Rails Summit Conference recap

That's me, delivering the closing keynote of the conference

Favorite parts of the conference

Here's a quick list of my favorites parts of the conference...

• The Brazilian (and Argentinian) "Raileros"... Simply awesome and super-enthusiastic bunch of people and I was so glad to be part of their special conference.
• The reception that my keynote talk about the "Hashrocket Way" got. I had a ton of attendees tell me afterward that they were very excited about adopting some of our Agile techniques and practices in their own operations.
• Pounding the tables, clapping and singing "We Will Rock You" along with what felt like another 100 conference attendees packed into a sushi restaurant in downtown Sao Paolo.
• Getting to spend quality time getting to know Dr. Nic and Chad Fowler, whoops I mean Chad Erik
• The look on my lovely Desi's face when she saw my presentation slide promoting DevChix at the end of the keynote. :)

Keynote Recap

I'm going to give this talk again this year, so I'm not posting the slides (which were mostly pics of the Hashrocket crew anyway). My 60 minute talk spanned the range of Agile practices that we use at Hashrocket, organized by the principles of the Agile Manifesto.

Individuals and interactions over processes and tools.

Among several other core practices, Hashrocket is a pair-programming shop primarily because we believe that pairing is a key way of emphasizing and leveraging the productivity of our people in effective ways. I spent a lot of time explaining how pairing works and its benefits.

Working software over comprehensive documentation

As Bryan says, "Test all the f*cking time!" There are other ways to put this principle into practice too, having to do with the test technology that we use.

Customer Collaboration over contract negotiation

Onsite customer is important, and our location on the beach in Florida plays into our ability to attract people to come work at our office. I also introduced some ideas about visual design, and when you should do design work on a project, that isn't necessarily what you would expect from a believer in extreme programming.

Responding to change over following a plan

I showed off Pivotal Tracker and spoke about how we use it. I also talked about the importance of standup meetings and how to do those effectively.

I can't recommend Pivotal Tracker enough for Agile teams. You should go sign up and try it for free.

Comments

[Lar Van Der Jagt]

I recently started using Pivotal Tracker for my own solo work and even as a solo developer with a few clients I highly recommend it. Previously I tried to bend lighthouse to do feature request/story tracking, to varying degrees of success, but it really didn't do much for generating reliable estimates.

Since I've started using Pivotal Tracker I've been hitting or exceeding most of my estimates, and when I don't it's almost always because one of my stories really needed to be broken down into smaller increments. Would love to see how well it works with a truly agile team!

[Thiago Taranto]

Hi Obi!

I was @ RailsSummit and I have to say that your keynote was awesome!!! I'll try to implement some things that you sad there at my company in Rio, by the way, very close to the beach!

I'd like to ask where I can find your slide presentation at RailsSummit.

Thanks for all your enthusiasm and knowledge!

Thiago Taranto

[Demetrius Nunes]

Hey Obie, great event wasn't it? Too bad I had to leave in the middle of your talk because I had a flight to catch back to Rio. Anyway, loved what I was able to see. As for the rest of the guys, Chad, Dr. Nic, David, the Phusion guys, all awesome. Will be back for next year for sure, I hope you'll be there too. Cheers!

[BrunoPedroso]

Hey Obie, thanks for the great presentation!

BTW, U talked about a sort of "pre-contract" your customers assign to before the project begins. You said that it would be available in the blog too... I'd realy like to see that.