Methods & Tools is a free e-newsletter for software developers, testers
and project managers. Spring 2008 issue's content:
* OpenUP
* How Quality is Assured by Evolutionary Method
* Creating an Agile environment
* Real Reuse for Requirements

60 pages of software development knowledge.

To download or read this issue go to http://www.methodsandtools.com/

After a great conference in Sydney last year, The Continuous Integration and
Testing conference (CITCON) is coming to Melbourne in 2008.  It's an open
space conference where we all meet the night before to propose and vote for
sessions then we drink, then we come back on the Saturday and talk or demo,
then eat, then talk or demo than probably drink again....... [grin]
Seriously, it was an amazing experience last year.   The Denver CITCON has
just happened (http://citconf.com/wiki/index.php?title=CITCONDenver2008Sessions)
and June is not far away.
The venue is being decided but it is central Melbourne.  Best of all this is
a free conference, running on sponsorship (contact me re potential
sponsorship).  Last year folk came from the US, NZ and around Australia, and
everyone thought it was great.  Registration numbers a a little low at the
moment compared to the past conferences in Europe and the US and even
Sydney, so if you want to come, register now. http://citconf
.com/melbourne2008/
Venue should be announced within a week.
cheers,
Erik
CITCON Melbourne Local Co-ordinator
www.testingspot.net

P.S Feel free to cross post this to other relevant agile, dev or test
mailing lists


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Folks,

this person here, fed up with the never ending debate over fixing the processes
in failing software projects, takes some inspiration from mathematics and online
forums to come up with a more peer-to-peer like organizational structure that's
probably not totally unlike Open Source projects are today, sexed up with a GUI
that manages 'karma'.

Time for some very original approaches?

Cheers

Hendrik


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Somehow they cut the link from my post.

http://www.jakevoytko.com/blog/2008/05/12/how-reddit-will-maybe-save-software-de\
velopment/

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

I have cleared this with the moderators and i apologise for the intrusion.

Audax Australia (http://www.audax.org.au) are a cycling club with over
1000 members, that run cycling events each weekend in most states. We
require the services of an XP programmer or team to assist on a
part-time basis to provide the club with a stable web-enabled platform
to manage the administration of members, events and the interaction
between each. The on-site customer is based in inner south-east
Melbourne and the city.

     The club's current database infrastructure is mySQL, ms-SQL and
Microsoft Access. Your code can be written in .NET, classic ASP or PHP
- or perhaps something else. The website is based on Joomla 1.13 ,
tinged with a hint of classic ASP that display some of our previously
developed databases. We are not too fussed about which technologies
are used, just as long as the club has the ability to update the code
without the need to rehire. The club will maintain ownership of all code.

     We are requesting developers to send an expression of interest
which includes a brief outline of your XP experience, your preferred
technologies, time available and where you are based. A shortlist will
be drawn up by the end of May 2009.

     Expressions of interest should be sent to xp@... (xp AT
audax.org.au) no later than 25th May, 2008. Requests for further
information can be sent via this address as well.

Ewen

G'Day Agilers,

I realise this is an XP group, but I hopefully that makes it likely
that there will be people with scrum as well.

An old school friend of mine, based in Sweden, is doing an MSc thesis
around the psychology of being a scrum master. To this end she wants
to interview developers who have worked with at least four different
scrum masters.

Anyone interested in principle? I'll get more details for anyone
interested.

Many thanks

--
Alec Clews
Personal <alec.clews@...>             Melbourne, Australia.
Jabber:  alecclews@...             PGPKey ID: 0x9BBBFC7C
Blog  http://alecthegeek.wordpress.com/

As one our our members discovered last time around, the Melbourne parking
officers are vigilant.
A few years ago, Wellington Parade South had economical on street parking that
seemed to be a bit available from 3:30pm on.
I don't know if that's still the case, but http://tinyurl.com/3gvlnm shows the
place.
It was one way. You could enter from Jolimont road.


----- Original Message ----
From: "melbourne_XP_enthusiasts@yahoogroups.com"
<melbourne_XP_enthusiasts@yahoogroups.com>
To: melbourne_XP_enthusiasts@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Sunday, 8 June, 2008 6:25:21 PM
Subject: [MXPEG] Melbourne XP Enthusiasts Meeting, 6/10/2008, 6:30 pm


Reminder from:   melbourne_XP_enthusiasts Yahoo! Group

Title:   Melbourne XP Enthusiasts Meeting

Date:   Tuesday June 10, 2008
Time:   6:30 pm  - 8:00 pm
Repeats:   This event repeats every month on the second Tuesday.
Street:   Lower ground floor, 45 Collins Street
City State Zip:   Melbourne ( http://tinyurl.com/35j6ll )

Get reminders on your mobile, Yahoo! Messenger, and email.
Edit reminder options Copyright © 2008
  Yahoo! Inc. All Rights Reserved | Terms of Service | Privacy Policy


       Get the name you always wanted with the new y7mail email address.
www.yahoo7.com.au/mail

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Some how I managed to send a personal mail to the whole list, dunno this reply
feature works against me. :)

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Good afternoon,

I've not been to a meeting for a while. Our current development process
does not include estimation, we are looking at the implication of
introducing this and the impacts to the teams. I looking for some
feedback on how estimation works for different workplaces and
particularly anyone who has had to implement estimation.

