Software Engineering Radio

Recording Venue: Skype

Guest: Jurgen Appelo

In this episode Michael interviews developer, manager, and book author Jurgen Appelo on the topic of management in agile organizations: leading agile developers. They talk about the need for a different style of management compared to previous command and control styles used to lead organizations. In going through the best practices that are also covered by his latest book Management 3.0, they cover topics like: Energize People, Empower Teams, Align Constraints, Develop Competence, Grow Structure, and Improve Everything – which are the six views he uses to explain his experiences.

• Management 3.0 
• Jurgen’s Blog

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In this episode Michael interviews Jurgen Appelo on the topic of leading agile developers.

Recording Venue: Skype

Guest: Bas Vodde

Host: Michael

In this episode Michael talks with Bas Vodde about how to apply agile principles to large and distributed development organizations. Bas shares his experiences on working in, consulting and coaching companies to adopt Scrum for large scale software development. Together Bas and Michael explore common problems and how organizations deal with these problems. Problems such as how to move to a feature-centric organization, how to get peoples buy-in in the transition or why to base large-scale development on Scrum.

Links:

• Odd-e
• Feature team primer
• Lean primer
• CppUTest page
• Book
• Practices book
• Craigs home page

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In this episode Michael talks with Bas Vodde about how to apply agile principles to large and distributed development organizations.

Recording Venue: Skype
Guest: Kent Beck

Host: Martin

In this episode we talk with Kent Beck about this tiny little thing he created many years ago and that has changed the daily work of many many programmers in the world: automated unit testing and JUnit. We briefly revisit the history of JUnit, talk about how things began and what has happened since then. We discuss test-driven development (TDD), talk about when to do TDD and when not, and chat about experiences in the wild. The episode closes with some personal thoughts about the future of testing and software engineering in general.

Links:

• JUnit at GitHub
• JUnit Max
• Test-Driven Development – By Example
• Poker Workout

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In this episode we talk with Kent Beck about automated unit testing and JUnit.

Recording Venue: Skype
Guest: John Wiegand

Host: Martin

This time we have John Wiegand on the mic for an episode on architectures and agile software development. We talk about the role of architectures in an agile world and why architectures change and need to change over time. We discuss the characteristics of those living architectures, using the Eclipse and the Jazz projects as examples, and the surrounding development methods for such environments.

Links:

• The Eclipse project
• Jazz community site
• RESTful architecture style at Wikipedia

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This time we have John Wiegand on the mic for an episode on architectures and agile software development. We talk about the role of architectures in an agile world and why architectures change and need to change over time. We discuss the characteristics of those living architectures, using the Eclipse and the Jazz projects ...

Recording Venue:
Guest(s): Jens Coldewey

Host(s): Markus
In this episode we’re talking to Jens Coldewey about his experiences in 10 years of introducing agile techniques to project teams. We discuss real-world examples and the lessons learned and strategies derived from them.

Links:

• Jens’ Blog (in German)
• Jens’ Homepage

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In this episode we're talking to Jens Coldewey about his experiences in 10 years of introducing agile techniques to project teams. We discuss real-world examples and the lessons learned and strategies derived from them.

Recording Venue: JAOO 2007
Guest(s): Rebecca Wirfs-Brock

Host(s): Markus
In this episode, Markus talks to Rebecca Wirfs-Brock on what she has learned from architecture reviews. This is a very complement to the earlier episode on architecture evaluation.

Links:

• Rebecca’s Website
• More of her Writings

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In this episode, Markus talks to Rebecca Wirfs-Brock on what she has learned from architecture reviews. This is a very complement to the earlier episode on architecture evaluation.

Recording Venue: OOPSLA 2007
Guest(s): Dave Thomas

Host(s): Markus
This episode is an interview with Dave Thomas (OTI Dave or Smalltalk Dave, not PragDave). We started our discussion with a look at the (non-)success of objects and components. We then discussed some history behine Eclipse and Dave’s role in OTI. We then compared Smalltalk and Ruby and looked at the promises of small and powerful languages such as Lisp. We also discussed the role of (static) type systems and the role of tool support for languages.

We then switched gears and looked at what is necessary to scale agile development to the level of large organizations
and how techniques from lean production and manufacturing as well as product management can play an important role.

