PriorMeetings

We've been having lots of great meetings lately, but we've lost interest in trying to keep this page up to date. Sorry.

August 12th: Regular monthly meeting, topic TBA

September 9th: Regular monthly meeting, topic TBA

September 25th-26th: APLN Leadership Summit, Marriott Perimeter Center

Tuesday, July 8th, 2008, 6:45 PM

On Tuesday, July 8th, Mark Isham will us a special sneak preview of the presentation he is delivering in August at the Agile 2008 conference in Toronto.

Agile Architecture IS Possible - You First Have to Believe!

Speaker: MarkIsham Date: July 8th, 6:45 PM Location: IBM-ISS (6303 Barfield Rd NE, Atlanta, Georgia 30328)

Have you ever been told "Agile works great for UI, but just doesn't work for large scale systems architecture"? In this experience report, I will review a real world project to redesign a successful large scale ecommerce system that became plagued with growing pains. After the team initially ran to the comfort of a long term waterfall project, cost overruns and escalating problems necessitated a new approach. Enter in Scrum and a focus on iterations and frequent customer feedback, and a once failed project turned into a blazing success.

Process/Mechanics

• Review of the problems we were hitting

• Overview of the initial "monolithic" redesign ideas

• Discuss business pushback on those ideas

• Discuss push to try agile technics to solve

• Cultural resistance faced by original architects from #2

• Talk about the points made and counter-arguments presented

• Review the revised iterative approach to solving

• Followup with results on how that approach worked.

May 13th 2008, 6:45 PM

Delivering Quality Software Using Agile Development Practices

Speaker: JannThomas

Delivering quality software on time is an art. Using development methods where weeks of testing follows weeks of development may have the following issues: The software team does not know when it is done, there is no list of what works only what does not, it is hard to determine what is in a build, the highest priority thing today may not be the highest priority thing tomorrow, there is tension between the software developers and software testers, the focus of team members can be on proving they are right instead of delivering software.

This presentation will give an Agile method for delivering software that is currently in practice in which, for every week of development there is a week of testing. Using this process, a team of developers and testing analyst have successfully delivered quarterly releases of management and control software for satellite communications with higher quality. By focusing on delivering our customer's highest priority features and fixes, this team has improved customer satisfaction.

One of the key elements to delivering software on time is to know when a unit of work is done. By integrating the software testers into the development team, the team can insure that each element delivered can be verified as complete. Furthermore, by creating a regression team that can test intermediate deliveries of software before the final release very focused functional testing can be per-formed and the quality of the product as a whole can be elevated.

Many methodologies describe the benefits of having the test team working on the software as early as possible. The goal of this presentation is to demonstrate an Agile method of delivering on that expectation.

Speaker: KenRitchie

Did you ever find yourself working on a company internal project? Were there any risks or issues concerning requirements, scope, budget, tools, expertise, team turnover, progress, or expectations? Was the project ever re-scoped, re-launched, re-started...or canceled?

Ken Ritchie will present an experience report from his past few years as an agile trainer and coach -- with some success stories emerging from troubled projects. We will include an open discussion, so you can ask questions and share insights from your own "war stories" of good, bad, and ugly projects!

Lighting Talks are quick presentations, usually 5 minutes, but we'll probably be fine with anything from 1 - 10 minutes. Basically, you have time to make one point, show a quick demo, or even ask a question to the group.

Speaker: You!

Lighting Talks are quick presentations, usually 5 minutes, but we'll probably be fine with anything from 1 - 10 minutes. Basically, you have time to make one point, show a quick demo, or even ask a question to the group.

Examples might include:

- A picture of your team's story wall or big visible charts http://www.xprogramming.com/xpmag/BigVisibleCharts.htm

- A demonstration of the tools your team uses for Agile

- A question on how to implement "impending doom" (one of Mike Cohn's change agents)

- Sharing a best practice you have learned

- An observation about your experience with Agile

This will be a great way to share our experiences and to learn from what others in your community are doing. If one talk doesn't interest you, just wait a few minutes and we will be on to the next one!

