking tendency (or "gift/curse", depending on how you look at it) has enabled Russ to gain a huge amount of experience working in a diverse collection of industry sectors.

Finally specialising in the "cloud-scale" enterprise systems domain, long before "cloud" was even mentioned, Russ has continually worked on in high-availability, high traffic web and internal event-based systems.

Russ took the decision in 2009 to take on the reins at OpenCredo as Managing Director and consultant. To ensure that he has as little spare time as possible, Russ is also a keen contributor to open source projects and an active track host and speaker or "noise maker" on large scale, enterprise systems integration both locally in London and internationally. He's also found the time to co-author a third book for O'Reilly titled "Head First Software Development".

Russ' latest project is working on a leading edge tool for business to make the most out of the burgeoning flexible IT commodity markets that are enabled by Cloud and related technologies. He's also in the process of turning all this first-hand experience into, yep you guessed it, another book.