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The Joburg Centre for software Engineering(JCSE) is a three way partnership between government, academia and industry. Based at Wits University, the JCSE is multifaceted with various programmes and facilities positioning it as a focal point of the sotfware development industry in Gauteng.

2012 JCSE ICT Skills Survey

Check out our Applied Research page for information on this new publication!

Source Code 2012

The Second Edition of our on-line magazine, Source Code, is available. Click and enjoy!

Featured News

[8 Mar 2013]

Barry reflects on his participation in CeBIT 2013

http://www.softwareengineer.org.za/reflections-on-cebit-2013/485/ 

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[1 Mar 2013]

Application development in South Africa is taking a step forward in terms of efficiency and productivity with the announcement of the formation of a joint venture to create “High-Maturity Software Development” (Hi-Mat) units. Under the leadership of the Joburg Centre for Software Engineering (JCSE) at Wits University, and sponsored by the Department of Trade and Industry, the Hi-Mat project will create 1 000 new software development jobs over the next three years.

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[12 Apr 2012]

Is it time to re-establish software engineering on firmer foundations? 

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[26 Oct 2010]

JCSE hosted a successful 2010 Annual Symposium on Process Improvement at the Sunnyside Park Hotel.  Click here for more information and copies of presentations.

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[30 Sep 2010]

September 30, 2010—Attendees from 15 U.S. states and 10 countries around the world visited Pittsburgh, the headquarters city for the Carnegie Mellon Software Engineering Institute, for the TSP Symposium 2010. Themed Changing the World of Software Engineering, the fifth annual Symposium provided seasoned users of the Team Software Process (TSP), those involved in its development and transition, and those who are new to TSP with four days of enriching tutorials, plentiful networking opportunities, and engaging presentations.

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[28 Jun 2010]

A group of postgraduate students from Wits University and the University of Johannesburg (UJ) have just completed an IT project for The AIDS Consortium.  The students are part of the CoachLab@JCSE programme run by the Joburg Centre for Software Engineering (JCSE).  Annlizé Marnewick, Project Manager at the JCSE explains “The CoachLab™ programme is a partnership between The Innovation Hub (based in Pretoria), JCSE, Local Industry (Barone Budge and Dominick, Standard Bank of South Africa, Microsoft and Vodacom), UJ and Wits and is aimed at top post-graduate students studying in IT related disciplines. It is aligned with post-graduate programmes at universities and prepares a student for leadership positions in the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) industry.”

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[31 May 2010]

 The Skills Corridor, an initiative of SmartXchange and the Joburg Centre for Software Engineering (JCSE), held a mobile technologies workshop on May 27.  Using the state of the art video conferencing facilities at Dimension Data's Client Experience Centre in Bryanston and a mobile video conferencing unit at their Durban office, together with Cisco's Webex application, delegates in Joburg and Durban were treated to lively presentations on the opportunities arising from the use of convergence and mobile technologies.

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[5 May 2010]

Oh no - not another information technology disaster! As lawyers on both sides sharpen their pencils, the future of another major South African IT project hangs in the balance.

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[7 Apr 2010]

Prof Barry Dwolatzky starts a new blog - "The Software Engineer" - with a debate sparked by an article in iWeek on whether the South African Government is failing the local ICT industry.

Barry aims in this blog to provide a specialised platform for the South African software engineering community. In it we will discuss the local software sector – its opportunities and challenges. We will discuss skills and how the broader ICT sector can position itself to create significant numbers of new and sustainable jobs. We will discuss how South Africa can export software products and services.

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[24 Mar 2010]

The JCSE is looking for experts in the Software Archtiecture Industry that can share their views and experience at the Software Archtecture Forum.

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[23 Mar 2010]

Prof. Barry Dwolatzky, Director of the Joburg Centre for Software Engineering (JCSE) delivered a keynote presentation at the Software Engineering Process Group North America Conference today and wow'ed the audience with a presentation of the vibrant South African ICT industry

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[27 Jan 2010]

The ITWeb/JCSE IT Skills Survey assesses local ICT skills landscape. The Roundtable held to discuss the results concluded that  the recession and the fact that university graduates are emerging into the job market lacking key skills are the major skills issues.

