[YLUG] AgileYorkshire - report

[Steve Almond]

Hi All,

Rob Donkin has posted his slides and handouts from Tuesday's 
AgileYorkshire on their site; see below.


I missed the opening talk, alas, but enjoyed the Q&A. Given the venue, 
I'd expected XP to be old hat but there were plenty of questions and a 
pretty decent debate. A friendly crowd, too.

The bulk of the evening was devoted to the Extreme Hour. The room was 
split into four teams of about 7 (we had six) who each put forward some 
Customers who went out for a briefing (see site). The rest of us 
'bonded' for a bit and read the Cheat Sheets (see site). When the 
customers came back, they brought their ideas for their businesses and 
we all got cracking!

The pace was frantic, the crowd enthusiastic, and the atmosphere 
comradely. Somehow, our team managed four iterations in the hour, and 
satisfied all the customers' User Stories; mainly, I suspect, by doing 
the bare minimum to meet the spec. It sounds harsh, but it's very XP 
(YAGNI - You Ain't Gonna Need It) and of course it's fast - meaning the 
client can easily extend the spec. Remember that we managed four 
iterations: one team only managed one.

Paper-prototyping was also lots of fun: A4 card for the monitor, A5? 
paper for the content areas, post-it notes for the popup dialogues, and 
lots of marker pens, glue, scissors and tape!


PS: I whinged that Leeds was a long way away and Rob replied that a) 
some of the LUGs also 'do' programming (so we could too), and b) various 
people have been thinking of starting something in York, so there's 
obviously some pent-up demand. What do you people reckon? If I/we 
arrange an evening meeting for, say, March, *would you come?* Say, 6x 
10min talks on Agile, Software Craftsmanship, other Groups in the area 
(and what they do). If it became a regular thing, we could also do 
coding dojos, field trips, and simulations like this Extreme Hour. 
AgileYorkshire have no problems getting visiting speakers, apparently, 
so we'd have options there.


http://www.agileyorkshire.org/meetings/10thjanuaryanextremehour


-- 
Yours,

Steve Almond
Web Developer

steve at SilkAndSlug.com | Skype: silkandslug
Tel: 07947 017 652 | 01904 466 833


SilkAndSlug.com : "Always Improving"

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