Personal Software Engineering Discussion Group

Place: Room 420, GP South (Building 78)
Time: Monday 27th March 2006, 4pm coffee/tea, 4.10 talk
Title: "Research vs Commercial Software Development: are there
        strategies that can be transferred?"
Presenter: Nikki Appleby

Abstract:
Commercial companies are those companies that provide a defined set of
services to consumers that are willing to pay a fair price for them.
They employ software development strategies that allow, amongst other
things, the fulfillment of customer needs, collaboration among developers,
and management of costs. Commercially driven strategies mean that the
companies are trying to reach a defined goal, and they are employing
software development to reach it.

Research is undertaken when there is not necessarily a clearly defined
goal. It can entirely consist of trial and error, but is more likely to
be a series of steps where the direction of the next step is not
determined until the prior step has been completed.

This seminar aims to create discussion inspired by the following
questions:

o  What commercial standard software development approaches should be used
   in research, for researchers; managers; architects?
o  What is special about Life Sciences research?
o  What saves time, and what adds time?
o  What is the result if software development is done ad-hoc?
o  Can collaboration be made easier?

Nikki Appleby graduated from the University of Hertfordshire, UK in 1989
with a degree in Computer Science. Starting as a developer in client/server
systems, then progressing to Business Analyst, Nikki has had to deal with
the management and co-ordination of customer requirements across UK sites
and globally. She moved to Australia in 2001 and, after a stint as Systems
Architect, changed direction into Bioinformatics. She is now studying for a PhD.


Additional details may be found on the discussion group's web page:
http://www.itee.uq.edu.au/~daniel/pse-dg/index.html

Daniel Bradley
Research Assistant
ARC Centre in Bioinformatics
d.bradley@imb.uq.edu.au




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