Agile IT! Experience

NFJS / Java World Podcast


User Group Events

May. 14 - Dallas, TX
10 Ways to Improve Your Code
by Neal Ford
JavaMUG - more »
May. 15 - Salt Lake City, UT
Thorough Introduction to Groovy
by Jeff Brown
Utah Java Users Group - more »
May. 20 - St. Paul, Minnesota
The Busy Developer's Guide to Scala by Ted Neward
by Ted Neward
Object Technology User Group - more »
Jun. 11 - Calgary, AB
Core Groovy
by Andrew Glover
Calgary Java Users Group - more »
Jun. 11 - Dallas, Texas
Grails - Agile Web 2.0 The Easy Way
by Jeff Brown
JavaMUG - more »

Private Events

NFJS will come to your company »

Blogs

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  • Ted Neward

    Enterprise, Virtual Machine and Language Wonk

    A couple of folks have taken me to task over some of the things I said... or didn't say... in my last blog piece. So, in no particular... more»

  • Alex Miller

    Sr. Engineer with Terracotta Inc.

    Just saw this post about reasons people Twitter. more»

  • Vladimir Vivien

    Software Engineer / Consultant

    Integrating Spring and JBoss SAR Components Last time I wrote a more»

  • Michael Nygard

    Agile technology leader and dynamicist

    The notion of a service-oriented architecture is real, and it can deliver. The term "SOA", however, has been entirely hijacked by a... more»

  • Jared Richardson

    Agile coach and co-author of Ship It

    It's good to read a story like this every now and again just to remind yourself how bad it is in some places. more»

  • Mike Levin

    Software Developer specializing in Web2.0 websites

    more»

  • Howard Lewis Ship

    Creator of Tapestry and HiveMind

    I spent some time yesterday revamping the Tapestry 5 Tutorial; you can see the updates at the more»

  • Pramod Sadalage

    Co-author of "Refactoring Databases:Evolutionary Database Development"

    We had a weird requirement on our project recently.. Find all the Rows in All the tables that do not comply with the Constraints more»

  • Matt Raible

    Creator of AppFuse and author of Spring Live

    In an effort to keep one of the top spots for "javaone parties", here's the updated list more»

  • Kirk Knoernschild

    Software Developer & Mentor

    It’s time to move on and show the simple elegance Spring brings to OSGi development using the HelloWorldSpec sample from the more»

  • Guillaume LaForge

    Groovy Spec Lead & Project Manager

    This is with great pleasure that G2One and the Groovy development team announce the first beta more»

  • Venkat Subramaniam

    Founder of Agile Developer, Inc.

    Earlier today I blogged about the more»

  • Graeme Rocher

    Project Lead of the Grails Project & CTO of G2One

    For those of you interested, Grails applications deploy and execute on SpringSource's new Application more»

  • Jeff Brown

    G2One Director Of North American Operations - Groovy and Grails Developer

    We have been busy preparing for JavaOne and it is finally almost here. Yay!We hope to see y more»

  • Craig Walls

    Author of Spring in Action

    I read thi s last night, but I have seen this coming for over a year. more»

  • Neal Ford

    Application Architect at ThoughtWorks, Inc.

    In the movie 200 more»

  • Andrew Glover

    Co-author of "Continuous Integration"

    On more than one occasion, I’ve been asked by various hip developers if there was a conversion script for transforming existing Ant... more»

  • Jason Rudolph

    Author of Getting Started with Grails

    Muness blogged a photographic introductio more»

  • David Bock

    Principal Consultant, CodeSherpas Inc.

    Installing CentOS 5, ImageMagick, and RMagick I don‘t normally blog about obscure, specific technical topics, mainly because 99% of more»

  • Scott Leberknight

    Chief Architect at Near Infinity

    Have you ever wondered, what is the best way to implement SOA in your organization? How can it help you? What benefits await and what are the... more»

  • Brian Pontarelli

    Brian Pontarelli - founder of Inversoft

    Found this funny. Looks like Lenovo has some issues in their pricing application today. I was planning on purchasing an X300 at some point,... more»

  • Jason Harwig

    Software Engineer

    pre { font-size:80%; } Of the trinity of web technologies, CSS is by far the worst at this stage. It's a language more»

  • Erik Doernenburg

    Principal Consultant @ Thoughtworks

    It has been in the making for some time but now the ThoughtWorks Anthology is available from the Pragmatic Programmers. The Anthology is a... more»

  • Pratik Patel

    Software Architect

    Shake off that St. Patrick's day hang-over by coming over to the AJUG meeting this Tuesday, March 1 more»

  • Pete Behrens

    Organizational Agility Coach

    Marti nig & Associates Methods & Tools group recentl more»

  • Nathaniel Schutta

    Author, speaker, software engineer focused on user interface design.

