Next Meeting of the XP Club

The June 14th meeting will feature a talk by guest speaker Clarke Ching.

Talk: An overview of Agile with an emphasis on why agile works, why waterfall doesn't, the big mistake we made in the 70's

After last months very successful and interesting How to sell TDD to your colleagues and bosses presentation, Clarke returns to do another presentation while he is still based in Sheffield.

Bio: Clarke Ching is a New Zealander who now calls Scotland home. He is a passionate advocate of agile software development and is chairman of AgileScotland special interest group. He is a frequent speaker and part-time lecturer on agile methods. Clarke has an MBA specialising in Technology management and is an independent consultant specialising in the use of Agile and Theory of Constraints in software development. He is currently writing a "business novel" - see www.RollingRocksDownhill.com - which shows how Lean, Quality and Constraints Management thinking SHOULD be applied to software and product development organisations.

Next Meeting of the XP Club

The May 10th meeting will feature a talk by guest speaker Clarke Ching.

Talk: How to sell TDD to your colleagues and bosses.
Clarke uses excel - a tool on most peoples desktops and one that managers, in particular, don't find intimidating - to demonstrate Test Driven Development. Ron Jeffries, the XP guru, said he loved this approach. The demo has been used in a number of companies and universities to demonstrate the concepts of TDD, without freaking people out. It's a great conversation starter around the importance of TDD, good design, pairing and refactoring. Clarke has written up the session for his book and will share the instructions so that you can use it with your colleagues and bosses.

Bio: Clarke Ching is a New Zealander who now calls Scotland home. He is a passionate advocate of agile software development and is chairman of AgileScotland special interest group. He is a frequent speaker and part-time lecturer on agile methods. Clarke has an MBA specialising in Technology management and is an independent consultant specialising in the use of Agile and Theory of Constraints in software development. He is currently writing a "business novel" - see www.RollingRocksDownhill.com - which shows how Lean, Quality and Constraints Management thinking SHOULD be applied to software and product development organisations.

Check your dates!

Just a quick post to remind you that this month's Yorkshire XP club will be held on the second Thursday of the month, the 12th of April. Please don't turn up this week, we won't be there!

Don't forget we'll be doing the Extreme Hour, we hope to have plenty of people to particpate. There's more information here.

An Extreme Hour

The next meeting of the Extreme Programming Club (April 12) will feature an ‘Extreme Hour’. This is basically an audience-participation exercise in which the audience must completely develop a product using XP principles, like pair programming.

The group takes on different roles (such as ‘developers’ or ‘stakeholders’) and there are certain rules in place to mimic what it’s like to work on an XP project.

It’s something that’s used by XP consultants to explain the methodology. Hopefully it'll be interesting and quite fun.

See you there.

First meeting a great success

The first meeting of the Extreme Programming Club was a great success, thanks to everyone that came along.
Here are the dates for the next meeting, same place, same time:
8th March
12th April
10th May
14th June

See you at the next meeting and please spread the word.

First meeting of the Extreme Programming Club

I have been interested in Extreme Programming for quite a while, and have been using various agile methods in my day-to-day job for the last two years. While I am not an expert, I consider myself to have some domain knowledge, and a desire to learn more.

My employers Erudine (www.erudine.com) are also fanatical about good software development methods and they have agreed to sponsor an Extreme Programming Club where it is hoped people can come together, network, and generally discuss IT issues related to Extreme Programming. (Although not necessarily exclusively XP - if someone wants to wax lyrical about the joys of Ruby then I for one will listen). Drinking real ale in one of my favourite pubs is something I am willing to endure for the greater good.

Initially, we are thinking of holding the meeting once a month in Leeds.
So the first meeting of the Extreme Programming Club will happen on:

Thursday 8 Feb at

Victoria Hotel
Great George St
Leeds,
LS1 3BB

The meeting starts at 7.00pm and finishes when we are all too tired to talk.
So I can get some ideas of the number of people that might turn up, can I ask anyone who is intending to come to email rosie.knighton@erudine.com

FEEDBACK ON THE IDEA
I would love some feedback. Do people think this is a good idea/a bad idea, would people like short talks (maybe 20 minutes) about aspects of Extreme Programming, or just an informal gathering? If you would like talks/presentations, what topics are of interest? Is anyone interested in doing a talk?