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[9 Dec 2009]

THE LATEST ITWeb/JCSE skills survey has found that ICT skills priorities have changed slightly over the past year. The 2008 survey showed business intelligence/knowledge management (BI/KM) as the top priority for companies; this year, application development was number one and network infrastructure was second.

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[24 Nov 2009]

The writing of source code in software development doesn't always follow proper processes, which often leads to risks and delays that could have been avoided through better planning and process management.

This is the view of Malcolm Rabson, MD of local software architecture developer, Dariel Solutions.

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Featured Events

20 May 2013 [Wits PDH] » Register

Architecture Recovery - What do you do when your system architecture deviates from the original over tme?

Dr Fritz Solms is a senior lecturer at the Department of Computer
Science at the University of Pretoria. He also provides a range of
consulting and training services to industry.

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3 Jun 2013 [OPSI Systems, 3rd floor Cradock Square, 169 Oxford Road, Rosebank, Johannesburg] » Register

The topic for this evening will be Teaching and Learning

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19 Jun 2013 [TBC] » Register

Come hear Martin Cronjé talk about some of his experiences in the field about "helping teams become agile without upsetting the applecart with buzzwords, trends and today certifications”.

More details to come soon

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29 Jul 2013 [TBC] » Register

There are various ways to decompose (design) your software. Layering is one popular way of doing it. The aim of this talk is to present an alternative way of designing based on Lean concepts of Value and Flow, and taking lessons from Lean Manufacturing.

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8 Oct 2012 [OPSI Systems, 3rd floor Cradock Square, 169 Oxford Road, Rosebank, Johannesburg]

The videos that will be screened at this event are:

  • Technical Debt and Organisational Process by Michael Feathers; and
  • Economic Models for Development by Donald Reinertsen

The slides from this evening can be downloaded here.

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6 Aug 2012 [OPSI Systems, 3rd floor Cradock Square, 169 Oxford Road, Rosebank, Johannesburg]

The topic for this video evening was Design

The slides can be downloaded here.

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16 Jul 2012 [Wits Professional Development Hub]

Software Architecture: What is it and how can one design and specify it?

The slides from the evening can be found here.

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2 Jul 2012 [OPSI Systems, 3rd floor Cradock Square, 169 Oxford Road, Rosebank, Johannesburg]

As we conduct more of our lives online, the security and privacy of our personal data becomes ever-more important. Companies like Google and Facebook are scrutinised, and even face legal action in Europe, due to their privacy practices.

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27 Jun 2012 [Thoughtworks, South Point Central (opposite Hotel Lamunu), 17 Melle Street Braamfontein]

Aslam Khan spoke on what he wants from a web UI framework

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4 Jun 2012 [OPSI Systems, 3rd floor Cradock Square, 169 Oxford Road, Rosebank, Johannesburg]

At the video evening on 4 June we watched several videos, most notably one by Steve McConnel on world-class organisations, and by James Whittaker on testing and software quality

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21 May 2012 [Wits Professional Development Hub]

Cloud computing represents a major shift in the technology landscape, for all users and stakeholders. However, cloud computing means many different things to different people, including elastic resources, software-as-a-service etc.

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7 May 2012 [OPSI Systems, 3rd floor Cradock Square, 169 Oxford Road, Rosebank, Johannesburg]

The second of our video evenings

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2 Apr 2012 [OPSI Systems, 3rd floor Cradock Square, 169 Oxford Road, Rosebank, Johannesburg]

The topic for this video evening was: The Art of Algorithms – including topics such as Google’s Page Rank Algorithm, cryptography algorithms, data compression, etc.

The slides can be downloaded here.

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24 Nov 2011 [PDH. Wits University]

Custom Domain-Specific Language's (DSL) have been around for a long time, and over recent years they have become increasingly popular. The speakers explored how DSL's can be used within your environment to improve the quality of the systems engineering efforts. 

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1 Nov 2011 [PDH. Wits University]

The past several years has seen the emergence of several next-generation software development frameworks, such as Scrum and XP. These frameworks are focussed on improving delivery, increasing agility, and creating sustainability in software development. For decades, the use of Kanban has enabled Toyota's Lean, Just-In-Time processes, which are world-renowned. This technology has been adapted for use in software development, as well as other domains. The presentation covered the Kanban philosophy, what Kanban is, how it differs to other major frameworks for development, and how it can help your organisation.