Speaker: MikeCohn

Transitioning to an agile development process is unlike most transitions an organization may make. Many transitions begin when a strong, visionary leader plants a stake in the ground and says, "Let's take our organization there." Other transitions start with a lone team thinking, "Who cares what management thinks, let's do this." The problem in transitioning to agile is that neither of these approaches alone is likely to lead to the long-term sustainable change required. Transitioning to agile is harder than many other corporate transitions because the transition process must be congruent with development process we are trying to adopt. We cannot, for example, wish to adopt an agile process because we believe in the power of self-organizing teams but then use a transition process that is not itself self-organizing. Nor can we adopt agile because it acknowledges the inherent uncertainty in precisely planning a project but then hope to precisely plan the transition to agile. In this session we will look at eight patterns of agile adoption and how to successfully transition to agile.

Meeting Coordinator: ChrisGardner

When we think about testing on agile teams, we usually assume the testers are fully integrated team members, working side by side with programmers and customers, helping to identify and execute acceptance tests. What do you do when your company has an independent test team? How do you integrate that team into the agile process?

Lisa will share her own experiences as a tester on agile teams, and what she has learned from other teams. She’ll discuss how to address cultural, organizational, technical and logistical issues when transitioning to agile. She’ll cover tips on how to handle areas such as defect tracking, lack of detailed requirements and the quick pace of delivery. This is intended to be an interactive discussion, so come prepared with your questions. Lisa will be presenting remotely via conference call.

Lisa Crispin has been a tester on agile teams developing Web-based applications since 2000. She co-authored Testing Extreme Programming (Addison-Wesley, 2002) with Tip House and is a regular contributor to Better Software magazine and other publications. She gives tutorials and facilitates workshops at agile and testing conferences in the U.S. and Europe. Read more about Lisa’s work at http://lisa.crispin.home.att.net.

Meeting Coordinator: AndyPowell

Have you ever been:

• Frustrated with a standup meeting that lasts 30 minutes?

• Disappointed that stories were not completed in an iteration?

• Confused about what it means for a story to be DONE on your team?

• Annoyed that your team has such little discipline?

• Upset at a member of your team?

Everyone wants to be a part of a well functioning agile team, but getting there isn't easy. Instead of trying to solve your team's problems alone, empower your team to solve its own issues by facilitating iteration retrospectives. After modeling an initial retrospective with the group, we'll spend this meeting discussing what retrospectives should feel like for your team, how determine a retrospective goal, and why retrospectives work so well.

Meeting Coordinator: HandlyCameron

Meeting Coordinator: AndrewFuqua

Stacia Broderick from RallyDevelopment was in town to teach a Certified Scrum Master class and was gracious enough to spend some time with us talking about multi-level planning. This was not a product demo, but a real, useful, talk on an agile topic.

This was a great session. Stacia has a lot of experience and really knows her stuff. We had some good debate as well.

PaulGale and PaulPalmer won the door prizes, books from OReilly.

Leader: BjornGustafsson

I believe Bjorn won the door prize, a book from our sponsor, OReilly.

Do agile processes eat their own dog food? John Brothers will lead a round table discussion based on recent discussions on the Scrum mailing list.

Primary topics:

• Are backlogs waste?

• Who owns Scrum (or XP)

• What are the best Agile metrics?

Bring your brain, your perspective and your own points of view!

Contact: ChrisGardner

Leader: JohnBrothers

Mike Cohn gave us an overview of the material in his excellent book Agile Estimating and Planning. This book is part of the Prentice-Hall Robert C. Martin Series. Mike was in Atlanta, giving his Certified ScrumMaster training.

We gave away a couple of copies of the estimating and planning book, which Mike graciously autographed.

Mike Cohn is the founder of Mountain Goat Software, a process and project management consultancy and training firm. With more than twenty years of experience, Mike has been a technology executive in companies ranging from start-ups to Fortune 40s, and is a founding member of the Agile Alliance. He frequently contributes to industry-related magazines and presents regularly at conferences. He is the author of User Stories Applied (Addison-Wesley, 2004). -- Prentice-Hall author information

Robert C. Martin of ObjectMentor was supposed to speak to us about Test Driven Development and many other topics. Unfortunately, Uncle Bob was feeling poorly and sent Michael Feathers in his place. An ObjectMentor associate, Michael Feathers is the author of Working Effectively with Legacy Code and the excellent article The Humble Dialog Box, a presentation of the Model View Presenter (MVP) pattern.

