Contents

1. Upcoming courses
2. Lean Software Development TV
3. Development courses now available in Java and C#
4. Book review: Perfect Software and other illusions about testing
5. Perfect Software give away
6. Events

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1. Upcoming courses
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4-6 March, eXperience Agile

?? March, Advanced TDD workshop

We are currently discussing a one day advanced TDD workshop with
participants. The exact contents and date are up to the participants.
In the last half year, we have developed a number of new exercises for
advanced practioners that are challenging but doable, and we are
working on more. If you are interested in participating, please let us
know: info -at- qwan -dot- it

Courses will take place in Tilburg (The Netherlands), unless indicated
otherwise. We also deliver our workshops and courses at other
locations (depending on where most participants come from) and in-
house.

www.qwan.it

Brochure: www.qwan.it/doc/courses_and_workshops_2008_en.pdf

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2. Lean Software Development TV
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The video of our “Lean Software Development – Agile
softwareontwikkeling in perspective” presentation is now available
online. Rob and Marc delivered this at the J-Fall conference in
November. Watch it here:

www.bachelor-ict.nl/jfall-lean-software-development–agile-software-ontw…

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3. Development courses now available in Java and C#
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Now that techniques like Test Driven Development, Refactoring, and
Mock Objects are becoming mainstream, we receive more requests to
teach these subjects in specific programming languages. Especially
Java and C# are in demand. We have translated our exercises to Java
last year and created new legacy code exercises in this language. We
are currently translating our materials to C#, for both the .NET and
Mono platforms. We are also working on new exercises on testing user
interfaces in C#.

Making our materials available on multiple platforms is part of our
new policy: to make our courses accessible for a wide audience, we
provide them in any common programming language desired by our
customers. We do not charge extra for this, but customers need to take
into account about 6 weeks of lead time to prepare and translate
material.

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4. Book review: Perfect Software and other illusions about testing
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Perfect Software focuses on the role and meaning of testing in
software projects. Jerry Weinberg is an IT thought leader, with more
than 50 years of experience. Weinberg makes clear what testing
actually is and why we do it: testing helps to answer questions about
the software being developed. Testing gives information as a basis for
(management) decisions. So testing is not a phase, but makes sure that
essential feedback loops exist in your development process. Without
good feedback loops, you cannot steer your projects. You need to be
aware of who needs which information when, and for which purpose.

Weinberg describes testing roles and responsibilities, which do not
necessarily map onto a single person labelled ‘tester’. He defuses a
number of ubiquitous testing illusions, like the “Decomposition
Fallacy” – to test a system, it would be sufficient to test all parts
independently … not.

He also elaborates on how people cope with the information produced by
testing. For instance the Satir Interaction Model helps to analyse
communication and misunderstandings around testing.

Perfect Software provides a good introduction in Weinberg’s work and
we highly recommend it – not only to testers, but also to project
managers, IT managers, developers, everyone who wants to get more
results and fun from IT projects.

www.dorsethouse.com/books/perf.html

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5. Perfect Software give away
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We will give away one copy of Perfect Software in February. If you
would like to win the copy, send us an email at news -at- qwan -dot- it with
subject “I want perfect software”. The deadline is February 15th.

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6. Events
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20-21 February, Agile Open Belgium (Ghent) – Almost sold out! -
www.agileopen.net

27 February, Software Craftsmanship Conference (London, UK) – We’ll
run our Responsibility Driven Development workshop -
www.softwarecraftsmanship.org.uk

12 March, Agile Belgium meeting at UltraGenda (Ghent) – Willem and
Marc will run the Responbility Driven Design workshop with a mini
coders dojo. The meeting is free and starts at 19:00 -
agile-be.collectivex.com/discussion/topic/show/138188

5-8 April, SPA 2009 (London, UK) – www.spa2009.org

15 April, J-Spring 2009 (Bussum, NL), the biannual conference of the
Dutch Java Users Group. The call for sessions is open, the deadline is
28 February – www.nljug.org/jspring

Currently, the calls for sessions for two of the well known
international agile conferences are open:

* XP 2009 in Sardinia, 26-30 May – www.xp2009.org
* Agile2009 in Chicago, 24-28 August – agile2009.agilealliance.org

The Agile Manifesto states We are uncovering better ways of developing
software by doing it and helping others do it. Doing a session at a
conference is a perfect way to do this. Do you have agile experiences
to share? Would you like to run a workshop to dive deeper into a
specific topic? Send in your session proposals before February 13th.

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