Day 1 was Developer day at t4a, and so was well suited to my interests. Below are brief notes from some of the talks that I attended.
10 warning signs to watch for to prevent project failure by Yann Larrivee of FooLab Inc
- identify threats early to reduce failures and stress
- have visible goals
- use metrics
From the field: Helping teams become lean & agile by Martin Cronje of nReality (pty) ltd
- "agile" comes with baggage. The names are known (Scrum, XP), but not always with positive associations.
- higher bandwidth conversations are better
- documentation should be used as an enhancement of a conversation
- continuous improvement is the great
- use metrics in your retro
- map your existing processes
- metrics
- production code
- cycle times
- waste (contains many categories)
- it's a journey
- communication is always the number 1, biggest, issue
- resistance from stakeholders
- prove quality improvement with acceptance tests, metrics
- fix problems rather than stick to agile dogma
- one small thing at a time
- make components, building blocks
- fear and hope of random busses
- be wary of heroes.
- help them share their knowledge, skills.
- making legacy code agile
- refactor
- change your definition of done
- log 2 tickets for each piece of work: doing and refactoring. makes amount of work visible.
- values and benefits
- be adjustable. find and fix inefficiencies.
- more frequent releases. improves cycle time.
- minimal solutions
- increase focus
- finds you time to innovate
- dramatic drop in defects
- fast change occur where IT is close to the profit stream
- deep issues come out in retros
- Tuckman's stages of team development: forming, storming, norming, performing
- user metrics to leverage org change
- pro tips
- get your own house in order first. helps shield against politics.
- have a retro of retros
- optimise work environment.
- ditch the cubicle farm in favour of a war room
- have decent internet, good coffee
- find alternative solutions to problems
- use pomodoros. single task focus. note interruptions, bring them up in the retro.
- focus on the why, not the what. Shows you the value. Difficult.
- TDD is essential.
- Continuous delivery is great. Automate all the tests.
The changing face of the retail customer experience through disruptive mobile innovations by Craig Leppan of Ovations
- Use previous and existing data (e.g. location) to supply suggestions. (There's a crossover here with micro-interactions, and Mobile First)
- collaborative filtering
- analytics-driven applications
Designing for context using a Mobile User Experience (UX) strategy by Rob Enslin of ThoughtWorks
- people, place, things - a framework. spatial, temporal, social, semantic
- mobile context - anywhere and everywhere - design for interruptability, pervasiveness, ubiquity
- mobile is personal, social, always near.
- bring important things to the surface
- copy should be contextualised too
- design for short attention span, limit digging, exploit existing device info and data, use the notion of time wisely (e.g. what's happened since last interaction), pick up where left off.