Ann Mwangi

Architect/Developer with Thoughtworks

Ann Mwangi

Ann Mwangi is a software developer and consultant at ThoughtWorks for projects across different domains mainly in Uganda and Australia. She had a stint as a quality analyst to understand the challenges of maintaining quality in a system.

Ann contributes to open source projects and has served as a mentor with groups like Rails Girls, coaching and working with young people interested in IT. Ann is an international speaker with experience speaking across 4 continents. She is intrigued by the complexity of life, people, and how teams effectively work together.

Ann hates being stagnant in life and thus keeps seeking for opportunities to grow both personally and professionally.

Presentations

What drives your achitecture

Wednesday, 9:00 AM EST

When we have a problem which can be solved using a software, we first design an architecture that will guide how the system will look like. This architecture needs to be robust and well thought of to ensure that it handles all the requirements at hand and flexible enough for the future.

This talk is about some considerations to take while designing a system:

The problem to be solved
The users of the system
Systems integrations

The talk also highlights some common pitfalls that teams fall into during this process:

Database management
Buzzword-oriented architecture

Outcome of the talk:

By the end of this session the listener is be able to:

Interpret the most important considerations while designing a system
Evaluate the business and customer requirements to determine their architecture
Analyse past organisation strengths and shortcomings to make better decisions

Continuous improvement all around

Wednesday, 11:00 AM EST

In the world today, and even more so in IT, no one can afford to be stuck in their ways. New ideas arise, which make fundamental changes to the world as we used to know it. In an age where technology is becoming a major driver in business, this talk answers the following questions:

How can a person still remain relevant as an individual and as a team member?
How can a team perform beyond the expectations given the blockers that always come their way?
What do organisations gain when it’s teams are always improving?
How can an organisation support and encourage continuous improvement?
How can an organisation continue improving along with its people?

At the end, an individual is encouraged to find ways to improve in all aspects of their life. The business leaders understand what continuous improvement is bringing to their teams and organisation as a whole. They also understand how a team and organisation can grow along with its people.

Business driven cloud architecture

Thursday, 9:00 AM EST

As the cloud becomes more popular, many cloud-inexperienced architects wonder whether migration to the cloud is the correct way to scale. When they decide to migrate they have to figure out where to start from and which components to use. This talk is not about a particular cloud vendor but the questions and considerations to take while deciding on a cloud architecture for your business.

After deciding to migrate to the cloud, the architecture design will determine the success rate of the infrastructure. This architecture needs to be robust and well thought of to ensure that it handles all the requirements at hand and flexible enough for the future.

This talk is about considerations to take while designing a system, including:

The intended clients
Investment decisions
The business strategy
The development team
Choice of tools
Good development practices
Here we also discuss common pitfalls of the architecture design process, including choosing tools.

How secure is your cloud?

Thursday, 1:30 PM EST

As Cloud computing becomes more popular and many businesses are keen to adopt it,one of their major concerns is security. In spite of the hype accompanying it and the success stories from the large organisations who have adopted, there are also numerous examples of breaches that have been experienced in the cloud. Many businesses would like to know how to create a secure cloud infrastructure to ensure that all their applications and data is well protected.

This talk is based on my experience in different projects that I have been involved in, some pitfalls that my team has fallen into and considerations that we can take while preparing for new cloud infrastructure.

This talk is not about a particular cloud vendor solutions but about the questions and considerations to take to ensure that your cloud infrastructure is secure.

The considerations include:

  1. Ensuring data is securely protected from anyone who would want to access it.

  2. Encrypting the data so that if it got to the wrong people

  3. Authentication to ensure that only the authorised people can access the data

  4. Enabling due diligence so that data is not accessible by those who eavesdrop and would like to modify it.

  5. Protecting the infrastructure from Denial of Service attacks(DOS) from both internal and external sources

This talk also highlights some common pitfalls:

  1. Using components for a different purpose other that what it is created to for.

  2. Waiting till after the application is built before preparing the infrastructure.

  3. Creating the infrastructure then thinking about the security at the last minute.

At the end of this session, attendees:

  1. Are able to evaluate the level of security that they need

  2. Can reorganise their priority while designing for their cloud infrastructure

  3. Are equipped to create a highly secure infrastructure