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Some Free and Cheap eBooks on Behavior Driven Development

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A free eBook in pre-release on Acceptance Testing, and comments are being collected.  You can use the voucher code    91YmqbaAzuEu   all of this month to download a free copy.



Go to the book’s blog page at http://baddotrobot.com/book for more info or use the voucher directly on the Leanpub book page to download …

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Added by John Voris on June 10, 2013 at 11:27am — No Comments

CULTUREcon Recap

Have you blogged about #CULTUREcon?  Reply in the comments with a link!  More chronicles at André's blog and at FreeStandingAgility .…

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Added by D. André Dhondt on September 26, 2012 at 10:30am — No Comments

Nominations for Philly ETE's Project of the Year

Chariot Solutions and Technically Philly are sponsoring the first annual Philly ETE Project of the Year Award.
We want to spotlight great software made in the Philadelphia region! We're looking for the coolest, most innovative software developed in 2011 in the Philadelphia region. We want to celebrate the art of software development and how it makes a difference in how organizations can thrive and grow.
The award will be given out in the afternoon of the first day on…
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Added by D. André Dhondt on February 8, 2012 at 5:40pm — No Comments

Agile Teams - Chili Cook Off Contest

It's winter here in PA and nothing goes better with lousy weather than a bowl of chili. 

We have a very competitive group and we do not need much motivation to turn anything into a compitition. 

One week prior to cooking day we gathered all the teams and unveiled the event and rules. The feedback from teams and tasters was that it was a rousing team building success..

One team took it as far as to execute a prototype and feedback session every morning to dial in…

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Added by Robert Shaw on January 27, 2012 at 4:16pm — 1 Comment

Microsoft Code Camp in Philly is now a truly Agile Conference

 

The Microsoft Code Camp on Oct 15th will be having an Open Spaces Track.  In my mind, that brings a lot of new people around to the idea of Open Spaces during conferences.

 

Open Spaces - Jess Chadwick - Room 105

An open discussion forum lasting the entire day. The format is deliberately fluid, with the general flow consisting of: participants shout out topics to discuss, vote on a topic, discuss it for 10 minutes (or more... or less), and then…

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Added by John Voris on August 30, 2011 at 11:19am — No Comments

Agile Coding - a truism about good coding

Naresh Jain, one of our original founders, has a great quote via a Corey Hains Code Retreat.  It is a truism about agile coding:

 

"write thrice, erase twice, release once, work small."

Added by John Voris on March 7, 2011 at 12:16am — No Comments

Free talks by our previous speakers

Free Talks by Mary Poppendieck &  Gojko Adzic among others

are listed in the lower right hand corner of http://skillsmatter.com/go/home 

These were listed in the newsletter of Skills Matters.  Times are London times.

======= Upcoming talks =======================-

Near as I can tell, their podcasts of recent talks listed in their newsletter is not condensed well on any page of their site.  These…

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Added by John Voris on January 21, 2011 at 12:16pm — No Comments

Building Trust

Building Trust as you work with a new team is crucial. To achieve a collaborative work environment, trust has to be built between all the involved parties be it team members or outside stakeholders. Trust helps teams function in a manner…

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Added by Ravindar Gujral on October 25, 2010 at 6:00pm — No Comments

Product Sashimi is delicious!

On October 2nd I participated in a Product Sashimi workshop with J. B. Rainsberger and Bonnie Aumann.



This workshop was all about learning how to "slice a product thinly" so that you can actually ship something of value quickly. We also spent a lot of time working on how to help turn a fuzzy customer product idea into something concrete that you can start to work on. I summarized it to my team like this: You customer comes in and they are… Continue

Added by Audrey R. Troutt on October 6, 2010 at 11:30am — No Comments

Slides from the last meeting Sept 22nd

Slides from the last joint meeting with SPIN on Sept 22nd are at
http://spin.asqphilly.org/PastMeetings.html

Added by John Voris on October 1, 2010 at 7:11pm — No Comments

Code Kata August

Thank you to Andre, Bonnie, Adam, Aaron and Sebastian for coming out to Code Kata night at the Math Forum! This was an experimental kata night in that we were trying out architectural katas for the first time.



