Our journey started with witnessing a huge chaos at the airport. Their systems had gone down so everything was haywire. We joked of representing Xebia here as well to present them a better software solution 

@Bangalore , India

The first day saw a huge number of people. A lot of buzz and enthusiasm among the delegates. Big sponsors like Microsoft, Adobe , Red hat , JBoss , IBM , Yahoo , Sony Ericsson were associated with this event. Everyday there were five parallel tracks going on at five different halls.

In this blog I would briefly cover the highlights.

DAY 1: 23rd April – Rich Web

“If HTTP did not restrict your creativity , what kind of web application would you build?”

This was the question thrown to us by Jonas Jacobi (Kaazing) in his session on Re-architecting the Web with HTML 5 Communication. The coherent thought in this and his subsequent sessions was:

“The HTML 5 specification is set to forever change the way in which we build applications for the Web. One innovation- WebSocket- in particular will enable full-duplex HTTP communication, and finally bring an end to the tired “click and wait” paradigm traditionally associated with the Web. The emerging standards outlined in the HTML 5 specification will give developers the advantage of a full-duplex communications channel that operates over a single socket. More specifically, WebSockets enable browsers to open a socket connection to any TCP-based back-end service (for example, JMS, JMX, IMAP, Jabber, and so on) allowing developers to easily create applications such as Web-based chat, and online trading, betting, and collaboration.” This was a complete paradigm shift and thus aroused a lot of thinking amongst all of us.

The next session was “Agile development with Grails- Venkat Subramanium“.

I was personally looking forward to this session. With some knowledge through the XTR (Xebia Tech Rally- A full day hands-on on any technology within Xebia ) on Grails I thought of gaining some additional knowledge through this session. There was a little disappointment here as what was covered technically was equivalent to our XTR. On Agile front , the purpose of his presentation was to pass on this idea:

“Agile development is all about developing code and seeking feedback from your users to make sure you’re developing what’s relevant. When they suggest changes, those must be affordable and reliable. Grails, along with its facility to develop test driven, is a killer combination for rapidly developing web applications.”

Seam , Web Beans and JBoss – Bruno Georges(Red Hat) and Emannuel Bernard(Red Hat)

They started the talk with Web Beans – an elegant new component model for Java that draws upon ideas from JBoss Seam and Google Guice. Further they took us through some cool features of Seam. The remaining session was a demo of the JBoss Tools.

Leveraging Cloud To Enable Software Development as a Service

The cloud is definitely getting bigger. Business model of 8KMiles ecosystem is completly built on cloud (Amazon EC2) . They make available the infrastructure (Software and Hardware) required for software development on-demand effectively enabling “software development-as-a-service”. To develop, test and collaborate on the cloud  was definately something interesting for us to know.

DAY 2: 24 April – JAVA

After my initial work with Amazon Cloud I was interested in the presentation by Craig McClanahan(Sun MicroSystems) on Computing in the cloud.

His session was focused on strategic overview of the cloud computing model, with references to Sun’s approach to provide supporting services. Sun would be coming up with its cloud model in Q2 this year. It would be a public compute and storage cloud. Future would be to build service layer over the current model. To all the queries about Oracle acquiring Sun he had this to say: “No Comments. We are still working on what we were  before the deal”. The other session by him was on What’s RESTful and what it means for application architectures to be RESTful.

Introduction to REST- The Starbucks Example by Dr. Jim Webber(ThoughtWorks)

According to him REST is an overhyped and under-used architectural style. While many have climbed aboard the ‘lightweight and simple’ bandwagon, in truth very little is understood about this architectural style beyond the fact that it often uses XML over HTTP, URI templates, and some things called resources. Using a simple problem domain – ordering a coffee from Starbucks – he explored concepts like uniform interfaces, URIs, idempotent actions, representation formats, caching and the all-important hypermedia constraint and showed  how Web-centric solutions can be designed to be scalable, dependable, and secure without all the fuss or middleware of competing approaches.

OSGI in the Enterprise by Mike Kieth(Oracle).