Thanks,

Alison Marquardt

A followup reminder for CITCON
After a venue search that started at Southbank and slowly crawled its way
north across the Melbourne CBD as we discovered Melb conference venues were
pricier than all the other CITCON cities, we finally have a venue!

The Open Information Foundation, co-founded by Jeffrey Fredrick and Paul
Julius, presents CITCON Asia-Pacific 2008 in Melbourne, Australia.

CITCON (Continuous Integration and Testing Conference) brings together more
than 100 people from every corner of the software development industry to
discuss Continuous Integration and the type of Testing that goes along with
it.

    - What: OpenSpace
<http://www.citconf.com/melbourne2008/openspace.php>event discussing
all aspects of CI and Testing, together
    - Where: Japser Hotel, 489 Elizabeth St, Melbourne, Australia (Near Vic
    Market)
    - When: Evening of June 27 & full day July 28, 2008
    - Who: Everyone interested in CI and Testing
    - Cost: Free

Register at http://www.citconf.com/melbourne2008/

Special thanks to the major sponsor, Hitwise!

Feel free to cross post this


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Methods & Tools is a free e-newsletter for software developers, testers
and project managers. Summer 2008 issue's content:
* UML versus Domain-Specific Languages
* We Increment to Adapt, We Iterate to Improve
* Building Products with Acceptance TDD
* Getting and Keeping Control over your Project

60 pages of software development knowledge.

To download or read this issue go to http://www.methodsandtools.com/

Hi everyone,

We've been doing some thinking about build farming.  We use
CruiseControl to start VisualStudio builds.  These then get passed
through to NUnit, NUnitForms, Coverage and CoverageCop.  May even be a
few more.

Obviously as a project matures the build process can take longer and
longer and we do various things to address this.

One that we are looking at is to farm out the parts of the build to
various PCs that are not utilised as much.  One possibility, being
part of a global company is to farm the work out to idle PCs in other
countries.

Has anyone had any good/bad experience with build farming?  Any blogs,
forums, advice or tools that could help us?

Thanks,

Luke Visser

lukevisser wrote:
> Hi everyone,
>
> We've been doing some thinking about build farming.  We use
> CruiseControl to start VisualStudio builds.  These then get passed
> through to NUnit, NUnitForms, Coverage and CoverageCop.  May even be a
> few more.
>
> Obviously as a project matures the build process can take longer and
> longer and we do various things to address this.
>
> One that we are looking at is to farm out the parts of the build to
> various PCs that are not utilised as much.  One possibility, being
> part of a global company is to farm the work out to idle PCs in other
> countries.
>
> Has anyone had any good/bad experience with build farming?  Any blogs,
> forums, advice or tools that could help us?
>
On Windows I've seen a team use IncrediBuild to reduce their build times.
On Linux and other *nixes there is distcc and ccache.

Eddy

Hi everyone who might have known me before I left for the US... Fargo continues
to be a great place to live and work. The cold winters aren't so bad as long as
you have a remote car starter and play indoor sports (tennis, soccer,
basketball). And the summers are a lot of fun! I miss the MXPEG meetings and the
intelligent conversations we had month after month, so I like to check in on the
mailing list from time-to-time to learn about the topic du jour. I still
supplement my work discussions by attending at least one local technology group
meeting each month... the local .NET developer group :). You can catch me on
Facebook...
Hi Luke,
I happened to see your message and I thought I'd offer a brief comment.
I work in Fargo North Dakota on Dynamics AX. We have our team physically
distributed between Fargo, Copenhagen (Denmark), and Redmond (Seattle). The team
is fairly evenly split between the three sites. The build team is located here
in Fargo but the build is actually performed in Copenhagen for a variety of
mostly legacy reasons. It has to be built somewhere so it might as well be the
place where it has traditionally been built if costs are about the same.
Although our source control and build processes are fairly robust, the build is
slow and the compiled application is large.
Two things you should keep an eye on are transmission costs and replication
speed.
Transmission Costs
The cost to transmit the compiled application to Fargo and Redmond FROM
Copenhagen is large, but it would have to be copied TO Copenhagen anyway, so
this cost is not a factor.
Replication Speed
The build team has sped up replication of the build by using DFS for file
replication:
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/technologies/storage/dfs/default.mspx
Prior to using DFS, the build replication took 5-8 hours. When the build took
this amount of time to replicate it had to be done in Copenhagen since they
start working 7 hours before Fargo and 9 hours before Redmond. Using DFS, the
build team has been able to get the compiled application to finish replication
within 30 minutes of the build completing. This speed improvement has been made
possible by replicating individual updated files as they complete instead of
starting a replication of the entire build folder upon completion of the build
using scripts.
I hope that helps!
- Chris Garty

