We’d like to thank everyone who attended XP Day Manhattan 2007 for helping to make it a success. The group was small, but the conversations were lively and the results were good. We are now preparing for the 2008 season, including some changes for the better.
Continue the conversation at the XP Day Manhattan 2007 wiki!
We are pleased to hold this event at Community Connect, located at 205 Hudson St, 6th floor on Saturday, October 13, 2007. Doors will open at 8:00 AM for breakfast and for attendees to check in.
Steve was a pioneer of Agile software development in the UK, he has built applications for banks, ISPs, financial data providers, and specialist software companies. He has given training courses in Europe, America, and Asia. Previously, he worked in research labs, software houses, earned a PhD, and wrote shrink-wrap software. Steve also teaches in the Computer Science department at University College London. He is a presenter and organizer at international industry conferences, and was conference chair for the first London XpDay.
Sustainability: A neglected principle.
Too many software organisations sacrifice their people and their projects to the present, leaving Support to cope with brittle systems and developers to cope with burn-out. This is false economy. Either that or they stop trying, leaving management to cope with rising costs. Agile Development practices deliver better value for everyone because they're realistic and take the whole picture into account. But even Agile teams sometimes forget about Sustainability in the rush to produce.
The Brundtland Commission defined sustainable economic development as "[meeting] the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs." This sounds like a good target for our industry too. I will talk about what Sustainability means in Agile Development and why it's important to us.
George Dinwiddie is a Software Development Consultant and Coach with over twenty years of experience creating software ranging from small embedded systems to corporate enterprise systems. While a teenage job as a television repairman and a BA in English proved sufficient for developing electronic hardware and embedded software, he ultimately went back and got MSCS credentials to justify competency at the work he was doing. He has continued a quest for lifelong learning through workshops, conferences, discussions, reading, teaching, and the school of hard knocks. He has pursued more effective ways of creating software at the technical, interpersonal and organizational levels. As a mentor, coach, team lead, or team member, he helps teams learn more effective software development techniques while accomplishing their current projects.
Agile practices tend to make existing problems more visible, as well as require some new skills. This is as true for the developer’s career development as it is for the company’s project management. If you’re not feeding your own future, you’re likely to see the problems more quickly on an Agile project, soon enough to take corrective action. And then you won’t find yourself painted into a corner by obsolete skills a decade down the road.
This tutorial will explore some of the avenues for staying current in the fast moving industry of software development. We’ll get down to earth with some simulations and exercises. And we’ll explore some enduring heuristics that will stand you in good stead as mere technologies change over time.
Naresh Jain is a software craftsman working as a consultant for ThoughtWorks India. He has worked on variety of software projects utilizing both XP and Scrum techniques since 2003. Working from India and US, Naresh has experience with distributed projects using CMM5i and Agile methods.
Naresh Jain is the founder Vice-Chairman of the Agile Software Community of India (ASCI) and the organizer of the Simple Design And Testing Conference (SDTConf). Naresh has help start various Agile User Groups including the Agile Philly User Group and various groups in India. Naresh is an active Open Source committer and enjoys teaching software development courses in Universities. By being a part of the team, Naresh helps software companies embrace agile.
Naresh enjoys beer, music, adventure sports and hot food of any colour. You can reach him at naresh@agilefaqs.com.
J. B. (Joe) Rainsberger is a programmer, coach, mentor and author. He has helped teams improve the overall value to their organizations by introducing concepts from lean manufacturing and new product development into the software development arena. His book JUnit Recipes is a manual for Java programmers to improve their programming skills through programmer testing, and has become "the bible of JUnit". Beyond helping programmers learn how to test, Joe teaches teams how to deliver working software frequently and predictably, enabling their businesses to realize revenue sooner and pursue more aggressive plans. In the true spirit of adventure, Joe is leaving Toronto behind this summer to move to Dauphin, Manitoba and live a simpler, less costly life.
Many people read the XP literature and wonder where the theory is. We forget that some people need a theoretical basis for understanding the practices of XP, a model to explain them both in isolation and as an interconnected web of mutually reinforcing activities. My Introduction to XP describes a model that attempts to explain the significance of the XP practices in concrete business terms. Eli Goldratt's formula for success in manufacturing is surprisingly appropriate for software development.
Steve Freeman & XP Day Manhattan 2007
invite you to co-create an Open Space event: Sustainability: A Neglected Principle.
Open Space Technology is a way to create a conference with the energy of a productive board meeting and the fun of a good coffee break! This technique has been used around the world for over 15 years to enable spirited and productive dialogue, helping people focus on the issues they're passionate about, to discover new solutions and strategies. The meeting approach will be new for many of you, so expect some pleasant surprises!
We invite you to join us in Open Space to help us create reminders to help us all make projects run more happily, more sustainably, and more productively.
The agenda for our conversations will be created by your initiative, using the ideas you bring with you, about the challenges and opportunities for turning things that need to be remembered into habits. You will also be asked to take responsibility for reporting your ideas and proposals so we can share them with all participants. Your engagement will be essential to our success. You can read more about Open Space as a meeting approach here.
You are putting in significant time on a weekend so that we can improve XP culture in this city. Thus, as the Sponsors, we will make a wiki available to help you capture the results of your efforts, so that you can share it with one another, as well as colleagues who did not attend.
We hope that each session will post its results on the wiki. After the conference.
Deborah Hartmann is an active proponent of Agile practices,
and is a Certified ScrumMaster
(Practitioner). Deborah has persevered in the software industry since the
early 80s, and during her extended consulting experience often thought
"there's got to be a better way!" Deborah promotes approaches like XP,
Scrum and Open Space as means to produce better ideas, teams and products. Deb
sponsored the "Growing Agile Practices" Open Space event held in
Toronto in 2004. She is the Agile Community Editor for
InfoQ.com, an online resource for the enterprise software development community.
This is her fourth appearance at XP Day North America as OpenSpace facilitator.
XP Day Manhattan 2007: Saturday, October 13, 2007, 8 AM to 6:15 PM