It’s the sixth day of the ThoughtWorks workshop at Mobile web Ghana. The workshop has been very exciting so far. The agile approach to software development is gradually sinking in. We’re all learning how to develop better software.
There are a total of 16 attendants, some entrepreneurs, IT managers and software enthusiast, which offers a good blend for sharing of ideas and views.
Agile Software development is totally new to me, I am however, realizing the usefulness and benefits I can derive from adapting this approach. Agile Software development is showing us better and more efficient ways to develop software with minimal risks involved.
I can honestly say that it has been a revolutionary week for us. The workshop has provided hands-on training and practical sessions which has enabled us to understand agile concepts, processes and methodologies.
Some of the topics that have been covered so far are;
- Introduction to the Agile Manifesto,
- Business Process Modelling,
- Identifying user stories,
- Management: Estimation & Release Planning,
- Iteration planning and tracking, to mention a few.
I enjoyed playing the Lego game. It gave us better understanding of agile estimation and planning. In this game, three teams are assigned a task to develop a lego creature through three iterations using story cards given to them by the customer.
There were many important points we derived in the process. One of which is, “The customer is King and so is the team.” This identifies the fact that it is important for the team to pay attention to its customer’s requirements. If possible get the customer involved in the entire process to ensure that the customer’s specific needs are being catered for.
It is also important to work as a team in order to achieve a unified goal. I remember Zeynab Leeya –(ThoughtWorks SIP program manager) saying, “It’s the team, the whole team, and nothing but the team, so help me God.”
We also had intensive hands-on training sessions in Test Driven Development in JAVA. In TDD, developers write a test before writing just enough production code to fulfil that test. It’s one way to think through requirements or design before writing functional code.
In summary, there are a lot of valuable lessons we have learnt from this workshop, we’ll definitely ask participants to blog about their personal experiences, lessons and interesting quotes they can remember after the workshop.