Neal Ford

Central Iowa Software Symposium

Des Moines · August 3 - 4, 2018

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Director / Software Architect / Meme Wrangler

Neal is Director, Software Architect, and Meme Wrangler at ThoughtWorks, a global IT consultancy with an exclusive focus on end-to-end software development and delivery.
Before joining ThoughtWorks, Neal was the Chief Technology Officer at The DSW Group, Ltd., a nationally recognized training and development firm. Neal has a degree in Computer Science from Georgia State University specializing in languages and compilers and a minor in mathematics specializing in statistical analysis.
He is also the designer and developer of applications, instructional materials, magazine articles, video presentations, and author of 6 books, including the most recent The Productive Programmer. His language proficiencies include Java, C#/.NET, Ruby, Groovy, functional languages, Scheme, Object Pascal, C++, and C. His primary consulting focus is the design and construction of large-scale enterprise applications. Neal has taught on-site classes nationally and internationally to all phases of the military and to many Fortune 500 companies. He is also an internationally acclaimed speaker, having spoken at over 100 developer conferences worldwide, delivering more than 600 talks. If you have an insatiable curiosity about Neal, visit his web site at http://www.nealford.com. He welcomes feedback and can be reached at nford@thoughtworks.com.

Presentations

Building Evolutionary Architectures

An evolutionary architecture supports incremental, guided change along multiple dimensions.

Building Evolutionary Architectures: Architectural Fitness Function Katas

Building Evolutionary Architectures requires identifying and creating architectural fitness functions. This hands-on workshop defines fitness functions and provides group exercises to help identify and discover them.

Documenting and Presenting Software Architectures

This session covers two critical soft skills for architects:

creating clear, concise documentation of software architecture, both structure and decisions
presenting architectural ideas as clearly as possible

Where Do Ideas Come From? Creating, Cultivating, and Communicating IP

How do you create creativity? This talk offers techniques and perspectives to discover, grow, and project your ideas.

Stories Every Developer Should Know

Stories and lessons from architecture, design, process, and other sources, each illustrating important principles and pitfalls for modern architects.

Supporting Constant Change

Everything in IT changes constantly: business, technology, practices, and so on. This keynote investigates techniques that allow architects and developers to build systems that support rather than avoid change.