Software/IT business is the best illustration of “the whole is more than the sum of the parts”. The art of “peopleware” is how to make the best of our people, how to match personal competences with organizational culture and processes. It starts with (some) job profiles and a bunch (hopefully) of CVs. How to judge, grade or compare developers and software engineers, and match them to our “dream teams”? Let’s discuss various aspects:

• Putting order in chaos: standardizing the Software Engineering e-competences and curriculum. Models for defining and analyzing: e-competences = knowledge + skills + abilities to perform (e.g. European e-Competence Framework e-CF — http://www.ecompetences.eu).
• Is it hard to cultivate “soft” skills? Where and how — university, on-the-job, specific trainings, team buildings, or…all?
• Understanding the business: do software engineers need business competences and culture? Meeting the challenges of new business (digitized economy) and development (agile) models. Development is not a production — creativity and innovations are.
• Real challenge: bridging academic education (curriculum) with the real industry needs — is latency the only problem? Best practices of practical aspects in academic education. Professional trainings (certifications) embedded and with credits for university degree — pros and cons.
• Corporate culture (“peopleware”): balancing between “hard” (engineering) and “soft” skills. Top down or bottom up?
  The role and profile of a coach — personal, team, organizational.
• What’s next — or about Moore’s law on e-skills and competences?

It is essential to have the views of:

• IT/Software managers — How do we grade our developers? Do we value “soft” skills and how?
• IT professionals/Developers view — what’s missing?
• Various stakeholders view — industry, customers, academic, government, regulators, defense, …

Moderator: Dr. George Sharkov

Director, European Software Institute — Center Eastern Europe (ESI CEE)

Dr. George Sharkov graduated Mathematics and Computer Science at Sofia University, has PhD in Artificial Intelligence, research in applied informatics, biophysics, thermography and genetics (Gent, Belgium), enterprise information systems architectures. After 1994 leading international projects and multi-national teams for financial and banking systems, e-business, online markets (France, USA, Israel, global markets).

Since 2003 he is managing the Eastern European regional excellence center (ESI CEE, www.esicenter.eu) of the European Software Institute (www.esi.es), covering 12 countries in Eastern Europe and Caucasus region. He is a trainer and consultant in SPI (software process improvement), software engineering quality and management, implementation of CMMI model (SEI, Carnegie Mellon), IT Mark appraiser (ESI method for SMEs). George is leading a research network in Cryptography, Cyber Defense and business resilience (www.cryptobg.org), part of the appraiser apprentice program on RMM (Resilience Management Model, CERT at SEI).

Dr. Sharkov is lecturing Software Quality (CMMI) at Sofia University and a new Digitized Ecosystems. He is leading a Program for modernization of Software Engineering Management education (SEMP) in partnership with Carnegie Mellon University and 6 Bulgarian universities. Steering Committee member of the EC CEN Workshop in ICT-skills and expert on e-competences.

George is among the founders and the first Chairman of BASSCOM (Bulgarian Association of Software Companies, PIN-SME founder), initiator and promoter of the regional ICT brand initiative (SEE-IT), a founder and board member of the Bulgarian ICT Cluster. He is Program Committee member of 5 international conferences, jury member of national and international ICT contests, Grand Jury and Board member of the WSA contest under UN WSIS.

Participants

Alexander Andreev

CEO, SoftJoys

Alexander Andreev graduated from Saint Petersburg State University with degree in Physics. After post graduate studies in field of Digital Signal Processing Applications he taught mathematics in University of Aerospace Instrumentation for ten years. At the same time Alexander established SoftJoys, one of the first Russian software development companies. In 1999 he co-founded SJ Labs, US company, which shortly became a world leader in VOIP software. He is also a co-founder MIT Enterprise Forum Russian Chapter

Andrey Ivanov

COO, JetBrains

Since 2010 Andrey Ivanov is the member of executive team in JetBrains company, the world leader in professional software development tools. During this time, the main development center of JetBrains in St. Petersburg has doubled, and the company shows a steady growth of turnover by 40% per year.

