Session Title

Some surprising features of tomorrow’s organizations

Abstract

Software development organization structure has never been very different from other service and manufacturing organizations. Much is celebrated about changes in process over the years from waterfall to agile. However, the organizational structure has always been hierarchical, with a manager at each level, and the use of gatekeepers such as marketing insulating their work from stakeholders.

Some of these structures are eroding and some becoming stronger. If software chooses to learn from the current lackluster performance of today’s groups, the future will see an increase in locally organized but less independent teams, doing specialized development that is integrated with the business processes of their area rather than having a separate IT identity. The biggest change will be the disappearance of software bloat, with future organizations one tenth the size of today’s overgrown projects. These radical changes, combined with a pullback on AI efforts, could lead to a serious blip in the world economy.

Bio

Jim Coplien is a pioneer who has laid much of the groundwork for modern software development. He is credited as a contributor to the Scrum framework, for his research that validated the Scrum approach, as well as for his foundational contributions to XP. He has nearly 200 publications including five books on topics ranging from agile development to object-oriented software design. He is a co-founder of the pattern discipline and co-inventor of the DCI paradigm. He also has a distinguished academic career history rooted in engineering, computer science and philosophy degrees. He currently works with projects to tackle strategic organizational and software architecture issues.