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!

“What do Svenska Handelsbanken, Nucor Steel, SAS Institute, W. L. Gore, Southwest Airlines, Semco, and Toyota have in common?” Each of these companies has developed a culture of high involvement, each thrives in an industry of high change, and each has sustained best-in-industry performance over time. Often imitated but never successfully copied, these companies frame their world differently than most other companies.

Geomodeling is an independent software vendor for the oil and gas industry with product development teams in Calgary and Beijing. This presentation will illustrate how, since July 2008, we have been deploying Scrum and other tools to help us bring the whole organization to the next level. It will discuss challenges and rewards that come with introducing new processes and technologies to an international business.

CAMUG is back. Our first session will be on September 8th (Tuesday) starting with networking at 6:00 pm with snacks and beverages. The actual session will start at 6:30 in the ICT building at the University, Room 121. Hope to see you all there.

We had many requests for more case studies so our first session is a real life experience on scaling agile.

PAS: Scaling Agile – A real life experience

Software Project Estimation

Quadrus Development Inc. will be presenting at CAMUG in May! Software estimation has been called a “black art”. Standard industry methods for estimating software projects are highly complex, geared toward very large waterfall projects and require a myriad of complex and non-intuitive inputs. Often Agile estimation approaches focus on stories or iterations, but fail in their attempt to accurately estimate an entire project.

Quadrus has developed an easily accessible and accurate estimation methodology and tool, built on cutting-edge mathematics and statistics. This presentation will introduce the next generation in software project estimation and demonstrate the Quadrus estimation toolset.

April 14th 6:00pm

Our speaker will be reknown author and agile persona Gerard Meszaros, who has been working on a brand new book!

Meeting Location is ICT 102

Gerard Meszaros is the author of XUnit Test Patterns and general all-round testing guru. Gerard has recently keynoted StarWest, where he talked about the principles behind test-driven development (both unit and functional/story tests) and how the role of test groups needs to change as a result. He also regularly speaks about Agile Usability, and about Right-sizing User Stories using "Story-o Types".