SoftwareGR

Tyler Jennings, Andy Maleh & Jake Scruggs, Obtiva

When: March 24, 6:00 pm – 8:00 pm
Where: Work Play Space, 941 Wealthy Street SE, Grand Rapids, MI 49506

Part 1: Jake Scruggs: “What’s the right level of testing?”

I’ve been on teams with way too little and (heresy) way too much testing. There have been lots of talks about how you should test more, but I’m going to dare to talk about when you should test less. Too much testing can lead to backlash, gridlock, morale problems, and poor velocity. Of course lack of testing can lead to bad design, gridlock, morale problems, and poor velocity. Balance is key.

The level of testing a team can support depends on many factors including: team size, developer buy in, managerial approval, company size, IT support, and testing experience of the team. In my talk I’ll be discussing each of these factors in turn as well as how they interact with each other (for instance: Rabid manager support of testing combined with developer hesitancy can spell disaster). In addition, I’ll be sharing my experiences trying to bring testing to many different teams of varying skill and size. There are strategies for integrating testing that can overcome most obstacles.

Part 2: Andy & Tyler: “Pair Parody”

Of all the XP practices, few have generated as much controversy and misunderstanding as Pair Programming. To help people understand what it is, what it isn’t, and how to do it effectively Andy & Tyler will demonstrate common pair programming patterns and anti-patterns.

Speaker Bios

Tyler Jennings

Tyler Jennings is an active member of many Chicago area user’s groups including CJUG (Chicago Java User’s Group) and CHAD (Chicago Agile Developers). Tyler is passionate about writing software and sharing his experience with others. Currently Tyler Jennings is a Senior Consultant at Obtiva, a firm that specializes in helping development teams transition to Agile methodologies.

Andy Maleh

Ever since he’s written his first computer program at the age of 7, Andy has always been interested in computers and technology. He has been involved with a number of projects in Ruby and Java, utilizing technologies such as Rails, JEE, Eclipse RCP, and Swing. Andy likes to follow agile XP software practices and user interface design best practices. He holds a bachelor degree in Computer Science from McGill University and a master degree in Software Engineering from DePaul University.

Jake Scruggs

{“High School Physics Teacher” => 7.years, “Object Mentor Apprentice” => 3.months, “ThoughtWorker” => 4.years, “Obtivian” => 1.year}