Eighteen people had lunch together on May 23, 2008, at the Mc Menamins on NE Broadway. Discussion ranged over many topics. Six or seven people were new to XPDX, the rest were the usual suspects. :-) I had fun and learned stuff. Diana Larsen
Notes from the monthly Portland Xp Users Group
2005 Sept 13 Xpdx Notes Sept Mmv - Planning and Promiscuous Pairing
2005 May 9 Offing Offsite Customer
2005 April 10
2005 March 8 Planning meeting
Diana Larsen, Arlo Belshee, Rebecca Wirfs Brock, Rik Smoody and Patrick Logan met over lunch at McMenamin's at Cedar Hills Crossing to discuss the future of XPDX. After several tangents and much pleasurable conversation, various members of the group agreed to the following actions:
Speaker Recruitment:
Rebecca will contact Ward Cunningham & Bjorn Freeman-Benson, Alan Shalloway (Net Objectives), Ron Jeffries, and Brian Marick
Diana will contact Mike Cohn and William Wake (for July or September speakers)
Arlo will contact Joshua Kerievsky
Rebecca recruited Diana to speak in August after the book is published
We'll all ask our speakers to include optimum interactivity in their presentations; we like hands-on meetings
Code Sprint:
Arlo will coordinate with the Portland Ruby UG to arrange a code sprint for late April or early May
Agile Open Space Conference NW:
Targeted for a 2-day gathering in late january or early February, 2007
Diana and Rebecca will take the lead in getting sponsorship from the Agile Alliance
Patrick will contact Intel as a potential sponsor
Arlo will help to coordinate with PADNUG as a potential sponsor
Someone (ooops! I didn't write this one down) will contact Eclipse as a potential sponsor
Diana will create an initial budget
We will develop a theme that focuses on drawing out topics about practical experiences of XP and other Agile methods
When the time comes, Rik will help set up a webpage/wiki for the conference
2005 January 11
"Agile Development in the Portland Area"
The goal of this meeting was to set an Portland Xp Users Group Agenda for 2005. We had about 17 attendees, good discussion, and good pizza complements of cubiccompass.com 
2004 June 8 -- Arlo Belshee The Process of Courage
Courage is more than just no fear. It starts with a dedication to "no fear", but develops into much more. Put simply, Courage is the desire for change. People naturally fear change; when the team has Courage, it seeks change out.
So, how do you get there? How do you bypass human nature and make change not only the normal way of things, but something that everyone on the team continually seeks out?
I will present a number of techniques that worked well for our team, and discuss why they did. The specific optimal techniques will vary from team to team, but the underlying objectives will remain. Hopefully, I can also give you a little taste of the state of true courage - and the difference between courage and fearlessness.
2004 February 10 -- Michael Leach:
Software Craftsmanship and the Outsourcing of Software Engineering
Software Engineering is a commodity skill and today's Engineers must become Software Craftsman to maintain a competitive edge, or become a casualty of the outsourcing trend.
This presentation will answer the following questions:
What is Software Craftsmanship?
When should Software Craftsmanship be applied?
How do I become a Software Craftsman?
How are XP and other agile methodologies related to SC?
Jim Shore of Titanium I.T. spoke on continual design under unenviable conditions. Somehow, Rik Smoody and Novell failed to make the connection, and we did not have use of the room. The cleaning staff persisted in vacuuming the hallway near where we gathered.
XP's emphasis on Test Driven Development, Merciless Refactoring, and Simple Design come together as "Continual Design" (aka Evolutionary Design). What is continual design? How does it work? What about architecture? How does it really work when it comes to hard problems in the real world? Jim Shore has been experimenting with continual design on many projects since 2000. He discussed his experience and the surprising results he's had.
2003.7.1 Several people who attended a recent Agile Developer's conference shared stories. They include Ward Cunningham, Rebecca Wirfs-Brock & Diana Larsen.
