Thank You Tom Fulton
"10 Best and Worst Practices Observed In The
Field"
Tuesday April
13, 2004
Tom
Fulton
Mentor Communications
 It
was a dark and stormy night for Tom Fulton to
share some of the best and worst things he has seen in over 20 years in
software development and training. His attentive audience provided
plenty of acknowledgement that most of his observations were "dead on"
and not at all unfamiliar.
Download his zipped Powerpoint
Slides!
Tom has observed a lot of different software
development practices, both as a developer and Project Leader, and also as
an instructor in C, C++ and Java. Some were unexpected successes, especially
because they appeared to run counter to the prevailing wisdom of the time.
Others were abject failures, and some spectacular train wrecks that lodged
in the memories of the survivors for all time.
Tom’s first development experience was a Dream Job –
as a Game Designer for Coleco Industries in West Hartford, developing arcade
games for the ColecoVision video game system. As Director of Software
Development at Corliss Data Systems he directed the design and development
of credit collection software, and later became Director of Computer
Services for Corliss Credit Services, using the same software he was
responsible for developing. Tom was also involved in a management project
doing competitive intelligence for the insurance industry, and learned some
revealing lessons about implementing new technologies. In recent years, as
an instructor in Object-Oriented topics, Tom has experienced the best and
worst the software industry has to offer, from developers that work to
establish a true partnership with their customers, to those that have
consciously sabotaged projects for political reasons.
Tom served as COOUG Treasurer and SIG Chairman until 1999. Tom was a
co-chair of the C++ SIG and taught a series of C++ tutorials. Tom also
presented a special "Java for C++ Programmers" tutorial event.
We gave away the following book door prizes courtesy
Addison Wesley.
Reported by Terry McAuliffe
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