OSGi started life some years ago as an embedded technology but is now making a leap into the enterprise domain. Some people are asking why we need another technology when Java EE has been so successful in providing enterprise solutions. Others are wondering if OSGi is going to unseat Java EE as the enterprise development platform of choice. Amidst all these thoughts what was summarized was OSGi would definitely be an additional power to Java EE and both should co exist and work together.

DAY3: 25 April – Workshop.

After listening to Ola Bini(ThoughtWorks) on Introduction to jRuby we  were  keen on attending his workshop. A point that he made was quite interesting -” Java is a powerful platform and there are millions of lines of Java code being written each month, that the world will have to live with for a long time from now. By leveraging Java the platform with the power of the Ruby programming language, programmers get the best from both worlds.”  He also suggested that the best way for Java dominant organizations to move towards adapting Ruby should be testing. Frameworks like Expectations , Rspec , JtestR enable testing of Java code with Ruby.

What Else?

Apart from the technical sessions we had Keynotes from the sponsors. They were less on the technical side and more towards showing their product suite. Adobe talked about flex 4 and interactive documents(mixing of application and document) . Sony Ericsson talked about how their developer world(Sony Erricson Developer World) can help the community in India to maximize their consumer reach. One of the interesting things showcased was Sony Ericsson’s Capuchin. As a combination of Java ME and flashlite, it utilizes the strengths of these technologies . At the same time empowers two distinct developer communities to leverage their respective expertise to quickly and securely create highly engaging mobile content.

A few  more keynotes from MicroFocus , SAP Business Objects were part of the schedule.

Conclusion:

My personal take aways after three days of conference were:

1. Computing in the cloud will only get bigger. It will continue to gain acceptance and would become more prevalent.

2. Its time we de-alineate ourselves from Java as a language and Java as a platform. The platform is pervasive  while the language lacks  in certain aspects.  Dynamic languages like Groovy and Ruby not only cater to those bottlenecks but also provide faster development with a lot more power.

3. A lot has been done in the RIA world.. but what we see is just the start.. A lot more is yet to come!!

I’ll say it takes something “extra” to be here. It calls for the people with perseverance and “ready to take on any challenge” kinda attitude .

One thing that I really like is that every single day is a learning day. In true sense I can see my learning graph sloping upwards. I felt more nourished with each passing day. There is a lot in store in technology for you to learn. The only thing needed is “pulling” the task for yourself. I believe that in all of us there is this “untapped reserve” which we are generally not aware of. When you need to push yourself for that one extra step you become aware of your real capacity. Xebia offers you not only good technologies to work on but it also gives you the chance of developing yourself into a developer and not a coder.

New Technologies:

I had worked on Java Swings before joining here. But in the span of 100 days at Xebia a lot of things have added. I started with creating a web application based on JSP, Servlets and Javascript. Also learnt about Maven 2.0. Followed the Test Driven development Environment(TDD) by writing tests first with JUnit. Currently I am working on Amazon S3 to be used in my web application. So lot of exciting things happening. I ve written some Junit test cases to get my first hands on experience on this technology.

Conferences and Workshops

Attending and Coordinating workshop and Conference was another thing that I took up. Agile Awareness workshop was one where in I took up dual task of coordinating and attending. Then the Lean Software Development Methodologies–Tom And Mary Poppendiecks was another important event which I became part of. These events give you a chance of interacting with people from different interest areas and business spheres. Definitely boosts your confidence level and enhances your vision. Xebia on regular basis keeps working on organizing various conferences with big names in the industry. Naturally, attending these conferences as a Xebian is an added value that you get. And all this in the beginning stage of your career gives me immense satisfaction. Apart from this I also got the chance of doing some infrastructure work like setting up the communication centers for the conferences hosted at Xebia campus. Quite clearly it calls for you to be an all rounder.

Blogging

Blogging is a culture here. One can blog about anything.. from their technical experiences to personal. I, being an avid writer, always loved this part . Ultimately you don’t end up becoming a stuffy coder but an agile developer!

XKE and XTR

The Xebia Knowledge Exchange session(XKE) is a culture that we follow at Xebia. It s a platform where we all talk about anything to everything about technology and otherwise. Say a book review… I find it a good interface where I can see the direction of the industry.I also got the chance to attend the Xebia Tech Rally-The one day hands-on session on new and upcoming technologies- Wicket this time. The well prepared content and exercises made it enjoyable to learn a new technology with just a bit of prior knowledge.

To sum up .. my initial 100 days @ Xebia have been exciting,enriching and fullfilling.

–Nancy.

It started from “The Problems that we face generally in Software Development”. And the answers that we had were quite unanimous.

• Unrealistic Deadlines
• Poor Estimation
• Surplus Documentation
• Inadequate Testing

and the most stressed point by all of us was “Changing Requirements”.

After expressing our major ‘Blockers’ it seems  we were ready to take a plunge  into the Agile World. The buzz word here is “Iterative Incremental”. This simply means that Iteratively you keep on making progress by adding something to the structure, however small the increments may be.This is a lot different from what “Traditional” methods ask us to do. Simply put,in traditional methods,the peak comes only when you are at “All-at-once-Delivery Stage” which is when your project completes.

Nicely Stated by Craig Larman :”Usually a partial system grows incrementally with new features,iteration by iteration,in other words,incremental development.”

 The dictionary defines Agile as “Nimbleness or Flexibility”. Agile in context of software development paradigm is all about being Adaptive than Predictive or Rigid. To change is law of nature. So we should not be afraid of changes. Rather we should plan how to act according to the change. The ones who crib over the changes required are rigid in thier approach. And Agile calls for being flexible in accepting any change made or to be made.

Most of the delegates have already experienced the pain of changing requirements, thus we were excited to see how Agile would come to our rescue in this area

This was explained quite well .It goes like:

In Software development it is impossible to have “Frozen Requirements”. And this is because we simply cannot freeze time. So we generally have bulk of requirements from the client  which can be modified , updated or scrapped by him in later stages of time. . Out of these  we first focus onto the “High Risk” and “High value” requirements. High Risks need to be tackled early in the development phase and High Value means more profits to the business. Apart from this we also have MoSCoW techniques to prioritize our requirements. For those who are thinking what is MoSCoW city to do with Agile and software..Take a look:

• MoSCoW

  MoSCoW represents a way of prioritizing items. In the context of DSDM the MoSCoW technique is used to prioritize requirements. It is an acronym that stands for:

MUST have this requirement to meet the business needs.

SHOULD have this requirement if at all possible, but the project success does not rely on this.

COULD have this requirement if it does not affect the fitness of business needs of the project.

WOULD have this requirement at later date if there is some time left (or in the future development of the system).

A brief mention of The Agile Manifesto was also made which is followed by  the four points:

1. Working software over Comprehensive Documents.. (Simply Said is: All that matters is what Works!!)
2. Customer Collaboration over Contract Negotiation..(Collaborates definitely sounds positive than Negotiates)
3. Responding to change(Definately with a plan!)
4. Individuals and interactions over processes and tools.

Short Iterations, TDD, Potentially Shippable (or Working Software) product at the end of each iteration, individuals and interactions over processes—Is all what we need to do.

To summarize Agile Way of working ill put it like this:

PRIORTIZE –> DO SOMETHING (ITERATION) –> GET FEEDBACK –>IMPROVE N GET GOING.

The two things that personally strike me are:

• Getting Feedback
• Failing Early.

I was amazed to see how “Real” is this way of development. Feedback was something we ve always taken/given. Be it shopping with friends or Areas of Improvements Column in magazines or newspapers.We all want to improve.

Another thing is to fail early. It’s always appreciable if you fail early ,improve and then win your task. And as a developer this is what we should look for too.This Calls for the use of Test Driven Environment.

After opening up the umbrella of Agile in the” Why Agile?” session we were now braced to take a peek at various technologies comprising it.

