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.

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

Agenda

18:15 Welcoming and Introduction

Jan Pool

18:20 Panelist Presentations      

Austin Fagan,      

Karen Greaves,      

Aslam Khan,      

Goedele van Deuren,      

Patrick Vine

19:00 Facilitated Discussion Session      

Samantha Laing

19:30 Closing and Thanks      

Jan Pool

19:35 Networking & Discussion

Facilitator Profile

Samantha Laing

I’m Samantha Laing… and I am passionate about enabling development teams to reach their full potential. I strive to make the entire process from business vision to development less frustrating and more rewarding for all the people involved. What makes Companies and projects successful? People! I strongly believe that everyone should enjoy and love what they do I also believe in having a healthy balance between work and exercise. My favorite is trail running… always challenging and beautiful (even in the rain and mud!). My long rambling thoughts can be read at my blog, while much shorter (and more frequent) comments are on twitter @samlaing

Panelist Profiles

Austin Fagan

I’m originally from the town of Dundalk in Ireland but have spent over 12 years living in London. I’ve worked with Scrum/XP teams for the last 5 years building everything from enterprise level systems to web and mobile applications. I love being involved in projects where there’s no mention of IE6. I’m passionate about good process which is why I am a big fan of Agile methodologies and am a keen advocate of pairing, TDD and other XP goodness. I’ve been in Cape Town since October 2010 and learned many things since coming here. Mainly that no single South African can understand me when I say my name over the phone, so now I book a table under the name Joe. When I’m not in work mode I like cooking, playing records and listening to South Africans complain about how cold it is in Winter. Dry your eyes, where I come from we call this weather Summer!

Karen Greaves

Karen Greaves is currently the Software Development Manager at Fundamo, where she works with four awesome Scrum teams to deliver great software regularly. She also regularly co-trains Scrum classes with Peter Hundermark, hoping to become a CST soon. She was previously the Scrum Coach at Intec where she was responsible for their Scrum roll out to approximately 100 people in Cape Town R&D. She has worked in software for over 12 years in a number of different roles and environments. She is passionate about building good software, and creating a work environment which enables technology professionals to be creative, motivated and productive. You can read her blog here.

Aslam Khan

I am learning software development and architecture for over 20 years and trying to be agile for more or less half that time. I believe that software development is an opportunity to break down traditional social barriers, carve out new social contracts, and to restore dignity to individuals. I spend my time trying to be a better developer, crawling with people that are trying to run, and sharing my lessons from software development and life equally. I work for factor10, a software development consultancy based in Sweden and South Africa. I blog reasonably frequently at aslamkhan.net. Apart from that, I think I ask far too many irritating questions prodding at the assumed, the obvious, and the unknown, just because there is a slight chance that it will help gain a deeper understanding of why we do what we try to do.

Goedele van Deuren

Goedele van Deuren is Development Manager and a Scrum Product Owner at Momentum Employee Benefits (Corporate - IT). They've been doing Scrum for almost two years now.

Goedele joined the department (back then part of Metropolitan) in 1998 as Analyst / Developer, working on enterprise systems and their integration needs, based on the Pick system first, then Microsoft and Java technologies. With a strong focus on process changes and improvements, confronted with outsourcing challenges, ever-changing business requirements and recently the move over to Alacrity, she managed to play a key role in implementing Scrum successfully, thereby highly improving development productivity while at the same time increasing work satisfaction of team members.

Goedele holds a diploma as Analyst Programmer from the Secundaire Handelsschool Sint-Lodewijk Antwerp, Belgium.

Patrick Vine

I started my career more than a decade ago at Microsoft and since then I’ve moved through different companies as developer, architect and manager in diverse technologies and industries. In 2008 I started to dabble with Scrum at Yellowtail Software and started to help the roll out of Scrum with a focus on helping teams get better on a daily basis. I’ve worked on fixed price, fixed team, fixed budget projects for customers and have experienced how to try to be agile in all of those realities. When it comes to tools I prefer to be low tech until we know what the working process is. I like to focus on what we are solving in our current process when adding a new tool to the tool belt.