Software Developer

Keynotes

K4 Lean Software Delivery: Synchronizing Cadence with Context

Mik Kersten, Tasktop

Thu, 06/06/2013 - 12:45pm

Daily, we are told that adopting agile, PaaS, DevOps, crowdsourced testing, or any of the myriad of current buzzwords will help us deliver better software faster. However, for the majority of software development organizations, naïve agile transformations that don’t look beyond the needs of developers will fail to produce the promised results.

Tutorials

MC Requirements Engineering: A Practicum

Erik van Veenendaal, Improve Quality Services BV

Mon, 06/03/2013 - 8:30am

Identifying, documenting, and communicating software requirements are key to all successful IT projects. Common problems in requirements engineering are “How do we discover the real requirements?”, “How do we document requirements?”, and “How do user stories fit into requirements?” Erik van Veenendaal answers these questions and more while helping you improve your skills in requirements engineering for both traditional and agile projects. With practical case studies and hands-on exercises, Erik illustrates requirements issues and solutions.

MD Dealing with Estimation, Uncertainty, Risk, and Commitment

Todd Little, Landmark Graphics Corporation

Mon, 06/03/2013 - 8:30am

Software projects are known to have challenges with estimation, uncertainty, risk, and commitment—and the most valuable projects often carry the most risk. Other industries also encounter risk and generate value by understanding and managing that risk effectively. Todd Little explores techniques used in a number of risky businesses—product development, oil and gas exploration, investment banking, medicine, weather forecasting, and gambling—and shares what those industries have done to manage uncertainty.

MF SOLD OUT! Acceptance Test-Driven Development: Mastering Agile Testing

Nate Oster, CodeSquads, LLC

Mon, 06/03/2013 - 8:30am

On agile teams, testers can struggle to keep up with the pace of development if they continue employing a waterfall-based verification process—finding bugs after development. Nate Oster challenges you to question waterfall assumptions and replace this legacy verification testing with acceptance test-driven development (ATDD). With ATDD, you “test first” by writing executable specifications for a new feature before development begins.

MH Tuning and Improving Your Agility

David Hussman, DevJam

Mon, 06/03/2013 - 8:30am

Are you using agile practices but struggling? If so, you are not alone. Experienced agile practitioners know that some practices are more difficult than others, and most need tuning over time. If you are looking for ways to get more value or improve your skills, this session will pass your acceptance tests. David Hussman shares his coaching tools for improving and tuning practices including product planning, roadmapping, story writing, planning sessions, and stand up meetings.

MI Design Patterns Explained: From Analysis through Implementation

Alan Shalloway, Net Objectives

Mon, 06/03/2013 - 8:30am

Alan Shalloway takes you beyond thinking of design patterns as “solutions to a problem in a context.” Patterns are really about handling variations in your problem domain while keeping code from becoming complex and difficult to maintain as the system evolves. Alan begins by describing the classic use of patterns. He shows how design patterns implement good coding practices and then explains key design patterns including Strategy, Bridge, Adapter, Façade, and Abstract Factory.

MK Agile Model-Driven Development

Scott Ambler, Scott W. Ambler + Associates

Mon, 06/03/2013 - 1:00pm

In this interactive session, Scott Ambler explores a vitally important, nitty-gritty, down-in-the-weeds aspect of agile—how to take an agile model-driven development (AMDD) approach to enhance and scale your software delivery capabilities. Correctly applied, AMDD enhances your modeling and documentation efforts, streamlines agile development, and reduces false starts and rework.

TE Design for Testability: A Tutorial for Devs and Testers

Peter Zimmerer, Siemens AG

Tue, 06/04/2013 - 8:30am

Testability is the degree to which a system can be effectively and efficiently tested. This key software attribute indicates whether testing (and subsequent maintenance) will be easy and cheap—or difficult and expensive. In the worst case, a lack of testability means that some components of the system cannot be tested at all. Testability is not free; it must be explicitly designed into the system through adequate design for testability.

TF Agile Project Failures: Root Causes and Corrective Actions

Jeff Payne, Coveros, Inc.

Tue, 06/04/2013 - 8:30am

Agile initiatives always begin with the best of intentions—accelerate delivery, better meet customer needs, or improve software quality. Unfortunately, some agile projects do not deliver on these expectations. If you want help to ensure the success of your agile project or get an agile project back on track, this session is for you. Jeff Payne discusses the most common causes of agile project failure and how you can avoid these issues—or mitigate their damaging effects.

TL Essential Test-Driven Development

Rob Myers, Agile Institute

Tue, 06/04/2013 - 1:00pm

Test-driven Development (TDD) is a powerful technique for combining software design, unit testing, and coding in a continuous process to increase reliability and produce better code design. Using the TDD approach, developers write programs in very short development cycles: first the developer writes a failing automated test case that defines a new function or improvement, then produces code to pass that test, and finally refactors the new code to acceptable standards. The developer repeats this process many times until the behavior is complete and fully tested.

TN SOLD OUT! Security Testing for Test Professionals

Jeff Payne, Coveros, Inc.

Tue, 06/04/2013 - 1:00pm

Your organization is doing well with functional, usability, and performance testing. However, you know that software security is a key part of software assurance and compliance strategy for protecting applications and critical data. Left undiscovered, security-related defects can wreak havoc in a system when malicious invaders attack. If you don’t know where to start with security testing and don’t know what you are—or should be—looking for, this tutorial is for you.