In the beginning we went through a summary of the basic elements of architecture: communication/distribution, presentation/interaction, state management, processing, resource management and tools. For this we followed the slides that Ted Neward provided especially for this…

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Added by Audrey R. Troutt on August 25, 2010 at 9:30am — 3 Comments

QA Team Member as an Equal

Many organizations give a lot of weight to their developers but neglect their QA departments. There are many misconception about the role of QA. This happens more in bigger organizations where there is a greater emphasis on strict demarcation of responsibilities. This creates a culture of silos. It encourages developers to believe that they are not required to interact with QA. Most developers start thinking that they are better than…
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Added by Ravindar Gujral on August 24, 2010 at 6:30pm — No Comments

Local Motors- A story of integrated development

This is a great story of a company that is trying to challenge the existing model of a mass producer building something that everyone consumes. Local Motors is an integrated and a more distributed mechanism to buying cars: http://www.local-motors.com/videos. This company exemplifies the movement towards a more decentralized way of doing things, where you empower not just your employees but the client itself.


I have yet to see…
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Added by Ravindar Gujral on August 18, 2010 at 9:50pm — No Comments

Follow-up from August's Roundtable

First of all, thanks to Keith for hosting!


It was a great discussion. We will definitely have more of this events in the future...


Nobody…
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Added by Sebastian Hermida on August 17, 2010 at 9:00pm — 6 Comments

On Planning

Let me start this article with a story I heard listening to a presentation by Ricardo Semler: Gary Kasparov, the chess grandmaster, played a computer nicknamed “Deep Thought” sometime in the 1980’s and he won. Deep Thought could think many moves ahead,…

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Added by Ravindar Gujral on May 18, 2010 at 12:33pm — 2 Comments

Creating a drawing is a lesson in software creation...

I often struggle with my inability to say code verbally without writing it or drawing it. Sometimes I start out TDD and then my inner well of code overflows into the code and I find from myself or my pair I need to stop! I ask myself why do I do this? Why do I jump into code? I like tests, I love tests more than you can imagine because I hate lots of words for documentation.



I was beating myself up over this while driving to work recently and it dawned on me. How do I draw? My drawing… Continue

Added by John Ferguson on April 30, 2010 at 4:38pm — 1 Comment

Fan-out Release Planning



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Added by D. André Dhondt on April 15, 2010 at 12:50pm — No Comments

How to meet other craftsmen

I had the luck to meet a craftsman during these holidays. He is not a software craftsman. He does not work with computers, but with construction and repairs of homes and apartments. He is a master mason.



During my stay in Spain, I had to interview and evaluate the proposals of three local constructions shops to almost rebuild from scratch an old apartment there.



I observed a bunch of similarities with the craftsmanship movement of our software industry. This actually… Continue

Added by Sebastian Hermida on January 18, 2010 at 10:19pm — No Comments

Pair Exchange Program

I just finished the first ever pair programming exchange program!



It all started when I was at SDTConf back in October. I don't remember the exact conversation, but the question was generally if software development as a craft takes two programmers pairing together to pass on and practice the craft then how will it ever scale?



Someone jokingly suggested that…

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Added by Audrey R. Troutt on November 19, 2009 at 6:00pm — 2 Comments

On Teams- Forming, Changes and Stability: An Opinion piece.

On Teams- Forming, Changes and Stability: An Opinion piece.



Teams are a collection of individuals that come together as a cohesive unit to work on a shared common goal. The group understands that the shared goals and outcomes are achievable if everyone cooperates and works towards a solution as a team, much like being in a lifeboat together. When we are in that boat together we learn to deal with those who are different and to tolerate those we don't like.



This is a basic,… Continue

Added by Ravindar Gujral on November 8, 2009 at 12:36am — No Comments

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