Jutta Eckstein

Evolving Pedagogical Patterns: The Work of the Pedagogical Patterns Project

This paper is a summary of the pedagogical patterns project. The project started in 1996 with the aim of collecting and disseminating experiences of teaching and learning about object technology. We adopted a pattern format early on, although the specific format has evolved over time. In this paper we give an overall view of the project: where it started, how the material we have collected has evolved and matured, and where we need to go from here. More material from the project is available from our website www.pedagogicalpatterns.org, and our publications.

Perspectives on Agile Coaching

There are many perspectives to agile coaching including: growing coaching expertise, selecting the appropriate coach for your context; and eva luating value. A coach is often an itinerant who may observe, mentor, negotiate, influence, lead, and/or architect everything from team organization to system architecture. With roots in diverse fields ranging from technology to sociology coaches have differing motivations and experience bases. This panel will bring together coaches to debate and discuss various perspectives on agile coaching. Some of the questions to be addressed will include: What are the skills required for effective coaching? What should be the expectations for teams or individu als being coached? Should coaches be: a corporate resource (internal team of consultants working with multiple internal teams); an integral part of a specific team; or external contractors? How should coaches exercise influence and au thority? How should management assess the value of a coaching engagement? Do you have what it takes to be a coach? – This panel will bring together sea soned agile coaches to offer their experience and advice on how to be the best you can be!

The pedagogical patterns project (poster session)

The project, which started in 1996, aims to encourage the capture and dissemination of successful experience of learning and teaching OT from industry and academia. Today, a significant body of material exists. We welcome contributions from people with experiences to share, or whose own practice is reflected in existing material.

Coaching for agile and Xtreme practices: a fishbowl with piranhas

This panel-fishbowl hybrid will discuss all aspects of coaching - becoming a coach - choosing one and describing what it means to be an (in) effective coach. A coach watches, provides feedback, and suggests subtle direction - some will argue that the coach is more - for example, an architect or team lead - but that is a matter for debate. This session will be run as a panel with two fishbowl seats - only one of which may be occupied by audience members at any one time. The piranhas (panelists) will state their positions and offer their feedback. The panel-fishbowl hybrid was conceived by Steven Fraser and facilitated by Rachel Reinitz.

Culture and Agile: Challenges and Synergies

Culture offers both local and global challenges to software teams as they collaborate to understand requirements, build systems, and deliver product. Agile software practices through iteration, incremental delivery, and customer proximity can ameliorate cultural challenges to create synergies. Alternatively, some cultural barriers may prove insurmountable. This panel brings together community experts to share and discuss research and field experience.

A fishbowl with piranhas: coalescence, convergence or divergence?

Agile software development practices including XP and Scrum have risen to prominence within the software engineering community over the past ten years. Are agile software development practices converging? Are some practices becoming more integrated and/or more widely adopted than others? In the early 90s there was a convergence of object-oriented design methodologies - is a similar pattern being repeated within the agile software development community? Several years ago conferences featured debates on the number of practices inherent to XP - or for that matter what constituted XP. Is the Agile community on the verge of converging to standardization or do individual practices retain their individually and evangelists/disciples? A somewhat related question is: Can an agile practice be applied out of the box or is some assembly required? What does it take to get agility going in an organization? Does it work as advertised? What practices work and play well with others? Hear the experiences of panelists in their attempts to actually make agile work in the real world. From Crystal, DSDM, FDD, LEAN, Scrum, to XP (and others) - participants will to share their perspectives and experiences. Be warned - this fishbowl will be stocked with piranhas.

Open source software in an agile world

Open Source Software (contrasted with proprietary or “closed” software) has become a more widely accepted enterprise solution not withstanding some issues related to intellectual property rights and issues of liability and indemnification. Open Source Software (OSS) takes collaborative software development to a global extreme – OSS also provides a mechanism for decreasing time-to-market, improved quality, and reduced development costs. This panel will serve as a catalyst to discuss strategies, tools, and communities focused on the development and application of open source software.

Deploying lightweight processes (poster session)

2. Why lightweight processes? Lightweight processes arise due to the need to speed up delivery, coupled with the desire to follow a disciplined development process. Although large teams might need lots of process, smaller teams can get away with less process. A key aspect that all lightweight processes have to balance is controlling programmers tendencies to “code first and ask questions afterwards” a Cowboy Coder approach that is often incorrectly labeled “Hacking”.

Politics and religion in agile development

Politics and Religion are traditionally taboo topics in polite after-dinner conversation. In this panel, we are going to discuss taboo topics in agile software development. Technical teams ought to choose technology based on the immediate needs of the current project and organization. But we all know that technology and methodology choices are often driven by people enhancing their resume – this conflict can start religious wars! On agile projects, we ask our customers to prioritize stories purely by business value, as if this is a straightforward thing to do and company politics are irrelevant. We need to recognize that projects that only deliver working software can still be classed as failures from an organizational perspective. If we pretend that the political dimension does not exist on agile projects then we cannot develop and share practices that help us handle these situations. This panel brings industry professionals to share their perspectives and experiences, the audience should come prepared to both ask and answer questions.

The view: the ultimate IT chat

The world is changing; and this is also true for our IT business. Nicolai Josuttis talks with five international extraordinary female representatives of our IT business about the most important, thought-provoking, and funniest IT headlines and tendencies of the past year. Lean back and enjoy being a fly on the wall when the following participants chat in a pub-like atmosphere: Rebecca Wirfs-Brock, Linda Rising, Mary Lynn Manns, Jutta Eckstein, and Lise B. Hvatum.