Hi Durban Agilists,

Can you do Agile without TDD?

As we head into spring and leave the cold weather behind us, we’re gearing up for our next AgileSA Durban gathering which will be held in a few weeks time on Wednesday 5th October. This event will focus on TDD with the theme being “Can you do Agile without TDD?”.

Brett Powell from Chillisoft will be doing an interactive presentation on Agile & TDD and what it means in an Agile development environment, after which we will proceed with an open discussion on the topic, allowing the chance for experiences to be shared and questions to be explored.

DATE: Wednesday 5th October 2011

TIME: 5:00 for 5:30pm

VENUE: SQS, Ground Floor, Technology House, 29 Salisbury Avenue, Westville, 3630 South Africa

FOCUS: Can you do Agile without TDD?

Hi Fellow Durban Agilists

With a fabulous Easter break behind us we are looking forward to our next Durban Agile gathering which will be held in a few weeks time on Wednesday 25^th May.  This event will focus on RETROSPECTIVES.  Following a brief overview from Kim Johnston, from SQS, covering the purpose of retrospectives in Agile and what they are all about, we will proceed with an open discussion on the topic, allowing the chance for experiences to be shared and questions to be explored.

** Click here to register for this free event **

To flex our collective knowledge a little we will then run a retrospective as a group, where we will look at our Agile user group and the year that has passed, utilising full retrospective techniques to establish what has worked, what has not worked, what we have achieved, how the group feels about our user group and then what we would like to see the group doing going forward.

WIN WIN WIN …

Additional to this great line up, we have a very exciting lucky-draw competition:  Peter Hundermark from Scrum Sense will be running a Certified Scrum Master training in Durban on 7/8 June 2011 and he has very generously offered to give away a seat on this training for our lucky draw at this May event!  This prize is worth R9700!  For more information on this course please visithttp://www.scrumsense.com/training/csm .  To stand a chance to win this amazing prize, bring along your business card, or fill in a form on the night, and the winner will be drawn at the event.

SQS is also very kindly sponsoring some very delicious snacks and beverages, so there will be refreshments to keep you going.

To summarise the details:

DATE: Wednesday 25^th May 2011

TIME: 5:00 for 5:30pm

VENUE: SA Home Loans, 78 Armstrong Avenue, La Lucia, Building 4 Basement Venue

FOCUS: Exploring Retrospectives (+ an awesome lucky-draw)

RSVP: Click here to register for this free event

We look forward to another great user group gathering and hope to see you there.

Rosalyn Charlton, and the Durban Agile SA Committee

This event is sponsored by:

For those who like to do so some interesting reading, download this PDF

Interesting blog regarding the Death Star. They claim it was an agile project.

Here for more info.

Hi Durban Agilists,

Welcome to 2011, and a very AGILE one it is set to be!  We will be kicking off our ‘Agile 2011’ with an open discussion forum on the evening  of 16^th February.  The topic will be:

Collaboration, ‘Swarming’, Pair Coding:  What they are, and when to do which.

The event will take the format of an open discussion facilitated by Rosalyn Charlton, Chris Tite and Adriaan Prinsloo with the discussions centered around these concepts and their definitions, investigate their varied understandings of them in reality,  and share experiences, suggestions and knowledge on the topics and the vital parts they play in Agile teams and processes.

This event is sponsored by: SA Homeloans, Clyral and SQS

Bring along your  willingness to explore, to learn, and to share ideas, and any wealth of information you may currently have or might acquire on the topic.

Venue: SA Home Loans, 78 Armstrong Ave, La Lucia, Building 4 basement venue

Date: Wednesday 16^th February 2011

Time: 5:00 for 5:30pm

Snacks and drinks provided.

e-Logics recently hosted the AgileSA Gauteng event in Centurion on November 24 .

Ushers showed people where to park and pink drinks were served at reception

Jacques Velleman reflected on lessons learned using Agile within the e-Logics software development process and the journey forward for e-Logics. Key points to mention was the successful contribution regarding communication within e-Logics among the team and role-players.

Lionel Bisschoff’s (Mobilitate) talked about Agile from a product owner’s point of view and this was very informative

“I love pot-holes!”

It was also important that the initial most challenging technology problems were addressed first; unlike the easy ones we tend to start first.

Interesting to note that Google Maps and Flickr were used in the technology offering in such a way that I never thought could be possible. This was also part of Mobilitate’s key “Must have” criteria’s and user stories.”

The marketing ladies from e-Logics really did well and the best food and coldest beer was provided. Kaizania also sponsored some good wine and the Chapel Red from Robinson Winery was a definite winner among the wine lovers!

The book review done by Nicky Stapelberg (aka “Trucker” due to his Movember moustache) was very informative and the lessons learned that I remember are: Myths are busted on practically every page, even myths that are associated with lean/agile and it provides 175 solid principles that could make a big difference for almost any product development organisation, from beginners to the most advanced.

“It offers a fundamentally different way of thinking about product development processes”

“flexibility is the result of advance choices and planning”

The downside of the evening was that people had to leave early at 21:30, but the presentation, questions and discussions held during the evening made up for it.

I’m looking forward to the Agile Road Show to be held next year in the first quarter of 2011 and the three cities that will be covered is Gauteng (Jhb/Midrand/Pta), Durban and Cape Town.

