Technology startups are hard and risky, why would anyone who’s not young and reckless get involved? Two experienced (and not so young any more) IT professionals will give inside views into their South African based startups: Kenny Inggs will share his passions and challenges up to and including his current endeavor 22Seven. Wim Morris will explore building today’s mobile applications, using ExpenZa as a case study.

Update: Wim Morris’ presentation.

Snacks kindly sponsored by Alacrity. Wine kindly sponsored by Polymorph Systems.

Venue

Wednesday, 16 May 2012, 18h15
Events Room, 5th floor
Bandwidth Barn
125 Buitengracht Street,
Cape Town

RSVP

Anyone is free to attend. Please RSVP at ctspin78.eventbrite.com. Alternatively, RSVP by sending YES or MAYBE via our contact form.

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Event Sponsors:

Enterprise software is everywhere, and few would disagree that the majority of the applications we interface with are a huge pain to work with. Annu Augustine (Digiata) will look at “Why does enterprise software suck?” from a user experience angle.

Aslam Khan (factor10) will also share some of his thoughts after attending Agile India 2012 earlier this year.

Snack kindly sponsored by Twenty57.
Wine kindly sponsored by Polymorph Systems.

Wednesday, 18 April 2012, 18h15
Events Room,
5th floor,
Bandwidth Barn,
125 Buitengracht Street,
Cape Town

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The mobile web is the biggest market on the planet. It differs from the plain old web of your desktop through the profoundly different User Experience (UX). There have been numerous unsuccessful attempts to manage the mobile web – from its early days as WAP, to reformatting proxies, … While the markup / web server side of the mobile web are seemingly simple, the secret to a successful mobile web is being able to think through and manage the user experience and journey of your user.

Korwe software has successfully used two technologies in this regard – State and Workflow.

Dr. David Hislop will elaborate a little more on the mobile landscape, and then demonstrate some interesting and useful (State) SCXML and (Workflow) Activiti features. (This talk will be of interest to Java / Grails programmers).

Presentation slides.

Event Sponsor:

Snacks and drinks kindly sponsored by Dynamic Visual Technologies
Wine kindly sponsored by Polymorph Systems.

Update – We are back at our old venue
Wednesday, 14 March 2012, 18h15
Events Room,
5th floor
Training Room,
4th floor,
Bandwidth Barn,
125 Buitengracht Street,
Cape Town

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DesignInAgileMethods-SPINCapeTown-20120215.pptx

Agile methods have some really good points: rapid feedback to customers who are considered part of the team, incremental building from a small, simple stable base, short time-boxed plan-do-show cycles, and continuous testing to prevent surprises. It is also interesting to talk about how agile methods approach designing systems. There seems to be a backlash against architecture, in the form of criticizing ‘BUFD’ – big up front design (thinking you can design for every eventuality before you really understand the requirements), and in the mantra ‘YAGNI’ – You aint gonna need it (never designing for the future, only putting the absolutely necessary things into your design as you need them). There has been quite some debate around these aspects, e.g. Are these valid criticisms of architecture? Do we need architecture in agile projects? Is there a way we can get the best of both worlds?

This talk is titled ‘Design in Agile Methods’, and looks at:
- design as art or science,
- engineering versus software design,
- the challenges of software design – urgency, complexity and uncertainty,
- two contrasting approaches to deal with these challenges (predict and control vs embrace change and learn),
- types of simplicity,
- cost of change, and
- how agile methods approach these issues in a specific way.

Event Sponsor:

Snacks kindly sponsored by Alacrity.
Wine kindly sponsored by Polymorph Systems.

Wednesday, 15 February 2012, 18h15
Events Room,
5th floor,
Bandwidth Barn,
125 Buitengracht Street,
Cape Town

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One of the principles behind the agile manifesto highlights face-to-face conversation as the best method for conveying information within a development team, yet there are times when teams consist partly or entirely of members who are geographically dispersed. While there is currently no true substitute for face-to-face interaction, there are some steps that can and should be taken to improve the quality of dispersed interactions.

In this talk, Philip Anastasiadis will be sharing some of the insights from his research, which includes analysis of some of the recent case studies reported by Jeff Sutherland on hyperproductivity in dispersed Scrums.

Snacks kindly sponsored by Amazon Web Services (Cape Town). Wine kindly sponsored by Yila Consulting.

Wednesday, 16 November 2011, 18h15

Events Room,
5th floor,
Bandwidth Barn,
125 Buitengracht Street,
Cape Town

RSVP

Anyone is free to attend. Please RSVP at ctspin73.eventbrite.com.
Alternatively, if you experience any problems, RSVP by sending YES or MAYBE via our contact form.

Continue reading →

The first line in the Agile Manifesto reads: we have come to value

Individuals and interactions over processes and tools

This is something that we all struggle to understand and implement in our various environments. Developers, managers, product owners, architects, gurus, coaches, mentors and masters all bring a creativity and a differentiating factor to the software that they are involved in producing. On the other hand, the processes and tools provide a supporting back drop to these activities and they help us organize and manage the clutter of day to day activities.

In the inaugural SPINJam event in October we want to explore the tools that you use to support the individuals in your team and organisation.

The format of the SPINJam will be loosely based on the WIPJam format from the recent AppsWorld conference at the CTICC – we will have a panel of about 5 people together with a facilitator to lead the conversation. We will start the evening with a 5 minute session for each of the panelists to discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the tools they have or are using. This will then flow into an open floor discussion lead by the facilitator. The aim is to have a frank and open discussion of tools ranging from your favourite type of whiteboard; through to your best ever bug tracking system; and ranging to your views on source control systems and their pros and cons.

Event Sponsors:

Snacks kindly sponsored by Alacrity and PolymorphSystems.
Wine kindly sponsored by Yila Consulting.

Wednesday, 19th October 2011, 18h15
Events Room,
5th floor,
Bandwidth Barn,
125 Buitengracht Street,
Cape Town

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Event Sponsor:

Many people get told that they should do what they love and the money will follow but get disappointed that the money does not follow. As a result many people give up on pursuing what they love or their mission in life. In this talk, Sandras outlines the follow up steps required to do what you love and get paid for it.

Snacks kindly sponsored by Alacrity. Wine kindly sponsored by Yila Consulting.

Wednesday, 21st September 2011, 18h15
Events Room,
5th floor,
Bandwidth Barn,
125 Buitengracht Street,
Cape Town

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Event Sponsor:

Developing software requires both art and craft to create a successful project and to lead a team that excels at what it does. In this talk Stephen Quirke, from StrategyWorks, walks us through the similarities between successful water colours and great teams.

Snacks kindly sponsored by PolymorphSystems. Wine kindly sponsored by Yila Consulting.