Nov 2005 Notes

The November meeting was lightly attended but highly rated. We talked about 1. RubyConf 2005 1. Using Rake 1. Introducing Agile to companies 1. Surviving Waterfall


Jim started us off with a review of RubyConf 2005. We all had lots of questions for him and the discussion was lively.

We then started a slimmed down version of OpenSpace. Where the users guide suggests a 5 hour minimum we had 3 hours. 1-hour during the meeting and 2-hours at Zas (aka Unos).

  1. Rake concepts Ed wanted to be able to run Rake from Eclipse. Jim explained Task dependencies verses File dependencies. He also explained that the main ruby libraries are: core, standard, and 3rd party. The 3rd party libraries can be gems or non-gems. And one of the interesting set of gems are facets which add small bits of behavior to normal Ruby classes.
  1. What tools do we need to get XP/Agile into Client companies? We were once again lucky to have Mike Schneider show up and give us great examples of how he has been able to target the correct projects that would benefit from Agile approaches. He suggested using metrics support moving toward Agile.
  1. How can you be Agile in a waterfall environment? There are two “users� of a process. (1) management, (2) developers. Waterfall is actually useful to management for project tracking and that is why they keep pushing it. I suggested that since building good software is the developer’s job, in the end the developer needs to do whatever is necessary to create the quality software. That means doing more than the water fall process tells you. So first fulfill the documentation requirements then go on and use your successful Agile techniques to iteratively build the software. Waterfall project that work are secretly adding Agile practices. And all Waterfall projects iterate during the Test/Debug Phase. That is when the system is actually built. The trouble is that they iterate in an undisciplined and chaotic way. Where an Agile project will iterate early and build the disciple needed for the end when the pressure is on. The team will already be tuned and disciplined and ready for anything. Thanks to everyone for a great meeting.
  1. Next Time Remember to pass out the Flyers for our December XP introduction !

Created at: Thu Nov 03 15:33:00 UTC 2005 Updated at: Thu Dec 28 18:57:48 UTC 2006