Southern Ohio Software Symposium
August 15 - 17, 2008
Jared Richardson
Agile coach and co-author of Ship It
Software Projects, is a speaker, consultant, and mentor with NFJS One. Jared has been in the industry for more than fifteen years as a consultant, developer, tester, and manager.
Jared can be found online at Agile Artisans.
Presentations
10 Tips for Getting Your Project Back on Track
Software projects fail over and over for many of the same reasons. We'll look at some of the more avoidable problems and some solid ways to fix them, or avoid them in the first place.
We'll talk about discovering what went wrong (and what went right!) with your last project, solving code integration issues, resolving lingering quality problems, establishing automated test suites, reining in soaring project requirements and more.
Techniques 2009
There are a number of great techniques you can use across technologies and projects. Come hear some of my favorite ways to move "beyond" and contribute a few of your own. We'll discuss topics ranging from glue languages to ditching your IDE to building your brain.
In this session we'll discuss:
- Move beyond tools
- Glue languages
- Inbox Zero
- Learning to learn
- Not being a cog anymore
- Macro Object Orientation
- Clean code
- Looking smarter than you are
- Open source tool stacks
- Tighter feedback loops
- Scripted deployments
- Scripting databases
- Virutalization
And more...
Credit Card Software Development: Recognizing and Repaying Technical Debt
Technical debt has long been recognized in technical circles for years, but convincing your manager to budget time to repay "technical debt" has always been problematic. Let's couch the term technical debt concept in language more familiar to our managers: credit card debt.
Like credit card debt, technical debt accumulates slowly over time, and usually takes just as long to pay off. The interest slowly builds up until you're no longer able to pay off the principle: your entire development cycle is devoted to just "paying the interest". We'll examine common types of technical debt and strategies to effectively communicating the problems, and their solutions, to your managers.
Agile Software Testing Strategies
Creating and maintaining a solid automated test suite is critical to an Agile strategy, but often we're just told to "Do it." In this talk we'll look at several pragmatic strategies for creating and building your suite.
We'll examine these strategies and then look at scenarios for using them next week. This presentation will get you started whether you're starting a new project or trying to clean up an existing one.
Build Teams, Not Products
A great team builds great software, but how do you build a great team?
Let's move beyond getting lucky and look at some key practices that will help you build your scattered cats into a well-oiled machine.
Books
by
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Has your career been a product of random chance? Learn how to take control. These solid, repeatable steps show you how to chart the course you want, then how to follow it.
The book is aimed primarily at a technical market, but the content is applicable to most professional fields.
by Jared Richardson and William A. Gwaltney
Price: $19.77
You Save: $10.18 (34%)
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Ship It! is a collection of tips that show the tools and techniques a successful project team has to use, and how to use them well. You'll get quick, easy-to-follow advice on modern practices: which to use, and when they should be applied. This book avoids current fashion trends and marketing hype; instead, readers find page after page of solid advice, all tried and tested in the real world.
Aimed at beginning to intermediate programmers, Ship It! will show you:
- Which tools help, and which don't
- How to keep a project moving
- Approaches to scheduling that work
- How to build developers as well as product
- What's normal on a project, and what's not
- How to manage managers, end-users and sponsors
- Danger signs and how to fix them
Few of the ideas presented here are controversial or extreme; most experienced programmers will agree that this stuff works. Yet 50 to 70 percent of all project teams in the U.S. aren't able to use even these simple, well-accepted practices effectively. This book will help you get started.
Ship It! begins by introducing the common technical infrastructure that every project needs to get the job done. Readers can choose from a variety of recommended technologies according to their skills and budgets. The next sections outline the necessary steps to get software out the door reliably, using well-accepted, easy-to-adopt, best-of-breed practices that really work.
Finally, and most importantly, Ship It! presents common problems that teams face, then offers real-world advice on how to solve them.