    Like pretty much any office with more than 3 people, we struggle with the ephemeral concept of more»

  • Joseph Nusairat

    Author of Beginning JBoss Seam & Co-Author of Beginning Groovy & Grails

    Today is the first day of JBoss World, I survived the first three presentations and waiting for the keynote to be  complete to d more»

  • Richard Monson-Haefel

    VP of Developer Relations, Curl Inc.

    more»

  • Brian Sam-Bodden

    Java author, Ruby geek and Open Source Advocate

    In this installment we are going to build the Dashboard page of the Tempo application. T more»

  • Mark Fisher

    Spring Integration Lead

    more»

  • Ron Bodkin

    Chief Software Architect, Quantcast

    I'm looking forward to speaking at The Rich Web Experience conference in San Jose next month. The event runs from September 7th through 9th.... more»

  • Mark Goodwin

    Web Application Security Specialist

    We've already looked at one of the two big problems posed by anti DNS pinning on Java applets; because there's rebinding on the applet and... more»

  • Scott Davis

    Author of "Groovy Recipes" & TDD Expert

    Every time I see a live show at the Denver Botanic more»

  • Brian Goetz

    Author of Java Concurrency in Practice

    Recently, Neal Gafter mused about whether we should consider removing more»

  • Romain Guy

    Java User Interface expert.

    more»

  • Ramnivas Laddad

    Author of AspectJ in Action, Principal at Interface21

    InfoQ.com has published my AOP myths and realities talk recorded at a No Fluff Just Stuff conference. InfoQ.com founded by Floyd Marine more»

  • David Geary

    Author of Graphic Java Swing and Co-author of Core JSF

    The 2006 NFJS tour kicked off t more»

  • Jason Hunter

    Author of Java Servlet Programming

    I just posted the JDOM 1.1 release for download. This release includes about 20 improvements and bug fixes. more»

  • Stuart Halloway

    CEO of Relevance

    <p>We are happy to announce that <a href='http://www.mckinneystation.co m/'>Geof Dagley</a> has joined the Relev more»


In the Spotlight - Mike Cohn

Agile software development trainer, consultant and coach

Mike Cohn is the founder of Mountain Goat Software, a process and project management consultancy and training firm. He is the author of User Stories Applied for Agile Software Development and Agile Estimating and Planning, as well as books on Java and C++ programming. With more than 20 years of experience, Mike has previously been a technology executive in companies of various sizes, from startup to Fortune 40. A frequent magazine contributor and conference speaker, Mike is a founding member of the AgileAlliance, and serves on its board of directors. He can be reached at mike@mountaingoatsoftware.com.




















Presentations by Mike Cohn

Scrum

An introduction to one of the most popular agile software development processes. Every 30 days Scrum teams deliver working, fully-tested and potentially shippable code. Teams adopting Scrum have been shown to become more productive and to produce higher quality code. In this class you will learn what Scrum is, why it works, and how to get started with it tomorrow.

Overview of Agile Estimating and Planning

Estimating and planning are key skills. A good plan helps both the organization and the developers working on the project. In this session you’ll learn how an easy and effective approach to estimating and planning that can help you create more realistic plans.

An Introduction to User Stories for Software Requirements

The technique of expressing requirements as user stories is one of the most broadly applicable techniques introduced by Extreme Programming. User stories are an effective approach on all time constrained projects, not just those using XP.

Salvaging Struggling Projects: Digging for Gold Instead of Digging a Deeper Hole

Projects struggle for many reasons—overly aggressive deadlines, unproven technologies, scope creep, team dynamics, communication problems, and inter-team coordination are just some of the reasons. If not given attention, these problems can ultimately cause a project to fail entirely. However, if you act early and in the right way, most struggling projects can be turned around.

Managing Agile Projects: Dispelling the Myths

There is a myth that agile projects do not need project management and that they cannot be estimated and planned. In this session we will dispel those rumors and learn why the job of the agile project manager is to do more than just buy pizza and get out of the way.

Selecting an Agile Process: Choosing Among the Leading Alternatives

With so many agile processes available it can be difficult to tell them apart. More importantly, it is often difficult to know which one you should try. This session helps you decide.

Project Economics: Selecting and Prioritizing High Value Projects

Almost all of us have worked on too many projects that have failed because of economic reasons rather than technical reasons. Just as the technical team is required to estimate the effort that will go into a project, a marketing or product management team should estimate the benefits of doing the project. Benefits can come in the form of additional sales, increased customer retention, increased operating efficiencies, and so on.

Transitioning to Agile: A Dozen Keys to Success

Transitioning to an agile process from a traditional process is fraught with potential dangers. Attend this class and learn the dozen things you absolutely must do in order to succeed.



Books by Mike Cohn

User Stories Applied for Agile Software Development
by Mike Cohn

User Stories Applied for Agile Software Development
  • Thoroughly reviewed and eagerly anticipated by the agile community, User Stories Applied offers a requirements process that saves time, eliminates rework, and leads directly to better software.

    The best way to build software that meets users' needs is to begin with "user stories": simple, clear, brief descriptions of functionality that will be valuable to real users. In User Stories Applied, Mike Cohn provides you with a front-to-back blueprint for writing these user stories and weaving them into your development lifecycle.

    You'll learn what makes a great user story, and what makes a bad one. You'll discover practical ways to gather user stories, even when you can't speak with your users. Then, once you've compiled your user stories, Cohn shows how to organize them, prioritize them, and use them for planning, management, and testing.

    * User role modeling: understanding what users have in common, and where they differ
    * Gathering stories: user interviewing, questionnaires, observation, and workshops
    * Working with managers, trainers, salespeople and other "proxies"
    * Writing user stories for acceptance testing
    * Using stories to prioritize, set schedules, and estimate release costs

    Includes end-of-chapter practice questions and exercises
    User Stories Applied will be invaluable to every software developer, tester, analyst, and manager working with any agile method: XP, Scrum... or even your own home-grown approach.
  • Available At: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0321205685/mountaingo..

Agile Estimating and Planning
by Mike Cohn

Agile Estimating and Planning