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Thursday, October 30, 2008 from 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM (ET)
The Agile Imperative for SaaS focuses on the changes required of engineering organizations to support the cultural shift associated with the SaaS model.
Traditional plan-driven, "waterfall" development approaches simply do not work in the SaaS model. In traditional models used by on-premise software companies, clear feedback on customer uptake, usage and sales blockers often takes six to eight months after release to reach product management and engineering. In this talk, Ryan Martens, Founder and CTO of Rally Software, will focus on the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) business model. Teams get immediate feedback from customers and typically have vast amounts of usage and adoption data to help guide rapid decision making. Agile software development provides the ability to achieve significantly greater resource efficiencies, while closing the feedback loop quickly. That helps manage the extreme expectations associated with SaaS services. SaaS is forcing a fundamental change in the way smart software companies develop their products. By leveraging Agile methods, SaaS providers can reduce cycle times to weeks, adjust rapidly to customer feedback and move testing to the front of the process. Software agility is the only process that will allow a SaaS engineering team to deliver continuous value, quality and user loyalty.
Speaker
Ryan Martens - Founder & Chief Technology Officer, Rally Software
Ryan Martens brings to Rally proven leadership in dynamic, high growth software companies and is an expert in assisting organizations transition from traditional development processes to more Agile techniques. Before founding Rally Software Development - his fourth software start-up - Ryan directed the corporate adoption of Internet technologies within Qwest Communications, and then moved on to co-found Avitek, a Boulder-based custom software development firm where he served as Vice President of Marketing & Business Development. Ryan's successful efforts at Avitek culminated in an acquisition by BEA Systems in 1999. At BEA, Ryan served as Director of Product Management for the eCommerce applications division and he was instrumental in growing that division to more than $50 million in revenue within its first twelve months.
Ryan is an alumnus of the Colorado Chapter of Young Entrepreneurs' Organization and is also involved in a variety of community organizations including Colorado Conservation Trust, the Knight Foundation and the Entrepreneur Foundation of Colorado. Most recently, Ryan was named as a semi-finalist for the 2006 Ernst & Young Entrepreneur Of The Year award. Ryan received his Masters in Business Administration and his Bachelors of Science in Civil Engineering from the University of Colorado at Boulder.
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Formed by the powerful combination of Mass Software Council and New England Business and Technology Association, Inc., the organization is dedicated to fostering entrepreneurship and promoting the success of companies that develop and deploy technology across industry sectors. The Mass Technology Leadership Council accomplishes its mission by conducting educational programs and hosting signature events, facilitating networking between industry executives and potential partners, investors, and c ustomers, sponsoring research on the industry, engaging in activities to enhance the quality and quantity of the next generation of technology professionals, advocating in favor of technology policies that promote innovation and entrepreneurship, and recognizing industry-leading companies and people.
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