MIT SDM Systems Thinking Webinar Series
Firas Glaiel, Corporate Technology Area Director, Information Systems and Computing, Raytheon; SDM Alumnus
Firas Glaiel, SDM ’10
Date: October 17, 2016
Download the presentation slides
About the Presentation
Commercial software providers have adopted “agile” believing that it will help lower costs, shorten development times, and deliver greater customer satisfaction. Now government contractors are looking at agile methods to help them compete successfully in the aerospace and defense domains. For them, two questions are paramount: Can agile succeed in the large-scale government systems development domain? And if so, how?
This presentation by SDM alumnus Firas Glaiel, Raytheon’s corporate technology area director for information systems and computing, is designed for government contractors as well as professionals in a wide variety of other domains. Glaiel will:
- provide a brief overview of systems thinking;
- describe system dynamics—a method for modeling and understanding the dynamic behavior of complex systems; and
- define agile practices and outline a framework for better understanding them.
He will then share research results, including:
- the seven agile techniques (seven genes) used by successful project teams, aka the “genome of the agile”; and
- a description of the system dynamics model developed from this research—agile project dynamics—including the structure and time-delayed relationships for capturing the impact of agile genes on emergent system behaviors.
A Q&A will follow the presentation. We invite you to join us!
About the Speaker
Firas Glaiel is Raytheon’s corporate technology area director for information systems and computing. He is responsible for coordinating technology and research, including cross-business alignment, collaboration with universities and external organizations, and support for technology strategy development. He also works on strategic research and development projects in big data analytics, cybersecurity, high-performance computing, and agile systems development. He holds a BS in computer engineering from Lebanese American University, a BS in computer system engineering from Boston University, and as an alumnus of MIT System Design & Management, an MS in engineering and management from MIT.
About the Series
Sponsored by the System Design & Management (SDM) program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the MIT SDM Systems Thinking Webinar Series features research conducted by SDM faculty, alumni, students, and industry partners. The series is designed to disseminate information on how to employ systems thinking to address engineering, management, and socio-political components of complex challenges. Recordings and slides from prior SDM webinars can be accessed here.
