Agile Engineering: The Hard Parts
This session covers some of the more difficult parts of engineering on agile projects: feature toggles, pair programming, organizational change, and others, offering concrete advice based on real-world project experience.
While teams can pick up the easy parts of agile from books and conferences, some of the engineering practices still present challenges. In this session, Neal covers many of the engineering practices teams struggle with:
- what are the tradeoffs between feature branching and trunk-based development?
- what tradeoffs does test-driven development offer?
- how can teams avoid adopting the newest technology as a religion?
- what benefits does pair programming offer? What are the downsides?
- how can architects and developers help foster organizational change?
Neal pulls these topics from common practices on ThoughtWorks projects, offering practice advice on things like feature toggles, pair programming techniques like Ping/Pong Pairing, and how do tackle some tough problems in intersection of architecture, design, and engineering
About Neal Ford
Neal is Director, Software Architect, and Meme Wrangler at ThoughtWorks, a global IT consultancy with an exclusive focus on end-to-end software development and delivery.
Before joining ThoughtWorks, Neal was the Chief Technology Officer at The DSW Group, Ltd., a nationally recognized training and development firm. Neal has a degree in Computer Science from Georgia State University specializing in languages and compilers and a minor in mathematics specializing in statistical analysis.
He is also the designer and developer of applications, instructional materials, magazine articles, video presentations, and author of 6 books, including the most recent The Productive Programmer. His language proficiencies include Java, C#/.NET, Ruby, Groovy, functional languages, Scheme, Object Pascal, C++, and C. His primary consulting focus is the design and construction of large-scale enterprise applications. Neal has taught on-site classes nationally and internationally to all phases of the military and to many Fortune 500 companies. He is also an internationally acclaimed speaker, having spoken at over 100 developer conferences worldwide, delivering more than 600 talks. If you have an insatiable curiosity about Neal, visit his web site at http://www.nealford.com. He welcomes feedback and can be reached at nford@thoughtworks.com.