Prior to that Andrey was the leader of the St. Petersburg Development Centers, such as Borland and Yandex, and ran his own company SwiftTeams. His overall path in IT-sector is 17 years long, starting from a programmer to the senior manager in international business in a high-professional team.

Andrey is one of the founders of the Academy of Modern Software Engineering, where during two years of the free study students can can get additional relevant knowledge demanded by the programming market.

Currently, the Academy is part of the Computer Science Center (http://compscicenter.ru), where Andrey is leading the Software Engineering stream.

Andrey is also the deputy director of the Department of Mathematics and Information Technologies in St. Petersburg Academic University of the Russian Academy of Sciences (http://mit.spbau.ru).

Andrey realizes the importance of preparing the young professionals for the rapidly growing IT market, and actively developes relations with relevant higher education institutions in St. Petersburg and the regions. In the nearest future JetBrains will open a new lab in one of the leading Russian educational institutions.

Andrey garduated from the Saint Petersburg Electrotechnical University (LETI) in 1994.

Richard Soley

As Chairman and CEO of OMG, Dr. Soley is responsible for the vision and direction of the world’s largest consortium of its type. Dr. Soley joined the nascent OMG as Technical Director in 1989, leading the development of OMG’s world-leading standardization process and the original CORBA® specification. In 1996, he led the effort to move into vertical market standards (starting with healthcare, finance, telecommunications and manufacturing) and modeling, leading first to the Unified Modeling Language TM (UML®) and later the Model Driven Architecture® (MDA®). He also led the effort to establish the SOA Consortium in January 2007, leading to the launch of the Business Ecology Initiative (BEI) in 2009. The Initiative focuses on the management imperative to make business more responsive, effective, sustainable and secure in a complex, networked world, through practice areas including Business Design, Business Process Excellence, Intelligent Business, Sustainable Business and Secure Business.

In addition, Dr. Soley is the Executive Director of the Cloud Standards Customer Council, helping end-users transition to cloud computing and direct requirements and priorities for cloud standards throughout the industry.

Dr. Soley also serves on numerous industrial, technical and academic conference program committees, and speaks all over the world on issues relevant to standards, the adoption of new technology and creating successful companies. He is an active angel investor, and was involved in the creation of both the Eclipse Foundation and Open Health Tools.

Previously, Dr. Soley was a cofounder and former Chairman/CEO of A. I. Architects, Inc., maker of the 386 HummingBoard and other PC and workstation hardware and software. Prior to that, he consulted for various technology companies and venture firms on matters pertaining to software investment opportunities. Dr. Soley has also consulted for IBM, Motorola, PictureTel, Texas Instruments, Gold Hill Computer and others. He began his professional life at Honeywell Computer Systems working on the Multics operating system.

A native of Baltimore, Maryland, U.S.A., Dr. Soley holds bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees in Computer Science and Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Benjamin B. Bederson

Benjamin B. Bederson is a Professor of Computer Science and a past director of the Human-Computer Interaction Lab at the Institute for Advanced Computer Studies and iSchool at the University of Maryland.

An ACM Distinguished Scientist, his research is on human computation, mobile device interfaces, interaction strategies, digital libraries, and online education. He is also Co-founder and Chief Scientist of Zumobi, a premium mobile app network.

Bill Curtis

Dr. Bill Curtis is Senior Vice President and Chief Scientist with Cast Software, a leader in providing technology for measuring and evaluating the structural quality of application software. He Is also the Director of the Consortium for IT Software Quality. He co-authored the Capability Maturity Model (CMM), the People CMM, and the Business Process MM.

Until its acquisition by Borland he was Co-founder and Chief Scientist of TeraQuest, the global leader in providing CMM-based services which was acquired by Borland. He is a former Director of the Software Process Program in the Software Engineering Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. Prior to joining the SEI, Dr. Curtis worked for MCC, ITT’s Programming Technology Center, GE Space Division, and taught statistics at the University of Washington.

He has published four books, over 150 articles, and was recently elected a Fellow of the IEEE for his contributions to software process improvement and measurement.