In the last part of the interview we looked at the state of research today, and especially the relationship between industry and academia in this area.

We concluded the interview with Dave’s opinion on what it takes to be a good developer.

Links:

• Another company Dave is involved in: Object Mentor
• Dave’s company, Bedarra Research Labs
• Dave Thomas’ website
• Object Technology International (OTI)
• Lean Software Development (Poppendieck)

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This episode is an interview with Dave Thomas (OTI Dave or Smalltalk Dave, not PragDave). We started our discussion with a look at the (non-)success of objects and components. We then discussed some history behine Eclipse and Dave's role in OTI. We then compared Smalltalk and Ruby and looked at the promises of small ...

Recording Venue:
Guest(s): Jeff DeLuca
Host(s): Martin
Recording Venue:
Guest(s): Jeff DeLuca
Host(s): Martin
In this episode we talk with Jeff DeLuca about Feature Driven Development (FDD). As one member of the agile methods family FDD is not so famous as Scrum or Extreme Programming but is becoming more and more popular, especially for situations where you have fixed price contracts. As the inventor of FDD Jeff gives short introduction to the method itself, talks about the basic ideas behind FDD and discusses with us how FDD relates to other members of the agile family.

Links:

• The Agile Manifesto
• Book: Jim Highsmith: Agile Software Development Ecosystems
• Website: Feature-Driven Development

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In this episode we talk with Jeff DeLuca about Feature Driven Development (FDD). As one member of the agile methods family FDD is not so famous as Scrum or Extreme Programming but is becoming more and more popular, especially for situations where you have fixed price contracts. As the inventor of FDD Jeff gives ...

Recording Venue:
Guest(s): Roman Pichler

Host(s): Alexander
This episode features Scrum, a very popular Agile software development framework. We interview Roman Pichler, a Certified ScrumMaster Trainer and independent consultant. Roman explains the principles behind Scrum, its roles and its key practices. He also answers FAQs. This episode continues our track on software development processes discussing an additional Agile method.
Roman is currently writing a book on Scrum in German that provides more in-depth information of the topics discussed in the podcast. The book will be available in autumn 2007 published by d.punkt (Heidelberg, Germany).

Links:

• The Scrum Alliance Web Site
• Ken Schwaber, Mike Beedle: Agile Software Development with SCRUM, Prentice Hall, 2001
• Ken Schwaber: Agile Project Management with Scrum, Microsoft Press. 2004
• Ken Schwaber: Scrum et al. Google Video
• Roman’s Web Site

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This episode features Scrum, a very popular Agile software development framework. We interview Roman Pichler, a Certified ScrumMaster Trainer and independent consultant. Roman explains the principles behind Scrum, its roles and its key practices. He also answers FAQs. This episode continues our track on software development processes discussing an additional Agile method. Roman is currently ...

Recording Venue:
Guest(s):
Host(s): Martin Eberhard
Recording Venue:
Guest(s):
Host(s): Martin Eberhard
In the first episode on Refactoring we talked about the basic ideas behind refactoring and some base principles why refactoring is a key part of software engineering. Now we move on to more complicated refactorings and discuss three major situations, their problems and possible solutions: advanced refactorings in large projects that can hardly be finished in a few minutes or hours and refactoring in larger teams. Also covered are the refactoring of published APIs and how merciless refactoring could be aligned with backward compatibility of published APIs, and refactorings that affect more than just code like for example database schemas.

Links:

• Article: Public versus Published Interfaces, Martin Fowler
• Refactoring Thumbnails by Sven Gorts, a nice way to describe and visualize larger refactorings
• Book: Ambler, Sadalage: Refactoring Databases: Evolutionary Database Design
• Book: Lippert, Roock: Refactoring in Large Software Projects – Performing Complex Restructurings Successfully
• Martin Fowler’s site about refactoring, including a list of refactoring tools for various languages and environments
• Refactoring mailing list at Yahoo

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In the first episode on Refactoring we talked about the basic ideas behind refactoring and some base principles why refactoring is a key part of software engineering. Now we move on to more complicated refactorings and discuss three major situations, their problems and possible solutions: advanced refactorings in large projects that can hardly be ...