After not really enough sleep it seems a good time reflect on DDD5.

My session

I felt my session went well, and the initial feedback was good. It is always good to be asked question all day about your session, proves it got people thinking; I certainly learnt a few tricks for TFS from these conversations.

A common question I got was ‘I am using Product XYZ should a change to TFS?’. To this my answer is always a question ‘Does your system, whether off the shelf or home grown work for you?’ If it does then don’t rush to change it. Certainly look at TFS and see if it is better solution for your project needs - if it is not don’t change to TFS. If you don’t a working system to manage software development certainly look at TFS, or anything for that matter. Good software only comes out of a structured process, whether the process is Agile or Formal in style all the team must know what it is and adhere to it.

For those at the session I would apologize again about the projector problems that caused the slides to be offset a bit to the right. Unfortunately I did not know about the super secret adjustment knob under the floor panel in Memphis until after I had finished.

Also I was certainly glad I had taken two laptops,I had intended one for PowerPoint and one for VPCs, but only one would sync with the projector. I have see this before with Vista, but it was strange as they were virtually identical Acers with the same ATI chipset and our standard Vista install image. Anyway I think  got away with one PC, who needs to see their speaker notes anyway?

Other sessions  went to

As is so often the case, when you present at a conference you miss half the sessions with your own prep and follow-up conversations. I did manage to make it to two, both very good:

  • Colin Angus Mackay’s An introduction to Unit Testing with Mock Objects
  • Abid Quereshi’s Windows Workflow Foundation for Your Automated Build

Abid’s particularly addressed the interesting issue of automation, but not from the more common TDD/CI side but to provide a flexible means for creating deployment tools. Something I had not considered before.

Next DDD

In the wrap up notices it was mentioned the next DDD might be in the North, this caused an interesting mixture cheers and boos, plus one voice ‘where is the north?’.

It will be interesting to see how much backing any moving of the location around the country gets. After yesterday’s drive from Yorkshire, a full day at the conference then a drive back, I certainly would appreciate less distance to travel, as I sure others would.

My next DDD Session

After chatting to a few people I think I will propose a general introduction to Scrum for the next DDD, based on the http://www.scrumalliance.org/ materials I got on my Certified Scrum Master course.

In my last two sessions at DDD I have mentioned Scrum, but I realize now that quite a few attendees have little experience of Scrum, just knowing it as a name, so a good general overview would be a good idea. I think I will like this to using Scrum with TFS

Am I right would this be of session of be interest?

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