How many times have you started a new project only to find that several months into it, you have a big ball of code you have to plod through to try to get anything done? Have you ever been the 'new guy' on a project where it seems like the code grew more like weeds and brambles than a well-tended garden? With a few good tools to help analyze the code, we can keep our project from turning into that big ball of mud, and we can salvage a project that is already headed down that path.

In this talk we will look at PMD, FindBugs, Macker, JDepend, and several other tools that can help us analyze source code and find problems we need to fix. We will cover each tool in enough depth for you to know what it does and how it can help you, understand its strengths and weaknesses, and see how it would fit in your personal development processes.

Capistrano (formerly Switchtower) is a tool originally written to help automate application deployment for Ruby on Rails. It does this well, but it has grown up into a tool capable of much, much more. It can be used for deploying Java applications, updating server configurations acrtoss an enterprise, administering netwoeks, backing up files, and all sorts of other activities. Any activity you might do from the command line, you can now do simultaneously across large numbers of machines, with all machines succeeding (or rolling back in case of failure) together.

In this talk I discuss the fundamentals of capistrano, use the built-in tasks to deploy a rails application, demonstrate the capability of performing custom tasks across several computers simultaneously (thanks to several virtual machines), and show how applications can be rolled back in case of problems. Capistrano isn't perfect though; we will also discuss best practices, limitations, and lessons learned.

Capistrano requires a POSIX-compatible shell and SSH on the machines it is going to control; as a side-benefit, we will also learn about CYGWIN, an open source tool that provides these capabilities (and lots lots more) to Windows environments.

Maven is a build tool that does a lot, demos well, and leaves the build maintainers managing what seems like unbridled complexity. It doesn't have to be that way - Maven is driven by some strong 'build process methodology', and that complexity can become manageable by wrapping your head around it. Furthermore, you can migrate to Maven 'piecemeal', by mapping your existing ant build to the Maven Lifecycle and calling your existing Ant tasks - you can decide to sip the Maven kool-aid.

Ideally, a build tool should be so simple and approachable that it fades into the project background and allows anyone to maintain it. Unfortunately, Maven's power comes at the expense of this ideal - Maven's philosophy is more like "the build process is so important that the people maintaining it should be steeped in the ways of Maven". This talk will give you the exposure you need without elevating The Maven Way to a religion.

In this talk we will cover:

Internals of the Maven POM Integrating Maven with Eclipse The Maven Build Lifecycle, and hooking your own goals into it Calling Ant tasks from Maven Extending your build with existing Maven Plugins Maven subprojects and the SuperPOM Writing your own Maven Plugins

Most good developers eventually have the opportunity to be managers. Whether they call you the "project manager", "Technical Lead", "Lead Developer", or some other classic middle-management title, you become the 'goto' guy between management and developers. You're the guy who is expected to keep the project in-line, track a schedule, and occasionally answer the question "How's it going?", and perhaps still contribute at a technical level. So how do you do that?

So what do you do next? How do you plan what needs to be developed? How do you know if you are 'on schedule' or heading off-track? Using good ideas from a bunch of successful projects (but no methodology in particular), you will learn the basics of good project planning, execution, and tracking.

While this talk as management methodology agnostic, many of the ideas are tracable directly back to concepts from XP, SCRUM, and even RUP and CMMi. Whether you are following a management methodology or not, the ideas in this talk will be applicable to technical managers.