Category Archives: agile

Scrum, XP, Lean Software Development

Cyber Dojo for teaching TDD

Posted on June 10, 2014 by Eric Lefevre-Ardant

I’ve been teaching “Agile Projects” (yes, the title does feel a bit strange) to undergraduate students for a few years, and I’ve always took that opportunity to spend half a day on TDD. That meant me demo’ing a test-first implementation … Continue reading →

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Worse than static methods or final classes?

Posted on November 28, 2011 by Eric Lefevre-Ardant

Do you know what’s worse that static methods or classes marked as final? I’ll tell you what’s worse: static methods that return final classes. That only provides private constructors. Here I was, merrily testing my way through a piece of … Continue reading →

Posted in java, tdd | 4 Comments

Java’s varargs are for unit tests

Posted on November 21, 2011 by Eric Lefevre-Ardant

At Devoxx last week, Joshua Bloch argued during his talk “The Evolution of Java: Past, Present, and Future” that varargs are only “somewhat useful”. I think he is overlooking some usages, particularly in tests. Here is my case.

Posted in conferences, java, tdd | 2 Comments

Why aren’t there more Agile luminaries developing and selling software?

Posted on September 10, 2010 by Eric Lefevre-Ardant

Have you noticed that few Agile luminaries earn a living from writing and selling software? Many do write code as consultants. Other are respected authors of non-commercial open-source development tools. Some do work for software companies such as RallyDev or … Continue reading →

Posted in agile | 13 Comments

Bob Martin on TDD in Clojure

Posted on June 4, 2010 by Eric Lefevre-Ardant

Robert “Uncle Bob” Martin has just blogged on the differences in TDD styles using Clojure, as compared to more traditional languages such as Java. Though I am a Clojure-newbie, I mostly disagree with his conclusions. His main point is that, … Continue reading →

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Interviewed by François Beauregard

Posted on September 10, 2009 by Eric Lefevre-Ardant

François Beauregard from Pyxis Technologies interviewed me during Agile 2009 for their Vox Agile podcast. The interview is now online. We chatted about a favorite topic of mine: how to expand the horizons for Agile. My point is mostly that … Continue reading →

Posted in agile, agile2009 | 1 Comment

“Is Scrum Evil?” Beyond our session at XP Day Paris

Posted on June 2, 2009 by Eric Lefevre-Ardant

Our session “Is Scrum Evil?” at XP Day Paris this year went well. Attendance was good (50 people or so). One participant called it an “eye opener“. Two recorded the discussion (one of the records is available, in French, here; … Continue reading →

Posted in scrum, xpday | 6 Comments

Refactoring applied to features (or YAGNIAM – You Aren’t Gonna Need It… Any More)

Posted on March 10, 2009 by Eric Lefevre-Ardant

Refactoring code without modifying its external behavior is necessary to keep your code base manageable. That is nowadays a well-established fact. However, it can only go so far to prevent your code base from swelling permanently. In theory, if your … Continue reading →

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Agile Alliance Meeting in Paris

Posted on January 17, 2009 by Eric Lefevre-Ardant

As you might know, the AA board is meeting in person a couple of times a year and, for once, they decided to reach out to the crowd. This time, it happened in Paris. Not much talking that evening; mostly … Continue reading →

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30,000 ScrumMasters and 1,500,000 members of Scrum Teams?!

Posted on November 3, 2008 by Eric Lefevre-Ardant

A look on the ScrumAlliance list of Certified ScrumMasters shows that they have 618 pages each containing 50 names of ScrumMaster. This means more than 30,000 CSMs as of Novembre, 3rd, 2008. According to an interview of Jeff Sutherland, for … Continue reading →

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More about Coding Dojo at CITCON Amsterdam

Posted on October 21, 2008 by Eric Lefevre-Ardant

As a nice followup to my earlier post, Willem did a great write up of our Coding Dojo session at CITCON Europe, in early October. His post is supplemented with pictures by Marc.

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Valtech Days are tomorrow!

Posted on October 20, 2008 by Eric Lefevre-Ardant

Valtech Days are starting tomorrow! We are all very excited. I will be presenting 3 things: Retrospectives: the key to continuous improvement, together with Laurent Bossavit A 15-mins demonstration of Hudson Introduction to the Open Space part of the conference … Continue reading →

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Valtech Days: bio & abstract for Jeff McKenna

Posted on October 13, 2008 by Eric Lefevre-Ardant

Jeff McKenna will be opening the Valtech Days conference on October 21th with a keynote on Agile. We got his bio in English, as well as the abstract for his talk. We duly translated into French, but could not take … Continue reading →

Posted in agile, conferences, valtech | 1 Comment

Coding Dojo on Legacy Code

Posted on October 8, 2008 by Eric Lefevre-Ardant

At CITCON Amsterdam last WE, Willem van den Ende and I facilitate a Coding Dojo session on both Mockito and Legacy Code. Willem and I thought that we had missed some of our goals (especially demonstrating Mockito), but still many people at … Continue reading →

Posted in citcon, facilitation, tdd | 2 Comments

Is Scrum Evil?

Posted on October 7, 2008 by Eric Lefevre-Ardant

This was a fascinating discussion facilitated by Jeffrey at CITCON Amsterdam. Much talking with him followed, so I think I finally understand why he introduced this topic, and why so many people seemed to dislike Scrum. This was a typical discussion … Continue reading →

Posted in citcon, scrum | 20 Comments