An agile team needs a workspace that supports highly collaborative ways of working together. The team needs to be able to sit together and have visible "information radiators" of the latest status on planned work and code quality. Some teams also boost their spaces with "eXtreme Feedback Devices" such as lava lamps and audio signals linked to automated processes. It is vital to ensure that feedback mechanisms within the agile workspace are easy to interpret and low maintenance. Join Rachel Davies to explore different ways to set up your agile workspace for maximum fun and productivity. Discover different ways to present information to the team and some snags to watch out for. If you or your team is new to agile development, this class is for you.

Agility is often described in terms of iterative development. In fact, it's more of an iterative analysis process with the code being written and tested immediately after the requirements are discovered. The heart of this process is the user Story, a collection of requirement descriptions, value statements, cost estimates, architecture designs, and test cases-all rolled into one. While at first glance user Stories seem simple, they play a key role in all agile methods. What makes a good one? How do you write it? How do you make them the right size? Alan Shalloway answers all of these questions and more in this thought-provoking class. Unfortunately, it is not enough just to create a collection of stories. We need a way to organize them and to plan for their release. Alan concludes by discussing these important organizational issues.

Many software teams do not have continuous visibility into the ongoing quality of their software releases. Although agile practices emphasize the value of bringing testing forward in the development process, many teams lack the infrastructure required to make this a reality. Testers often depend on development or operations to produce, install, or deploy builds. Zach Nies discusses how build automation provides an effective platform to bring quality and testing earlier into the development process. Zach shows how automated deployments give testers many more opportunities to do meaningful testing during each release iteration. At the same time, testers will greatly enhance the quality feedback loop for the entire organization. During this class, participants will work through an exercise to provide insights into ways to improve their development process and infrastructure.

Break out of the cookie-cutter mentality that some agile teams take toward requirements. Join Ellen Gottesdiener to explore what requirements models you should use to supplement (or replace) user stories for large projects. Ellen looks at the factors to consider when deciding on a requirements approach, including your project’s size and technology characteristics and your team’s domain expertise. Find out when to engage the product owner in requirements work and discover ways to leverage the role of business analyst in agile projects. Explore new ways to adapt your existing documentation for product and project needs while enhancing requirements to drive development on large agile projects. Gain an appreciation and understanding of ways to adapt requirements practices to fit various agile project situations so you can do the right things for your project.