Wednesday, November 5, 2008

Talking Agile - Developer Manager's Breakfast Feedback

Just a quick update on this event to break up all the technical stuff.

I attended the Talking Agile - Developer Manager's Breakfast hosted by Microsoft at Buitengeluk this morning. I must commend the organisers for putting a top class event together, the venue, food and facilities where excellent and well run.

Of the speakers, well this was a mixed bag, Ernest Mnkandla, senior lecturer at the University of Johannesburg was disappointing, one was hoping that he would offer some insights into the agile process and present some new research on the topic, considering his academic pedigree.

But his presentation turned into a lecture on the history of agile and a run down of the different flavours of agile, anyone having read Fowler and Ambler would have got very little out of his talk.

Ahmed Salijee gave us a sneak preview of some agile enhancements to Team server coming in Visual Studio 2010, lots of report automation and labour saving wizardry. He continues to be a great speaker.

The best talk of the day was Clifford De Wit, he gave a to the point, insightful talk on practically implementing agility into development teams,very process focused. He talks allot of sense and should publish his ideas formally as they represent a realistic and tried methodology that would be welcomed by many.

As always there was some product spiel, but all in all a good session made worthwhile by Clifford and Ahmed, well done guys.