Agile Sharepoint development by 21apps and Andrew Woodward MVP

Yet again the Best Practices Conference was a success.  But what do I mean by success? 

• Was it well attended?  – Yes, considering the economy
• Were the sessions good?  – Yes,  exceptional as always
• Was the accommodation and organisation good?  – Yes, Mark did a great job again

If you read some of the other (definitely quicker off the mark posts) you will get a feel for the event.

Paul Culmsee – Segways Rock

Laura (@WondaLaura) Rogers – Part 1 – Brilliant Video Interviews

Laura Rogers – Part 2 – Who is that lucky guy – (and not as rumour has it founder of #SharePint)

Zlatan Dzinic – Loud and enthusiastic South African << need to talk to about World Cup Tickets

and many others

So why was BPC such a great success?

I think what really makes the event so successful is the way that everyone just gets on with each other,  there is none of the normal ITPro -v- Dev artificial separation, there is a great mix of people and skills – you could say a great diversity in the attendees and speakers,  to quote the BPC site

Top experts put you ahead of the curve

This Conference gathers the leading authorities to define, describe and set methods that will become industry standard – insights you can gain now to avoid pitfalls, cut costs and gain a competitive edge. Speakers include:

• Microsoft MVPs
• Microsoft Product Team Members
• Top industry executives and authors 
• Leading trainers, consultants and topic experts
• Industry colleagues

Valuable as the speakers are, a conference they do not make,  it is the mix of people that really stand out for me at these conferences, the depth of conversation and debate that take place before during and after the sessions, how people are engaged in delivering real world projects and faced with real world challenges. 

I think the reason the Best Practices Conferences are so successful is noted in a book I was told to read by Paul Culmsee,  The Practice of Adaptive Leadership by Ronald Heifetz.  Where Heifetz talks about how

it is specifically about change; builds on the past rather than repudiating it; achieves organizational adaptation through continuous experimentation; heavily relies on diversity (i.e. talents, skills, experience, and perspectives); ensures that new adaptations significantly displace, re-regulate, or rearrange whatever is defective, obsolete, or irrelevant; and usually requires both time, patience, and persistence

Although the book goes on into greater depth this statement sums up for me why the Best Practices Conferences are successful.

• Diversity of talents, skills, experiences and perspectives
• Willingness to displace or rearrange defectives processes
• Time, patience and persistence

All of the qualities needed to be successful in deploying SharePoint and all active participants in the conference.

And on a lighter note,  if there is one best practice I took away from BPC, one that you all can try at home today – Beer!

Yes that’s right Beer is THE best practice and I can safely say that there was a lot of this Best Practice undertaken during the conference.

Looks like I’ve been a little slack in my planning for SharePint at the Best Practices Conference in Washington DC – Andrew Connell has trumped me big time with what looks like the SharePint to end all SharePint’s at SPC in Vegas.

What’s the reason for my delay you may ask?

In part because I have been busy, but the main reason is that I will be in the Reston area a whole week before SharePint will take place and thought what better opportunity than to do a bit of a local tour to see which venue really stood out as a great SharePint venue.

Here is what I do know:

SharePint will on Tuesday 25th August – starting around 7pm till late

Here is what I want from you:

Help me to find the ideal location for the SharePint – Best Practices DC 2009 Edition.
Mapping potential venues, please add your recommendations.

Perhaps we can make this a tradition,

The pre-SharePint tour – In Search of the Venue

If you want to keep up with what’s happening and want to join the search follow me @andrewwoody,  @sharepint or search for #sharepint on twitter.  To help us get a feel for the numbers and to warn the bar please add a +1 comment to this post,  include your twitter name if you want.

In contrast to the Agile SharePoint development with Scrum session this was very light on the slides.  In good Agile tradition I adopted a Pair Programming approach with me at the keyboard and the audience been my code buddy.  Everyone was provided with a copy of Uncle Bobs Three rules of TDD to help with during the pairing process.  The rules state:

1. You are not allowed to write any production code unless it is to make a failing unit test pass.
2. You are not allowed to write any more of a unit test than is sufficient to fail; and compilation failures are failures.
3. You are not allowed to write any more production code than is sufficient to pass the one failing unit test.