Michael gave us a excellent presentation of making untested code bases more testable. There was significant audience participation. Many remarked about how they would be able to directly apply some of the techniques described.

We would like to thank Michael for speaking to our group on such short notice and ObjectMentor for sending us a wonderful speaker. We also thank our sponsor ADP for providing the facility.

Several of the group got together at TacoMac to break the ice for a new year of Agile Atlanta. We had an excellent time.

Meeting cancelled

Meeting cancelled

Meeting cancelled

Agile Project Management (APM) has extended well beyond its roots in agile software development projects, and is now also being used as a management framework to manage product development and other non-software projects. APM defines the role of project management differently from traditional plan-driven management: stressing leadership and collaboration over command and control, and continuous learning and adaptation over conformance to plan. In addition, APM defines project management as a shared, active effort for all team members, not simply the project manager. As project managers transition to new responsibilities on agile projects, what are some of the management responsibilities that are now incumbent on the team to fulfill? Come hear Sanjiv Augustine share and discuss his thoughts on the shared role and responsibilties of the team in project management on agile projects.

Sanjiv Augustine is the Practice Director, Lean-Agile Consulting at CC Pace, and a leading agile management consultant. In over fifteen years in the IT industry, Sanjiv has performed in a variety of roles as a programmer, system architect, technical director, management consultant and project manager. Driven by a holistic organizational view and customer value focus, he has led the industry in combining Agile and Lean methodologies into a unique and powerful hybrid. As a consultant, he has assisted clients in deploying agile and lean methodologies at many institutions, large and small. As an in-the-trenches practitioner, he has personally managed agile projects varying in size from five to over one hundred people. He is the author of Managing Agile Projects, founder and moderator of the Yahoo! Agile Project Management discussion group, and a co-author of the Declaration of Inter-dependence for Agile and Adaptive Management.

Meeting cancelled

Dave Hoover described the meeting topic and this is what he said: "The excellent books The Pragmatic Programmer and Software Craftsmanship were written for Journeymen and Masters. We are writing a book for apprentices, documenting the common approaches that have guided less experienced developers toward mastery. We are collecting stories from software craftsmen to grow and test this emerging apprenticeship pattern language. Please join us as we share what we've learned. We're interested in your feedback and the stories of how you yourself grew from a novice to craftsman."

The meeting turned into a lively discussion where many of our resident gray-beards had the opportunity to relate the patterns to their careers. Dave was also open to new pattern contributions and updates.

Dave is always welcome to present at our meetings, and we are looking forward to his apprenticeship patterns book. Be sure to visit his website, http://redsquirrel.com/dave/, for pattern updates.

We had several door prize winners courtesy of our friends at Addison-Wesley/Prentice-Hall. Finally, our ever reliable ClearNova sponsor provided the excellent food and facilties.

Paul Zabelin and Jeffrey Rogers of ThoughtWorks teamed up to present strategies and tools available to the agile tester. Paul focused on Fit and FitNesse and touched on achieiving 100% test coverage, while Jeff presented Selenium and Watir.

The presentations were infomative, giving us a chance to compare testing tools many of us had heard of for a while.

Our sponsors came through, as usual:

• ClearNova for providing the facilities and the food.

• Addison-Wesley for providing the door prizes.

Here were our door prize winners:

• Paul Holser - Extreme Programming Explored by William C. Wake

• Wendy Elmore - Agile Software Development, Principles, Patterns, and Practices by Robert C. Martin

• Dheeraj Ravula - Agile Software Development by Alistair Cockburn

• Paul Zabelin - Agile Project Management: Creating Innovative Products by Jim Highsmith

Some people think that Ruby on Rails (http://www.rubyonrails.org/) is the next big thing in web development, and our own Obie Fernandez, former president of Agile Atlanta and current star at ThoughtWorks, is among them. Obie gave us a phenomenal RoR presentation. You can read Obie's online ROR musings here:

http://www.jroller.com/page/obie/Weblog?catname=%2FRuby

Our sponsors came through, as usual:

• ClearNova for providing the facilities and the food.

