A good analyst or tester knows what questions to ask to quickly bring clarity to a murky subject. When they first hear about Acceptance Test-Driven Development (ATDD), a core practice on agile projects, their initial questions often are "Can examples really capture functional requirements?", "Where do user stories come from?", and "Will the analyst and tester roles become extinct?" When Jennitta Andrea worked on her first agile project in 2000, she asked all of these questions and more. As a hands-on practitioner and keen observer of teams and processes on more than a dozen agile projects since then, Jennitta has discovered that success comes from knowing how ATDD fits within an ecosystem of roles, practices, and tools. Learn what Acceptance Test-Driven Development is, the critical success factors for ATDD, and the details of several key success factors.

Presented by Frank Maurer and ASE Students

The evening will consist of a sequence of very short presentations followed by concurrent demos of different research prototypes developed by the research team of the Agile Software Engineering group.

Agenda:
• Frank Maurer: Research conducted by ASE Group
• Theodore Hellmann: Enhanced Exploratory Testing with LEET
• Ali Hosseini Khayat: Agile, usability, surfaces and how they relate
• SM Sohan: Building a Knowledge-Base by Auto-Tagging Emails with User Stories

Abstract:
Think you know agile? Come and test your mettle to see how you would handle these real life agile horror stories.

- Why delivering working software isn't enough.
- What to do when test automation is too easy.
- How to handle a lead developer that isn't a lead developer.
- The $1M VP surprise
- If developers are writing the tests, what role do testers play on project?
- The one time I was asked to leave a project
- Get your donuts off the table
- What to do if you can't have a visible workspace
- Handling technical misunderstanding (C# vs VB.NET)

Michael McCullough will discuss the application of games and simulations to enable learning and application of agile principles and practices. This interactive session will focus on how games can be an effective technique for agile champions to communicate complex ideas and concepts. Michael will also discuss some best practices for running games and simulations in your organization.

Chad Fournier will be presenting a brief case study about the creation of an application for Shaw’s call centre staff. Throughout the presentation he will highlighting the ways Shaw is ‘doing more with less’, including the transition from Waterfall practice to the adoption of Agile methodologies and the growth of a UX team.

Bio:

Ever looked up the classic stereotype of a computer programmer? If you have, you will probably recognize that the developers working in agile teams don't match that stereotype. Rather than working alone, agile team members tend to work in pairs, groups, teams. Rather than hiding their work until the very end, agile team members ask and receive feedback many times per day and work side-by-side with their end-user.

Performance tuning is often a critical issue in the development of enterprise applications. But are agile methods appropriate for this task?
Traditionally, up-front analysis and design have tried to understand and meet performance requirements. The poor results from this approach have led many to leave performance issues until all functional requirements have been implemented. But then too often we are left in a last minute panic with limited options.

Sometimes in order to change systems, to improve them in a lean fashion, a change of perspectives is required. Using examples from outside and inside the software industry, we will explore some ways in which changes in perspective can enhance our ability to see things differently in our systems of development, and help us find a path forward in tuning those systems or radically altering them for the better.

Presenter Bio:

Here are the presentation slides from Mary Poppendieck's CAMUG session held November 2nd, 2009. Enjoy!