XP Day Benelux 2006

Presentation Zen

pascal — 17 November 2007 19:14 GMT

Presentation Zen

Presenters: Pascal Van Cauwenberghe & Vera Peeters
Type: workshop
Duration: 90
Audience: those who are called upon to give presentations and are afraid of speaking in front of an audience. Those who want to make their presentations more memorable. Those who want to convey their ideas more effectively.
We need laptops for this session, one laptop per group of 3-4 people. The organizers will bring some laptops, but participants are encouraged to bring their own, with some presentation software.

Objectives

Learn new techniques for making and giving effective presentations and get your ideas across. Get the urge to become an XP Day session presenter, if you aren't yet.

Abstract

For the past few years, presentations have been changing:

gone are the overloaded slides in unreadable 10pt font,
gone, the cheesy animations and effects,
gone, the clashing colors,
gone, the same old, same old clip-art,
gone, the droning presenter reading off his slides in front of a sleeping audience,
gone, the boring bullets!

Why would you want to keep on doing that?

You too can have passion, style, stories, design, beauty...

... to really engage the audience and get your message across.

In this session, we have a brief look at some presentation styles (listed below). Then, you form groups and apply one or more of the styles to make a presentation about your experiences at the XP Days.

Each group shows their presentation and gets feedback from the other participants. We then improve our sessions and our delivery.

Some examples of different presentation styles.

The leading site on this topic is Presentation Zen by Garr Reynolds. His site contains lots of tips and techniques. He links to examples of great design and presentation. He also links to some truly bad presentations and designs. Have a look at the following examples of different presentation and delivery styles:

The "Lessig Style" has simple, stark slides that underline the presenters words
Even more frenetic: Dick Hardt's "Identity 2.0" and Jim Weirich's Ruby on Rails presentations.
ZEN. The "Takahashi" style is simple, stark and calm.
Guy Kawasaki's method has a "Top 10" format, lots of stories and laughs. Watch how he delivers the presentation with perfect ease and lots of humour. And don't forget the "10/20/30 rule"!
The "Godin method" combines well-chosen images with a little text to underscore the story. Watch how Seth Godin delivers the presentation in a very natural, relaxed style.
In-your-face standup comedy style presentations: see Jim McCarthy explain "23.5 rules of thumb for shipping software" to Microsoft consultants.
The most extreme presentation method is to "go naked": do away with all the presentations, technology and gimmicks. Just tell an interesting story.

Benefits of participating

Get some experience preparing and giving a presentation. Learn and pratice techniques to get your ideas across. If you want to change the world, you need to get people to listen to you and understand you.

Session Outline

15 min: intro with some examples of different presentation styles
25 min: groups prepare presentations
30 min: tryout of each presentation, with feedback for improvement from the other participants
15 min: groups update their presentations
05 min: closing

History

Agile Open 2006: http://www.agileopen.net/2006/PresentationZen.html
The authors have been known to give Zen Presentations. Come and see at the 3 XP Loops and The Toyota Way of Managing sessions.

Movies of the presentations by Lasse Koskela

Gino Marckx steps in at the last minute to present his team's Zen presentation, because the original presenter had to leave early.

Conan Dalton during the rehearsal of the "Beer Sphere" presentation. Switching between the "presentation" and the beer mats was a bit awkward, so...

Emmanuel Gaillot demonstrates the high tech beermats during Conan's presentation, so that Conan can concentrate on the story.

FrontPage

pascal — 30 May 2007 18:54 GMT

XP Day Benelux 2006

16-17 November 2006

Mechelen, Belgium

XP Day Benelux is a two day international conference about agile software development, intended for software development and business people from all walks of life. It provides a good opportunity for exchanging ideas and sharing experiences and is suited for both experienced participants and beginners in agile software development. The focus of this conference is on practical knowledge, real-world experience, and active participation of everyone.

The number of participants is limited to 120.