• Addison-Wesley for providing the door prizes.

Here were our door prize winners:

• Upendra Kanda - Extreme Programming Explained Second Edition by Kent Beck

• Rajesh Narayan - Agile Project Management by Jim Highsmith

• Gang Wang - Agile Software Development Ecosystems by Jim Highsmith

In March we talked about the changes and clarifications Kent Beck made in the second edition of Extreme Programming Explained: Embrace Change. The theme of the discussion was "Has eXtreme Programming embraced change?" Well, this month we reflected on the Agile Atlanta User Group itself. We asked "Has our user group embraced change?" We had an interesting discussion about the future of Agile Atlanta. This discussion yielded some interesting possibilities that could dramatically change the way we do business. There is a lot more to say about this, and we would like our members to participate in the discussion via e-mail or better yet our new project management website at basecamphq. E-mail me at chris_gardner76@yahoo.com, if you'd like to participate.

Our sponsor ClearNova provided snacks and facilities.

We had a lively discussion of the new vision of the principles of XP as presented in the second edition of Extreme Programming Explained: Embrace Change

Several attendees won door prizes provided by our friends at Addison-Wesley/Prentice Hall:

• Ron Sullivan: Agile Software Development by Alistair Cockburn

• Andrew York: Agile Software Development, Principles, Patterns, and Practices by Robert C. Martin

• Changyi: Test Driven Development: A Practical Guide by David Astels

This was the first meeting at the offices of our new sponsor ClearNova.

Overview of Agile

In his presentation, “Overview of Agile: Predictability & Quality”, Robert C. Martin makes believers out of non-believers by demonstrating the practicality of using agile methodologies. Robert C. Martin is the author of Agile Software Development, a book for the software developer in the trenches. It describes Agile Software Development from a practitioner's point of view. Through dozens of case studies it describes and teaches the principles of object oriented software design, the patterns that embody those principles, and the practices that enable individuals and teams to use those principles. Robert Martin has been developing software since 1970. He is CEO, president, and founder of Object Mentor Inc., a firm of highly experienced software professionals that offers process improvement consulting, object-oriented software design consulting, training, and development services to major corporations around the world.

This presentation was great fun. We had around 50 attendees and gave away copies of Bob's book Agile Software Development as well as several other books. Bob is welcome to speak to us any time he wants.

January 11 '05 -- Feature Driven Development

MartinWestbrook put together an enlightening presentation on Feature Driven Development (FDD).

Known as a 'less agile' methodology, Feature-Driven Development is a combination of elements from traditional software development processes and more agile thinking.

On the traditional side, FDD includes formalized feature list collection, thorough modeling, and early project estimation. On the agile side, it provides short iterations, incremental deliveries, close collaboration, real-time graphical project visibility, emphasis on quality early, and focusing on client-valued functionality.

This Introduction to Feature-Driven Development presentation covered:

• History

• Characteristics

• Five-Stage Model

• Measurements

• Tools

• Further Information

• Q&A - Discussion

Many people have asked for Martin's FDD Power Point. You may obtain it in the files section of our yahoo group:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/agile-atlanta/files/ .

We also had several door prize winners:

• Darrell Ross and his colleagues won FDDTracker on behalf of their company, ClearNova

• Pankaj Bhargava won Agile and Iterative Development: A Manager's Guide

• Handly Cameron and MartinWestbrook each won A Practical Guide to Feature-Driven Development

• MichaelHirsch won Object Design: Roles, Responsibilities, and Collaborations

The books are courtesy of our friends at Addison-Wesley and Prentice Hall.

December '04 -- Social

Meeting Coordinator: DevaWijewickrema

Many of us got together at Fuddruckers. Thanks for setting this up Deva!

MichaelHirsh gave us a wonderful introduction to Scrum. Scrum is an "agile management process". It emphasizes short (4 week) iteration cycles, or "sprints," with shippable code as the deliverable from each cycle. Scrum is not a development methodology--small teams self organize to develop the solution in whatever means they find appropriate. Daily feedback is available in the form of short daily status meetings which anyone may attend, and burndown charts.

This presentation covered the essentials of Scrum, including the terminology and basic processes mentioned above. The talk was well structured and quite informative.

