Kemal Erdogan

Background

About Kemal Erdogan

My BSc is in Industrial Engineering but had the caught software bug when I learned FORTRAN for a numerical analysis class project more than 25 years ago. I quickly realized that good software was about not only writing correct code, but also the code structure and (later) the development process. My particular interests have always been SW architecture, risk, and change control in SDLC, which is probably where the problems start. I am amazed when I meet experienced people who think they can actually write complete specifications in full detail upfront. My approach has been to accept that the analysis is incomplete at best, and the software design must be able to accommodate changes gracefully. I always have good returns with that approach. One must note though that designing SW for change is not trivial and requires both experience and talent. Below (an open source library that I authored) is an example of how I think and design software. Meeting the schedule, scope, and cost constraints is good, but meeting them with a maintainable and scalable product is better. Ultimately, a satisfactory software product is possible only with a good design, no matter how good you are in management. Having both software designer and project manager hats have helped me a lot in that respect. Recently, for example, I redesigned a critical application, which deals with some 350 million statistical observations. The redesign made between 70 and 280 times (yes, not %) improvement in performance, depending on the task, with a fully modular, auto-testable, and smaller code base. A good design makes a lot of future problems and changes much easier to tackle. In addition to having more than 10 years of experience in leading software teams and managing software development projects both in-house and offshore-outsourced, I hold an MSc degree in Project Management, PMP and Scrum Master Certifications. Specialties: software architecture, SW team leading, high performance design for large databases, SQL, MarkLogic, XQuery, XML