Nov 2009 Meeting

Abstract: It doesn’t matter if you’re doing Agile or if you’re working in an environment like RUP or CMMI, there are several things you can do to improve your development process. This highly interactive session will show you three specific tips: improve your estimation, use a daily standup to keep a close focus on your progress, and work in retrospectives to empower your team’s ability to drastically improve your entire software development process, regardless of what that process is, even if it’s no process! You’ll leave this session with a handle on ways to smooth out your project’s environment.

Feedback:

“Jim really hit the points home as to what we need to improve our processes in general. The best quote that I got from this talk was ‘It's estimation, not exactimation.’” Sarah Dutkiewicz, http://is.gd/2ouuW

Jim is active in Ohio user groups and events such as Day of .Net and CodeMash.

Biography: Father. Husband. Geek. Veteran. Around 25 years IT experience. Co-author of “Windows Developer Power Tools.” Coffee Roaster. MVP for C#. Chief Cat Herder of the CodeMash Conference. Liked 5^th grade so much he did it twice. One-time setter, middle blocker, and weakside hitter. Blogger (http://FrazzledDad.com). Quality Lead at Telligent, makers of neat social software. Big fan of naps.

Food for tonight's meeting is sponsored by Keller Schroeder.

Meeting Notes

We had a very good turnout and meeting tonight for Jim's presentation.

Thanks again to Keller Schroeder for providing pizza and salads for the group.

Attendance tonight was 23 with several new faces. Since our topic was not specific to .Net technology, we disseminated the meeting announcement to other groups that might find the presentation of value and I think we drew some people from those groups.

Jim's talk focused on 3 key communication techniques that any development team can use to improve their process, whatever it may be.

1 - Daily Standup - a short meeting where developers and stakeholders give and hear a quick update on: what I did yesterday, what I'm commiting to do today, and are there any obstacles to that commitment.

2 - Retrospectives - regular meetings after each iteration/sprint/cycle to identify any issues that need to be addressed to improve the project or development process

3 - Estimation - some good suggestions on how to improve the estimation process

http://iterativerose.com/Presentations/ThreeThingsForProcess.pdf

References:

http://www.amazon.com/Agile-Retrospectives-Making-Teams-Great/dp/0977616649

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0321150783/poppendieckco-20

Additional references from Jim:

Tom & Mary have another great one which I’ve read http://www.amazon.com/Implementing-Lean-Software-Development-Concept/dp/0321437381/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1258562973&sr=8-1

They’ve also just released a third one: http://www.amazon.com/Leading-Lean-Software-Development-Results/dp/0321620704/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1258562973&sr=8-4

Two other really good ones: http://www.amazon.com/Art-Agile-Development-Shane-Warden/dp/0596527675/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1258563127&sr=1-1 (which I referenced)

and http://www.amazon.com/Practices-Agile-Developer-Pragmatic-Programmers/dp/097451408X/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1258563127&sr=1-3 (which I didn’t reference, but is really a critical read too)

The results of the poll regarding lunch vs evening meeting:

Are you more likely to attend Evening or Lunch meetings?

User group poll (16 votes)

Lunch

(44%)

Evening

(50%)

No preference

(6%)

As you can see - no strong preference either way but we only got 16 votes. So we will try a lunch meeting and maybe even alternate meeting times.

Next meeting is scheduled for Jan 19th at 11:30AM at the library. Topic - to be determined.

We received some goodies that Bart shared with the group and we also had a $50 gift card for Barnes & Noble which we gave away in a random drawing - and the winner was Carol Brockman of Keller Schroeder.

If anyone would like a user group licensed copy of Nevron Chart for .Net, please contact Toby.

Thanks all for supporting the group.