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From Chaos to Kanban

March 5, 2015 Agile / Experiences / Kanban / Software Craftsmanship
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There’s always a great atmosphere and discussion at Agile Staffordshire whenever we have a guest speaker. February did not disappoint. Craig Judson (Operations Manager at Codeweavers) presented Kanban in general and then elaborated on how Kanban is utilised specifically for continuous delivery of software.

Subsequently, a vibrant and energised discussion took place on working practices and project/product management. It was great to have such a varied mix of disciplines and roles present to contribute; consultants, developers, academics and managers. It was particularly interesting to note how various people were adapting well-known techniques to their work place and teams.

Thank you, Craig!

Craig Judson discussing Kanban and software delivery.

Craig Judson gave a presentation on Kanban and how it is used to deliver software at Codeweavers.

Also in February, Rosie Anderson and Rebecca Mycock stopped by to introduce Outsource. While Agile Staffordshire is primarily a group to share experience, expertise and good practice it is useful to network and learn about jobs, careers and opportunities in the Industry. I am sure that we will welcome them again at some point in the near future. Students may wish to pay attention to our blog for news concerning graduate recruitment (as well as all of the great professional experiences they can learn about). Thank you, Rosie and Rebecca!

Git Introduction January 2015

February 14, 2015 Agile / Experiences / Meeting / Retrospectives
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Paul Williams presenting Git.

Paul Williams gave a great introduction to the group on version control basics with Git

There was a great vibe this January; our first meeting of 2015. Paul Williams opened the year with a great session introducing Git. The session served as a useful introduction to those new to Git as a version control mechanism and incorporated rebasing techniques for those with intermediate skills. We experienced a wide spread of issues related to version control; what else would you expect with up to 20 people trying to do the initial commit? We also had a sneak peak how others are using Git in professional ventures. It was a great fun! Agile Staffordshire enjoyed an enthusiastic turnout; it was lovely to see everyone. Thank you, Paul.

The session provoked some good discussion and even set the scene for our first quarter topics. In March 2015, Agile Staffordshire will hold a session on Vi (the editor that appeared mercilessly upon commits) and more advanced Git techniques in April 2015. February’s session will focus on project management, with a specific discussion on Kanban in relation to software development. Keep watching our blog for upcoming events or join our meet-up group.

Group working at Agile Staffs January 2015

Ad-hoc team trying to commit to repositories in ad-hoc ways! What could go wrong? Not much really!

Enjoying Git session - January 2015.

It’s amazing how a bit of Git can make people smile.

I would like to add special thanks to Staffordshire University for hosting our event and providing wireless Internet connectivity throughout the session. Super stuff! Another special mention to Mel for taking photographs!

Lean Code Retrospective

June 12, 2014 Experiences / Programming / Retrospectives
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It’s great to consider concepts around a practical challenge. Lean code is best considered with a working example. It doesn’t take a complex/large problem to highlight the issues and this session hit home. Paul Williams gave a ‘lightning talk’ on Lean Code based on slides by Chris Parsons, and quickly got us in front of our IDEs and started the ‘Fresco’ challenge. To briefly explain, the challenge comprises a fast cycle of iterations (about 10 minutes each), where each pair delivers the requirements as per the specification and acceptance tests.

One might say the challenge is intentionally trivial, but it’s a great exercise because it neatly encapsulates many of the challenges in software development; especially in a rapidly changing context. Producing some code to address the problem was relatively simple, but how about the Lean principles? For convenience, I list the points that the group considered:

  • Eliminate Waste
  • Focus on value
  • Deliver fast
  • Decide late

The exercise prompted a valuable, albeit short, discussion of the Lean principles in regards to software development. In particular, where the Lean manufacturing and engineering principles perhaps do note related directly to software. Specific topics of note:

  • Waste is not simple to recognise/define in regards to software.
  • Development environment / platform / tools matter – especially version control.
  • Is there an upfront design / deliver fast trade-off? How would we know?
  • Context matters. Producing a car for a fixed and familiar environment. A car does not eventually turn into an aeroplane.