Arrie van der Dussen (www.agileacademy.co.za) said that two success factors for this road show are: “It must be free” and, “It must be agile for South Africans by South Africans.”

It is good to know that the Project Management South Africa (PMSA) will also partner with AgileSA in the future.

Further communication will send out regarding sponsorship, business cases and call for papers so watch out the press for more details and visit www.agilesa.co.za.

Dear AgileSA members,

Welcome to 2011, may it be a great year for us all and for the adoption of Agile in South Africa!

2010 was a great year for AgileSA with the establishment of AgileSA Durban and AgileSA Gauteng (still waiting for Cape Town ).

The year was filled with exciting events and the membership and attendance of these events have grown tremendously. What was truly amazing to myself is how many true adopters of Agile there are now in South Africa. This was seen in the involvement of people, the passion they have, the questions they ask and more importantly their willingness to stand up at events and share their wealth of agile knowledge gained through practical experience with others.

Although we had some successes in 2010, we also had some failures. This being Agile, we learn from our failures in order to deliver a better product. This is what 2011 will be about.

Have you joined us on Facebook yet?

As to increase the social part of our community, we now have a Facebook Community – www.facebook.com/agilesa… join us and ask questions, answer questions from others in the community, share successes, share failures, share great books or articles and much more…

That said, we need your help, and very soon…

1. We will allow you to have more input into the themes and topics for events – check back soon

2. We want more people from the industry to share the experience by volunteering to speak at events – please contact us

3. We need more support from local organisations  - yes, we will market you brand

4. We need volunteers to assist us in organizing an AgileSA 2011 Roadshow. The aim, well, to organize a FREE event showcasing the amazing adoption and experience of agile in South Africa. If you may be interested to assist in the organisation, please contact us.

Loads more on the backlog and loads to organize, but I personally am looking forward to a great 2011 agile year!

Regards

Arrie van der Dussen

AgileSA

I was able to attend an enjoyable Agile SA meeting for a short while last night where once again the drinks and the snacks where a huge hit. Unfortunately, I believe that it was the last meeting for 2010.

Arrie van der Dussen from Agile SA gave a presentation on KANBAN. He started with a brief history of KANBAN and its origin in the TOYOTA production line. He continued explaining the concepts which most of us are familiar with, using our SA Home Loans KANBAN board as a guideline. Our KANBAN board has gone through quite a few changes, so it was good to know that we are doing things right. It’s amazing that even though we follow the KANBAN methodology on a daily basis we are still able to learn something new in these meetings. One concept that was new to me was the topic of waste, which basically is, anything that is incomplete, which means anything that is in “Work In Progress” is waste if it is not pulled through the process and delivered.

He did mention some controversial stuff which raised a few eye brows, such as twiddling your thumbs in KANBAN is a good thing, something we here at SA Homeloans don’t have the opportunity to test yet. Another thing that he spoke about which made sense was doing things slower could lead to things getting done faster. Greater quality of the work going through the system means less back and forth movement on the KANBAN board from TEST back to Work In Progress. He ended the presentation showing the importance and the role of the scrum master by showing us a video of a busy highway in Britain where there was an unexplainable traffic jam on a well designed highway. It showed how you could not see the problem while driving in the traffic (referring here to developers actually in the process doing the work) but if you had an aerial view of the highway, you could see what was causing the backlog in traffic. So the scrum master cannot be a developer who is technically involved in the process, he/she has to keep an overhead view of the process identifying the flaws and “traffic jams” and removing them from the process.

I unfortunately missed the last half of the evening where the SA Home Loans, Agrista, and Clyral Kanban boards were displayed and discussed, but it was a lovely relaxed evening, well organised once again, with a good turn-out of individuals from different organisations using Agile Methods in their daily lives, chatting and sharing experiences both good and bad. Can’t wait for the next one at the end of Jan 2011.

Ashish Singh, Developer – November 2010

By Adriaan Prinsloo, Senior Systems Architect, Elzaris Technologies

During the last two Agile SA gatherings in Durban, I was struck again by the realisation of how diverse the agile space really is.  When we organised the company showcases I was worried that we would have four presentations that pretty much said the same thing, just with different presentation graphics.  Well I should have worried about more important things like the soaring price of whiskey and the lack of international bands on the Durban music scene.  Not that worrying about these things would help, I’m just saying that the initial worry was completely unfounded.  We were presented with views of the agile world from four completely unique perspectives.  Steve and Gary from SA Homeloans gave us a concise and honest account of their leap into agility, both from a developer and a project management perspective. Barry from Impro shared with us how they have transformed the entire culture of their company through adopting agile methodologies.  ‘Kim and the gang’ (not an international band either) from SQS gave us a humorous and informative look at the role of a tester in the agile development process, while master Tite from Agrista thrilled us with a fast paced and hard hitting account of the agrista trials and tribulations through Chris’s entire history with the company.  I walked away from these session with a wealth of shared knowledge and a sense that we are succeeding in creating a community that will benefit all who participate, whether they be the director of a corporation, or a 733t h@x0r in a damp basement.  I also walked away with a very nice beer due to my previously underutilized, but blindingly fast recollection of Star Trek characters, thanks Chris!