This event is organized by AgileSystems vzw with the Dutch XP users group and the Belgian XP users group

Latest News:

30/05/2007: The Call for Sessions of XP Day Benelux 2007 has been sent out.
05/12/2006: See the program page for presentations and outputs of the sessions
25/11/2006: Read the feedback we received from the participants
23/11/2006: Find out who's writing about XP Days Benelux
13/11/2006: Registration closed, no more places left. Contact info if you want to be on the reserve list, in case someone cancels.
The Off-shore, fixed price and still agile session has been canceled. Sorry for that. We're looking for a way to replace this session in the program.
Download the printable flyer
26/09/2006: The Conference Program is published. Look at all those great sessions!
05/08/2006: The Call for Sessions is closed. The session organizers are now reviewing and improving their session proposals

Sponsors:

Thank you to Lasse Koskela of Reaktor Innovations for organizing the great conference T-shirts

Payment options

pascal — 08 May 2007 23:02 GMT

Registration type	1 Day	2 Days + dinner	Valid
~~Super early~~	N/A	275,00 € + 21% VAT = 332,75 €	~~until half September~~
~~Normal~~	175,00 € + 21% VAT = 211,75 €	300,00 € + 21% VAT = 363,00 €	~~from half september until 15 October~~
~~Late~~	200,00 € + 21% VAT = 242,00 €	350,00 € + 21% VAT = 423,50 €	from 15 October
~~Extra dinner ticket~~	40,00 € + 21% VAT = 48,40 €	40,00 € + 21% VAT = 48,40 €	until mid November

Who's writing about XPDay ?

pascal — 20 March 2007 21:34 GMT

Who's writing about XP Day Benelux?

Yves Hanoulle writes about the Help! My team is at war! session
Matteo Vaccari describes his experiences on Wednesday and Thursday and his experiences on Friday.
Pascal Van Cauwenberghe describes his experiences on Wednesday and Thursday and on Friday.
A field report by Lasse Koskela

Read more from the session organizers

Find more blog posts about XP Day on Technorati.

Program

rob — 13 December 2006 21:41 GMT

Conference Program

Thursday 16 November

8:45	Registration and coffee
9:30	Plenary opening
	Room 1	Room 16	Room 17	Room 18
10:00	Planning for non-functional requirements in Agile projects Johan Peeters & Paul Dyson	The 3 XP Loops Vera Peeters & Pascal Van Cauwenberghe	Agile Planning Hans Keppens & Sven Gorts download presentation	Coding Tournament Lasse Koskela & Markus Hjort
11:00	15 min break
11:15	CONTINUED download: slides posters WebBank ProjectBrief	What is Agile Software Development Rob Westgeest & Willem van den Ende dowload sides	Test-driven development on a large scale project Jan Van Reusel download slides	CONTINUED
12:30	Lunch
13:30	Help mijn team is in oorlog! Ignace Hanoulle & Yves Hanoulle	Intro to SCRUM Joseph Pelrine	Is JUnit overdesigned? Vera Peeters	Getting Things Done: Agility for your Life Bernard Vander Beken
15:00	30 min break
15:30	CONTINUED	Agile applied on the largest J2EE project in the Benelux Johan Lybaert	Agile Factors Rachel Davies & Steve Freeman	A Fugue about Paradigms and Functional Programming Emmanuel Gaillot & Christophe Thibaut
17:00	Plenary closing
17:15	Drinks sponsored by
18:00 20:00	Dinner

Friday 17 November

9:00	Registration and coffee
9:30	Plenary opening
	Room 6	Room 1	Room 16	Room 17	Room 18
10:00	OPEN SPACE How can your business benefit from agile	Agile Development Workshop Kathleen Cornelis & Jan Van Reusel	The Toyota Way of Managing Pascal Van Cauwenberghe	Turning up the heat (without getting burnt) Joseph Pelrine & Ben Fuchs	Introducing unit tests to a large evolving application Dirk Maegh & Olivier Costa DOWNLOAD the slides (245K)
11:00		15 min break
11:15		CONTINUED	Continuous Integration Vera Peeters & Sven Gorts download slides	CONTINUED	Difficult Conversations Hans Keppens & Vladimir Blagojevic
12:30	Lunch
13:30	OPEN SPACE	Refactoring: Trimming your design for agile development Sven Gorts download slides	Storytelling with FIT Steve Freeman & Mike Hill	Resistance as a Resource Lasse Koskela	Project Status: Writing On The Walls Emmanuel Gaillot & Christophe Thibaut
15:00		15 min break
15:15		Building up an agile test strategy Anko Tijman	CONTINUED	Presentation Zen Pascal Van Cauwenberghe & Vera Peeters See the session description for links to the movies and the presentations made during the session	Haste makes waste. - Oh no it does not! Rob Westgeest, Tjakko Kleinhuis, Willem van den Ende
16:45	Plenary closing
17:15 18:00	Closing drinks