TP Influence Strategies for Software Professionals

Linda Rising, Independent Consultant

Tue, 06/04/2013 - 1:00pm

You’ve tried and tried to convince people of your position. You’ve laid out your logical arguments on impressive PowerPoint slides—but you are still not able to sway them. Cognitive scientists understand that the approach you are taking is rarely successful. Often you must speak to others’ subconscious motivators rather than their rational, analytic side. Linda Rising shares influence strategies that you can use to more effectively convince others to see things your way.

Concurrent Sessions

BW10 Enhancing Developer Productivity with Code Forensics

Anthony Voellm, Google, Inc.

Wed, 06/05/2013 - 3:45pm

Imagine an engineering system that could evaluate developer performance, recognize rushed check-ins, and use that data to speed up development. “Congratulations Jane. You know this code well. No check-in test gate for you.” Anthony Voellm shares how behavioral analysis and developer assessments can be applied to improve productivity.

BW11 Continuous Delivery at Ancestry.com

Seng Lin Shee, Ancestry.com

Wed, 06/05/2013 - 3:45pm

Continuous delivery is a practice that enables teams to release code at any time, based on changing business requirements. However, continuous delivery requires a substantial investment in infrastructure and possibly fundamental architectural changes to support the process. Anti-patterns that would render a continuous delivery pipeline a burden rather than a beneficial tool for continuous delivery must be avoided.

BW12 Hybrid Security Analysis: Bridging the Gap between Inside-Out and Outside-In

Arthur Hicken, Parasoft

Wed, 06/05/2013 - 3:45pm

With the rising adoption of the cloud and the mobile revolution, software security is more important and complex than ever. The efforts of developers and testers are frequently disconnected, wasting time and reducing effectiveness. Arthur Hicken describes how hybrid security analysis bridges the gap between static analysis and penetration testing by detecting security vulnerabilities with unprecedented accuracy—and few false positives. Testers receive an instant assessment of where security attacks actually penetrated the application.

AW3 Seeking the Agile Path through Database Design

Jonathan Wiggs, Netmotion Wireless, Inc.

Wed, 06/05/2013 - 10:15am

Being first to market or meeting rapidly changing customer demands compels development teams to build systems while requirements are still being discovered. Developing a relational database design ahead of its requirements can paint you into a corner—with a product that suffers from legacy-like limitations. Jonathan Wiggs shares ideas to solve this problem in an agile way that provides both support for the present and flexibility for the unknown future.

BT5 Gamification to Solve Real-World Challenges

Ram Srinivasan, inRhythm

Thu, 06/06/2013 - 2:15pm

What can we learn from Angry Birds, which has been downloaded more than one billion times? What makes games engaging and fun? What is the secret that motivates players to mastery, even when they fail 80 percent of the time? What if we could reverse-engineer the principles behind a well-designed game and graft them to a real-life business challenge? Based on psychology, design, strategy, and technology, gamification is an emerging and exciting concept. Ram Srinivasan describes the principles behind player engagement, social connectivity, and self-motivation to mastery.

AW4 Agile Testing: It’s a Team Sport

Jeff "Cheezy" Morgan, LeanDog

Wed, 06/05/2013 - 10:15am

Who is responsible for testing on agile teams? The answer is “Everybody”—and yet this is rarely the case. Often the testers write their test cases in isolation and execute them after development is finished. Developers write their code without talking to the testers except to understand how to reproduce the latest discovered defect. Product owners elaborate requirements in isolation and then hand them off to the team only to check back at the end of the sprint. Business analysts spend their time working on documents that have questionable usefulness.

BT2 Mob Programming: A Whole Team Approach

Woody Zuill, Hunter Industries

Thu, 06/06/2013 - 10:15am

Teamwork is an important component of agile software development. We all agree that teamwork must be nurtured and grown in our organizations. But what does it mean to work as a team in the world of software development? How can we encourage our “teams” to truly work “as a team?” Woody Zuill and his team at Hunter Industries have found tremendous benefits following the whole team approach they call Mob Programming. Everyone works together at the same time, in the same space, on the same problem, and at the computer—every day, eight hours a day! How can this possibly work?

BT3 You Said What? Becoming Aware of the Things We Say

Steven “Doc” List, Santeon Group

Thu, 06/06/2013 - 10:15am

Most of us take language for granted. We use words without thinking about how they may affect others and then are surprised at the reaction we get. Learn the importance of language in building and maintaining high performing agile teams. Become more aware of the words you choose and the impact of those words on your listeners. Steven “Doc” List presents a series of exercises in a game show format. Participants attempt to identify loaded words in seemingly simple statements and questions. Some of the exercises are written, others are acted out in role play.

Pre-Conference Training

Fundamentals of Agile Certification (2-day)

Jeff Payne, Coveros, Inc.

Sun, 06/02/2013 - 8:30am

Fundamentals of Agile Certification will present a roadmap for how to get started with agile along with practical advice. It will introduce you to agile software development concepts and teach you how to make them work. You will learn what agile is all about, why agile works, and how to effectively plan and develop software using agile principles. A running case study allows you to apply the techniques you are learning as you go through the course.