Thanks to everyone who attended the first event. It wasn't perfect, but I believed that everyone got value out of it. Most importantly, there was tons of great feedback (see below) which will help us make the next one even better.
Photos
A few photos were snapped during the event. They are currently hosted as a Flickr set:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/15936983@N04/sets/72157603883173852/
Time and Location
Feb. 9th, 2008 8:00 A.M.
TOPAZ Technologies, Inc.
9601 Amberglen Blvd.
Suite 140, Bldg G
Austin, TX 78729
Coding Challenge
The coding challenge was a simple console application which children and teachers can use to work on match skills much like multiplication flash cards. The code was written using VS2005 in C#.
Attendees
- Aaron Eastburn
- Alex Kazakov
- Bindiya Mansharamani
- Brian Loehr
- Chad Myers
- Greg Long
- Jason Meridth
- Jay Brownlee
- Jimmy Bogard
- Joe Ocampo
- Justin Dial
- Kerry MacLean
- Lee Basey
- Mark Anderson
- Matt Vasquez
- Pete Fink
- Ray Houston
- Scott Killen
- Sharon Cichelli
- Tim Hardy
- Tim Tonnesen
- Tom Jaeschke
There were a few others, but we didn't have cards for them. Please let us know who we missed.
Books and Articles Referenced During Event
Retrospective
Repeat - What worked well?
- Attendees had different levels of experience
- Introductions
- Great Learning opportunity
- Good choice of problem statement (succinct and universally known)
- Simple prep work ahead of time
- The fact that this session was held was a good thing!
- Lots of exposure to experience
- Interacting with TDD experts
- Honest open dialog
- Liked seeing Rhino Mocks in action
- Diversity in experience level
- I liked pair-programming with persons in-the-know
- Hands-on “real” coding
- I liked having some people that were knowledgeable of topic at hand. They were able to explain things in a way that is easy to understand.
- I liked the gathering of the minds to solve a problem.
Review - What caused difficulty?
- Better walk-troughs of what was done and why
- Once I realized that a mocking tool such as Rhino Mocks was required at the very end I wished I knew more about it.
- Size of dojo – too much going on
- Separate space for concept discussions. I had trouble following coding pair and concept discussions.
- Short time frame
- 8:00 A.M.
- Find a way to direct conversation to prevent multiples and lost conversation
- Side conversation and chaos detracted from designated speakers at times
- Start with a pair that has experience with TDD
- Not a lot of tests created
- Not everyone that wanted to try it could
Revise - What new are different things do we want to try in the future?
- Maybe continue this dojo bi-weekly on a regular basis?
- Smaller group
- Fruit in addition to donuts
- Multiple yet smaller groups each with a separate user story – at break, half of each team ping pongs.
- Speaker system to hear dialog
- Some more complete pattern for TDD newbies
- Have a ping-pong referee to keep pair moving towards Red, Green, Red.
- Name tags
- Don’t need breaks – it just causes loss of momentum.
- Too many discussions at the same time
- Define model before diving in – some level of design
- Increase audience’s chances to try TDD – switch more often
- Identify background items before hand so people can be up to speed
First, thanks so much for organizing and hosting the event, and to everyone who participated. I was glad to be there and appreciate what I got out of it.
Two questions, please. First, can members add wiki pages, or only owners?
Second, there was talk of working up our own solutions to the challenge, to provide examples of TDD styles. Could you recommend a way to share those? I'm still a neophyte with SubVersion, so I need to finish reading the book before I can figure out how to branch the code. Is branching the best method, or something else?
Thanks again. I hope there will be more, and yes, I'll bring fruit next time.
-Sharon