Grigori Melnik: Thoughts on Agile Software Engineering and Beyond : PDC

Grigori at PDC

gmelnik — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 13:54:22 GMT

I’ll be at PDC2009 in LA next week. I’ll be happy to meet with EntLib and Unity users as well as critics, to discuss new features of EntLib 5.0, preview the new config experience and also solicit suggestions for post v5 work.

If you’d like to discuss acceptance testing and test automation strategies, I’d be interested in that too.

Look for me at the p&p booth Mon-Thu or ping me to set specific time to meet.

See you there.

Agile Perspectives PDC Workshop

gmelnik — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 05:14:00 GMT

As promised, here’s the deck Mary Poppendieck and I used during the workshop. We hope it was worth the attendees’ time. We encourage you to try new techniques we talked about and let us know how your agile adoption is going. For more information, visit Mary’s site.

Agile PreCon at PDC 2008

gmelnik — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 05:38:57 GMT

Mary Poppendieck and I are set to run a pre-conference workshop on Agile Perspectives: Industry and Microsoft.

In it, we will provide our observations on what works, what doesn’t in the world of agile, and why (we call this segment of the workshop “Reality of agile”). The objective is to provide pragmatic advice, recommendations and actions that you could use tomorrow to improve the way your teams produce software.

Mary, the author of popular Lean Software Development and Implementing Lean books, will provide her lean perspective from many years in the industry (if you want to find out more about Mary, check out this really good interview that Scott Hanselman took with both Mary and Tom Poppendieck, in which they challenge the notion of success in software industry). In turn, I am going to share my experience from several projects at Microsoft patterns & practices. Several other colleagues from Microsoft will join our panel at the end of the day to debate hot issues of agility. The floor will be open to audience participation. Mary and I identified several hot issues to bring up. However, it would be really good to know what kind of stuff you’d prefer us to touch upon. Please post your At-Issue suggestions in response to this post or simply email me. Thanks and see you in LA!

Upcoming conferences - where I'll be (May - Oct 2008)

gmelnik — Sat, 31 May 2008 17:45:00 GMT

Tech-Ed 2008 Developers, June 2-6, Orlando, FL. I’ll be giving a talk on the Enterprise Library (DVP02-TLC). I’ll be also hanging out in the exhibition areas (mainly, Process & Project Management (DVP- VSTS 2008)).
CAST 2008 , July 14-17, Toronto, ON. I look forward to good interaction with testing experts and thought leaders from around the world.
Microsoft Product Fair, July 22-23, Redmond, WA.
TechReady7, July 28-Aug 1, Seattle, WA. I’ll do a couple of talks on the Enterprise Library and agility.
Agile 2008, Aug 4-8, Toronto, ON – the major world conference on agile software engineering. Mary Poppendieck and I are program-charing the conference.
STARWest 2008, Sep 29- Oct 3, Anaheim, CA. Jon Bach and I will give a talk on Acceptable Acceptance Testing, telling the tale of our team producing the guide on acceptance testing and dogfooding our own recommendations.
PNSQC2008, Oct 13-15, Portland, OR. We have a paper "Acceptance Testing: a love story in two acts". No Shakesperian-level drama, but some exciting stuff for sure.
PDC 2008, Oct 26-30, Los Angeles, CA. Together with Mary Poppendieck and other colleagues from p&p, we’ll be presenting the Agile Perspectives pre-conference event.

If you are planning on attending any of these conferences, please come by and say hello. I would love to hear your stories of using or reasons for not using the Enterprise Library, Unity, other p&p assets. I would also be glad to chat with you about our upcoming guidance on Acceptance Test Engineering and hear your experiences, lessons learnt, and suggestions.

Also, I talk to user groups regularly. If you are from the city I am visiting (or nearby) and would like me to give a talk to your user group (agile, .NET, software testing), feel free to ping me.