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28 Oct 2011 [Wits University. PDH]
Have you ever heard of Use Cases, UML or the Rational Unified Process (RUP)? Have you heard of the “3 Amigos” ? If you answer “Yes” to any of these you should know who Ivar Jacobson is.
On Friday 28th October the JCSE is honoured to be hosting Ivar Jacobson at Wits University. He will present a talk entitled:
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12 May 2011 [Sandton, Johannesburg]

Object Oriented Design

OO is the first development technology that really has the potential to deliver against business needs, i.e., to produce systems that are flexible, robust, reliable, reusable and extendable. However, the reality is that many Dev shops are not achieving the level of delivery that the literature suggests they should. More importantly they are not delivering against the needs of their businesses.

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14 Apr 2011 [Wits University. PDH]

Demystifying the hype around NoSQL

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12 Apr 2011 [Wits University. PDH]

Test driven development with practical refactoring tips

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10 Mar 2011 [Nedbank. Sandton]

The Assurance over the quality of IT projects

Information Systems have moved from being merely used as enablers to being an integral part of the corporate strategy to support, sustain and grow the business. 

 

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24 Feb 2011 [PDH. Wits University]

As in 2010, the Architecture Forum started 2011 with an open discussion where industry professionals  contributed and learnt using the open-spaces approach. 

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25 Nov 2010 [The Wanderers Club, Johannesburg]

On the 25th of November forum participants were given the opportunity to share their approach to software architecture in their respective environments. The idea was for interested participants to do a 10 minute long slide- or whiteboard-driven overview of the process followed or techniques applied in their respective environments. This was a great opportunity to get input from other industry professionals on their approach or simply to learn from your peers' thinking about architecture.

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16 Nov 2010 [Hackle Brooke, 110 Conrad Drive Craighall, Johannesburg]
A story of agile software development, from cocktail party buzzwords to real life practical experience over more than 10 years. How do you start out with an agile project? Where do you take it? This talk  covered a wide spectrum of the agile experience, including delivering on customer needs, teams, planning and tools. How testing, test driven development and refactoring make up a cornerstone agility. Also a look at recent topics of discussion on XP such as the agile manifesto, YAGNI and testing and others. Fortunately there's always room for improvement and we have a few things to learn, places to go.
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17-19 May 2010 [Hackle Brooke, 110 Conrad Drive Craighall, Johannesburg]
4-6 Aug 2010 [Hackle Brooke, 110 Conrad Drive Craighall, Johannesburg]
8-10 Nov 2010 [Hackle Brooke, 110 Conrad Drive Craighall, Johannesburg]

HOW GOOD IS YOUR ORGANISATION AT MANAGING ITS PEOPLE

The People Capability Maturity Model®(P-CMM) is a framework that helps organisations improve their workforce management practices. This three-day course introduces those who are involved in managing people to P-CMM Version 2.0, its fundamental concepts, and the value it can bring to organizations using it.

The P-CMM is a framework that organizations can use to attract, motivate, and retain talented staff. The practices in the model help an organization be an employer of choice and ensure that the staff has the competencies and capabilities to achieve the organization's current and future business objectives.

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26 Oct 2010 [Sunnyside Park Hotel, Parktown - Princess of Wales Terrace, Parktown]

The theme of this annual Symposium is "Process Improvement as a driver in creating software development jobs in South Africa".

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2-3 Oct 2010 [Wits University]

Three Gauteng-based entrepreneurs – Mikkel, David and Jarrod – have piloted two “Startup Sessions” over the past few months. The concept is a fantastic one and we at the JCSE are keen to support this initiative by providing a venue and some logistical support. We held our first “Startup Session” on the 2nd and 3rd October at Wits University.  

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30 Sep 2010 [The Wanderers Club, Johannesburg]

Let’s face it: architects are high-end knowledge workers who often advance organisational understanding through detailed problem analysis and design. Yet for all of our processes, artefacts, patterns and knowledge repositories architecture is often more about our ability to empower others to shine, and use their personal creativity.

Information technology and cognitive psychology are siblings; both have their origins in the late 1950s and early 1960s, and both influence each other. In this session, we used this knowledge to shed light on the personality styles and career challenges of the architect, by reflecting upon ourselves.

Download Presentation (1MB).

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Year Planner

The JCSE offers a variety of events, courses and skills development programs running throughout the year. We've put together a page to see what's on when, so you can take full advantage of our products.