Agile

Developer practices for traditional and agile Java development are well understood and documented. But dynamic languages--Groovy, Ruby, and others--change the ground rules. Many of the common practices, refactoring techniques, and design patterns we have been taught either no longer apply or should be applied differently. In addition, some new techniques can come into play to improve your development. Join Paul King as he discusses and demonstrates new and modified techniques for agile development with dynamic languages, including closure refactoring, better ways to implement the delegation pattern, rules for creating domain specific languages (DSLs), and the pros and cons of static and dynamic typing. Paul further explains the impact of dynamic programming on dependency injection, immutability, aspects, mocking approaches, and interface-oriented design.

You're agile ... great! Now what? What does this mean for the organization's bottom line profits? Actually, it means a lot. You can use your agility to dramatically increase the value of your project to its stakeholders. Join agilist James Shore for an in-depth discussion of when, why, and how to use agile release planning to improve the functional and economic success of your project. Learn how agile release planning can turn a losing project into a winner in mid-stream. James describes five specific ways to use agile release planning to increase ROI on your project--work on one project at a time, release early/release often, learn as you go, plan adaptively, and keep your options open. James explains when to use these techniques and how to avoid the pitfalls of each.

Based on their experiences as software developers and the pair programming practices they use at Oxygen Media, Wendy Friedlander and Oksana Udovitska describe the principles of pair programming, explain why it is a worthwhile practice, and show you how to get started. They share ways to take full advantage of pairing and how to cope with its challenges. For those new to pair programming, this class serves as a good introduction and includes concrete first steps for getting into a new way of programming. For those already working in a pairing environment, Wendy and Oksana include some novel viewpoints and interesting discussions on familiar topics. Additionally, everyone will benefit from the interactive and fun games for improving and enhancing communication skills. Being women in a male-dominated profession gives Wendy and Oksana unique perspectives and insights into pairing which they are eager to share.

Many software teams do not have continuous visibility into the ongoing quality of their software releases. Although agile practices emphasize the value of bringing testing forward in the development process, many teams lack the infrastructure required to make this a reality. Testers often depend on development or operations to produce, install, or deploy builds. Zach Nies discusses how build automation provides an effective platform to bring quality and testing earlier into the development process. Zach shows how automated deployments give testers many more opportunities to do meaningful testing during each release iteration. At the same time, testers will greatly enhance the quality feedback loop for the entire organization. During this class, participants will work through an exercise to provide insights into ways to improve their development process and infrastructure.