The technique of expressing requirements as user stories is one of the
most broadly applicable techniques introduced by Extreme Programming. User
stories are an effective approach on all time constrained projects, not
just those using XP. In this session we will look at how to identify and
write good user stories. The session will describe the six attributes all
good stories must exhibit and present thirteen guidelines for writing
better stories. We will explore how user role modeling can help when
gathering a project’s initial stories.
Who Should Attend:
This class will be equally suited for managers, analysts, customers,
programmers, testers, product owners, or anyone who needs to express or
understand the requirements of a project.
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Value Stream Mapping
Mary Poppendieck, Tom Poppendieck
Description:
Value Stream Mapping is a Lean tool that has a long history of uncovering
waste in manufacturing and operational settings; it is also a great tool for
software development. In this session, participants will learn simple rules
for creating value stream maps, and teams will create maps of real
situations. The resulting value stream maps will be presented and critiqued,
so participants can envision for themselves how they might use this
practical tool.
Participants will discover, through hands-on experience and discussion, how
to create and use value stream maps. As the maps are constructed and
analyzed, participants will discover how value stream maps create a new
perspective on the software development process, one that they can use to
evaluate their workflow and pinpoint the biggest opportunities for
improvement.
Who Should Attend
This workshop will interest managers and team leads who understand Agile
development who are looking for a practical tool they can use to analyze and
improve their workflow.
Presenter bio:
Mary Poppendieck has been in the Information Technology industry for thirty
years. She has managed solutions for companies in several disciplines,
including supply chain management, manufacturing systems, and digital media.
As a seasoned leader in both operations and new product development, she
provides a business perspective to software development problems.
A popular writer and speaker, Mary’s classes on managing software
development have been popular with both large and small companies. She is
co-author of the book Lean Software Development: An Agile Toolkit, published
by Addison Wesley in May, 2003 and winner of the Software Development
Productivity Award in 2004.
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How
to deliver on the value proposition from real life XP projects
Lars Arne Skår, Jan-Erik Sandberg
Description
Although XP is no longer as controversial as it used to be, it is still
hard to initiate and deliver on XP projects in a way that delivers on the
promised values. It is as hard as ever to maintain a focus on the XP
practices in projects over time.
This may be in areas such as:
• Contractual agreements
• Old habits that die hard (both from developers and customers)
• Accepting that significant start-up investments are needed
• Getting true acceptance of the practices - from the tangible test and
build techniques to softer parts like refactoring and pair programming,
which still can be very controversial.
• How to interface to formal “toll gates” in larger organizations.
The organizers have been through multiple large scale successful agile
projects, which have delivered the starting and ongoing values of an XP
approach. Most of the initial customers and organizations were used to
traditional waterfall and similar approaches.
The workshop will consist of initial group discussions to share experiences
and opinions, and a final fishbowl discussion with a focus on what values XP
projects actually provide and how to communicate those to the stakeholders.
Who should attend
The organizers wish to gather project managers, developers and ideally
potential customers of xp/agile projects to discuss and share ideas on what
values XP projects actually provides for customers and managers. In order to
get new views on the topic, a group with mixed experience level on XP is
desirable.
Presenter's background
Jan-Erik Sandberg, Chief Quality Officer,
Objectware, Norway
Jan-Erik Sandberg founded the Norwegian eXtreme
Programming forum 5 years ago, with a strong dedication to evangelize
extreme programming to the norwegian community. He has presented XP on
several international events - at TechED Europe 2004 he was rated one of the
“Top Speakers”. For several years, he has been in charge of the agile track
at one of Scandinavia’s largest software conferences. Currently he is
technical project manager for an agile project with over 45 developers, and
a timeframe of 8 years.
Lars Arne Skår, Chief Technology Officer,
TietoEnator Banking Solutions
Lars Skar joined the Norwegian eXtreme
Programming forum 3 years ago, and shares Jan-Eriks ambition to evangelize
extreme programming and agile development in the Norwegian system
development community. Lars actively participates at OOPSLA and other
international conferences as conference speaker and in workshops. During his
16 years of experience in the consultancy industry, he has always had a
strong focus on training and coaching others. In addition to act as a coach,
he has also been an instructor on several international training events.
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The Coders' Dojo - A different way to teach
and learn programming
Christophe Thibaut (cthibaut@octo.com),
Emmanuel Gaillot (egaillot@octo.com)
Summary
If I want to learn Judo, I will enroll at the nearest dojo, and show up
for one hour every week for the next couple years. After two years I may
decide to start studying in earnest to progress in the art. Years of further
training might be rewarded with a black belt, which merely signals a
different stage of learning. No master ever stops learning. If I want to
learn object programming... my employer will pack me off to a three-day Java
course picked from this year's issue of a big training firm's catalog. Nuts
to that – acquiring coding skills is not an “instant gratification” process.