We had several winners of door prizes from our friends at Addison-Wesley:

• IanGibson won Extreme Programming Explored

• DevaWijewickrema and MichaelHirsch each won a signed copy of User Stories Applied

Meeting Coordinator: ChrisGardner

Practitioners of agile software development methodologies, including XP, are often "anti" project management. However, the real issue is not project management or no project management, but the style of project management.

Many developers rightfully struggle with a style that has been characterized as "project administration" rather than true project management. Furthermore, there is a second issue characterized by the difference between command-control and leadership-collaboration styles of management. The "right" type of project management is as important, if not more so, to agile/XP projects as it is to traditional ones. A little project management can go a long way, particularly with larger projects.

This presentation covered: a set of agile project management (APM) values and principles that are based on those of the Agile Software Manifesto, but adapted for project managers; an APM framework of Envision, Speculate, Explore, Adapt, and Close; some of the core practices that define APM; and the key role differences between agile and traditional project managers.

The presentation was based on material in Jim's new book, Agile Project Management: Creating Innovative Products.

We had a nice turnout with several new people. We gave away a few copies of Jim's book as well as some XP related titles.

-- ChrisGardner

September 14 '04 -- When XP/Agile Goes Wrong

Meeting Coordinator: ChrisGardner

Paul Gale suggested this idea from AgileBazaar (AgileBazaar@yahoogroups.com) a few months ago:

We discussed this paper: Extreme Programming Considered Harmful for Reliable Software Development

It was a lively discussion. Chris presented the paper section-by-section. We had counter arguments to most of the material in the paper. Only occasionally did we find ourselves agreeing with the material.

We had several new attendees, including Danny Sebestyen, Paul Lockwood, and Ian Gibson. Also, here were the winners of our coveted book door prizes from our friends at Addison-Wesley:

• Danny Sebestyen - Test Driven Development: By Example

• John Brothers - a signed copy of User Stories Applied

• Lan Cao - Domain Driven Design

Meeting Coordinator: ChrisGardner

Luke Hohmann spoke to us via webinar about the role of architecture, software professionalism, and product management. Luke wrote a couple of books that cover those subjects (http://www.lukehohmann.com/books/index.htm). One of those books is in the Martin Fowler Signature Series.

http://www.lukehohmann.com/

Here is what Martin Fowler has to say about Luke: http://martinfowler.com/books.html#series

This was a great meeting. We gave away a copies of both of Luke's books.

Meeting Coordinator: ChrisGardner

A presentation on Lean Software Development from Mary Poppendieck (http://www.poppendieck.com/). This was in conjunction with the Atlanta SPIN group (http://www.atlantaspin.org/). This was an excellent meeting that suggested how companies can be more productive in developing software. Details can be found here: http://atlantaspin.org/Archives/072804.html

We gave away two copies of Mary's book Lean Software Development (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0321150783/qid=1091498787/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/002-8191342-3352062?v=glance&s=books).

The collaboration with SPIN worked well. This is something we should consider for future meetings that may go beyond agile considerations.

Canceled meeting

Meeting Coordinator: ChrisGardner

The session will use exercises in Bill Wake's Refactoring Workbook (http://www.awprofessional.com/title/0321109295) as a guide. We will be giving away a copy of the Workbook as a door prize. The approach will be to take some ugly code, as presented in the exercises, and refactor it live with direction from the audience. To allow more hands-on, however, people are encouraged to bring their laptops. Ideally, there will be enough laptops such that a pair can work together to refactor the code.

Laptops should have the following:

• A Java IDE, such as Eclipse or IntelliJ, that supports refactoring;

• The Refactoring Workbook code linked at http://xp123.com/rwb/rwb.zip. (Also, read the page at http://xp123.com/rwb/)

-- This was a great meeting. We gave away lots of door prizes. If you weren't there, you really missed out.

