ACTIVITIES
Monday June 19
Charlie Poole
Over the last 20 or more years, the Open Space movement has
grown to the point where entire conferences based on its principles are not
uncommon. Working without an agenda, but with specific strategies to
encourage and direct participation, groups of up to 1000 people have
successfully self-organized around a complex problem, held meetings and
published results.
Although XP2006 is organized as a traditional conference, with sessions and
speakers scheduled in advance, it also incorporates an Open Space “track”,
which will allow participants to create and attend sessions around topics of
their own choosing, even topics that arise right at the conference itself.
The opening session of Open Space takes place as a full-conference session
on the first day. At that time, the “rules” of Open Space will be explained
and individuals will be invited to present their session proposals very
briefly. As each session is presented, the sponsor will select a date and
place using a large wall-display and will place the notice of the session in
the appropriate location.
Sessions may be on any subject that relates to the conference. They may be
in the form of a short demonstration, a workshop, a discussion or anything
else that the presenter wishes. It’s not even necessary for the presenter to
be an expert in the subject of the session. In fact, sponsoring a session on
some topic, about which you would like to know more, is an excellent way to
tailor the conference to your own needs!
A special feature of the Open Space at XP2006 is that unregistered spouses
and partners of conference attendees are also invited to sponsor sessions.
In order to get things started, we asked several individuals to commit in
advance to Open Space sessions. These sessions, which will be presented by Patrick Kua and Erik Lundh are listed
separately.
You got Agile – How do you convince the rest?
Erik Lundh
Compelcon AB, Box 7151,
25007 Helsingborg, Sweden
http://www.compelcon.se
Invitation to an XP2006 Open Space Event
Key Question: How do I sell XP/Agile to “other people”, making it
possible to start or spread XP/Agile within my organization?
1 Invited
Developers, managers and business stakeholders, the people who want to
introduce and implement XP or other agile approaches within their company:
XP Customers who need better support from their company
Already working XP/Agile teams who need to convince the rest of the company
to go Agile.
And all people who have successfully convinced the rest to go Agile
Participants will share challenges and questions, success stories,
strategies and tactics as well as actual experience of how to convince
companies to go agile.
2 What we should cover
2.1 Getting People Interested
How do we tell the success stories in figures to non-XP-ers, i.e. how going
Agile pays off? We look at some examples of companies going Agile
successfully, in words that appeal to our different stakeholders. And we
look at how Lean Software Development helped us explain why XP and Agile
works.
2.2 Strategies for Change
We look into a few different approaches to introduce process improvement
such as XP and other agile methods. What works and what usually fails.
2.3 How We Changed These Companies
How do we explain agile to different stakeholders and have them turn over
and tell others the same story?
What matters for developers, customers, and management?
How we:
• enable communication, and deal with die-hards.
• position XP as an experience that bootstraps “the learning organization”
• convince the business people with simulations and games.
2.4 How to Bring People On Board with Simulations
• How to prepare a simulation
• How to sell it to business people
• Why do simulations work so well?
• Things to look out for
• What to count on
• Bigger groups – the audience is the market
3 Presenter
Erik Lundh
Change agent with 25 years in the software industry.
Technical, business and peopleware person.
Some people at Lund University brought XP to Erik’s attention, back when
Erik was working with cross-industrial R&D centers for products with
software. Erik recognized key players like Beck and Cunningham from the
patterns movement and went to XP2000, spoke about XP in Sweden, started
workgroups, organized a 200-head Swedish process improvement conference with
an XP theme, and finally found himself deeply involved in XP/Agile both in
Sweden and internationally.
Erik has been invited to several panels with Beck, Jeffries and other
well-known XP profiles and is regarded as one of the most experienced XP
coaches in Sweden. Erik currently coaches successful XP-teams, gives
well-attended XP seminars in major cities of Sweden, is sometimes honored to
be a host of guest appearances by profiles like Ward Cunningham and Mary
Poppendieck, and tries to find time to finish writing his big book on XP
with practical advice from a seasoned XP coach. Erik started to use XP and
XP coaching as experience-based process improvement in 2000. His teams are
successful with XP and usually get company-wide recognition.
