Contents
1. Upcoming courses
2. Coders Dojo at CITCON Europe 2008
3. Agile Holland founded in June
4. First Agile Holland conference
5. Article: Responsibility Driven Design with Mock Objects
6. J-Fall conference
7. Few places available for XP Days Benelux
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1. Upcoming courses
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2008:
5-7 November, eXperience Agile in Tilburg
13-14 November, eXperience Refactoring in Tilburg
18-19 November, Unit Testing Masterclass in Tilburg
3-4 December, Remaniement Continu in Paris (France)
8-10 December, eXperience Agile in Tilburg
16 December, Refactoring Legacy Software
17 December, Responsibility Driven Design with Mock Objects
2009:
9 januari, Introduction to Lean Software Development
12-14 januari, eXperience Agile
16 januari, Workshop Test Driven Development
16 januari, Workshop Mock Objects
We also deliver our workshops and courses in-house.
Brochure: www.qwan.it/doc/courses_and_workshops_2008_en.pdf
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2. Coders Dojo at CITCON Europe 2008
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At the CITCON conference in Amsterdam a few weeks ago, Willem
organized a coders dojo together with our French colleague Eric
Lefevre. A coders dojo is a workshop where programmers meet to
collaborate on a programming challenge, so that they can improve their
skills.
The dojo takes its inspiration from martial arts, where practitioners
get together to repeatedly practice exercises (’katas’), amongst each
other or guided by a teacher.
Coders dojos exist in many shapes. The form we used at CITCON is
called ‘randori’: one or two people prepare an exercise; they explain
the exercise to the group and start pair programming in front of the
group, using a video projector. Every five or ten minutes, one person
rotates out and someone from the audience rotates in.
Benefits of participating in a coders dojo are:
- Improve your skills by doing and by seeing other people do it.
- Challenge and be challenged: accept criticism, defend your ideas,
deliver criticism in a way that others are encouraged to act on it.
- Learn how to work better in really small steps – if you want to
rotate out after 10 minutes with succeeding tests, you’ll have to 
We also facilitate in-house coders dojos, for example on test driven
development or refactoring difficult legacy software.
www.ericlefevre.net/wordpress/2008/10/08/coding-dojo-on-legacy-code
me.andering.com/2008/10/21/coders-dojo
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3. Agile Holland founded in June
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In June, Marc has founded Agile Holland together with Michael Franken,
Olav Maassen, and Laurens Bonnema, as a platform for and by agilistas
in The Netherlands. The objective of Agile Holland is to make agile
better known, to promote the use of agile, to share knowledge and
experience, and to stimulate further research and development.
The Agile Holland website offers articles, blog entries by community
members and news about agile events. Furthermore, Agile Holland
frequently organises evening meetings and other events.
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4. First Agile Holland conference
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Agile Holland organizes its first conference on Friday 24 October in
Amsterdam. This conference is for anyone practising agile or
interested in agile.
The program offers sessions about agile in practice, lean, corporate
story telling, and jazz and improvisation. Together with Nicole
Belilos from Topic Embedded Systems, Willem will facilitate the “Pimp
my Retrospective” workshop. Pascal Van Cauwenberghe and Vera Peeters -
the authors of the famous XP Game – will run their new Business Value
Game.
The conference starts at 9:30; we’ll close with drinks at 16:30. The
conference will be held in Dutch. The venue is the Montessori College
Oost in Amsterdam, near train station Muiderpoort. The venue offers
sufficient free parking.
Would you like to hear stories from other people, share experiences,
get new ideas, or make new contacts? There are still some places
available, so register quickly:
www.agileholland.com/nl/webform/agileholland-organiseert-haar-eerste-con…
me.andering.com/2008/10/20/pimp-my-retrospective/
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5. Article: Responsibility Driven Design with Mock Objects
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Rob and Marc have written an article on “Responsibility Driven Design
with Mock Objects” for the September edition of the Dutch Java
Magazine.
Object oriented design is the art of assigning the right
responsibilities to the right objects and arriving at a clean,
loosely coupled, and highly cohesive design. Test Driven Development
will guide you in that direction, but not far enough. TDD helps to
get loosely coupled objects, because coupling hinders the test-code-
refactor rhythm.
Responsibility Driven Design is an approach that goes a step further.
It shifts the focus from object state to interactions and
responsibilities. In this article, we show how responsibility driven
design helps to get a highly cohesive, loosely coupled object oriented
design and how test driven development with mock objects facilitates
this.
If you’re interested in the article or in a workshop on this topic,
don’t hesitate to contact us.
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6. J-Fall conference
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On 12 November, the J-Fall conference will take place. J-Fall is the
annual autumn conference of the Dutch Java User Group. QWAN
contributes to the conference program with two sessions:
- Rob and Marc will present about “Lean Software Development -
Putting agile software development in perspective”;
- Willem and Rob will run the “Dirty Jobs” workshop, a hands-on lab
where participants can work on real dirty legacy code.
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7. Few places available for XP Days Benelux
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The XP Days Benelux conference (taking place on 20 and 21 November in
Veldhoven, The Netherlands) has almost sold out. There are just a few
places available.
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