Build Stuff

The presenter has had repeated success delivering Agile projects across more than a dozen years. One of the most important factors to that success is recognizing that the programming style of developers on the team is not wellaligned with Agile. This presentation discusses this flaw and remedies for it, as well as touching on several other key success enablers.
The initial element of success is being able to write code that is easily changed. This style of coding, rooted in the beginnings of the Agile movement, is not publicized nearly enough (and even ignored in eXtreme Programming Explained, the first Agile book.) We illustrate this different style with several real projects.
We move on to outline how teams on our projects have acquired the skills to write programs that are easily changed, and suggest a model for how to improve. We discuss a training program,
developed in the mid90’
s (and the roots of the ThoughtWorks University curriculum) that
addresses the transformation.
We conclude by suggesting that team structure is essential to adopting necessary change.