Westfall Weekly Webinars

Top 6 BIG MISTAKES in Your Career & Job Search presented by Diana Alt

Wednesday, September 11, 2024, at 12:01 pm Central

Many excellent professionals do phenomenal things on the job, like developing innovative products, streamlining processes, or even saving lives. What they often DON'T do well is managing their career growth and job searches.

In this session, No BS career and executive coach Diana Alt will share 6 of the top mistakes she sees people make in their career and job search and what you should do instead.

Considerations When Qualifying Suppliers presented by Linda Westfall

Wednesday, September 18, 2024, at 12:01 pm Central

In today’s fast paced software industry where customers demand larger, more complex software products with higher quality, lower costs and faster times to market, many software organizations are choosing software development or maintenance outsourcing as a competitive advantage.

This webinar will discuss the first pass of potential supplier qualifications. This pass looks at high level considerations of the cost, schedule, and product (both feature and the quality of the features) to reduced the list of potential suppliers down to a manageable list for additional evaluation. During further evaluation, those potential suppliers are judged against more detailed and rigorous selection criteria. The risks associated with each supplier are identified and analyzed, and cost/benefit analysis is conducted. Based on this additional information, the final supplier or the COTS package is selected.

During this webinar you will learn:

• Considerations when qualifying the initial list of potential suppliers
• Risk-based considerations for further evaluating suppliers
• How to use scoring matrices to summarize all of the evaluation criteria information and score for each supplier

Become a (Rich and Respected) Consultant

Presented by: Robin Goldsmith

Consulting can be the path to riches and respect!  At least, that’s the story, which doesn’t have to be an exaggeration.  Consulting indeed has many attractive aspects:  being your own boss, doing work you enjoy and excel at getting rich.  For some, it does seem to happen magically, but for most, it takes more concerted effort.  There’s not a single route to becoming a consultant, but there are some helpful guidelines.  Join this interactive webinar to learn:

•    Pros, and cons (darn it), of becoming a consultant.
•    How to avoid being a euphemism for unemployed.
•    Guidelines to increasing your consulting success chances.

Available Free Until: 10/23/2024

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Quality Management Documentation Hierarchy

Presented by: Linda Westfall

One of the fundamentals of establishing a Quality Management System (QMS) is to document, implement and continuously improve it. In this webinar, we are going to discuss the hierarchy of documents required for a QMS and the roles of each of those documents, including:
     - Industry standards and models
     - Organizational-level policies, standardized processes, and standardized work instructions
     - Project-level plans, tailored processes, and tailored work instructions

Available Free Until: 10/16/2023
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Agile Quality (Assurance)

Presented by:  Scott Duncan

Agile methods are often characterized by the dictionary definition of 'agile', which involves quick, easy movement and pivoting in direction. What the definition doesn't talk about is the need to maintain stability while doing that. A gymnast would not be considered very 'agile' if they could not maintain balance and stability while they performed. In product development 'stability' is about maintaining quality while moving smoothly and easily forward. This webinar will discuss the various ways an Agile approach pursues maintaining that quality.

Available Free Until: 10/09/2024
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The Seven Steps of Building Knowledge

Presented by: Grace Duffy

Effective Quality Management requires an in-depth knowledge of the organization. One approach to a deeper understanding of excellence is to use an iterative discovery process. Explore a data analyst’s path to building knowledge in seven dimensions. Travel this path from local action to increasingly strategic and theoretical perspectives of current and innovative opportunities for improvement.

Consider the adage “If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.” Take home a diagram of the seven iterative subprocesses for studying the multiple layers of quality management.

Available Free Until: 10/02/2024
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Is Quality Management More than a Quality Management System (QMS)?

Presented by: Robin Goldsmith

There are a number of commercial “Quality Management Systems.”  Many people may equate quality management (QM) to using such a system.  

Frankly, before such systems became prevalent, “quality management” didn’t seem to be a big topic; although some international standards referred to, and a few organizations may have had, a quality management function/group separate from its “quality assurance” (QA) function/group.  Join this interactive session to address:

•    Are QM and QA really different?  Do we need both?
•    Is QM really a thing or just using a QMS?
•    Can we gain QM benefits without investing in a commercial QMS?

Available Free Until: 9/25/2024
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Principles of DevOps

Presented by: Tom Henricksen

DevOps brings development and operations together for faster releases. In this presentation, we cover the basics and principles of DevOps.

From there we review key aspects such as DataOps, DevSecOps, Flow Engineering, and more.

During this webinar you will learn to:
1.    Identify the basic principles
2.    Understand the DevOps framework
3.    Find additional practices to bring to your team

This is essential for developers and operations professionals in all stages of DevOps adoption.

Available Free Until: 09/18/24
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The Role of Software Quality Testing/Assurance in CI/CD

Presented by: Charles Cason

In this webinar on CI/CD and Software Quality Assurance, we'll discuss how Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment automate code integration, testing, and deployment, and highlight the crucial role of Software QA in ensuring high-quality, reliable software releases.

Available free until 09/11/2024
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Is DevOps Really Different? If So From What?

Presented by: Robin Goldsmith

Are you struck, and possibly annoyed, by all the “___Ops” buzzwords being thrown around as if they’re making meaningful distinctions?  

“DevOps” of course is the grandfather of them all and presumably conveys something different from plain "Agile." “DevSecOps” has gained perhaps more traction than its various cousins.  Do we really need both terms, not to mention all the related variants? What has the proliferation achieved, and at what costs?  Join this interactive session to address:

•    What is, and is not, DevOps.
•    Whether its variant terms actually convey meaningful distinctions.
•    Why buzzword proliferation persists and what to do about it.

Available Free Until: 09/04/2024
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