We propose a more appropriate way of teaching and learning programming,
respecting the depth and subtlety of the craft.
Audience
Developers – those who value their programming skills and have a strong
motivation to improve.
Benefits
The Dojo is a long-term process; this one-time session encourages
participants to start their own. The format is between a tutorial (interactive
instruction) and a workshop (instructive interaction). We pay attention both
to participants' payback in improvement of their programming and TDD skills,
and to ideas for improving the Dojo format.
Logistics
Attendance is limited to 16 participants. One beamer and a table seating one
programming pair are required. One QWERTY keyboard. Seating arrangements
should be such that participants can move about freely.
Process
The Coders' Dojo is a weekly programming class. Programmers of varying skill
levels meet as equals. They come together – in physical, not virtual space –
around an ongoing series of coding challenges, usually small in scope, often
patterned after “pragmatic” Dave Thomas' idea of “coding Kata”. The session
replicates a “typical” session of the Coders' Dojo.
The Dojo uses different formats according to participants' inclination. In
the session we will use the Randori format, in which:
– at any one time there is one pair “on the mat” (i.e. at the keyboard)
– the rest of the group observes via beamer
– the pair writes a test, codes, and refactors for one 7-minute timebox
– at the end of the timebox, the copilot becomes driver, a new copilot comes
forward from the group of observers, and the driver goes back to observing
The session schedule is as follows:
09:00-09:10 Bootstrapping: introduction to the Coders' Dojo, rules of
engagement
09:15-09:30 Brainstorm possible topics, vote
09:30-10:15 Randori – first topic
10:15-10:30 Debrief: what worked, what needs improving, new ideas
10:30-10:45 Break
10:45-11:30 Randori – second topic (or continue first)
11:30-12:00 Session retrospective
History
The Coders' Dojo in Paris has been running on a weekly basis since January
2005. A “sister” Dojo is also running bi-monthly basis in Finland. The
session itself has been presented at XP2005, XP Day Benelux 2005 and XP Day
Germany 2005.
Presenters
Christophe Thibaut has been working in IT for 15 years as a Developer,
Project Manager and Consultant for Banking and Industrial groups in France.
He is interested in everything that can help teams in their day to day work
of creating liable, usable and maintainable software. As such he has been
practicing Extreme Programming with small teams since 2001 in the context of
lecacy applications. He's also involved in the Developers Dojo Experiment in
Paris since it's creation.
Emmanuel Gaillot is a software engineer and an experienced designer
for theatre and dance. He has adapted XP practices and principles to the
theatrical production process, and he currently works on instilling theatre
practices back into the field of software making. Emmanuel's areas of
expertise and interests include self-organizing teams, software making and
Extreme Programming. He is involved in the conduct of the Coders' Dojo
Experiment in Paris, France, where he also works for Octo Technology as an
XP coach.
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Wednesday June 21 |
Agile
Process Anti-patterns Workshop: Detecting and correcting process "smells"
Wayne Allen
Description:
Agile methodologies are just as prone to mistakes, deviations and subversion
as any other methodology. This workshop is intended to discover and share
agile process anti-patterns then discuss and present creative solutions.
Anti-patterns, also referred to as pitfalls, are classes of
commonly-reinvented bad solutions to problems. They are studied, as a
category, in order that they may be avoided in the future, and that
instances of them may be recognized when investigating non-working systems.
This workshop focuses on participants’ (less than perfect) experiences in
the workplace and mines the collective wisdom of the group to come up with
creative solutions via a fishbowl process followed by breakout sessions and
then group presentations. This is a half day workshop.
A fishbowl is structured conversation technique where a small number of
people sit in front of the group (in the fishbowl) and converse with each
other. The audience listens and at any time a member of the audience may
become a member of the fishbowl, replacing one of the existing members.
Sample starter agile process anti-patterns: Testing Not Completed by
Iteration End, Functional Specialists & Handoffs, Lack of Automated Testing,
100% Utilization.
Who Should Attend
This workshop is for anyone who has ever worked on an imperfect agile
team or who desires to understand how things can go wrong. Participants will
come away with a broader understanding of the ways agile projects can get
off track and a variety of solutions for addressing these problems.
Presenter’s Background:
Wayne Allen has been a technology professional since 1987 and is currently a
Product Development Manager for Corillian Corporation where he manages
several agile teams. He has been coaching organizations in adoption of agile
methods since 2000. Starting in 2002 Wayne began specializing on the areas
outside the core of agile development, namely product management, quality
assurance, human factors, documentation and project management. Wayne is one
of the organizers for the Portland, OR USA XP Users Group (XPDX
http://www.xpdx.org).