I did have some slides to set the scene (see below), to give some background to TDD and raise the issues around the use of the word TEST.  We also looked at 10 reasons TDD sucks, with a slight SharePoint slant,  and quickly got into Visual Studio where the real learning was to happen.

The user story was to develop a Magic 8 Ball web part that could have custom answers defined in a SharePoint list.  The finished code is available on CodePlex and it is planned to extend this solution over time to expand on the ideas.  My main issue with just getting the finished code is the learning is in the process and it can be hard to see how the design was driven by the code.   I am planning to do a web cast on this to show this process.

CodePlex project now available  http://www.codeplex.com/sp8ball

Winners

The guys at Typemock we very generous in donating 3 copies of Isolator for SharePoint which is an essential component for anyone doing unit testing in a SharePoint environment.  The lucky winners were

Mark Freeman
Shahar Tamari
Kennedy Duncan

Each of you will receive a free license for Isolator for SharePoint,  for those that did not win Typemock are running a special discount.

As promised the slide deck from my Agile SharePoint Development with Scrum.

Abstract

Provide an introduction to Agile development using Scrum and discuss how the iterative approach to development helps the customer to get the solution they want. Look at how this approach works when applied to SharePoint projects, how it helps leverage more of the core platform and focuses effort on the biggest value areas. We will look at the challenges this brings to your development team by doing early integration, dealing with upgrades and changes and understand how addressing the hard things early is the right approach. We will also discuss how Scrum gives visibility of the project and brings both good and bad news. How getting customer engagement is the primary challenge and how the flexible approach is often at odds with the way work is contracted.

Agile SharePoint Development with Scrum

The session was spilt into two parts, an introduction to Scrum and a discussion about how this can be applied to SharePoint projects.  The audience was a good mix of Developers, Managers, ITPros, and business people with a range of exposure to Agile practices and Scrum.  The session provided everyone with an understanding of the terminology and process of doing Scrum.  There was a focus on ‘What is done’ and a good discussion around how you architect solutions.  For those that attended and anyone else interested I recommend you listen to Scott Hanselman’s podcast with Ken Schwaber where Ken covers these topics.  Also looking at the question ‘when do you architect solutions?’ I really like Kens take on how, using the waterfall approach, you have to spend time getting it right upfront. The ability to change later in the process is limited and the costs can be prohibitive.   Using agile techniques the architecture will emerge over time,  you know that you only have the architecture in place to support the business requirements developed.  He poses the question,  if you had defined the architecture up front what happens if it is changed mid way through the project?   With waterfall there is a lot of unpicking to be done and wasted effort.  With agile you don’t have to do the unpicking and the rigours of the process, ensuring things are done, means your code base is easier to change.

Being Agile with SharePoint

Here the focus was on facing the tough challenges early, understanding how to package your solutions, deployments to multiple environments, automation of processes and the eclectic mix of tasks you need to do to deal with the upgrade story.  There was a significant synergy with Ben Robb’s session on automated builds using Hyper-V and Robert Bogue’s coverage of the SharePoint Patterns and Practices coverage of upgrading.

I plan to do a screen cast of this session to provide some background to the slides and also the animations that really took me a long time to do.

People are starting to arrive from around the globe to the Best Practices SharePoint Conference

in San Diego.  As expected a number were to be found in the hotel bar.   If you want to catch up will all of the buzz search for the twitter tag  #SPBPC.   For those travelling in the location is great,  Sun is just rising and from the hotel room i’m overlooking the 18th hole of the Torrey Pines course, with views out over the sea.  This really is going to be a great event,  Ben Curry has done a brilliant job of getting top speakers.  This is not an Introduction to SharePoint, this is for people who know it, have deployed and what to get the most from the platform.