In 2004, Erik became CSM through Ken Schwaber’s excellent Scrum Master class,
only to find that he always has done Scrum as part of his approach to XP.
Erik is a board member of SPIN-Sweden, and an involved sponsor in most, if
not all, of the Swedish SPIN-chapters. His local chapter SPIN-SYD is the
largest in Sweden, with over 40 companies including Ericsson and ABB.
SPIN-SYD and Lund University was key to Erik’s early work in XP and Agile.
Lund University has continued independently and introduced full XP as the
first project method to over 500 students over 5 years.
Erik currently lives with his wife and two kids in Helsingborg, Sweden, just
across the water from the Danish castle of Kronborg, home of Shakespeare’s
Prince Hamlet.
Steven Fraser, Charlie Poole
Are agile software development practices converging? Are practices becoming more integrated and/or more widely adopted than others? In the early 90s there was a convergence of object-oriented design methodologies – is a similar pattern being repeated within the agile software development community? Several years ago conferences featured debates on the number of practices inherent to XP – or for that matter what constituted XP. Is the Agile community on the verge of converging to standardization or do individual practices retain their individually and evangelists/disciples? Perhaps the question should be: “How are different Agile methods coalescing?” (rather than converging) – in that some methods complement each other – for example XP and SCRUM. Come and share your perspectives and experiences on the nature and results (customer engagement, coaching, methods, processes, project management, certification…) of agile convergence.
Patrick Kua
Description
Client side applications are notoriously difficult to test, with many of the traditional approaches leveraging screen scraping techniques resulting in both brittle and costly tests. There are a number of alternative ways of testing Swing GUIs, and we will be looking at one of these that make testing Swing applications easier and more reliable.
We will investigate how you can apply this testing technique for TDDing an entire Swing application that will be both robust and reliable. We will look at how you write acceptance level tests and the patterns that you could implement in a swing application that allows you to fully test all the components before you get an acceptance test passing.
We will demonstrate the robustness of tests by demonstrating how you can changing the way the components are laid out without breaking tests. We will also discuss all the difficulties, tips and tricks that you should be aware when you do decide to write tests for your application.
Who Should Attend
Attendees should be strong Java developers who have been exposed to unit testing and open to TDD. Any budding TDDers are welcome where you will learn how to better express requirements in tests, and learn how to effectively TDD swing applications, avoiding the painful way of brittle UI testing.
You will learn how to leverage the Model View Presenter for structuring an application that is almost fully testable without having to actually visually render any components. You will learn how to write acceptance tests that read well and that are can be easily refactored to use different libraries.
Presenter's background
Patrick is a budding agile coach and hardcore agile developer who is currently working for Thoughtworks, a software development consultancy. He is driven by lightweight methods of delivery that means his team gets to write more code more often that delivers greater value.
He is a big believer in self-empowered teams and achieves this by continually spreading the word about better ways of writing software. He believes that Test Driven Development is an effective technique for writing Just The Right Amount of Code that is both more understandable and more maintainable.
Tuesday June 20
Pair
Storytelling – "Once upon a time there were two …"
Fred Grossman, Joe Bergin
Description
Experience the value and personal satisfaction of pairing. This workshop
activity will use non-programming story-writing techniques to show novices,
experienced developers, managers, and even non-technical people, what it is
like to work in pairs to produce something creative.
Pair programming is one of the key practices of eXtreme Programming (XP).
Even though research has shown that working in pairs is more productive than
working alone, many people are skeptical about the practice until they try
it. Managers are wary of the practice, believing it will increase costs;
developers are wary, believing it will curb creativity. This workshop
activity can provide an experience to address these concerns in a fun and
informative manner.