Legend
Interactive Presentation	the presenters will explain something to the audience, but you can expect some lively discussions!
Tutorial with exercises, simulation	the presenters will guide you through a predefined excercise, you will learn by experience!
Think tank, workshop	the audience has to do the work! You will be asked to do some creative thinking!

Location

pascal — 15 November 2006 08:18 GMT

Location

The conference is organized in Elewijt Center near Mechelen, Belgium. Mechelen is located between Brussels and Antwerp.

Travel

By car:

the conference center is near the highway between Brussels and Antwerp. See the map

By train:

Mechelen can be reached easily from most Belgian railway stations.
Mechelen is a stop on the international line Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Antwerp, Brussels.
Travelers from the UK, France and Germany can take the Eurostar/Thalys to Brussels Midi and take a train to Mechelen (25-30 min from Brussels)
You can take a bus or taxi from the train station to the conference center or carpool with other conference participants. Bus 280 "Mechelen-Vilvoorde" stops right in front of the Elewijt Center, a blocky building (see the pictures below and the plan of the center).

See the route planner

By plane:

Brussels airport can be reached from most international airports. A taxi will bring you to the conference center in +/- 25 minutes.

Ryanair flies into 'Brussels South' (actually Charleroi). You can take the bus shuttle to 'Brussels Midi' train station (+/- 1 hour) then take a train to Mechelen (25-30 minutes).

Car pooling

If you're looking for or can provide a ride from/to the conference center, add your name to the Carpooling page.

Staying in Mechelen

The conference center has a number of hotel rooms on site. There is a large choice of hotels in Mechelen. The conference organizers can help you to find and book accomodation.

Registration

pascal — 13 November 2006 19:18 GMT

Sponsoring

pascal — 04 November 2006 15:54 GMT

If you are interested in sponsoring the XP Day Benelux conference, please send an e-mail to xpdayinfo with subject 'sponsoring'. We offer a number of different SponsorPackages .

We thank our sponsors for making this event possible.

Living Software
Nayima	Moebius

Media Sponsors

Is JUnit Overdesigned ?

pascal — 23 October 2006 21:01 GMT

Presenters: Vera Peeters
Type: ipresentation + workshop
Duration: 90
Audience: preferably you have some experience with any one of the XUnit frameworks

Objectives

Explore the concept simple design, and apply this idea to a well known framework.

Abstract

When can we say that a design is simple and good?

A nice and easy checklist (Kent Beck's white book) is that the code has to

run all the tests
communicate everything
contain no duplication
contain a minimum number of classes and methods

Another idea in the agile philisophy is that you should never implement features that you think will be useful later, but that you don't really need right now. It is definitely not forbidden to think about those features now, and to assure yourself that you don't paint yourself in a corner. But you don't want to burden the living design with hooks for future whistles and bells.

How does JUnit, or any one of the XUnit frameworks behave if we look at them from this perspective? Does this depend on your own environment, on your own requirements? Is it better to use an existing framework or utility? Is it better to write and control the utilities you need yourself? When does a framework become a standard?

The session starts with a short presentation. Afterwards, there is a group excercise, "My own minimal framework". This excercise starts from real life situations where attendants are currently using tools and frameworks to support unit-testing. From these real life situations, they will explore their actual needs, and they will be able to analyze the pro's and con's of the choices they have made in the past.

Benefits of participating

You will reflect on

Why and when do you use existing frameworks?
Why and when do you use house-grown utilities?
Why and when does someone else use existing frameworks?
Why and when does someone else use house-grown utilities?

What will the organisers learn

I will reflect on

Why and when do I use existing frameworks?
Why and when do I use house-grown utilities?
Why and when does someone else use existing frameworks?
Why and when does someone else use house-grown utilities?

