Better Software - September 2008 - (Page ADP13)

PRE-CONFERENCE TuTORIALS HALF-DAY TUTORIALS TM Avoid Integration Defects J. B. Rainsberger, Independent Consultant TuESDAy, NOvEMBER 11, 1:00-4:30 J. B. Rainsberger helps software organizations satisfy their customers and the businesses they support. Expert at delivering successful software, he writes, teaches, and speaks about why delivering better software is important—but not enough. He helps clients improve their bottom line by coaching teams as well as leading change programs. J. B. helps software organizations get off the treadmill of overcommitment and underdelivery, addressing all aspects of software delivery, including understanding the business, gelling the team, and writing great code. Learn more about how J. B. will inspire your software organization at jbrains.ca, in his IEEE Software magazine column “Not Just Coding”, at conferences worldwide, or by writing him at get.started@jbrains.ca. without Integration Testing NEW Despite their good test-driven design (TDD) practices, end-to-end tests have sunk many TDD enthusiasts. Although end-to-end tests are not inherently bad, they can slow you down when you rely on them too heavily, causing you to make more mistakes. As a result, some developers give up on TDD entirely. Don’t give up! You are ready to learn the next key TDD technique that will help you write better code that avoids integration defects. learn the design principles and techniques that have enabled J. B. Rainsberger to not rely on end-toend tests while writing correct code. With these new techniques, you will write fewer tests that cover more of the code base, provide far superior feedback, and deliver features sooner. Join J. B. Rainsberger to reduce your integration defects without adding costly end-to-end tests to the test base. optionaL Laptop J. B. Rainsberger encourages you to bring a laptop with code that has your integration tests—tests that worry about the correctness of multiple objects. If you don’t mind the critique, he’ll show you how to write smaller, more focused tests. TN From user Story to user Jeff Patton, Independent Consultant Interface You’ve chosen to take an agile approach to development. You’ve written down a set of user stories of what users want for their system. Now, the developers have questions on the look and feel of the user interface. How can you quickly, predictably, and with confidence move from user stories to a user interface? Jeff Patton introduces a practical approach for translating user goals and tasks into user interface designs that effectively support users’ work. Discover how a user-centered design practitioner moves quickly from user tasks to user interface. Practice taking a set of user stories and transforming them into more tangible actions that users might take in the user interface; then, collaboratively build and test paper prototypes of your proposed user interface. In addition to paper prototyping skills and basic usability testing skills, learn the essential visual design skills that can help improve the appeal of your new user interface. For the past twelve years, Jeff Patton has designed and developed software on a wide variety of projects from online aircraft parts ordering to electronic medical records. A winner of the Agile Alliance’s 2007 Gordon Pask Award for contributions to agile development, Jeff has focused on agile approaches since working on an early Extreme Programming team in 2000. Jeff has specialized in the application of user-centered design techniques to improve agile requirements, planning, and products. Some of his recent writing on the subject can be found at www.agileproductdesign.com and Alistair Cockburn’s Crystal Clear. His forthcoming book gives tactical advice to those seeking to deliver useful, usable, and valuable software. TO The Bridge to Agility for Traditional Project Managers NEW Michele Sliger, Sliger Consulting, Inc. Traditional software project managers are feeling left behind by new agile software development practices. This is your opportunity to bridge agile development concepts by relating these new approaches to practices with which you are already familiar—the Project Management Institute’s Body of Knowledge (PMBOK). learn about agile frameworks and the meaning of value-driven development, Scrum, XP, lean methods, and more. Michele Sliger maps PMI’s PMBOK Guide® knowledge areas to the corresponding agile development practices. The mapping includes answers to questions, such as how to manage risk, what happens to change control, what project plans look like, and whether or not scope creep has any meaning in agile projects. Michele describes how to redefine project managers’ traditional jobs into a new—and more important—role in agile development. The co-author of The Software Project Manager’s Bridge to Agility, Michele Sliger has extensive experience in agile software development, having transitioned to Scrum and XP practices in 2000 after starting her career following the traditional waterfall approach. A self-described “bridge builder,” her passion lies in helping those in traditional software development environments cross the bridge to agility. Michele consults with businesses ranging from small start-ups to Fortune 500 companies, helping teams with their agile adoption and helping