Keith Braithwaite, Zuhlke Engineering

Keith Braithwaite is a Principle Consultant with Zuhlke Engineering, and leads their Center for Agile Practice in London. He provides Agile training, consultancy and mentoring to development teams in the wholesale finance and mobile telecoms industries.

Previously he was Head of Technology Solutions for the ASIA-PAC region of WDS Global, and co-authored the first published descriptions of successful distributed Agile based on his experience there. He is a frequent speaker at Agile conferences around the world.

Presentation: "Measure for Measure"

Track: XpDay Sampler

Time: Thursday 14:30 - 15:30

Location: Guild Room

Abstract:

Programmers love the programmer-centric technical practices common in Agile development at large, most of which are derived from the programmer-pleasing method called Extreme Programming. That's fine, but do they work? Those who pay for development to occur are often unmoved by anecdotal evidence and lyrical descriptions of the beauty of "well factored" code. They want objective evidence.

It is starting to appear. It is possible to measure certain properties of code, and on the one hand, correlate them with project factors known to have economic merit (such as reduced defect rates) and on the other, with certain of those programmer-pleasing practices.

This session surveys some of the emerging evidence that we can measure the effect of the technical practices of Agile development, and explores what we might be able to do about it to our benefit, both as programmers and as inhabitants of projects.

Presentation: "Transparency: great leap forward or exposed artery"

Track: XpDay Sampler

Time: Thursday 17:15 - 18:15

Location: Guild Room

Abstract:

Agile propagandists make great claims about the advantages of being transparent about the state of their projects

They fill their walls with index cards and charts that expose their progress to anyone who might be wandering through the room. They have regular, intense feedback sessions where they make it clear to the stakeholders just how many things they need to fix. They claim that this how maturerelationships work and that "Honesty is the best policy".

But is this true? Many of us work in dysfunctional organisations where honesty is the best way to get cheated. Surely Transparency is just not pragmatic?