----- Original Message ----
From: "melbourne_XP_enthusiasts@yahoogroups.com"
<melbourne_XP_enthusiasts@yahoogroups.com>
To: melbourne_XP_enthusiasts@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Monday, July 7, 2008 2:50:24 AM
Subject: [MXPEG] Digest Number 995

Hi everyone,

We've been doing some thinking about build farming. We use
CruiseControl to start VisualStudio builds. These then get passed
through to NUnit, NUnitForms, Coverage and CoverageCop. May even be a
few more.

Obviously as a project matures the build process can take longer and
longer and we do various things to address this.

One that we are looking at is to farm out the parts of the build to
various PCs that are not utilised as much. One possibility, being
part of a global company is to farm the work out to idle PCs in other
countries.

Has anyone had any good/bad experience with build farming? Any blogs,
forums, advice or tools that could help us?

Thanks,

Luke Visser


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

I found this on AgileEmbedded@yahoogroups.com.

----------------------------------------------------------
JULY/ AUGUST 2008 FEATURE ARTICLE
----------------------------------------------------------

How To Fail With Agile
20 Tips to Help You Avoid Success
by Clinton Keith and Mike Cohn

Agile processes are now accepted as valid alternatives to
traditional software development processes. Most people
who adopt agile do so to realize the benefits of faster
delivery, higher quality, products that more closely
match user needs, and so on.

Read More:
http://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/sqe/bettersoftware0708/
<http://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/sqe/bettersoftware0708/>

Hello!

Just a brief description of the group meeting, maybe it can encourage
more people to attend to the next ones! :-)

We were in 6 today, and basically we discussed about the following:

* Meta: how to make the group more active in the mail list and in the
meetings. Some random thoughts were to encourage people to ask
questions - specially for the beginners! and maybe to make the
meetings more appealing - a beer meeting? :-p Well, they were just
thoughts.

* Some participants shared their experience with the quality
assurance/testers team, followed by a discussion of how difficult it
is to integrate these people  in an agile way. No only them, also the
managers who say they want agile development, but do not commit
themselves and continue to act as a waterfall or ad hoc agent. There
was a general consent that this is still an issue.

* We shared some thoughts about how to start an agile project, what
work and what doesn't, and good books to read. My very humble ideas
on the matter:

"Get the Right People first" - many, if not all of the agile books
(that I've read) consider that you already have motivated and skilled
managers and specially, programmers. But in reality, if you try to
implement an agile process in an environment where the key
stakeholders do not want to change, or are not skilled to implement
changes, it just doesn't work.
In this respect, the book  "From Good To Great", from Jim Collins,
give great insights. After reading it, whenever I  read a more
technical book about agile I remember that it only works *with the
right people on board*.

* "Do not customize a process until you understand why it is the way
it is". Pair programming in XP, 30 days length iterations in Scrum,
these practices make sense to whole context of the process and if you
start to change them without understanding why originally they are
there, can give you a big risk of failure. Of course experienced
people customize agile processes to their needs, but they know
already how to compensate the practices they are skipping or
changing. I would suggest "Agile and Iterative Development: A
Manager's Guide", from Craig Larman, because he answers the question
"What is the difference between iterative and agile?", give a good
overview of XP, Scrum and UP and the consequences of mixing them. I
also liked it because it provides an easy view of the artifacts of
each process.

Finally, to get an overview of the problem of software management and
how it is taking long to manage it,  "The mythical man-man", from
Brooks, is a classic,  fun to read and ironically still very
relevant: "adding man-power to a late project only makes it worse",
"how a project gets one year late? One day at a time..."

Well, these were my suggestions. It would be nice to see what people
here have been reading that  they think could be helpful!

cheers,
Kimie
ps: apologize my English mistakes, I'm still learning :-)

Hi All,

I work for Serena Software (www.serena.com)based here in Melbourne and
have an opportunity to bring to Australia John Scumniotales (in
October most likely Friday the 18th) with a view to holding a general
group meeting to talk about AGILE Development. I would like to
understand what sort of audience we would obtain for such a meeting.
Feel free to send me an email at ekubilay@...

Kind regards
Eralp Kubilay

Methods & Tools is a free e-newsletter for software developers, testers
and project managers. Fall 2008 issue's content:

* Controlling Project Risk by Design
* How to Choose Candidates for Large Agile Companies
* Outsourcing Software Testing
* Managing Scrum Meetings

35 pages of software development knowledge that you can download from
http://www.methodsandtools.com/mt/download.php?fall08