The Refactoring Workbook had several thought-provoking exercises. Theses were the winners of excellent Addison-Wesley door prizes:

-- ChrisGardner

April 13, '04 -- VersionOne vs XPlanner shoot-out

Meeting Coordinator:

RobertHoller did a demo of VersionOne back in December '02. Robert has agree to an encore performance. Perhaps we can do a shoot-out of VersionOne versus XPlanner (xplanner.org). -- AndrewFuqua

We're just starting to use it at nuBridges and I'd be interested in seeing it demoed. I'd also like to see xplanner--I've never had the energy to look into it more. -- MichaelHirsch

We had an excellent meeting. I would like to thank Robert Holler for demonstrating VersionOne at last night's meeting. A deserving winner of the 2004 Jolt Award, VersionOne is an agile software development management tool. From the presentation, it was obvious that Robert and his team put forth significant effort to create a high quality product in terms of features, usability, and aesthetics. I wish Robert success with his business.

We also gave away books from Addison-Wesley and O'Reilly as door prizes. AndrewFuqua won Hohmann's Beyond Software Architecture. HandlyCameron won the Apache Cookbook. JohnBrothers won an Addison Wesley hat.

-- ChrisGardner

Meeting Coordinator (Contact): ChrisGardner

A Classes, Responsibilities, Collaborations (CRC) session attempted to give attendees the opportunity to learn an interesting approach to software design. Discussion included:

1. Explanation of CRC

2. History of CRC

3. Overview of the approach

4. Presentation of the user stories

5. CRC breakout (into 3 three groups)

This was a great session. Many commented that they learned a lot, that the exercise was very helpful. We had 16 in attendance. Dave Corbin won the Jython and Andrew Fuqua won the Web Security book, both courtesy of O'Reilly. -- AndrewFuqua

Also, Michael Hirsh had a chance to apply CRC cards to a real project at work. See http://groups.yahoo.com/group/agile-atlanta/message/917 -- ChrisGardner

February 10th, '04 -- User Stories

Meeting Coordinator (Contact): ChrisGardner

MikeCohn presented (via phone and powerpoint) principles and practices of user stories, based on his upcoming book UserStoriesApplied. This was a very thought provoking talk for me and we had a great discussion. We're very grateful to Mike for taking time out of his busy schedule to talk with us.

We had 2 door prizes!

• AndrewFuqua won the 2 free nights in a delux cabin at [www.thelastresort.com The Last Resort]

• MichaelSellers won the book of his choice from O'Reilly. I think he took the "Java Extreme Programming Cookbook", but I could be mistaken.

Turnout: 17

Door prize: the Ant book from O'Reilly,

Door prize winner: GeorgeZhou

From: MichaelHirsch

I've just come back from Scrum Master training. 3 of us from nuBridges were sent to Scrum Master Certification in Boston. It was pretty interesting. I learned a lot I could improve in my practice.

If anyone is interested I'd be happy to give a presentation on it and Scrum and the relationship between Scrum and XP. I could do it at any length, from 10 minutes to an hour depending on what y'all want.

For those who don't know, Scrum is an agile management technique that shares certain features with XP--it is agile and iterative. Scrum does not prescribe any actual engineering methods, so it is completely compatible with much of XP--pairing, unit testing, continuous integration, etc. Scrum proponents say that it can scale up to large enterprises while still remaining nimble.

Special location:

JOHNNY'S PIZZA AND SUBS
7887 ROSWELL RD
(770) 804-3322

We pulled a bunch of tables together and had a grand ol' time debating, socializing, questioning, networking and, of course, eating and drinking. The turn-out was great! How many did we have? 15 or 20? Four new guys joined us: RaghuVenkat, two guys from e-<small>mumblemumble</small> (sorry, forgot the name, but I know they are doing XP in an embeded environment), and one of Obie's co-workers. It was great to have some new faces and also to see Paul and Obie again.

SPECIAL DATE -- Thursday 11/13/03. See http://fitnesse.org/ and Ward Cunningham's http://fit.c2.com/

Mr. Martin gave a great demo of Fitnesse. He created a demo from scratch based on input from the audience. That was fun to watch and seeing every little step is most helpful. Folks asked questions for about 20 minutes afterward. Thanks Uncle Bob!

What a blast. We played Explanations and XP War (showdown). http://industriallogic.com/games/eppc.html

Robert Gash on Cruise Control (http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?CruiseControl; http://cruisecontrol.sourceforge.net) and Dave Corbin on Anthill (http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?AntHill; http://www.urbancode.com/projects/anthill).

