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PROGRAMME

See the full
event programme.

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VENUE

This year's conference has moved to a larger space at
Churchill College, Cambridge.

Agile Cambridge 2011

PRE-CONFERENCE TUTORIALS AND WORKSHOPS

The following tutorials will be run before the main conference:

Booking for these tutorials is now open below. Ticket prices increase as more tickets are sold so please book now to save money.

Kanban - Successful evolutionary change for your technology business

Tuesday 27th September - Wednesday 28th September. (2 Days)
Facilitator - David J. Anderson

Description

Participants will learn how to use the simple process of limiting work-in-progress as a driver of change. Kanban is a change management method and a different approach to striking agreements between IT and the business.

You’ll learn how to define the policies that constrain the collaborative game of software development. You’ll learn how to use those policies to manage risk and to reset negotiations and recast them as collaborative problem solving.

Used effectively, Kanban will change you and your organization. If your workplace has been stagnating and you are looking for new ideas to unleash productivity, innovation, collaboration and creativity, take 2 days and come along.

About David Anderson

David J. Anderson leads a management consulting firm focused on improving performance of technology companies. He has many years management experience leading teams on agile software development projects. David was a founder of the agile movement through his involvement in the creation of Feature Driven Development. He was also a founder of the APLN, a non-profit dedicated to improving management and leadership in technology companies. Recently David has been focusing his attention on business agility and enterprise scale agile software transitions through a synergy of the CMMI model for organizational maturity with Agile and Lean methods.

 David J. Anderson

Mastering the Product Backlog

Wednesday 28th September. (1 Day)
Facilitator - Roman Pichler

Description

The product backlog contains the outstanding work to create a successful product including user stories and defects. While it is intended to be a simple tool, many teams struggle to use it effectively. Product backlogs often contain either too much or too little information – ranging from a handful of user stories to many hundred items.

This interactive training course teaches the attendees proven techniques to set up, stock, and manage their product backlogs – backlogs that contain the right amount of information presented in the right way.

Participants should have a working knowledge of an agile method such as Scrum or Kanban.

Agenda:

About Roman Pichler

Roman helps companies create innovative products by providing consulting, coaching and training in agile product management and Scrum. He is the author of three books on Agile and Scrum including "Agile Product Management with Scrum" and a Certified Scrum Trainer. Find out more at: www.romanpichler.com

 Roman Pichler

Hands-On : TDD at the System Scale

Wednesday 28th September. (1 Day)
Facilitators - Steve Freeman & Nat Pryce

Description

This is a hands-on session so PLEASE BRING A LAPTOP.

A hands-on tutorial teaching techniques for test-driven development at large scales, starting development with end-to-end tests at the system or system-of-systems level.

If you address integration and system testing as early as possible in a project, the system you are building is always in a deployable state and the project can be more "agile" because new features can be put in front of users as soon as is deemed necessary.

However, many teams applying TDD leave integration and system testing until late in the project because they find it too difficult to write tests that cope with the distributed architecture and concurrent behaviour of their system.

This tutorial demonstrates how to test-drive development starting with end-to-end system-tests and avoid common pitfalls, including unreliable tests, tests that give false positives, slow-running tests and test code that becomes difficult to maintain as the system grows.

This tutorial will answer the questions:

  • Where does system testing fits in to the TDD process?
  • How can I start with integration, packaging, deployment and end-to-end testing before the code to be integrated is written?
  • How do I cope with distribution and concurrency when testing from outside the system?
  • How do tests drive architectural decisions?
  • How do tests improve the system's large-scale internal quality -- manageability, supportability, etc.?

    • The exercise requires a laptop with a Java (JDK 1.6) development environment. However, the techniques taught are applicable to any language and environment.

    About Steve Freeman

    Steve is co-author of "Growing Object-Oriented Software, Guided by Tests" and 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 for IBM. 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.

    About Nat Pryce

    Nat is co-author of "Growing Object-Oriented Software, Guided by Tests" and developer of the jMock mock-object library.

    After completing his PhD at Imperial College, Nat Pryce joined a dot-com just in time to ride the bust. Since then he has worked as a programmer, architect, trainer, and consultant in a variety of industries, including sports reportage, marketing communications, retail, telecoms, and finance. He has also worked on academic research projects and does occasional university teaching. An early adopter of XP, he has written or contributed to several open source libraries and tools that support TDD and was one of the founding organizers of the London XP Day conference. He also regularly presents at international conferences. Nat is based in London, UK.