On a less technical note it’s count down to the SharePoint by Day, SharePint by Night San Diego Best Practices Edition.  Haven’t signed up yet,  put your name down here so the La Jolla Brew House knows how much beer to get in

Attending the Best Practices™ SharePoint Conference in San Diego in February?  Have some questions you thought about after the sessions, or were too late to ask?  Want to just hang out with fellow SharePoint geeks?  or just looking for some friendly company to share a few pints in the evening?

Keeping the tradition going there will be a SharePoint by Day, SharePint by Night event on Tuesday 3rd February at La Jolla Brew House around 7pm till you’ve had enough.

Location: approx. 6miles from the Hilton (directions) – there will likely be a few taxis heading down so worth matching up with people.

Plan on coming?  If you’re undecided check out the galley of other events at La Jolla Brew House!

Please RSVP by leaving a comment on this post.

Like the new SharePint Logo?   Take your pick from these designed by Sam Dolan.

During these challenging financial times tough questions are asked of everyone;  project budgets are cut and more focus is placed on the Return on Investment.  If you planning to deploy SharePoint or have already deployed you will be aware of some the challenges you will face.

Whether you’re a CIO, Project Manager, Developer or Information Worker you will need to consider what influence you can have.  At the top of your list should be to spend a few days at the Best Practices™ SharePoint Conference in San Diego, CA.  

What is it?
This conference goes beyond the how-to’s of SharePoint and delves into real world issues facing successful SharePoint implementations. Learn how to:

• Make consistent, confident decisions at every level, across your enterprise.
• Break the cycle of avoidance, disagreement and ignorance that leads to subpar results.
• Eliminate design, deployment, organizational and administrative confusion.
• Apply effective SharePoint decision-making in any situation and in turn enhance enterprise communication, collaboration and efficiency – while significantly lowering cost.
• Replace disorder with clarity, direction and confidence.

Who should attend?
The conference sessions are divided into 6 tracks in order to accommodate topics for SharePoint professionals at every level:

• IT Pro
• Developers and Designers
• Information Worker
• Information Architect/Taxonomist
• Project Manager
• Chief Information Officer

21apps is proud to have SharePoint MVP Andrew Woodward speaking at the conference on Agile development with Scrum and Test Driven SharePoint Development.   And if you have any really tough question he will be sitting on that Developers Expert Panel!

DEV338, Agile SharePoint development with Scrum – Andrew Woodward

Provide an introduction to Agile development using Scrum and discuss how the iterative approach to development helps the customer to get the solution they want. Look at how this approach works when applied to SharePoint projects, how it helps leverage more of the core platform and focuses effort on the biggest value areas. We will look at the challenges this brings to your development team by doing early integration, dealing with upgrades and changes and understand how addressing the hard things early is the right approach. We will also discuss how Scrum gives visibility of the project and brings both good and bad news. How getting customer engagement is the primary challenge and how the flexible approach is often at odds with the way work is contracted.

DEV371, Test Driven SharePoint Development – Andrew Woodward

Provide an introduction to Test Driven Development (TDD), how TDD influences you design enhances the quality of the developed solution. We will look at the challenges faced in doing Unit Testing in a SharePoint environment and look at mocking out the core SharePoint object model elements using the new Typemock Isolator APIs. We will discuss some of the way you can approach TDD in your environment and the challenges you are like to face.

DEV249, Developers Experts Panel – Todd Bleeker, Brad Smith, Robert Bogue, Francis Cheung, Andrew Woodward.

Best Practices™ SharePoint Conference
Hilton La Jolla, Torrey Pines, San Diego, CA, USA

February 2 – 4, 2009

Sign up now!

Coming to the Europe – April 6-8

For those of you in Europe and having a hard time justifying the costs of going to the USA, the Best Practices™ SharePoint Conference is coming to London, UK. And with the way the British Pound is fairing against the Euro at the moment this is going to be impossible to justify NOT coming.

There are already some great speakers lined up from Europe and a few of the very best from the USA including Joel Oleson, Andrew Connell and Ben Curry.

European Best Practices™ SharePoint Conference
Westminster, London, UK

April 6 – 8, 2009

Sign up early!