Dinosaur Strategies: How Data Professionals Can Still Prosper in Modern IT Organizations

Scott Ambler

Scott Ambler

In recent years we've seen a meteoric rise in the popularity of agile techniques such as Extreme Programming (XP), Scrum, Agile Modeling, and database refactoring. Just as data professionals safely ignored object-oriented technology in the 1990s, we can similarly ignore agile techniques in the 2000s. For all the hype, organizations never adopted object technology to any great extent and it is likely that agile techniques will suffer the same fate. There is no need to worry.

So what should we do as the application developers around us once again waste their time trying new, unproven techniques? History provides the answer--we should look take our cue from the dinosaurs of course. Dinosaurs thrived for millions of years, millions of years! Clearly there must be strategies which the data community can adopt which will enable us to similarly thrive for at least that long. In this Birds Of a Feather session we will discuss potential dinosaur strategies such as: