QCon is a practitioner-driven conference designed for technical team leads, architects, and project managers who influence software innovation in their teams.

Russell Miles, Co-Author of Head First Software Development

Russell Miles

Biography: Russell Miles

Russ Miles is Principal Consultant at Simplicity Itself and works with their clients to continuously and sustainably delivering valuable software.

Russ' experience covers almost every facet of software delivery having worked across many different domains including Financial Services, Publishing, Defence, Insurance and Search. With over 16 years experience and through consultancy, coaching and training, Russ uses a holistic view of the software delivery process in order to implement multi-faceted continuous improvement programmes touching on everything from developer skills and practices, creating and evolving the best architectures and designs for a given domain, through to advising the management of various companies on how to apply lean and agile thinking and practices to better tune their return on investment from their software development effort.

Russ is also an international speaker on techniques for achieving the delivery of valuable software as well as a published author, most recently of "Head First Software Development" from O'Reilly Media. He is currently working on two new books; "Programming Spring" for O'Reilly Media that launches the Simplicity Itself technique of "Test Driven Learning" for the first time publicly, and another book, working title being "Field Guide to Continuous Improvement for Software Delivery Team Members" that captures the different thinking tools and techniques that a professional software developer can apply concretely to their own continuous improvement goals.

Twitter: @russmiles

Presentation: You don't need a PaaS; the Epic Search for Truth

Track: Next Gen Cloud / Time: Friday 16:50 - 17:40 / Location: Mountbatten Room

Drums, lungs, strums and … umm, guns? Perhaps not the last one!

Thinking of popping home early? Don't! Life's boring there! Or if it's not, then that exciting life will still be there in a few hours!

Maybe trying one last time to nullify your existential pain with CnH2n+1OH or topping up on C8H10N4O2? We can do that after, of that I promise you!

Or maybe you're watching the exhibition floors empty, the mediocre coffee being drained slowly into the dustbins beside the politician (or judge, take your pick) too inebriated to walk to Westminster tube from the Westminster Arms, the sad flop of yet another batch of unread promo leaflets from a QCon bag scutter across the street... and desperate for one last foray before the delight that is QCon London 2014 comes to a close?

This talk won't disappoint. Today I'm formally announcing the anti-keynote, the 'footnote', 'bootnote' or 'locknote' perhaps. Typically the last talk of the conference, on the last day, in the biggest room is a poison chalice of cosmological proportions but I see this as an opportunity to buck that trend (or simply have a lot of fun trying).

So you want a PaaS… Really?! No, seriously, why? Ok all the cool kids are interested in them, and peer pressure still has a lot to answer for but… really, why?

In this talk Russ will be his irreverent self and throw everything, including the chef's workplace washing area, into a talk where he'll expound on his experiences using and building PaaSs, and things like PaaSs, for various organisations. He'll take you on a search for truth in PaaS, and it will be quite a journey!

PaaS is not one-size-fits-all, there are many twists-betwixt-cup-and-lip, and this talk will examine the many flavours of technology that can get you where you need to be against the various real benefits that a PaaS might deliver.

You might be forgiven for thinking that this might be more entertainment than information and knowledge, but there you'd be wrong! Russ will be deep-diving through various technologies that can be used to get the right PaaS-related benefits for you, often without the need for a full-blown PaaS at all. If you want to be able to evaluate, use, build and be smart in your technology selection when aiming for real benefits from PaaS then hanging out to the bitter end of the conference for this talk will not be a waste of your time.

So now the talk has been effectively bigged-up enough, I hope to see you there and the new 'locknote' session to be born!

Training: Embracing Change: Building Adaptable Software with Events

Track: Training / Time: To be announced / Location: To be announced

Ever experienced that moment where your heart sinks at the words "We just want you to make this one, small and trivial change…".

If you build software, change is an inevitable force in your life and your ability to react to change can be the difference between a killer product and a last-to-the-post flop.

Given that change and speed of software evolution is so critical, why is it that so much software becomes a millstone around yourself and your team's next, leading to you dreading the next inevitable change that's needed? For over 10 years, focus has been consistently applied to helping us work in a more agile and adaptable fashion, with far less focus on how to create software that thrives in an agile environment.

This hands-on, extremely practical course teaches you the latest techniques you can apply today to your architecture, design and code to build software that doesn't fear change. This course will teach you how to build software that adapts as fast as your business and requirements do.

In this deeply technical course you will learn how to:

  • Understand Change: Manage evolution from a component, module and system perspective.
  • Understand Complexity: Identify the causes of complexity in your architecture, design and code and the affect it has on dealing with change.
  • Organise for Change: Organise your architecture, design and code for clarity and change.
  • Clean Design and Architecture: Architect, design and build components that embrace change.
  • Reduce Inter and Intra System Coupling: Identify and Manage accidental coupling between components, modules and systems.
  • Apply Events: Apply Event-Driven Architectural patterns to increase de-coupling.

Requirements: Bring a laptop and if you have GitHub account.