We have a lot to think about for our future sessions. Our post-exercise discussion could benefit from more time. We had a super turn out this month and some great ideas. I look forward to seeing everyone in June! Lean code gave plenty of food for thought.

Open Data Institute Retrospective

April 30, 2014 Experiences / Retrospectives
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Stuart Harrison, ruby developer for the ODI, introduced us to the ODI’s mission and how it facilitates ‘openness’.

I think for many Agile Staffordshire participants, including me, it was a great introduction to an organisation of which only the name may have been familiar. Stuart provided a spirited talk on the rationale for open data and shed some light on how open data has already gained some traction.

It is possible I am really late to the ‘open data game’, but I find the idea profound. I first encountered open data systems being realised during Brooklyn Beta 2013. Since then I have been interested in how applications can make use of available open data to overcome information hoarding. I think this is relevant to Agile Staffordshire, many of us being involved in software development for the web. How many great projects have stalled due to unavailable data; and particularly data that could really benefit society by being open, authoritative and reliable? Public information could be stored in several data stores, with no external access to the organisation responsible and with no arbitration or authority. Stuart explained the situation by way of a scenario involving an app designed to provide information on public transport.

The introduction to ODI provides Agile Staffordshire with a number of things to think about:

  • How can we become more open? Would it help attract more members if we were?
  • Could we make our projects open, inviting other interest groups to make use of the fruits of our labour?
  • Is there scope to making our event planning open? Again, some transparency may assist us with reaching more people in the local area.

Overall, for me the main message seems clear. Great software, great business and great people all seem to share one particular trait. They all create more value than they take. ODI embodies this principle and I think we are better off for their endeavours. Software that provides a great experience and service, but also provides opportunity for others to build on it and create value elsewhere is good for everyone.

November 2013 – Brooklyn Beta and Testing with C

November 17, 2013 Agile / Experiences / Kata / Meeting / Software Craftsmanship
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Date: Thursday 28th November 2013
Time: 7:00pm
Venue: Staffordshire University – Stafford Campus (K102 – the Octagon building)

Brooklyn Beta is a friendly web conference aimed at the “work hard and be nice to people” crowd. Trevor Adams, a long time member of Agile Staffordshire, attended the event and will be presenting a short talk on what happened and what it might mean. The fourth Brooklyn Beta happened during 9-11th October 2013 in Brooklyn, New York.

Later in the session we shall be refactoring some C code; an exercise that grew from a post-presentation discussion in October. To get the most out of the session, access to a C compiler will be useful. The code is available via a github repository.

Last month’s agile experience session with Craig Judson

November 14, 2013 Agile / Experiences / Meeting
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Firstly, I’d like to thank Craig for an excellent October session on Codeweaver’s experiences with agile. It was our first session in a Staffordshire University lecture theatre so well done Craig for dealing with such an imposing stage, especially with the growing number of attendees 🙂

It was good to see this increase in newcomers and regulars – surely due to the combination of the interesting presentation, Cathy’s excellent work on publicising our group around the University and the Meetup.com site attracting newcomers.

Back to Craig’s talk (Development in an Agile Environment -slides) – he briefly covered the Chaos to Kanban era at Codeweavers which saw their development team and wider organisation transistion towards Lean service provision. Craig discussed their popular introduction to agile through Scrum, how using an agile coach (Kevin Rutherford) helped, and how agile means change to all stakeholders within an organisation. In particular, he introduced many to concepts like ‘work in progress’, ‘flow’, ‘feature switches’ and ‘SOLID principles’ which fuelled a healthy barrage of questions at the end.

9PM came too quickly, and the questions had to be interrupted temporarily while we walked / drove to  the Morris Man pub. On completion of the traditional ale purchasing, the questions and discussions continued for some time – another great Agile Staffs session.

 

 

Tag Cloud

2015 agile announcement clean code codeweavers conference data development experience experiences february git guildedrose january kanban kata lean lego lego mindstorms march meeting ODI open data outcomes presentation programming REST retrospective software software craftsmanship staffordshire Stuart Harrison tdd university value version control