As Jeremy Miller and Wendy Friedlander wrote, new jobs don’t always work out.
At only two months, let’s consider my last gig a walking shapiro.
Fortunately, my second hunt of the year went well thanks to peers in the NY Scrum and XP community.
This is a good time for experienced agilists and I’m grateful to provide for my family and aspire to fulfilling, collaborative work.
Even if things don’t always work out.
I start my new, new job in June.
Oxygen Software Development is off to Agile 2007. Four of us are speaking:
Ript™: Innovation and Collective Product Ownership
by Ken H. Judy and Ilio Krumins-Beens
XR11: Product Ownership
Thursday, 4:00pm
In 2006, Oxygen Media CEO Geraldine (Gerry) Laybourne, the woman largely responsible for Nickelodeon’s early success, partnered with her XP/Scrum development team to create a new mission and new revenue stream for her company. This experience report covers product conception through initial release of a single product. It describes how Gerry’s leadership qualities paired with agile practices to engender deep mutual trust and collective ownership over technical execution and business outcome. This unbounded collaboration provides a template for future projects at Oxygen and other organizations with innovation as part of their agile product development strategy.
The Gentle Art of Pair Programming
Oksana Udovitska and Wendy Friedlander
Wednesday, 8:30am
The presenters build upon their experience as software professionals and the pair programming practices employed at Oxygen Media, the first and only cable Network owned and operated by women, to teach The Gentle Art of Pair Programming. This tutorial will cover the basic principles of pair programming, why it is a worthwhile practice and how to get started. Discussion will include how to take full advantage of pairing and how to cope with its challenges. For those new to pair programming, this will serve as a good introduction and include concrete first steps. For those already in a pairing environment, this presentation will include new viewpoints and interesting discussions on familiar topics. Additionally, everyone will benefit from the interactive and fun games for improving and enhancing communication skills. Being women in a male dominated profession gives the presenters unique perspectives and insights into pairing which they are eager to share in passionate and exciting ways.
Two of our developers, Wendy Friedlander and Oksana Udovitska are taking “The Gentle Art of Pair Programming” on the road to DevTeach in Montreal on May 16th.
A description is on Scott Bellware’s blog.
Our team consistently pair programs both in the office and remotely. Oksana and Wendy’s introduction to this practice made enough of an impact at NYC CodeCamp that they were urged to repeat it at DevTeach.
I’m not surprised. They are smart and talented and a blast to work with. Such engaging personalities you might see them on Oxygen online sometime.
DonXml has a review of NYC Code Camp presentations by three of our team: Oksana Udovitska, Wendy Friedlander, and Luke Melia.
But besides being a media outlet for women, Oxygen has been building up a reputation in the Agile community, especially in NYC. So, I was very pleased to hear that they were presenting 3 sessions at the NYC Code Camp …
Three of our team are participating in this year’s NYC CodeCamp. Luke Melia is presenting Supercharging the WPF Command Pattern with Dependency Injection. Wendy Friedlander and Oksana Udovitska are presenting The Gentle Art of Pair Programming and Testing in C# with RhinoMocks.
I’ve always wanted to build a learning culture. Before embracing agile principles, we had a hard time fulfilling this aspiration. In retrospect, our definition of the developer role and what constituted success in that role was too narrow. Intensive classes on specific topics don’t suit many learning styles and there was no direct connection between a broader scope of learning and project outcomes.
Scrum and XP require continual improvement. They encourage reflection, engage a broad range of social and intellectual intelligences and tie those abilities to project success. They place you in a larger ecology of peers and mentors.
People striving to make a contribution love learning.