For such a dry topic, this was a surprisingly entertaining pair of presentations.

In the last 45 minutes we did an exercise on change that Andrew picked up from Joshua Kerievsky at XP2003. We had a great discussion on change, how it feels, and particularly about being aware of how we change-agents may be making our coworkers feel when we're pushing XP in an org.

KielHodges showed us somethink like httpunit (http://httpunit.sourceforge.net/).

JohnRoth showed FIT (http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?FitWiki) and NakedObjects (http://www.nakedobjects.org).

AndrewFuqua showed a home-grown XML based AT framework.

MattDiIorio presented some acceptance tests that test a Swing GUI.

Robert told us all about SCRUM. Robert's the founder of VersionOne (www.versionone.net).

Experience report from Chris Gardner (a follow-up to the release planning meeting a few months back)

Bob and Lowell dropped in on us. It was awesome. There are a couple posts with notes on this meeting in our yahoo group (agile-atlanta). See the posts in Feb.

At first glance, an agile methodology like XP would seem to be completely incompatible with a traditional software engineering planning methodology like the Capability Maturity Model (CMM). However, further exploration of the two does reveal many overlapping ideas and methods. But do the two complement or compete with each other?

Robert demo'd VersionOne's XP/SCRUM/Agile product. Cool.

Awesome discussion with Alistair about Crystal and other agile topics. http://alistair.cockburn.us

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/agile-atlanta/message/404

Discuss whatever is on your mind.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/agile-atlanta/message/327

Warning: what makes a good task for one team makes a lousy task for another. That's why XP books and education always start off with "do it this way". Then when you get comfortable with it, you begin doing it a different way -- one that is customized to your team.

Brainstorming session of all the types of things that you might possibly want as a task:

• What kinds of activity qualify as a single task.

• design meeting, talk to other team, document results, spike,

• refactor, retrofit, look for reuse,

• install db upgrade, install profiler/ide, designing icons

• Things you can write tests for!

• code: new/changed classes/interfaces

Fowler: "in the end there is no hard and fast rules for how you break something down into tasks. Use whatever approach makes sence for you. As long as the tasks are kept short and you can write tests for them, you'll be fine."

• How to put together good estimates for tasks.

• consider rounding to 4hr increments (4 and 8)

• consider allowing estimates of 1hr, 4, 8 and 16hrs only

• count the things to do (subtasks) and multiply by average size.

• count the classes or methods or interactions and multiple...

• look back at prior tasks (history)

• NEVER estimate alone. Always with at least 1 other.

• AVOID estimating with MORE than 4-6 in a group.

• ALWAYS remember to estimate time to write tests.

• How to know you're going too far in identifying tasks (In Planning Extreme Programming, p. 88, Fowler and Beck talk about taking "a short pass at the classes and interactions you'll need to add and modify."). How do you avoid analysis paralysis at the task identification level?

• Table big discussions--HAVE a DESIGN meeting following a short break.

• consider having a "misc" task card for short 1hr (sub-)tasks

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/agile-atlanta/message/281

The poll: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/agile-atlanta/surveys?id=10655977

FuquasXpPresentation

MartinFowler presented concepts from his new archeticture patterns book at our May '02 meeting. It was really cool.

Our next meeting (4/9/2002) is at our new digs (see below).

The topic is "Adopting XP / Adoption pains"

The format will be an open discussion.

Everyone will have an opportunity to describe how they adopted XP and to describe their adoption pains. (Please prepare your thoughts before the meeting.) The group will discuss how to address those pains.

The February and March '02 meetings successfully tackled the Test First Challenge.

This was a fantastic presentation. I'd love to hear Fred again.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/agile-atlanta/message/152

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/agile-atlanta/message/159

PaulGale gave RonJeffries' planning game talk.

Discuss whatever is on your mind. We discussed lots of problems some of us were having adopting XP.

Meeting canceled for obvious reasons.

MichaelLauer of Brokat presented his talk on ExtendingXP that he presented earlier that year at JavaOne.

Got organized! Got topic ideas.

MoinMoin Powered

Immutable page (last edited 2009-02-11 14:22:44 by afuqua)

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