Track details

Requirements, Definition and Management

Requirements Definition and Management encompasses all of the activities that revolve around eliciting, defining, elaborating, understanding, organizing, reviewing, and communicating business, user, and software requirements, as well as defining solutions based on those business goals and objectives. These activities are done because they help ensure that the applications that are developed solve the real business and customer problems. This track explores the experiences of organizations with tools, techniques, and processes used to effectively define and manage requirements and analyze systems. Analysts, architects, developers, project managers, and others interested in methodology and tools for defining, managing, and analyzing requirements should attend this track.

Modeling, Architecture and Construction

Software development is a business process requiring many different talents to implement effectively. The software architect and the software developer are key roles for successful software delivery. The architect is responsible for turning requirements into analysis and design models built on a sound architecture. Software architecture is crucial for designing reliable, flexible, and maintainable software systems, and helps communicate the high-level design to the various stakeholders at a level of detail that is meaningful to them. It also allows developers to create software systems that enable reuse and integration with legacy and third-party systems. Developers create the reality of the architecture ideas and models through building, modernizing, extending, integrating, and deploying software. Sessions in this track explore the benefits of a well-architected system, present the tips and techniques of organizations that have made software architecture an important part of their software delivery process, and show how both visual and code-centric development can help organizations adopt the right paradigm for their particular development needs. This track is for architects and developers interested in best practices and the latest innovations in methodology and tools for supporting architectural design, discovery, and control, and software construction and assembly.

Quality Management

Quality driven software delivery is a team sport, and every member of that team shares responsibility for enterprise quality management. This track is dedicated to the IBM Rational tools and industry best practices that can help software development teams improve the functionality, performance, and availability of complex applications. Attendees gain in-depth guidance from experienced IBM experts and customers on topics ranging from deep code analysis to system test automation and management, all enabled by the tools and capabilities in the IBM Rational quality management portfolio. Learn how to work with existing resources and how to overcome schedule constraints in order to increase productivity and value to the organization while enhancing project success. This track is for testers and others on the project team - analysts, architects, developers, and deployment managers - looking for valuable, actionable information that can be used to build quality into applications from the beginning.

Change and Release Management

Software change and release management, a key capability in modern software development, enables teams to accelerate the software and systems delivery lifecycle. This track is for practitioners, administrators, and advanced users who want to learn how IBM Rational change and release management solutions - IBM Rational ClearCase®, IBM Rational ClearQuest®, IBM Rational Team Concert®, IBM Rational Build Forge® and IBM Rational Software Analyzer® - can empower organizations to improve productivity and team collaboration, gain better visibility into projects, automate processes, improve quality, manage distributed teams, and provide audit trails and traceability across the software development lifecycle for fast delivery of high-quality software.

Process, Project and Portfolio Management

Software and systems delivery has become a fundamental business process in the global economy, and the ability to adapt to changing market conditions requires that information technology is fully integrated into the business strategy and operations to ensure consistent alignment with business priorities, and better execution.

Executives require visibility and real-time decision support to keep the enterprise focused on solutions to high-priority problems, supported by the ability to measure the performance of current and future IT activities and assets. IT leaders must deliver significant business value and ensure constant alignment of project investments with evolving business objectives. Project leaders must be able to identify, implement and drive adoption of repeatable best-practice approaches for successful execution, and be able to more proactively identify and resolve issues, to reduce risks associated with project failure. All stakeholders must be involved and informed in addressing the changing business needs, especially when variations in project health threaten outcomes.

This track explores topics across several domains that support organizational change and iterative software and systems delivery. Hear and learn from actual experiences across the spectrum of process adoption, portfolio planning and oversight, and execution of major initiatives, programs, and projects. This track is for executives, IT leaders, program managers, project managers, portfolio managers, process engineers, business analysts, and other stakeholders concerned with optimizing IT investments with industry best practices and team unifying tools for more predictability, adaptability, and visibility.

Application Security and Compliance

Today, many organizations depend on Web-based software and systems to run their business processes, conduct transactions with suppliers and deliver ever more sophisticated services to customers. Unfortunately, in the race to stay one step ahead of the competition, many organizations spend little or no effort ensuring that these applications do not compromise the overall security and compliance of their organization by introducing vulnerabilities that can be exploited to gain access to confidential company information or sensitive client data. The most efficient way to stay ahead of application security and compliance is to build software securely from the ground up. Unfortunately, application security is most often "bolted on" at the end of the software development process, rather than "built in" across the entire development and delivery cycle, resulting in vulnerabilities that are found late - if at all - where they prose the greatest threats and are significantly more costly to repair.

In this track we will focus on the fundamentals of application security - common attack types, how to defend against these attacks, secure coding practices, identifying vulnerabilities through a combination of manual and automated approaches, what to do when vulnerabilities have been identified, and best practices for integrating security testing into application development. We will also delve into emerging threats in Web 2.0 environments, SOA security and the inherent risks of Web-enabling legacy applications.

Enterprise Architecture Management

Today's organizations need to make faster, better-informed decisions in order to seize business opportunities. Enterprise Architecture (EA) delivers enterprise blueprints for change and transformation, with visibility across strategy, business architecture, IT architecture and technology. Further, EA helps organizations prioritize IT investments to support business goals in order to maximize the business value from IT investments by installing a powerful communication and collaboration platform between business and IT stakeholders. Organizations that practice EA report more effective decision-making, improved business and IT alignment, IT cost savings, better insight during organizational transformations, and improved time-to-value of in their IT investments. EA also improves the success of IT Governance, SOA and Business Process Management (BPM) initiatives. This track focuses on the management aspects of EA and therefore balances two areas of concern: Building an EA, and using an EA. Building the EA applies modeling notations, processes, methodologies, and tools surrounding various forms of business and solution architecture, addressing both current and future states. Using the EA addresses how those activities and associated artifacts are linked to solution requirements, software development, and application deployment processes. By addressing both building and using concerns, participants learn how to makes EA more actionable -- integrating strategy and solution delivery -- thereby improving time-to-value for affecting transformation and overall business results.

Participants who will find the greatest value from this track include: Business LOB Executives, IT Executives, Business Strategists, Enterprise Architects, Business Architects and Business Analysts. This track will also benefit IT Architects, Solution Architects, Software Architects, Data Architects and Project managers who are interested in best practices, real-world experiences, and the latest innovations in enhancing organizational agility and the communication and collaboration between business and IT.

Enterprise Modernisation

Today your company is facing demands for new products and services, including global support for outsourced operations, integration with business partner and customer applications. Competitive factors are often driving new requirements. Frequently the IT organizations ability to rapidly respond to the business is severely limited by the architecture and years of evolution of existing systems. An incremental modernization approach leading to service-oriented architecture (SOA) is the path to provide the flexibility required to meet your business needs.

This track will showcase IBM Rationals Enterprise Modernisation solution that enable organizations to cost-effectively and incrementally evolve core IT systems towards modern architectures and technologies-reducing maintenance burden and freeing up more of their resources to focus on developing new business requirements and capabilities.

IBM Rational Software Delivery Platform

IBM Rational offers tools and processes supporting the entire software delivery lifecycle. Sessions in this track are designed to introduce participants to the wide range of offerings from IBM Rational. This track will include sessions for classic Rational solutions as well as detailed overviews of the new Jazz platform and the IBM Rational offerings now built on that platform! This track is for developers, testers, configuration managers, project and team leaders, or anyone interested in learning more about the IBM Rational Software Delivery Platform.