In her opening keynote, Susan Ershler told the autobiographical story of her experiences climbing Mt. Everest. It was an entertaining talk. But, relating the subject matter to the Agile community was a bit of a stretch. The primary message of Susan's talk centered around her tag line: "Project, Prepare...

Tuesday saw the opening keynote by Susan Ershler, as well as the beginning of the vendor talks that I organized this year. Here's the full list of sessions I attended: Reaching New Heights: Learning to Adapt by Susan Ershler Agile Tooling: A Point, Counter-point Discussion by Ryan Martens (Rally) and...

Diana Larsen is a special sort of nut. She's an organizational development and communications expert, not a technologist. Her sessions touch on many of the softer skills necessary to thrive on a team (any team, not just an Agile team). I've been seeking out and attending Diana's sessions since my first...

In 90 minutes, Garg, Matt and David built a working web photo sharing web site. Garg played customer. David played whip-cracker (um... PM), and David did all the heavy lifting with Rails. This talk was a high level introduction to the speed and power of Rails as a development environment. As such...

The conference is organized a bit differently this year. The only thing going on this morning is registration. So, I checked in and scanned the program guide for sessions I'd like to attend. There are too many good looking talks, this year! I hate that! How can I ever get to see all of them. I'm going...

I will be attending Agile 2007 in Washington, D.C. next week. In my capacity as Vendor Talks Chair, I will be moderating the vendor talks in Meeting Room 3 on both Tuesday and Thursday. Drop me a note if you're attending the conference. I'd love to meet you and find out about your experiences with...

I am enjoying the copy of Visual Studio Team System: Better Software Development for Agile Teams by Will Stott and James Newkirk that I picked up the other day. So far, it is doing a good job of both explaining Agile and how an Agile team might use VSTS. They've even gone to the trouble of creating a...

Agile software development methods are often described as being forms of something called iterative and incremental development (or, IID). But, what does that mean? I went looking for an answer recently, and was surprised to find a single, simple definition elusive. Wikipedia defines IID this way: (from...

Joel Spolsky and Dmitri Zimine mixed it up last November over whether or not to interrupt a team in the middle of an iteration. I'm pretty late to this thread. But, I think I have something to add. So, here goes... Dmitri started the thread by arguing on behalf of never interrupting an iteration once...

A CNN International crew from Hong Kong was just here filming the patterns & practices agile development space . They were working on a feature program called Global Office. They filmed me while I pretended to be reading email on Peter’s laptop while sitting in our lounge. Thank goodness I wore some...

I recently stumbled upon the blog of a colleague, John Socha-Leialoha . And, in familiarizing myself with his writing, I found these three solid little posts on what it was like to transition to Test-Driven Development: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love TDD Unit Tests for Learning and...

Thanks to the good folks over at Agile Certification Now , you too can join the legions of Certified Agile Software Specialists already making the industry a safer place. Follow the link. You won't be disappointed.

My team just completed a discussion - at times a rather passionate discussion - about what work items we should be tracking in TFS. Sanjeev , our PM, argued in favor of tracking everything we do - except meetings. I, lead dev and agile purist that I am, argued in favor of only tracking those work items...

When my team is stuck, I like to break the log jam with a bit of brainstorming. I've had good luck with this well known technique. Maybe you will, too. I call the technique "Buckshot Brainstorming." Here's how it works: Get the team together Pick a time and place where the team can concentrate...

Like most organizations, Microsoft is keen on rewarding people who go above and beyond. Defining what “above and beyond” looks like for every individual in the company is a process we do annually called “Commitments.” As an organization, we spend significant portions of July and...

Well, here I am at Agile 2006. So far, it’s been a good show. Here’s the list of sessions I’ve attended: Are Agilists the Bonobos of Software Development (Linda Rising) Refactoring Games (Alan Harriman & Josh Kerievsky) Demonstrating Responsibility: The Mindset of an Agile Leader (Christopher...

<RANT> It happens every time I start a new project. Team Foundation Server makes me choose a process template when I create a new Team Project. But, since I’m not happy with any of the process templates I’ve tried so far (MSF Agile, Conchango Scrum, and one custom template), I end up asking...

This week, I spent some time learning Team Build and configuring a build server for Continuous Integration (CI). I’ll tell you more about that experience in a separate post. But, before I go there, I want to make sure everyone is on the same page. For those of you unfamiliar with the practice… ...

My good friend Darrell Snow recently blogged about his dislike of the term “war room.” I couldn’t agree more. I usually use either “team room” or “collaborative space.” But, I agree with Darrell there, too. They both lack pizazz. Here are a few alternate suggestions: What about working in “the...

Microsoft patterns & practices is considering guidance offerings around the topic of Agile Software Development. Like many of you, we build software using Agile tools and techniques like test-driven development, continuous integration, and iterative development cycles with daily team meetings. We...

Okay, Gandhi never said anything about Agile, per sé. But, he did talk about change. And, in many organisations, Agile is a huge change to the status quo. So, perhaps there is something for us to learn from a very wise, very successful change agent. “You must be the change you want to see in the world...

In my quest to acclimate myself to the MS world, I’ve been poking around a bit. Today, I found a great post on transparency by S. (Soma) Somaseger, head of the Developer Division at Microsoft. It’s already nine months old. But, it’s new to me. And, it’s worth a read if it’s new to you.

The two sessions I attended today were, for me, the best of the conference. Storytest-Driven Development with Max Baumann and Gil Broza was the best overview of Fit that I’ve yet encountered. And, Diana Larsen & Pollyanna Pixton were wonderful on Meeting the Agile Leadership Challenge . Fit was...

I ate dinner tonight with six other people from Seattle. I knew all but one of them before coming to Denver. Besides the keynote, I don't think I've attended a single session with any of them. It was a fantastic opportunity to recap the conference. It started with two of us and a fantastic wine: 2003...

If I were to ask you, “Who is responsible for quality?” you’d likely answer, “Everyone.” But, if I were to ask you, “Who is responsible for testing?” would your answer be the same? This afternoon I attended a tutorial session entitled Agile Testing for “Traditional” Testers and Agile Team Members...