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Better Software Conference & EXPO 2006 Tutorials

Go To:  Monday  |  Tuesday

 Tutorials for Monday, June 26, 2006
  8:30 AM — 5:30 PM

A

Introduction to Agile Practices
Robert Martin, Object Mentor


Robert Martin not only covers the principles and business values of Agile practices at a high level but he also digs down to the details to cover Agile planning, estimation, and project management practices. Learn about Agile development methods and how they fit into a development organization. Delve into pair programming, test-first programming, continuous integration, collective ownership, the planning game, whole team, and more. Review several real projects that have used Agile methods and learn about the things they did right, the things they did wrong, and what they did to fix the mistakes. See how Test Driven Development works on a real application as Robert demonstrates this critical agile practice. This tutorial is designed for a broad range of professionals�from senior-level executives, managers, and leads, to developers, testers, and business analysts.

Robert Martin
A software professional since 1970, Robert Martin is founder and president of Object Mentor Inc., offering process improvement consulting, object-oriented software design consulting, training, and skill development services to major corporations worldwide. Robert has published dozens of articles in trade journals and is a regular speaker at international conferences and trade shows. A leader in the industry of software development, Robert served three years as the editor-in-chief of the C++ Report and was the first chairman of the Agile Alliance.

B

Essential Software Requirements
Lee Copeland, Software Quality Engineering


You deal with software requirements all the time. Whether you are a developer in an agile environment, an analyst who gathers and documents requirements for plan-driven development, a software designer who studies requirements as the basis of your work, a tester who employs or often must discover requirements as the foundation of test cases, or a technical user who describes your needs to development, you need the right approaches and skills to develop and interpret software requirements. Learn how to identify all the important stakeholders of a system and better ways to elicit and capture requirements in different settings: one-on-one interviews, meetings, brainstorming and Joint Application Development (JAD) sessions, buddy checks, inspections, ambiguity reviews, and retrospectives. Find ways to ferret out the big risks, unknowns, and unresolved conflicts that often doom projects from the start. Learn more about and practice the important skills you need to do a great job: listening, observing, interviewing, writing, speaking, facilitating, sketching, modeling, applying deductive and inductive reasoning, and resolving conflicts.

Lee Copeland
With more than thirty years of experience as an information systems professional at commercial and nonprofit organizations, Lee Copeland has worked in applications development, software testing, and software process improvement. Lee has developed and taught numerous training courses on software development and testing issues and is a well-known speaker with Software Quality Engineering. The author of the popular reference book A Practitioner's Guide to Software Test Design, Lee presents at software conferences around the world.

C

Scrum: Project Management for Agile Software DevelopmentNew Tutorial!
Jean Tabaka, Rally Software Development Corporation


Scrum is an agile, lightweight process that you can use to manage software development that employs iterative, incremental methodologies. Scrum can help double a team�s productivity and significantly improve ROI within the first year of implementation. Although it is conceptually simple, Scrum can be hard to implement because of the cultural changes that it demands. Through its principles and practices, Scrum challenges fundamental assumptions about roles, teams, process, and planning. Moreover, it forces each team member to accept the incompleteness of what they know and yet still move forward with a product increment. Jean Tabaka takes you through a series of exercises, simulations, and discussions to bring Scrum alive. Using Scrum practices to actually deliver the tutorial, Jean leads you through the fundamentals of prioritization, timeboxing, product delivery, and retrospection as tools for maintaining and delivering product value. Learn to embrace your role shift in a Scrum project from a Project Manager, who owns plans and decisions, to the next frontier of Scrum Master.

Jean Tabaka
An agile coach with Rally Software, Jean Tabaka specializes in creating, coaching, and mentoring agile software teams. Jean brings more than twenty-five years of experience in software development to the agile plate in a variety of organizational contexts including internal IT departments, ISVs, government agencies, and consulting organizations. Jean�s work has spanned industries and continents, and she has implemented both plan-driven and agile development approaches for a variety of large and small ventures. A Certified Scrum Master, Certified Scrum Trainer, and Certified Professional Facilitator, Jean holds a Masters in Computer Science from Johns Hopkins University and is the author of Collaboration Explained: Facilitation Skills for Software Project Leaders.

D

Fearless Change: Patterns for Introducing New IdeasNew Tutorial!
Linda Rising, Independent Consultant


Those who attend conferences or read books and articles see new ideas they want to implement in to their organizations�but then they struggle to make change happen. This struggle has become especially apparent of late as enthusiastic agile development proponents want to encourage their teams to apply these new approaches. Unfortunately, the person introducing change is not always welcomed with open arms. Linda Rising will provide you with proven change management strategies to make you a successful change agent in your organization. Learn what forces in your organization drive and retard change, and learn how to plant the seeds of change for buy-in and participation�from start to finish. Find the right timing to introduce changes and discover ways to make your changes appear less threatening. Linda will present these and many other lessons learned as documented in a new pattern language and published in her book, Fearless Change: Patterns for Introducing New Ideas. Join Linda to learn how to overcome adversity to change and to celebrate your improvement successes and your organization�s new found practices.

