ALT.NET - Day 3

Day 3 started out with some breakfast at the DigiPen campus.  The first session was on Lean Software Development.  Evan Hoff was supposed to convene this session, however he had to leave for the airport.  Dave Laribee filled in.

Lean Software Development

Notes:

• Lean really refers to lean manufacturing
• manufacturing is a much more appropriate metaphor to software development
• focus not just on software development, but on entire value stream from inception to delivery
• Everything is a pull.
• i pull requirements off of a “shelf” someone should put the next one up there for me to grab it.  If there isn’t one there when I go to pull, waste occurrs, because I am waiting on something that I need. 
• This concept goes all the way down the chain
• everything is a customer/supplier relationship
• Goal of any business is to make $
• focus on flow (value stream)
• I need to read these books:
• The Goal
• The Toyota Way
• Lean Thinking
• Lean Accounting
• Implementing Lean
• I think a good metaphor for this is to picture a rope that goes from the beginning of business actions (ie: a CEO makes a decision to create value for the business) to the end (business value).  A number of interactions take place along the rope, and anytime you are pulling what you need from your “supplier” you have to have the slack, otherwise the rope will go taut.
• eliminating waste would mean to minimize the tension *and* the slack in the rope.

I found a lot of value in this session because it seemed to pinpoint some of the issues that I face in my current project (ie: not technical problems, but getting customer involvement, prioritization of features based on business value, rather than tasks in TFS, etc).

I hope I didn’t steal the stage at this session, but I felt like Lean is probably going to be an area of study of mine later this year (once I dwindle down my book list!).

Advanced Techniques & The rest of the team

Some controversy surrounds development techniques such as IOC, SRP, ORM, AOP, etc.  These are all complex topics that solve complex problems.  For a team to not know how to deal with this, it can be fatal to a project.

Oren said that he tried to “hide” all of this from his team, so they woulnd’t have to learn it.  What happened?  A year later (this week) he received a call and someone asked him what “that windsor file was.”  I think it was obvious that this technique has a high “bus” factor.  (I.E. what would happen if you got hit by a bus?)

Scott Bellware noticed that we kept saying “Us” and “Them” — which leads to distrust and lack of empathy.  No really solid answers came out of this session, but a lot of folks concurred that an incremental approach to using very advanced techniques is ideal.

Oren recommended Release It! for the 100th time.  I think I need to buy that book  (but I already mentioned my reading backlog).

“Find the friction points and remove them” — Oren said this referring to abstracting away the infrastructure in an application.

Round table & lunch at Thai Ginger

The sessions came to a close and we all gathered in the main room again to do the final round table discussion of what we liked.  We passed around a stick and said what we liked about the conference.  The stick was much nicer than the sweaty putty we had last time.  It was a little sad to have the event come to a close, but as they say “When it’s over it’s over”

We met Donald Belcham and some of the rest of the Canadian Contingency (TM) for lunch at Thai Ginger.  The waitstaff was friendly and the food was excellent.  We even had a surprise visiter!  Hey, how’d you get there?

Ending Thoughts

This 2^nd ALT.NET Conference was so much more profound than the first.  There were no sessions on “Are we hurting feelings” or “Can we change the name?” and more topics like “Git” and “F#” and “Coaching Agile Teams.”  Doc was right when he said that in Austin we were very much a “storming” team.  This time around we were definitely “norming” and likely “performing.”  I think the next ALT.NET in Austin (dubbed “Continuous Improvement”) will be even better.

Bye ALT.NET Seattle!  See you in Austin this October!