Session Outline

Simple design (5 min)
JUnit 4.1 (5 min)
XUnit (5 min)
Need-driven design or Featurism (5 min)
Minimal test framework (5 min)
Flexibility and complexity (5 min)
My own minimal framework (groups) (60 min)
- List stories: which unit test frameworks do you use? (5 min)
- form groups (5 min)
- tell stories in group (10 min)
- select 1 story --> analyse
  - features actually used? (5 min)
  - unsupported needed features? (5 min)
  - unnecessary complexity? (5 min)
  - solution? (10 min)
- present stories to group (15 min)

TjakkoKleinhuis

pascal — 23 October 2006 19:31 GMT

Tjakko Kleinhuis has 10 years experience in software development in both embedded systems as well as desktop applications. In this period of time he found the human and process aspects of the profession to be crucial for the success of technical projects. In the past 5 years he has seen agile techniques improve the success rates of individuals and projects.

He has attended XP conferences in the Benelux, the United Kingdom and the USA, and has co-tutored workshops on conferences as well as for an in-company training.

A Fugue about Paradigms and Functional Programming

pascal — 21 October 2006 19:13 GMT

A Fugue about Paradigms and Functional Programming

Presenters: Emmanuel Gaillot & Christophe Thibaut
Type: Kata session, as done in the Paris Coders' Dojo. This is an interactive programming session.
Duration: 90
Audience: Participants should know about programming, OO and TDD. Prior knowledge about functional programming is welcome, although not necessary.

Objectives

This workshop's objectives include:

exploring Test Driven Design practices in a Functional Programming flavor -- or vice-versa
discovering some new ways to code a domain problem with no domain object
thinking in terms of calculus and values instead of behaviour, state and collaboration
thinking about accidental and essential complexity

Abstract

Test Driven Design is quite frequently introduced within an Object Oriented Context. Many tutorials and books about TDD are written for Java, C#, or Ruby. One might think TDD is intended only for OO programming. On the other hand, Functional Programming (FP) languages have flourished on a tradition of formal reasoning about programs, in which proving code is sometimes preferred over testing it... TDD and FP: do those two mix well?

TDD rules are quite simple: write a failing test, make it pass, refactor code. Behind the rules -- TDD principles include doing the simplest thing that could possibly work, write expressive code and eliminate redundancy. Could we obey such principles while programming in a language that isn't OO?

Sure we can! In the workshop we will program a small problem the TDD way, using immutable values instead of mutable object states, functions and expressions instead of object behaviour and lexical closures instead of object collaboration.

Such a programming adventure will happen in the form of a (Paris Coders' Dojo) kata session in Haskell, a session during which the developer and driver write the full code directly in front of -- and with the full collaboration of -- the audience, submitting their design to everybody's questions, comments, suggestions and approbation.

We will explore some of the most useful functional programming topics, including :

data structure made simple and expressive: lists, generators
generalization trough lexical closures
avoiding intricate control structures with pattern matching and recursion
reliability granted by referential transparency
clear boundaries between "pure" functions and intended side effects

Our intent is to assess the applicability of FP languages and tools to writing code that meets TDD standard criteria : passes all the tests, expresses intention, no redundancy, economic in terms of lines of code. In particular we'll try to see how well specific functional programming idioms may help us writing smaller, more expressive tests, and give birth to elegant ways to make them pass.

Debriefing the dojo session will also give us an opportunity to think more about the notions of accidental and essential complexity, and the representations underlying the way we model a solution for a given domain problem. Furthermore, as many OOPL now feature some functional constructions, we will also discuss about blending OOP and FP flavors, and get the best of both worlds.

Benefits of participating

Participants will

learn about Haskell and its suitability to complex systems,
learn about coding in a functionnal programming language the TDD way,
learn about how they can add an FP touch to their current programming style,
discuss and compare OO and FP design specificities,
have fun, make friends and connect with people from the FP community.

What will the organisers learn

The organizers expect to

learn more about functional programming and its applicability to some domains they didn't think of,
learn more about how to efficiently communicate their interest and knowledge about FP paradigm,
have fun, make friends and connect with people from the FP community.