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Exploring Agile Project Parameters
Rachel Davies, David Hussman
Description
When a team sets out to apply agile software development on a project, they
soon will discover there are a bunch of parameters and variables that need
to be set. For example, how long will their development cycles be, what
tasks will the apply pair programming to, who will maintain tracking
information, etc.
This workshop aims to provide a guide to teams on topics that they will need
to develop working agreements on within their project teams to help the team
get clear about how they want to apply agile techniques. The goal of this
workshop is to produce a set of questions that teams can use at the start of
a software development project to help them get clear about how they plan to
apply agile techniques.
Who shoud attend
This session will interest coaches, team leads and managers who want to set
their project teams up for successful implementation of agile software
development. Participants should have some experience of working in agile
software development.
Presenters' backgrounds
Rachel Davies is as an independent coach and facilitator in UK. She is
passionate about agile software development because it can increase the
chance of success in the face of complex problems and recognizes that teams
are made-up of individuals rather than resources. Rachel specializes in XP
and Scrum flavours of agile development and advocates the use of
retrospectives to help teams adapt their process to their context. Rachel is
a frequent presenter at agile conferences and serving director of the Agile
Alliance.
Rachel is founder of Agile Experience Limited and also a senior consultant
with Cutter Consortium.
David Hussman has designed and created software for more than 13 years in a
variety of domains: digital audio, digital biometrics, medical, retail, and
education to name a few. For the past 6 years, David has mentored and
coached agile teams in the U.S., Canada, Russia, and Ukraine. Along with
leading workshops and presenting at conferences in the U.S. and Europe,
David has contributed to numerous publications and several books. David
co-owns the Minneapolis based SGF Software, is a senior consultant with
Cutter Consortium, and has contributed to the agile curriculum for Capella
University and University of Minnesota.
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Extreme Construction:
Making Agile Accessible
Joe Bergin, Fred Grossman, Jutta Eckstein
Description
Get a jumpstart on the basics of Agile Development and Extreme
Programming (XP) in a day, without programming. This workshop will use
non-programming construction techniques to teach most of the XP practices in
a fun and interesting format. Build a non-software artifact using practices
of XP. See how the synergy of the XP practices brings benefits to you and
your organization.
Many people have an interest in agile methodologies, and XP in particular.
Managers need a way to evaluate XP from an institutional benefits
perspective and knowing how it actually works can be a help in this.
Programmers need to learn the practices before they can begin to effectively
use them. They also need a way to see how their current development habits
may be in conflict with XP practices. Educators and coaches want effective
ways to introduce XP and build teams. This workshop can provide required
background for all of these needs in a fun and informative way.
This workshop has been given many times in industrial, conference, and
academic settings. It has proven to be an effective way to train individuals
and teams, and also to help a new agile team coalesce into an effective
working unit.
Who should attend
Managers and other stakeholders interested in an in-depth understanding of
XP practices will experience how it works and get a chance to evaluate XP.
Educators/trainers/coaches interested in a technique for teaching XP
principles will learn how to use a valuable teaching exercise.
Developers wanting a quick-start to XP will get familiarity with the actual
XP practices.
There is no required background. This is accessible to novices and
non-programmers. Having read one of the XP books, such as Kent Beck's
Extreme Programming Explained, will be a plus, but not essential.
Presenters
Joe Bergin
Joe (jbergin@pace.edu) is a long time
participant at Agile conferences. He has, with Fred, co-led workshops at
OOPSLA and CASCON on XP, including the past two years. He uses XP in the
classroom and developed this exercise as an outgrowth of the Extreme Hour,
needing something that covered more of the practices, but still possible to
do in a day. Joe is an educator and practitioner with 33 years experience,
17 in OO, and 5 or so in agile practice and consulting. He is the author of
four books.
Jutta Eckstein
Jutta (www.jeckstein.com,
info@jeckstein.com) is an
independent consultant and trainer for over ten years. She has a unique
experience in applying agile processes within medium-sized to large
mission-critical projects. This is also the topic of her book Agile Software
Development in the Large. She is a member of the board of the AgileAlliance
and a member of the program committee of many different European and
American conferences in the area of agile development, object-orientation
and patterns.
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.
Joe and Jutta frequently collaborate, especially on pedagogical issues. Fred
and Joe jointly teach in a Doctoral program in which this is used to
introduce an agile software engineering course and build team spirit. All
three are certified ScrumMasters as well as XP trainer/coaches.
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