After delivering the keynote (with Tango dancing) Brian held a Fishbowl discussion on testing. This was moderated by Emily Bache. Here’s a few notes I took from the discussion, when I wasn’t participating: Test Maintenance – In the 90’s people tried to do testing, trying to be lean like Toyota. They said that TDD won’t… Read More Testing Fishbowl Discussion – Brian Marick #xp2011

Here were the points I took from David’s lightening talk on Kanban: Start with your current process Incrementally introduce improvements (evolutionary change) – unless you’re in the US where they like revolutionary change Initially respect current roles, processes etc. (this keeps people feeling safe) Seed Properties (observations David’s taken from successful projects) Visualise workflow (the… Read More Kanban by David Anderson at #xp2011

Here were the points I took from Erik’s lightening talk: Don’t do retrospectives Feed your system with stories that are too large (reduces flow, slow or no flow is an indication your stories are too big) Have no limits on the Kanban board Depend on external companies Feel responsible for only “our” column (throwing stuff… Read More 7 Ways to sabotage your Kanban Adoption – Erik van der Velde #xp2011

I kept wanting to give @ken_power the middle name of “The”. In my head he’s not only this epic Scrum master, but the world’s best dart thrower. This ligtening talk is where Ken explained “ready”. Basically it’s knowing when a story is complete enough to start working on. There’s always ambiguity and not enough focus… Read More Definition of Ready – Ken Power #xp2011

I’m organising two very different and two very EXCITING barcamps this year. I’ve got Nottingham in July http://bcnott.simplified.co.uk/ and Blackpool in October http://barcampblackpool.com. They’re going to be E P I C Nottingham – 2 day event at the Nottingham Hackspace. This will be Nottingham’s first barcamp and I hope to meet members from the very rich Nottingham… Read More barcamps, barcamps everywhere…

On 16th April I headed up to Sheffield to enjoy my second barcamp there. The last one had been held at the showcase cinema and my two ferrets came along. This time the two day event was held at GIST labs building. Filled with geeks playing card games, it was pretty easy to spot and… Read More Barcamp Sheffield

Last night a blog post saved my life…. We wrote some tests, wrote some code. Red, green refactor. There were regular expressions, they passed first time! All was beautiful. Then we moved the code out of the tests into the main project and it all went wrong. The project we moved it to was strongly… Read More Signing a 3rd party assembly

I’ve found the following really useful on my journey using git: TortoiseGit Git Source Control Provider It’s great to have that visual studio integration as it allows you to see which files are under version control, and their state, from within the IDE.     Tortoisegit feels really natural for me as I’m used to… Read More Git – Visual Studio Integration

We’ve recently migrated from TFS to git. I’m an svn girl at heart, so it’s all a bit new and strange. So far, it’s been a big learning curve. The Git – SVN Crash Course has been really useful. Things I have learned today: I do not understand git rebase I do not understand git… Read More Foray into git