Session Outline

5 mn: introducing ourselves to each others
10 mn: introducing the basic principles behind FP
60 mn: unfolding the kata in Haskell
15 mn: debriefing and debating about what we learned

Offshore Fixed Price Agile

willem — 16 October 2006 21:56 GMT

Off-shore, Fixed Price and still Agile. How does that work?

This session is tentatively in the program. After November the 1st we will know whether this session will be able to run at xp days benelux.

Presenters: Marco Jansen
Type: Experience Report & Simulation
Duration: 90
Audience: People who are (going to be) involved in agile projects that are running in multiple locations. People who are (going to be) involved in fixed price projects.

Objectives

Share lessons learned and let participants experience what the effect is of working on two different locations in two different time zones.

Abstract

During the last year the presenters worked on a product development project that had a duration of one year, a fixed-price contract, customers in the UK, a 3 person team in the UK and a 35 person team in India that was run in an Agile way. This experience report tells about which Agile practices still hold in this situation and which Agile practices needs to be adjusted. It covers topics like how to run a distributed stand-up, when to split teams, how to negotiate scope when having a fixed price contract, how to build a relationship between the customer and the team in Bangalore and the value of weekly showcases. It also covers the impact of traffic congestion and the wild job market in Bangalore.

During a simulation the participants will experience what the effect is of working on two different locations in two different time zones.

Benefits of participating

Experience what the impact is on working on two different locations in two different time zones.
Get tips on how to be Agile while working under a fixed price contract
Get tips on how to be Agile while working in two different locations
Get tips on how to be Agile while working in two different time zones
Get tips on how to be Agile while working with a team of 35 people

What will the organisers learn

Hear experiences of other people with fixed price projects
Hear experiences of other people with off-shore projects
Further improve the off-shore simulation

Session Outline

5 min Introduction
30 min Simulation
45 min Experience Report
10 min Contingency

Mike Hill

pascal — 11 October 2006 19:11 GMT

Mike Hill is an independent consultant, developing and coaching on Agile projects. Mike began his professional career back in 1993, with Logica. Since 2002, he has been enjoying working with Agile/XP teams at Kizoom and Thoughtworks. Mike has a Maths degree and an Msc in Fluid Mechanics.

Christophe Thibaut

pascal — 11 October 2006 19:01 GMT

Christophe Thibaut has been working in IT for 15 years as a Developer, Project Manager and Consultant for Banking and Industrial groups in France. He is interested in everything that can help teams in their day to day work of creating liable, usable and maintainable software. As such he has been practicing Extreme Programming with small teams since 2001 in the context of lecacy applications. He's also involved in the Developers Dojo Experiment in Paris since it's creation.

Emmanuel Gaillot

pascal — 11 October 2006 19:00 GMT

Emmanuel Gaillot is a software engineer and an experienced designer for theatre and dance. He has adapted XP practices and principles for the theatre, and he currently works on instilling performance art practices back into the field of software making. Emmanuel's areas of expertise include self-organizing teams, software making and Extreme Programming. He is a founding member of the Coders' Dojo in Paris. He works for Octo Technology as an XP coach.

Agile Development Workshop

pascal — 10 October 2006 23:48 GMT

Agile Development Workshop

Presenters: Kathleen Cornelis & Jan Van Reusel
Type: Workshop
Duration: 120
Audience:
- All: Apprentice, journeyman, master
- Some Java development experience is recommended.
- A maximum of 8 participants (4 pairs).

Objectives

Get some hands-on 'agile development' experience

Abstract

A short overview of the practices of agile development that will be exercised during the workshop: scrum, pair programming, stories, test driven development, refactoring, retrospectives
A real development exercise based on these practices. During this exercise, the full development cycle will be covered: participants will write test and production code for small chuncks of functionality described in stories that will be prepared by us. They will build their code, run the tests and integrate test and production code into a common code base.

Benefits of participating

Experience and understand the agile development practices and learn about its advantages and its challenges.

What will the organisers learn

How easy or difficult it is for outstanders to jump into this way of working

Session Outline

Introduction to agile development practices - 20 minutes
Exercise:
- scrum 15 minutes
- first session of pair programming - 30 minutes
- burndown, switch pairs - 10 minutes
- second session of pair programming - 30 minutes
- retrospective - 15 minutes.

