Gojko Adzic

I just ordered the final print proof copy of my new book, Bridging the Communication Gap: Specification by Example and Agile Acceptance Testing (ISBN: 978-0-9556836-1-9), which means that the paperback will start shipping in a week or so. PDFs are immediately available.

The book is about improving communication between customers, business analysts, developers and testers on software projects, especially by using specification by example and agile acceptance testing. It is primarily intended for product owners, business analysts, software developers and testers who want to learn about agile acceptance testing and implement it. It should also prove to be interesting to project managers working on software projects, both within the implementation team and on the customer side. It is intended both for people already working with agile processes and for people who wish to migrate to them.

I’m really enthusiastic about this book because I think that it fills an important void in the market today, helping different roles look at specification by example and agile acceptance testing from their perspective and figure out how to cooperate better as a team. The book is intentionally not very technical so that business people can read and understand it. It got some really nice reviews, so I encourage you to have a look at it by downloading the sample chapters and checking out the table of contents.

The book is (again) published by my company using a print-on-demand system. It should soon appear on all major online bookshops and will hopefully be picked up by traditional bookstores as well. It is immediately available online from my new acceptance testing info portal. You can order the paperback (they will start shipping on Jan 5th) or download the PDF immediately.

Our upcoming OpenSource .NET Exchange conference generated some unexpected interest in the blogging community.

Savio Rodrigues from Infoworld wrote that the conference is “another example of developers choosing .Net and open source, and leaving the technology purity debate to someone else.” Laura Bentley from IT Business Edge said that “London Dev Conference Shows .NET, Open Source Coexist”, which was also picked up by Microsoft .

Roy Schestowitz from the Boycot Novell site takes a different approach and blames us for a “Microsoftication of open source”, I guess without even reading what the event is all about and who is organising it.

On the end, all publicity is good publicity, so thank you guys for blogging about the event and linking to it (even to those that haven’t bothered to actually check what it is about).

From February 2009, Skills Matter will start organising public Alt.NET courses (first in London and then across Europe).

Opensource .NET tools crash course

The first will be a three-day crash course on tools and practices aimed at .NET developers that want to learn about Alt.NET tools and Java developers that are migrating to .NET and looking for good equivalents to the tools that they are used to working with. The course gives an overview of the most popular opensource .net tools and introduces modern development practices that these tools promote, such as test driven development, continuous integration, dependency injection, object-relational mapping and web development using the model-view-controller pattern.

Learn how to:

• Implement TDD in .NET using NUnit, MBUnit, Rhino Mocks and FitNesse
• Utilise Aspect oriented programming and Dependency Injection using Castle Windsor
• Efficiently build Web applications using the MVC pattern in Monorail and utilising Monorail and Script# for Ajax and test them using Selenium Remote Console.
• Manage persistence easily using ORM tools such as ActiveRecord and NHibernate
• Introduce continuous integration in your projects using CruiseControl.NET and CI Factory

See the full programme.

Agile Web Development with the Castle Framework

The second one is a two-day course on Agile Web Development using the Castle project, teaching the basics of the Castle Framework and helping people develop a solid understanding of its benefits. Over the course of the two days, attendees will create a simple but complete web application using agile Web development practices such as Inversion of Control, Dependency Injection, Aspect Oriented Programming, Object/Relational Mapping and applying the Model-View-Controller pattern.

Learn how to

• Apply agile web development practices like MVC and dependency injection
• Use ActiveRecord to manage the object-relational mapping and the database layer
• Use the Monorail MVC engine to create web applications that are easy to maintain and test
• Explain the basics of Monorail views, layouts, rescues
• Use the NVelocity view engine to build web UIs for Monorail
• Apply Windsor Microkernel to configure and wire application components
• Unit test the data access layer with Castle
• Unit test web controllers
• Describe how Castle components come together to help us develop web applications easier
• Explain why this approach is much more effective than ASP.NET
• Apply best practices, common pitfalls, and tips and tricks for Castle Web development

See the full programme.

During his lightning talk on the requirements trap at XP Day 08, Allan Kelly presented the results of a Bain Consulting research which looked into the effectiveness of IT, alignment with business goals and the effects of those two factors on sales and IT spending. Continue Reading »

Here’s the final programme for the OpenSource .NET Exchange on 22/Jan in London:

• Dylan Beattie : JQuery
• David Ross: PostSharp
• Sebastien Lambla: Fluent NHibernate
• David de Florinier: ActiveMQ and NMS
• Mike Hadlow: Implementing the Repository pattern
• Russ Miles: Spring .NET best practices

After the talks, we are planning to have a discussion panel to compare Castle and Spring.NET and work out when to use what.

We have a larger venue this time, and free beer and pizza is the perfect excuse to come.

For full details and to sign up, see the event page on skillsmatter.com.