Building ChangingThePresent: Agility in Action
ChangingThePresent is the increasingly popular charity donations portal that lets you give donation gifts instead of another pair of fuzzy slippers. The site is built and maintained under unusual circumstances. The team is distributed, with no more than two developers in any one place. The team uses agile techniques such as automated testing, heavy customer involvement, and a SCRUM-like release plan to deliver the core features.
ChangingThePresent was built with extraordinary speed, with a very effective development process. In this session, learn how to use agile techniques and common sense to build great software under high-pressure conditions. You'll learn how a typical day, or week, flows in a team with several high-powered developers. Learn about our core practices:
- How do we do tests?
- How do we manage requirements?
- How do we maintain tight communications with our customer?
- How do we manage the tension between junior and senior developers?
When the session is done, you'll have a better understanding of real techniques used to build a real-world site, and how you can apply them to many development jobs.
About Bruce Tate
Bruce Tate is a kayaker, mountain biker, and father of two from Austin, Texas. Currently at RapidRed, his focus is on rapid development and Ruby applications. Bruce was the chief technology officer behind the sites ChangingThePresent.org and ClassWish. His current project is DigtheDirt, a social gardening site. The international speaker has coauthored more than a dozen books including Rails Up and Running, Deploying Rails Applications, Beyond Java, and From Java to Ruby. His firm seeks to improve total application quality through the use of small teams, expressive programming language and agile development practices.
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