me.andering – Willem van den Ende

We are partnering with local companies to provide our training curriculum in other countries. We started the Mastering Unit Testing course after we found many teams have started writing unit tests, but very few have experienced the benefits of hard-core test-driven development.

“You have some experience writing unit tests, but wonder how you could get more out of unit testing. Register for the Mastering Unit Testing training to experience how test driven development can make development faster and more enjoyable. You’ll learn how working test-first lets you create better designed code, and understand why unit testing techniques that are ‘simple’ in theory can be difficult to practice. Past participants have experienced less defects in production code, as well as higher velocity, which leads to happier clients and more fun in your job!”

See the Mastering Unit Testing page on the iLean site for registration and details. The first course is scheduled for September 24 and 25. After that we’ve also got our Mastering legacy code, November 16 and 17, also in Antwerp.

Televox by d.billy

photo found through Photo Suggest

With the holiday season almost ending it is time to make plans for the rest of the year. Summer was enjoyable; After Marc and I went to the ESSAP summer school in Varese, we drove to Luzern, Switzerland for the first, and very succesful, in-house run of the Unit Testing Masterclass. Marc, Rob and I learnt a lot about what works (and what doesn’t) in our courses in the first half of this year, and it was very satisfying to see it come together… when we experiment it does’nt always, of course – the price of a little courage. I took two full weeks of holiday – highly recommended to you (yes you!), my fellow workaholics. Then on to agile2008 in Toronto, which I took as a sort of extended holiday, swimming everyday, chatting with people, the occasional session, and my last meetings as a member of the agile alliance board – I want to focus more on my business and travel less between timezones if it’s not business. And then a small roadtrip afterwards.

Now I’m ‘not travelling’ – visiting my girfriend in Bath, while working remotely, and meeting some people in London at the eXtreme Tuesday Club tonight.

I’m busy brainstorming some new training courses, and turning the spike of a customer relationship management system for eXperience Agile (soon to be relaunched under a different name, watch this space ) into something that is tested and ready for production. With Emmanuel Gaillot we’re translating eXperience Refactoring into “des excursions dans le rémaniement continu”, which we’ll do in-house in September, and hope to do an open enrollment one in Paris in October. In the Netherlands we’re planning to do some more open enrollment courses:

• Unit Testing Masterclass in Tilburg, 8 and 9 September
• eXperience Agile in Tilburg, 17-19 September
• Unit Testing Masterclass in Utrecht 29 and 30 September

And 29 October I’ll be presenting “right sizing your unit tests” (a taster session for our unit testing masterclass) with Marc at the Scandinavian Agile Conference. I’ll probably also be running a session (wich one to be decided yet) at Xp Days Benelux November 20 & 21 in my hometown of Eindhoven and then later on enjoying the open space at XpDay London, 11th & 12th December.

And of course I’m planning to make more plans and blogging to make more blogs

We have a few open spaces for the eighteenth eXperience Agile course , which we will be running in Rob Westgeests’ new office in Tilburg, the Netherlands on June 25 though 27. Three days of fun learning and experiencing Agile Software Development (and students who kick more ass after they’ve been – more on that later).

One of the few courses that goes in-depth in both Agile planning practices as well as technical practices. See the course page for a full description.

Nicole Belilos and I are hosting a trial run of our ‘labour turnover – should I stay or should I go’ workshop – we’re going to also run it during agile2008. We’re doing a trial run next tuesday (June 17th) at the office of Topic in Best. Contact me or Nicole if you want to join. If you want to know more, read the workshop description, or the full trial description in Dutch (below).
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The next eXperience Agile training is December 12, 13 and 14 near Eindhoven. We’ve created an e-mail newsletter to keep everyone interested more in the loop on upcoming agile courses and conferences. The first edition is about XP days Benelux and London – enjoy XP Days – register while you still can…