St. Petersburg, Russia, December 6, 2011 – First Line Software, a premiere provider of custom software development services, participated in the International Software Project Management Conference (SPMConf) that took place in St. Petersburg, Russia on November 26.

First Line’s project manager Mikhail Ganchikov presented a talk entitled, “Flying in zero visibility: A practical experience of project planning and launch”. The presentation, which generated a lot of discussion at the event, detailed an approach to project estimation and planning under conditions of severe time constraints and extreme uncertainty regarding scope. Based on his practical experience of executing numerous software development projects, Mikhail covered such aspects as team productivity and ramp-up planning, requirements management, preventing scope creep, metrics, tracking and reporting.

The full text of the presentation will be available on the First Line website (www.firstlinesoftware.com).

“My overall impressions of the conference are very favorable,”

said Mikhail Ganchikov.

“The organizers have obviously put a great deal of effort into making the program as useful as possible. I would also note that the overall theme has shifted from people speaking about how to do things to the practical presentations and experience reports focusing on how not to do things in project management. This makes the content much more useful to the audience, and the members of the project management community are free to decide which practices work for them and which are likely to do more harm than good, based on the specific circumstances. I am in favor of that approach, rather than blindly adhering to a particular methodology and trying to force reality into its narrow confines, even if it harms the project, the team and the customer”.

“First Line draws on the wealth of experience that comes from having delivered hundreds of successful projects for the most demanding global clients”, said Alexander Pozdniakov, First Line’s CEO. “We have been using various Agile methods for a decade now, including XP, Scrum, Kanban and others, and we constantly strive to broaden our perspective in order to improve our processes and the quality of our service. That is why we are happy to participate at SPMConf, because it provides a valuable forum where project management professionals can share experiences and ideas with their colleagues in the industry”.

About First Line Software

First Line Software is a premiere provider of R&D and custom software development services, with the focus on product development, cloud computing, online media, and logistics. First Line’s clients range from global industry leaders to medium-sized growth companies and startups in North America, Europe, and Asia. First Line is headquartered in the US and operates multiple software development centers in Russia. First Line’s culture is grounded in subject matter expertise, technical excellence, and proven methodologies, with a strong focus on Agile.