Capers Jones, Gary Gack, Leon Kappleman, Dan Galorath Team Up To Improve IT
From the consortium web site:
Information Systems Risk Management Consortium Charter
Written on January 28, 2010 at 4:25 pm, by adminThe consortium is the result of four of the industry’s leaders (Capers Jones, Gary Gack, Leon Kappelman, Dan Galorath) deciding to pool our expertise and form a consortium called the Information Systems Risk Management Consortium for the purpose of offering our combined talents to assist the information systems industry. The process improvement results we’ve achieved with other diversified government and industry organizations and large distributed companies has convinced us we can help you accelerate your strategic initiatives while improving tactical performance with measurable results within a 6 to 18 month calendar window.
Our experiences can help your teams identify and reduce the potential risks earlier in the project life cycle. In most cases the problems and failures are avoidable if you know what to look for, what to do about them, have repeatable processes, appropriate practices, and utilize independent expertise like ours both before and after contracts are awarded. Federal Government organizations a world-class companies often lack the necessary in-house expertise to ensure success in these high-risk, complex, multi-year initiatives. Independent specialists with world-class experience and capabilities can provide the critical differentiator needed to manage successfully large high-risk projects.
Software and IT Projects are Risky
Failures are common, especially as project size increases. Problems are not uncommon but are preventable.
A Risk Reduction Strategy
This Consortium has expertise and a desire to help organizations improve its software and IT project outcomes. We offer a preliminary discussion with senior IT management team to discuss an approach to software and IT project risk containment. Over a century of relevant experience helping complex organizations like yours makes us confident future outcomes will be greatly improved with our assistance.
Consortium Members
Capers Jones
Capers Jones is the President and CEO of Capers Jones & Associates LLC. He is also the founder and former chairman of Software Productivity Research LLC (SPR), and holds the title of Chief Scientist Emeritus at SPR. Capers Jones founded SPR in 1984.
Mr. Jones is a well-known author, researcher, and international public speaker. Among his book titles are Patterns of Software Systems Failure and Success (Prentice Hall 1994); Applied Software Measurement, 3rd edition (McGraw Hill 2008); Software Quality: Analysis and Guidelines for Success (International Thomson 1997); Estimating Software Costs, 2nd edition(McGraw Hill 2007); and Software Assessments, Benchmarks, and Best Practices(Addison Wesley Longman 2000). The 3rd edition of his book Applied Software Measurement was published in the Spring of 2008 and his most recent book, Software Engineering Best Practices,was published by McGraw Hill in October of 2009.
Mr. Jones and his colleagues have collected historical data from more than 600 corporations and more than 30 government organizations. This historical data is a key resource for judging the effectiveness of software process improvement methods. This data is also widely cited in software litigation cases where quality, productivity, and schedules are involved. Mr. Jones has been retained as an expert witness in 15 software-related lawsuits dealing with breach of contract and software tax issues.
Mr. Jones has consulted at more than 150 large corporations and a number of government organizations such as NASA, the U.S. Air Force, U.S. Navy, Internal Revenue Service, and the U.S. Courts. He has also worked with several State governments.
Gary Gack
Gary Gack is the founder and President of Process-Fusion.net, a provider of e-Learning, Assessments, Strategy advice, Training, and Coaching related to integration and deployment of software and IT industry best practices. Mr. Gack holds an MBA from the Wharton School and is a Lean Six Sigma Black Belt. In addition he is an ASQ Certified Software Quality Engineer (CSQE), a Certified Scrum Master, a Visiting Scientist with the Software Engineering Institute (2006) where he co-authored Measuring for Performance Driven Improvement 1, a course that he is an authorized instructor and holds the ITIL Foundation Certification. He has more than 40 years of diverse experience in the software and IT industry, including more than 20 years focused on process improvement. He is the author of numerous articles and a forthcoming book entitled Managing the Black Hole: The Executive’s Guide to Software Project Risk.
Mr. Gackhas extensive experience with problem project assessment and recovery. His areas of specific expertise include best practices assessments, large scale critical path planning (projects with 10,000+ tasks), and software quality assurance methods (including software inspections, combinatorial test methods, static and dynamic analysis of test coverage, andotherrelated methods). In addition he has extensive experience with software metrics and models used to forecast and evaluate the impact of process changes on effectiveness and efficiency.
Leon A. Kappelman
Leon A. Kappelman, Ph.D. is a research scientist, teacher, author, speaker, and consultant dedicated to helping organizations better manage their information, systems, and technology assets. He is Director Emeritus of the Information Systems Research Center and a Professor of Information Systems in the Information Technology & Decision Sciences Department of the College of Business at the University of North Texas, where he is also a Fellow of the Texas Center for Digital Knowledge. Dr. Kappelman founded and chairs the Society for Information Management’s Enterprise Architecture Working Group and edited their book The SIM Guide to Enterprise Architecture (CRC Press, 2010).
Dr. Kappelman has assisted many public andprivate organizations (including the Department of Veteran Affairs, EDS, the Executive Office of the President of the United States, Experian, Computer Associates, IBM, JC Penney, Kraft Foods, SAIC, the State of Texas, Texas Health Resources, the Treasury Department of Canada, the United Nations, Wells Fargo, and the World Bank) with technology management activities including project management, software development, continuity of operations, strategic planning, governance, enterprise architecture, and IT workforce management. His research and publications on the early warning signs of software project failure are widely recognized.
Professor Kappelman has testified before the US Congress on technology legislation and IT management practices. He has lectured and conducted seminars and workshops on many management, business, and technology topics in North America, Europe, and Asia. His work has been reported in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, BusinessWeek, Newsweek, Dallas Morning News, Washington Post, Vanity Fair, L.A. Times, and scores of other newspapers and magazines; he has appeared on CNN, CNBC, PBS, ABC World News Tonight, as well as numerous local and regional television and radio stations.
Dan Galorath
Dan Galorath is the President and CEO of Galorath Incorporated. During his over three decades in the industry, Mr. Galorath has been solving a variety of management, costing, systems, and software problems for both information technology and embedded systems.
Mr. Galorath has performed all aspects of software development and software management. He has reorganized troubled software projects, assessed their progress, applied proven methodologies and plans for completion, and estimated cost to complete. He has personally managed these projects to successful completion. He has created and implemented software management policies, and reorganized (as well as designed and managed) software development projects.
His company, Galorath Incorporated, developed the SEER applications, methods, and training for Software and Information Technology cost, schedule, risk analysis, and management decision support. He is one of the principal developers of the SEER-SEM software evaluation model.
His teaching experience includes development and presentation of courses in Software Cost, Schedule, and Risk Analysis; Software Management; Software Engineering; to name a few. Among Mr. Galorath’s published works are papers encompassing software cost modeling, testing theory, software life cycle error prediction and reduction, and software and systems requirements definition. Mr. Galorath is a contributing author of IT Measurement, Advice from the Experts(Prentice Hall) and Mr Galorath’s book Software Sizing, Estimation, and Risk Managementwas published March 2006 (Auerbach). Mr. Galorath publishes a blog, Dan Galorath on Estimating
Thank you for reading “Dan on Estimating”, if you would like more information about Galorath’s estimation models, please visit our contact page, call us at +1 310 414-3222 or click a button below to ask sales questions, sign up for our free library or schedule a demo.
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Dan Galorath is the President and CEO of Galorath Incorporated and the chief architect of SEER-SEM, an algorithmic project management software application. He is a recognized expert in the fields of software estimation and sizing and the author of Software Sizing, Estimation, and Risk Management.
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