organizations prepare for the changes that agile brings. She is a certified Project Management Professional (PMP®) and a Certified Scrum Trainer (CST). Michele can be reached at michele@ sligerconsulting.com. With twenty years of experience in the software industry, working with both startup and established companies, Certified Scrum Practitioner Steve Berczuk leads and coaches teams in agile software development practices. In addition to developing software, he helps teams effectively use software configuration management (SCM). Steve is co-author of Software Configuration Management Patterns: Effective Teamwork, Practical Integration. He lives and works in Boston as a technical lead for Cyrus Innovation, an agile consultancy. Steve’s Web site is www.berczuk.com. TP Software Configuration Steve Berczuk, Cyrus Innovation Management for Agile Development NEW version management, build, and release practices are essential elements of any effective development environment. Yet many agile teams are puzzled by how to translate good software configuration management (SCM) practices into an agile environment. Some teams believe SCM interferes with the agile goals of rapid integration and change; others ignore SCM to the point that their code becomes more chaotic than agile. Steve Berczuk provides an overview of SCM concepts and explains the SCM patterns and practices that teams need to maintain an agile change rate. Robust SCM practices provide for the traceability and reproducibility you need for production environments. After this session, you will understand how both agile testing practices and continuous integration change how teams use SCM. learn how to use SCM to manage both legacy (non-agile) code bases and new agile projects, and how to set up the essentials of an agile SCM environment. leave this session with a better understanding of how SCM can help you be more agile—while still maintaining control of your code. TQ Agile Estimating and Planning Mike Cohn, Mountain Goat Software NEW Planning is important for all projects, especially agile ones. Unfortunately, we’ve all seen many worthless plans and often want to throw out planning altogether. Unfortunately, too many teams today view planning as something to be avoided, and too many organizations view plans as something to hold against their development teams. Don’t give up yet! With the right type of agile planning and estimating, you can create an accurate and useful project plan that looks six to nine months in the future. Join Mike Cohn to learn new skills that will help you create reliable plans that improve decision-making and break the cycle of poor estimates and failed expectations. leave with a solid understanding of and experience in agile planning as you learn new approaches to estimating—unit-less points, ideal time, and more. Practice estimating with the popular Planning Poker technique and see how these techniques work on fixed-price and fixed-scope projects. With Mike and the other participants, you’ll explore techniques that dramatically increase your project’s chances of on-time completion. A Certified Scrum trainer, Mike Cohn is the founder of Mountain Goat Software, a process and project management consultancy and training firm. He is the author of Agile Estimating and Planning and User Stories Applied for Agile Software Development, as well as books on Java and C++ programming. With more than twenty years of experience, Mike has previously been a technology executive in companies of various sizes—from startup to Fortune 40. A frequent magazine contributor and conference speaker, Mike is a founding member of the Scrum Alliance and the Agile Alliance. He can be reached at mike@mountaingoatsoftware.com. TR Practical Agile: Real World Jared Richardson, 6th Sense Analytics Practices NEW Agile is a huge paradigm shift for most development organizations. It is difficult to decide which practices suit your organization and how to introduce them without alienating your team. Jared Richardson offers practical ideas that he has found are critical to agile adoption and its success. Join Jared to discuss and experiment with practices ranging from peer code reviews and daily stand-up meetings to learning about “The list.” These practices will help you improve code quality, increase team cohesion, manage your feature backlog, and help keep your team on track. Jared describes how to get started with agile, pitfalls to avoid, and how to decide which practices are working for you. Experiment with and try out some of these practices to gain hands-on experience. learn how a gradual, grassroots introduction of the right agile practices can help ease your team http://www.agileproductdesign.com http://www.berczuk.com http://www.AgileArtisans.com http://www.6sa.com/blog http://WWW.SQE.COM/ADPREG

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Better Software - September 2008

Agile Conference Brochure Contents Conference-at-a-Glance The EXPO Special Events Conference Speaker Index 36 In-Depth Pre-conference Tutorials 4 Keynote Presentations 42 Concurrent Classes Agile Leadership Summit by APLN Conference Venue and Things to Do in Orlando, FL Conference Sponsors & Exhibitors Registration Information Event Location Ways to Save

Better Software - September 2008

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