'''Embracing change: Games and Reflections - Diana Larsen (www.futureworksconsulting.com ) -- January 28, 2003
Diana brought sets of eXtreme Programming Playing Cards contributed by Joshua Kerievsky, Industrial Logic, and the group played several XP learning games: eXPplanations, Value Squares and Pair Draw. Diana gave out four decks of the cards as door prizes. Photos of the lively play are available at these links:
In addition, Diana gave out copies of an article she wrote for Cutter IT Journal February 2003 issue, "Embracing Change: A Retrospective" and we all discussed ways in which change has been accomplished in our organizations.
XP: Back To Basics -- Michael Leach -- December 3, 2002
Mike discussed what it is about XP that is "Extreme" and gave a high level description of the XP rules principles found at extremeprogramming.org . Real world user stories and task cards from Cubic Compass software were shared.
Framework for Integrated Test -- Ward Cunningham -- October 1, 2002
Ward continues creating new, helpful bits. He talked about getting clients/customers to write acceptance tests by saving a Word table as html, then processing it into automated tests.
Details of the talk are on the Wiki: fit.c2.com
XP Down Under -- Ken Dickey
Ken described how he ran an xp project in Australia. Here are his slides in Star Office/Open Office format:
www.openoffice.org -- for reader
Implementing XP in a Corporate I.T. Shop -- August 7th, 2001
Here are the Power Point slides from my presentation: xpdx.org
-- Alex Ginos
After Alex's presentation, Jim Little and Ward Cunningham shared their thoughts on Xp Universe Two Thousand One. Jim described Kay Johansons Xp Universe Experience Report, Complexity As Debt, and Xp For Capitalists. Ward mentioned the discussions of XP inclusion/exclusion and Kent's "etudes" speech: Practices Versus Etudes.
Pair-programming and Spike -- June 6th, 2001
We wrote this much of the twenty-four game.
Planning and Feedback - May 1st, 2001
Facilitated by Michael Leach, Ward Cunningham, and Jim Little
Thanks again to our sponsors Novell and Logical e-Business Solutions who provided the meeting space and food!
This XPDX meeting focused on the Planning Game. Michael Leach provided a high level introduction of how the game is played and the group briefly discussed the concept of planning and how it is currently defined within their organization.
The Planning Game was then enacted in a 30-45 minute demonstration with Ward Cunningham and Jim Little playing the roles of Development and Michael Leach acting in the Business role. The premise of the game was based on a Business customer trying to develop an online version of the board game Monopoly with the assistance of an XP development team. Monopoly User Stories were presented, estimated, split/combined, re-estimated, prioritized, and negotiated for a 3 week 1st iteration.
Following the demonstration, the group split into smaller groups of 4 and conducted a hands on planning exercise for iteration 2 using pre-printed story cards (thanks Jim!). One group member was elected to represent Business while the other 3 represented Development. XP Coaches floated around the room and offered assistance. This exercise lasted about 45-60 minutes. Here is one team at work ...
xpdx.org
During the exercise, participants were encouraged to write their questions down on Post It notes for later discussion. Jim Little then organized and addressed the questions while sharing his wealth of experience using XP on a demanding Internet project.
The evening concluded with the distribution of a Planning Game epilogue authored by Alex Ginos which highlights moves that take place beyond the Planning Game.
Presentation slides and documents available at www.cubiccompass.com .
Unit Tests and Continuous Integration - March 6th, 2001
Facilitated by Alex Ginos and Brian Knowles
Eats provided by CSG Professionals.
Digs provided by Novell, Inc. Thanks sponsors!
Thanks to everyone who came to the second XPDX meeting on March 6th. We had a good turn out again and a very interesting meeting.
Alex Ginos kicked off the meeting with a brief overview of what Unit Tests are and how to use them in Extreme Programming. This lead into a very fruitful discussion (it lasted for two hours!) of Unit Testing tools, techniques, gotchas and how to do Continuous Integration. Martin Fowler was present and shared his perspective and experiences with these topics. He mentioned Thought Works' experiences with a Build Monkey that facilitates automated Continuous Integration. More details on their experiences can be had via Martin's Continuous Integration article. http://www.martinfowler.com/articles/continuousIntegration.html www.martinfowler.com
He also mentioned a testing technique they use called the Object Mother to centralize object creation for use in complex Unit Tests. The idea is to centrally locate the creation and management of objects that Unit Tests depend upon. This keeps test startup code in one place and also improves performance by avoiding too much object churn.
