Northern Virginia Software Symposium
Apr 29 - May 1, 2011 - Reston, VA
Matt Stine
Enterprise Java/Cloud Consultant
Matt Stine is an Enterprise Java/Cloud consultant based in Memphis, TN. He is a twelve year veteran of the enterprise software and web development industries, with experience spanning the healthcare, biomedical research, e-commerce, and retail store domains.
Matt has spoken at conferences ranging from JavaOne to CodeMash and has published several articles for Agile Zone, GroovyMag and NFJS the Magazine, as well as the Selenium 2.0 DZone Refcard. Matt is also the founder of the Memphis/Mid-South Java User Group.
His current areas of interest include lean/agile software development, software architecture, mobile application development and functional languages.
Presentations
Automated UAT Shootout: High-Noon w/ Selenium, WebDriver, Watir, and HtmlUnit
Today's web application developers and testers have a host of options at their disposal for building automated user acceptance tests. This session will be a "shootout" of sorts between several of the popular available frameworks:
- Selenium
- WebDriver
- Watir
- HtmlUnit
We'll briefly examine the feature set of each of these tools and look and their pros, cons, and appropriate usage patterns. We'll then take a few web application screens and utilize each of the tools to implement a test scenario. I'll allow you, the session attendees, to declare the winner, and then follow up with my recommendations.
Executable Specifications: Automating Your Requirements Document with Geb and Spock
One of the hallmarks of lean software development is the elimination of waste. Several of the key wastes in software development revolve around incomplete, incorrect, or obsolete documentation, especially documentation of requirements. One effective means of ensuring that your requirements documentation is complete, correct, and up-to-date is to make it executable. That sounds nice, but how do we get it done, especially in the world of modern, cross-browser web applications?
Executable web application specifications are within your reach through the combination of Spock, a testing and specification framework written for the JVM in Groovy, and Geb, an elegant Groovy wrapper around the powerful WebDriver browser automation framework. In this session we'll take a close look at Spock specifications for describing and verifying the behavior of our applications. We'll then examine how we can use Geb's implementation of the Page Object pattern and its "jQuery-ish" API for interacting with our web applications in WebDriver's range of supported browsers. Finally, by gluing these two technologies together via Geb's Spock integration, we'll automate the requirements specification for a simple web app.
Yes You Kanban
Kanban. What is it? It is most certainly not just moving sticky notes around on a board. Far from that, it is a method for gradual, evolutionary improvement of existing software processes. That's right, existing software processes. There is no "Kanban Development Process." Think you're "doing Kanban?" Think again.
In this session we'll examine the byproducts of the "Kanban method" and its use of a WIP-limiting, pull-based mechanism for managing a software team's work. Next, we'll examine "A day in that Kanban life" in order to get our minds around how a Kanban system works. We'll then step back in time and examine the roots of Kanban in the lean manufacturing methods used at Toyota. We'll also walk through a little queuing theory to understand why Kanban systems work. Finally, we'll walk through Kanban thought-leader David Anderson's "Principles of the Kanban Method."
You'll leave this session equipped to start a Kanban change initiative in your team, along with the tools to make it successful.
The Seven Wastes of Software Development
One of the first principles of lean software development is the elimination of waste. Shigeo Shingo identified seven types of manufacturing waste in his "A Study of the Toyota Production System." Later, the Poppendieck's translated these to seven wastes of software development.
The seven wastes:
- Partially Done Work
- Relearning
- Extra Features
- Handoffs
- Delays
- Task Switching
- Defects
In this session, we'll examine each of these wastes and look at some of their common manifestations, both in our coding practices and in our development methodologies. We'll also examine strategies for eliminating each of these wastes from our development efforts.
Books
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List Price: $179.00
Price: $98.07
You Save: $80.93 (45%)
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This book will review work from a number of researchers who have produced open source software addressing the need for data management, integration, analysis, and visualization to aid cancer research. With the advent of high-throughput technologies in biomedicine, the need for data management and appropriate data analysis tools in genomics has increased dramatically, joining clinical trials data as a major driver of informatics at cancer research centers. The gathering of this data requires careful encoding of metadata, usually through the use of controlled vocabularies or ontologies, as well as the linking of data from model organisms, done at both a physiological level (e.g., anatomy) and at a molecular level (e.g., orthology). This data will then find use within computational and statistical models, which require data pipelines and analysis systems, as well as algorithms, visualization methods, and computational modeling systems. We will introduce open source tools available for these aspects of the problem. The editors plan to divide the book into five sections, beginning with a section containing high level overviews of the field and key issues. This will include an introductory review of informatics in cancer research, followed by five overviews addressing issues in authentication and authorization, data management, data pipelines and annotations, algorithms and models, and the NCI caBIG initiative. This will be followed by sections dedicated to data systems, data pipelines, algorithms for analysis and visualization, and modeling systems. Each of these areas has seen publication of open source tools, ranging from the widely known R/Bioconductor package to little known but powerful systems such as SImmune for biochemical modeling. The area of laboratory information management systems has seen development of a number of unpublished but powerful systems, which we would also include. Three groups have agreed to provide chapters in this area (USC/Norris CAFE extensible clinical trials system, St Jude Unified LIMS, Fox Chase/British Columbia flow cytometry LIMS). While there has been a great deal of development of informatics tools that can be applied to problems in cancer research, there has not been adequate dissemination of details on these tools to the community. As such, there remains low adoption of all but a few tools. This book aims to increase overall adoption of tools by providing cancer center leaders and researchers with a single volume detailing both issues that must be addressed and tools that are ready for use.
Price: $98.07
You Save: $80.93 (45%)
- This book will review work from a number of researchers who have produced open source software addressing the need for data management, integration, analysis, and visualization to aid cancer research. With the advent of high-throughput technologies in biomedicine, the need for data management and appropriate data analysis tools in genomics has increased dramatically, joining clinical trials data as a major driver of informatics at cancer research centers. The gathering of this data requires careful encoding of metadata, usually through the use of controlled vocabularies or ontologies, as well as the linking of data from model organisms, done at both a physiological level (e.g., anatomy) and at a molecular level (e.g., orthology). This data will then find use within computational and statistical models, which require data pipelines and analysis systems, as well as algorithms, visualization methods, and computational modeling systems. We will introduce open source tools available for these aspects of the problem. The editors plan to divide the book into five sections, beginning with a section containing high level overviews of the field and key issues. This will include an introductory review of informatics in cancer research, followed by five overviews addressing issues in authentication and authorization, data management, data pipelines and annotations, algorithms and models, and the NCI caBIG initiative. This will be followed by sections dedicated to data systems, data pipelines, algorithms for analysis and visualization, and modeling systems. Each of these areas has seen publication of open source tools, ranging from the widely known R/Bioconductor package to little known but powerful systems such as SImmune for biochemical modeling. The area of laboratory information management systems has seen development of a number of unpublished but powerful systems, which we would also include. Three groups have agreed to provide chapters in this area (USC/Norris CAFE extensible clinical trials system, St Jude Unified LIMS, Fox Chase/British Columbia flow cytometry LIMS). While there has been a great deal of development of informatics tools that can be applied to problems in cancer research, there has not been adequate dissemination of details on these tools to the community. As such, there remains low adoption of all but a few tools. This book aims to increase overall adoption of tools by providing cancer center leaders and researchers with a single volume detailing both issues that must be addressed and tools that are ready for use.