Programming will be in Java using Eclipse. Therefore, some Java experience is recommended.

History

Ardatis organized this workshop once before to introduce potential job applicants to our way of working. See the Ardatis Software Factory

Jan Van Reusel

pascal — 10 October 2006 23:46 GMT

Jan Van Reusel is a development manager at Ardatis, he is currently in charge of the development team of a large-scale agile software development project. He is a senior J2EE architect and has succesfully applied agile techniques on several projects.

The Ardatis Software Factory

Agile Factors

pascal — 09 October 2006 19:20 GMT

Agile Factors

Presenters: Rachel Davies & Steve Freeman
Type: Workshop
Duration: 90 minutes
Audience: This session will interest coaches, team leads and managers who want to set their project teams up for successful implementation of agile software development.

Objectives The goal of this workshop is to produce a set of questions that teams can use at the start of a software development project to help them get clear about how they plan to apply agile techniques

Abstract

Teams setting out to apply agile software development on a project, soon discover there are a bunch of parameters and variables that need to be set in implementing agile practices. For example, What time will the team run daily status meetings? How long will the team�s development cycle be? Who needs to be invited to review meetings? Etc.

This workshop aims to provide a guide to teams on topics that they will need to develop working agreements on and help team get clear about how they want to apply agile techniques. In the workshop we will produce a set of questions that you can use to explore working agreements for your team.

We were inspired to put this workshop together after applying the practice of Project Chartering and learning that establishing working agreements with the team from the start of the project avoids a lot of churn and misunderstandings as the project progresses. Consensus on Working Agreements can be developed via Project Chartering workshops at the project kick-off and thereafter reviewed and refined via Retrospective workshops.

Benefits of participating

You will explore the variations and limiting factors around implementing several agile development practices. You will get a chance to hear the experiences of many other workshop participants and the opportunity to share your own stories too.

What will the organisers learn

More good questions to ask at the start of agile projects.

Session Outline

In this workshop, we offer participants practices for discussion and they work in groups to build a set of questions that are useful to answer before the team gets started with these practices.

With each practice, we invite groups to talk through different ways you have seen that practice implemented and to probe for parameters that can vary in employing the practice on different teams. Try asking �Who? What? Where? When?� questions about each practice. Each group is given two practices to discuss (on neon starburst cards) and asked to spend 5 minutes per practice writing questions on stickies and grouping them around the practice they related to.

Every 10 minutes participants disperse and choose a new table to discuss more practices.

About half way through the workshop the participants are encouraged to identify new practices - we provide blank starbursts for this.

The session ends with a debrief at each table to talk about the most useful questions they saw during the workshop and then a retrospective of the session (What to Keep/What to Change).

History

This workshop has been presented with David Hussman at XP2006 (Finland) and Agile2006 (USA). It will also be presented at Agile Business Conference with co-presenter SteveFreeman. What went well in previous runs was short iterations (5 mins per practice) and allowing people to move around to the practices they are interested in (we also encourage people to add new practices after the first few rounds) and what I would like to do differently is to allow longer time for the debrief.

How can your business benefit from agile

willem — 09 October 2006 15:34 GMT

How can your business benefit from agile

Facilitators: Anko Tijman
Type: Open Space
Audience: CEO, CFO, CIO, Managers, Project managers, Consultants

Objectives

Understanding the bandwidth of implementing agile software in relation to the business of the company
Getting a grip on the aspects of the business

Abstract

Agile @ project level: What are the positive results for a project when you are going agile
Agile @ people level: What can (or should) be changed in people issues and HRM when you are going agile
Agile @ financial level: What are or might be financial benefits for your organization?
Agile @ enterprise level: Concerning this, what influence might agile SD have on the overall enterprise strategy?

Benefits of participating

Discussing in business terms the benefits of agile software development
Learning the business language

Nynke Fokma

marc — 08 October 2006 20:27 GMT

Nynke Etk Fokma

Fool @ Moebius Consulting
E-mail: nynke@moebius.nl
Mobile: +31 646118574

Nynke's coaching and consulting focuses on addressing important, difficult issues, balancing unbalanced stances and communicating dangerous miscommunications.