Pair storytelling involves writing a story that is partially specified by
another person (the customer/product owner). The stories used in this
activity will be based on familiar children’s stories. The task is to update
them in a "customer" specified way, being as creative as you like. This will
be done initially as individual work and then with pairing. A few samples of
individual and paired stories are read to the group. At the end of the
activity, a brief retrospective permits the group to discuss the experience.
Who should attend
Developers, managers and other stakeholders interested in understanding
the creative value and personal satisfaction of working in pairs will
experience how it works and get a chance to evaluate it. Educators and
trainers will experience a valuable teaching exercise. It is especially
useful for the skeptical.
There is no required background. This is accessible to novices, experienced
developers, managers and non-technical people.
Presenters' backgrounds
Fred Grossman
Fred (grossman@pace.edu) has been
teaching for more than 30 years and has been involved in software
development for 40 years. He is a professor and Program Chair of the Doctor
of Professional Studies in Computing in the Ivan G. Seidenberg School of
Computer Science and Information Systems of Pace University. He has, with
Joe, co-led workshops at OOPSLA and CASCON on XP and trained and coached XP
teams in academic and industrial settings. Fred initiated this exercise as a
way to demonstrate the creativity of pairing in a context open to
non-programmers.
Joe Bergin
Joe (jbergin@pace.edu) is an educator
and practitioner with 33 years experience, 17 in OO, and 5 or so in agile
practice and consulting. He uses XP in the classroom and is the author of
four textbooks on object-oriented programming. In addition he is an active
pattern writer, with many papers (co-authored) on pedagogical patterns. One
current project is a pattern language for agile development, including all
of the well-known advice as well as solutions to some common pitfalls.
Effective teaching is one of his life goals and he believes in agile
approaches to achieve this.
The
Coding Tournament
Lasse Koskela, Markus Hjort
Description
The coding tournament is a fun-oriented social event where small teams are
presented with a task involving a simple multiplayer game using XP practices.
Project skeletons will be provided and teams can choose between Java and
Ruby for their implementation. The solution will not require in-depth
knowledge of exotic API's--standard libraries will do just fine.
The ultimate goal is to learn by doing, and participants are encouraged to
use XP engineering practices. Pairing with others offers an excellent
opportunity to improve your technique and gain new perspective. The
organizers are also available for assistance throughout the experience.
Participants are encouraged to "register" beforehand to the organizers via
email but it is by no means a requirement. Plus, if you're coming solo,
we'll hook you up with a team. We'll not be able to provide laptops for all
teams, however, so if you have a laptop, bring it with you so that all teams
will have something to work with.
In the grand finale of the event, the actual tournament is carried out by
playing the teams' end products against each other on a projector while the
teams and their supporters cheer ferociously. And you won't leave empty
handed either!
Who should attend?
Have you heard of the XP thing but haven't had the chance to experience the
practices first-hand? Are you looking for a learning opportunity wrapped
into a fun social act? Do you need an excuse for learning Ruby? Want to show
off your mad h4x0r skillz? Even if you didn't answer "yes" to any of these
questions, this is the activity you want to attend.
This activity is targeted at practitioners of all levels and knowing XP in
and out is not a prerequisite. In fact, this is a great chance to get
hands-on coaching from long-time practitioners!
Activity Organizers
Lasse Koskela
lasse.koskela@ri.fi
Methodology specialist at Reaktor Innovations, Lasse entered the IT industry
to celebrate the new Millennium and has since held roles varying from
development to project management and training to consulting, dipping his
toes to sales every once in a while. He started promoting agile methods in
Finland in 2002, ramped up the local Agile Seminars in 2005, and is
currently working on a book on test-driven development for Manning
Publications.
Markus Hjort
markus.hjort@ri.fi
Software architect at Reaktor Innovations, Markus has been in industry over
seven years with experience from various technologies including J2EE,
Microsoft, and Symbian platforms. He has always actively participated in
process and methodology improvement. A certified Scrum Master and a member
of Agile Alliance with extensive experience on agile methods, Markus
kick-started the local Coding Dojo events in 2005.
