Past Meetings - Descriptions and Summaries

Wednesday 7 June 2006

8.00pm at the offices of Steria Limited, Hemel Hempstead

The NHS Patient Care Records System etc., the World's Biggest IT Project

Brian Gorman, Chief Technology Officer, BT, Capital Care Alliance

NHS Connecting for Health is delivering the National Programme for IT to bring modern computer systems into the NHS, which will improve patient care and services. Over the next eight years 30,000 GPs in England will be connected to almost 300 hospitals and give patients access to their personal health and care information, transforming the way the NHS works. The project will cost £6.2 bn. England has been divided into five different regions (other parts of the UK have their own systems) communicating via an interconnecting Spine network. As our speaker's job title suggests, he will concentrate on the technological aspects, but will mention the peculiar challenges of a controversial project of this size, and how BT and the Capital Care Alliance, as Local Service Provider, are overcoming them in the London and Southeast region.

Wednesday 26 April 2006

8.00pm at the offices of Steria Limited, Hemel Hempstead

The POLICE NATIONAL COMPUTER, a vital tool for tackling crime

Karl Wissgott & Gary Edwards from PITO (Police Information Technology Organisation)

Since 1974 the Police National Computer (PNC) has been one of the key computer systems used by the police service in the fight against crime. Karl Wissgott, Head of Software Engineering Group, and Gary Edwards, National PNC Advisor, Software Engineering Group, will share some insights regarding the past, present and immediate future development of the PNC. Gary will explain how some of the systems have evolved and can be used to aid policing. Karl will illustrate some of the many opportunities and challenges that he and his colleagues face in their work, whilst keeping pace with business needs and the many advances in technology.

Wednesday 29 March 2006

8.00pm at the offices of Steria Limited, Hemel Hempstead

MICROWORLDS

Professor Kim Warren, London Business School

MicroWorlds are dynamic models that help strategists and planners explore how systems and organisations will behave in the future. With the increased availability of interactive PC-based simulation and modeling tools, the use of MicroWorlds by both government and the private sector is rapidly growing and the insights that they bring are being used to underpin these organisations' policies and strategies.

Professor Kim Warren is one of the UK's leading exponents of the application of System Dynamics methods and tools for the development of MicroWorlds and his recent book, Strategy Dynamics, is regarded as a definitive work on this subject. In his talk, he will be discussing his work to develop MicroWorlds for many of the UK's blue chip companies and the results and benefits that they have delivered.

Professor Warren being in the United States on a visit to MIT, this talk was given by Bob Thurlby, a fellow worker in the field. Bob's presentation may be found here (665 KB pdf file).

Wednesday 22 February 2006

8.00pm at the offices of Steria Limited, Hemel Hempstead

Software, lies? and 'videotape': or, where is the evidence to support claims made in the IT industry?

Dr. Austen Rainer, Senior Lecturer School of Computer Science University of Hertfordshire.

The IT industry is a rapidly changing industry, with new tools, technologies, processes and methodologies continually being introduced. These innovations often come with the claim that they will improve some part of the IT industry in some way. Many of the claims made, however, do not appear to be independently substantiated (e.g. the claims are not supported by evidence or rigorous arguments) or where they are substantiated the findings are disputed (e.g. through third-party consultancy evaluations).

A notable current example is the benefits of open source software in comparison to proprietary software. In this talk, I want to present some examples of claims made by leading IT organisations, the way in which those claims are made, and the difficulties with evaluating those claims. I want to introduce one approach to address these difficulties, an approach modelled on evidence-based medicine. I then want to critically assess the prospects for this new approach: can this approach genuinely benefit the IT industry in the longer term?

Thursday 26 January 2006

8.00pm at the offices of Steria Limited, Hemel Hempstead

2020 - Creating visions of the future

Finlay Edridge, PA Consulting

Robot fire-fighters, seamless music distribution, digital doctors in your bathroom and twenty-first century school satchels. These visions might sound far-fetched, but innovators could soon make them a reality by exploiting today's emerging technology. Each of these visions is brought to life as a cartoon-style article in the latest issue of 2020 magazine. Created by PA's IT Innovation Unit, this magazine aims to inspire people about the exciting opportunities that technology innovation can present. This talk will explain how 2020 magazine is developed, exploring some of the magazine articles and underlying technologies.

Wednesday 23 November 2005

8.00pm at the offices of Steria Limited, Hemel Hempstead

AGILE METHODS, a Specialisation of Iterative and Evolutionary Methods

Akbar Zamir, Principal Consultant, Valtech

Building on the foundations of iterative and evolutionary software development, the Agile approach holds out the promise of greater efficiency and responsiveness to change. This talk will provide an outline of - and rationale for - the principles common to Agile methods, and how they affect the project stakeholders. Agile tools and techniques will be presented for the various project activities including planning; tracking; requirements capture; design, and testing.

Click here to download Akbar Zamir's presentation slides (4534 KB pdf file)

Tuesday 25 October 2005

8.00pm at the offices of Steria Limited, Hemel Hempstead

SERVICE ORIENTED ARCHITECTURE (SOA), the What, Why and How

Joe Cotter, Principal Architect, Steria Limited
Manager of the Architects Group within the Application and Technology Practice.

Joe will introduce the subject and define the principles of Service Oriented Architecture, and discuss its relevance as part of IT solutions provided to satisfy business demands in a cost effective and timely manner.

Gary Walsh, Technical Program Manager, IBM UK Limited
Team Leader of the Technical Advocates Group within IBM's Computer Services Industry Sector.

Building on the generics, Gary will focus on how IBM has built its Service Oriented Architecture and Enterprise Service Bus offerings to satisfy the On Demand requirements of businesses.

Click here to download Joe Cotter's presentation slides (1590 KB pdf file)
Click here to download Gary Walsh's presentation slides (5092 KB pdf file)

Wednesday 28 September 2005

8.00pm at the offices of Steria Limited, Hemel Hempstead

OFF-SHORING

Jaidev Sharma, Client Services Director – Mastek (UK) Limited.

To remain competitive in the global economy, corporations have to exploit all available sourcing options for their IT functions. The rapid growth of offshore outsourcing, known as 'offshoring', has posed many challenges. Is it a panacea, what are key success factors in offshoring, how do we avoid pitfalls? Our speaker, whose parent company is a global IT outsourcing company headquartered in Mumbai, India, will explore such aspects and offer insights into how best to exploit offshoring.

Click here to download presentation slides (690 KB pdf file)

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