Linda Rising
Linda Rising has a Ph.D. from Arizona State University in the field of object-based design metrics and a background which includes university teaching and industry work in telecommunications, avionics, and strategic weapons systems. An internationally known presenter on topics related to patterns, retrospectives, and the change process, Linda is the author of numerous articles and four books�Design Patterns in Communications, The Pattern Almanac 2000, A Patterns Handbook, and Fearless Change: Patterns for Introducing New Ideas, written with Mary Lynn Manns. Find more information about Linda at www.lindarising.org.

E

Twelve Steps to a Successful Metrics Program
Linda Westfall, The Westfall Team


Linda Westfall offers a practical process for establishing and tailoring a software metrics program, focusing on business goals and information needs. Learn a systematic, start-to-finish method for selecting, designing, and implementing software metrics. Linda outlines a �cookbook� approach you can use to simplify the journey from conceptual software measurement and metrics to information summarized and delivered to management. Linda walks you through many areas of selected metrics: definitions, metrics models, sizing and counting criteria, benchmarking, objectives of a metrics program, successful reporting mechanisms, and qualifiers of what a good measurement program requires. Learn how to identify your software metrics customers and employ the Goal/Question/Metric paradigm to select metrics that align with the organizational, project, and process goals of those customers. Find out who should collect the data, what data to collect, and how to collect it. Consider the human issues of implementing a measurement system and the metric do�s and don�ts for sustaining a metrics program in your organization.

Linda Westfall
Linda Westfall is the president of the Westfall Team, which provides software metrics and quality engineering consulting and training services. Prior to starting her own business, Linda was senior manager of quality metrics and analysis at DSC Communications, where her team designed and implemented a corporate-wide metrics program. An ASQ Certified Software Quality Engineer, Linda has more than twenty years of experience in real-time software engineering, quality, and metrics.

F

Becoming a Trusted Advisor to Senior ManagementNew Tutorial!
Lloyd Roden, Grove Consultants


Providing good, timely, factual, and relevant information to senior managers and other stakeholders is essential for projects to succeed. But why do some project managers, development managers, and test managers find it difficult to get their messages across? And why does it seem as though some senior managers and customers willingly ignore sound advice? The reasons could be of our own making�we are not providing the right information in the right form at the right time. Lloyd Roden presents seven powerful monitoring and reporting techniques to help you become trusted advisors to senior management. Each of these techniques focuses on a different aspect of the system, giving you an extremely effective tool-kit to enhance and improve reporting. Lloyd describes fundamental yet powerful measures you can present to senior managers to show the value that development and testing bring to the company. Take back templates and spreadsheets to help you provide the right information to the right people and utilities to help you gather appropriate data to measure the progress of development and testing.

Lloyd Roden
With more than twenty-five years in the software industry, Lloyd Roden worked as a developer, managed an independent test group within a software house, and joined Grove Consultants in 1999. Lloyd has been a speaker at STAREAST, STARWEST, EuroSTAR, AsiaSTAR, Software Test Automation, Test Congress, and Unicom conferences as well as Special Interest Groups in Software Testing in several countries. He was Program Chair for both the tenth and eleventh EuroSTAR conferences.

G

Test Automation for Agile DevelopmentNew Tutorial!
Linda Hayes, Worksoft, Inc.


Most companies resist test automation until the software is stable, reasoning that any savings from automation will be offset by the maintenance required to keep up with requirements and code changes. Another sticking point is that traditional record/script/replay approaches can't be implemented until the code is functional�too late in an agile development environment. Linda Hayes presents an approach to test automation that supports agile development as well as any incremental development methodology. Find out how to write automated tests before coding and learn ways to rapidly update your automated tests as changes are introduced into the system under test. Learn to define executable stories, improve code development practices through automation, write self-documenting automated tests before code is developed, and implement a test automation architecture that works with any test tool and on any technology platform. Move away from traditional test automation that does not work with agile development to an incremental method that supports rapid changes to applications under development.

Linda Hayes
Linda Hayes is Chief Technology Officer at Worksoft, Inc., a software company specializing in test automation. She has more than twenty years of experience in software quality and testing and holds degrees in accounting, tax, and law. Linda is a frequent speaker and award-winning author of books and articles, including the Automated Testing Handbook and regular columns for StickyMinds.com, Computerworld, and Datamation.

H

Agile Retrospectives: A Team Leader's GuideNew Tutorial!
Esther Derby, Esther Derby Associates, Inc.


Agile development teams learn and improve by constant feedback and adaptation. High performing teams adapt not only their code and tests but also their methods and interactions. Through regular retrospectives, teams become skilled at acquiring and using their collective wisdom, accessing best practice thinking, avoiding faulty decisions or reinvented wheels, and increasing opportunities for successful innovations. Retrospectives require adept design and skillful facilitation for teams to reap these benefits. This interactive session offers participants an experiential understanding of retrospectives from both a participant�s and a facilitator�s point of view. Participants will practice designing an iteration retrospective. Take away an overview of retrospectives for agile projects, retrospective simulation, and the five phases of an effective retrospective. Join Esther to practice your new knowledge with retrospective exercises and activities.

Esther Derby
Esther Derby is one of the rare breeds of consultants who blend technical and managerial issues with the people-side issues. Project retrospectives and project assessments are two of Esther's key practices that serve as tools to start a team's transformation. Recognized as one of the world's leaders in retrospective facilitation, Esther often receives requests to work with struggling teams. Esther is one of the founders of the Amplify Your Effectiveness (AYE) Conference.



Better Software Conference & EXPO 2006 is a Software Quality Engineering Production

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