Our first destination was SCRUM Techniques. Had heard the word “SCRUM” before which had to do with the Rugby team. It is when the team huddles together to discuss their plan of action for the next few minutes of the game. Was figuring out as to how it fits in here?  To this we were told that to work Agile way the teams should be self organised and cross functional. When we say cross functional it means that a team should be adept and complete in every sense. This can fuel a very common debate of Generalists over Specialists that is persisting in the industry since long. I came across a very useful blog on this topic which happened to be written by one of the speakers of this event.  The other key aspect is self discipline in the team. And I think this is what makes this simple concept a difficult one to follow. We don’t like to be disciplined ..that’s the general word..

After this we were introduced to various roles existing in Scrum. To give a short trip ..Product Backlog,Scrum Master,Sprint and Sprint backlog,Committed Backlog, Burndown chart. Another very important point that caught my attention was “Responsibilities are never given but taken”. I agree.Responsibility “given” is more of an instruction. As someone has aptly said : “You cannot instruct to innovate”. Later in the session we talked more about the iteration details.An iteration is a short period of time say 2-4 weeks in which a team goes for a complete development cycle.For traditional developers we can put as a whole waterfall within an iteration. In Agile starting from taking requirements into Sprint backlog to Sprint retrospectives -all becomes part of an iteration.In this whole discusssion it was little difficult to think in terms of velocity and complexity points though. Probably cause brain was busy receiving hunger signals!!

After breaking for snacks,it was eXtremeProgramming..second flavour of Agile. This name was little tough to comprehend than the earlier ones. It started on the note that everything done should have some business value and should make sense. So it was clear that its from the developer’s perspective. Out of the four levers of a project namely:

1. Time
2. Scope
3. Quality
4. Cost

agile team plays with the lever of functionality i.e.Scope.  Its very common to see that about 60% of the functionalities of a product are never used and about 20% are intensively used.

Again coming back to real life association of agile..I believe that not everybody is a born genious. But two ordinary minds working together can definately come up with extra ordinary results. And simply put this is Pair Programming in Agile. No doubt it is a win-win situation if both of you pair well. But i was stuck with a question..What if you and your pair dont gel well? It could be disastrous to project’s productivity. We then discussed number of intelligent ways to overcome such situations within the team. In this course of discussion one of the speakers came up with a really interesting Solution to this called “CC and BCC”. Those who are wondering..CC is communication over coffee and BCC is bullshit communication over coffee. Indeed, a lot can happen over coffee

Here I would like to quote one of the speaker ..You need to have a lot of “Courage” to work Agile way. I guess that’s absolutely true. When working agile way you need to shed all your inhibitions . Come out with any or all of your problems . Discuss with the team and move ahead. How many of us are really comfortable saying “I’m stuck with this problem , Dunno what to do?”Not many of us can really tell our weakness to others. This in particular calls for lot of “Courage”as agile encourages full interaction among the team.

Till the end of this session i was happy as i could now make this point clear that XP talks at developer level whereas SCRUM talks at project management level..

As we say in software industry there is nothing like theory sessions.. So here also a hands on session was awaiting. It was real fun to now imply the “simple and realistic rules of Agile”.We went through two iterations..where we were given user story . We had to plan and assign complexity points to each user story. After this planning we had to commit to those stories which we thought were achievable in stipulated amount of time. And it was not points that made a team win but how much you learnt from  the mistakes.. We had a sprint retrospective after each iteration. This was the real learning of the day. At the end of this hands on we were now really comfortable with complexity points and velocity concept..

In the end to summarize i’ll say that Agile way of development is not a revolution but evolution. It’s realising your roots ,infact, coming back to your roots. Taking feedback , working in baby steps and improving, failing early is all we have been doing in our early days but then had kept them in oblivion. 

Agile is not about revolutionizing software development but  breaking the ice of rigid mindsets!! Its time that we break free and appreciate the beauty of Agile way of development. I congratulate the speakers for their efforts which definitely ignited these sparks in most of us.