Mention was made of a few other tools:
NUnit is a Java Unit derivative that tests .NET applications.
Http Unit was discussed briefly as a way to programmatically apply Functional Tests to an HTML user interface.
IntelleJ's IDEA Java IDE has some very interesting refactoring tools and might integrate Jakarta Ant into their project management functionality in the future.
Finally, Brian Knowles gave a demonstration of work he has done to automate Unit Testing in a Java Two Enterprise Edition application. He first gave an overview of how Jtwoee Unit works and how to use it to test code accessed by Java Servlets. Then he went over how Jakarta Ant works and how to use it to assemble and test your J2EE applications. Finally, in an impressive show of skill and grace, he demonstrated Jakarta Ant automatically assembling a J2EE application, deploying it, starting Jakarta Tomcat, and running all defined unit tests within the application (both plain JUnit tests and J2EEUnit tests).
Inaugural Meeting - February 8, 2001
Introduction
Alex Ginos provided an overview and introduction to the purpose of the group. This group exists to provide:
mutual support for people interested in using XP
networking for XP related jobs
a place to give feedback to the creators of XP and thereby further its evolution.
Distinguished Speaker -� Ward Cunningham
Ward Cunningham then gave a short presentation on the past, present and future of Extreme Programming and what he�s up to now.
Extreme Programming grew out of Ward�s work at Tektronix, building real products with Small Talk and Object Oriented principles, early on in OO's adoption. After being asked what he was up to every day, Ward began to structure his development so his answer could end "...for the customer". To do this, he started asking himself these questions before any undertaking.
"What am I doing?"
"Why am I doing it?"
"Whom am I doing it for?"
"What�s next?"
With this customer focus, OO�s ability to simplify Re Factoring code and successful experiments with Pair Programming, the kernel of XP was assembled. Then, about five years ago, Kent Beck "turned up the knobs to ten" on a troubled project at Chrysler, successfully putting XP through the paces on a significant project.
XP is now known as a Light Weight Methodology, however, Ward does not believe that�s a good categorization. He�d rather have people understand that XP is focused more on the final deliverable than on producing project management artifacts. Ward asked the group to list off light-weight methodologies and the following were mentioned:
It was even proposed that there should be a Unified Lightweight Methodology :-)
Three XP books have now been published and there are more on the way (if not here already). "The publishers have figured out that thin methodology books sell."
Planning Extreme Programming by Kent Beck et al
Ward then listed off recent or upcoming conferences that will deal with XP:
SD 2001
The XP buzz in the industry is building. As a show of hands displayed, few people are following all of its tenets yet, but many are interested in learning how it can help deliver better customer results.
Currently, Ward is focusing his attention on better defining the business role of XP. Traditional business processes are handed down from big business and don't fit entrepreneurial startups well. Since XP is a good risk control tool and there is an absolute focus on outcomes (liquidity in the business world), the start-up environment appears to be a good fit. He has taken an academic interest, collaborating with a successful local entrepreneur in applying XP principles at a new start-up company. His goal is to define a unified XP-like process for startups.
Activity
A "get to know ya" game was played to introduce everyone to each other. The goal was to meet as many people as possible in fifteen minutes and find something personal in common. Some attendees can really network!
Business
Prof. Andrew Black will be teaching an XP course at the Oregon Graduate Institute this spring. He would be grateful if any XP'ers would be willing to be guest speakers, provide tips, or even be an on-site customer for a stretch. Contact Prof. Black at black@cse.ogi.edu if you are interested.
What should this brand-new group be called? After a few nominations, a nearly unanimous decision for Xp Dx was rendered. This acronym nearly rivals GNU on the recursion scale. Aaron Singmaster-Judd from the Techno Loft swiftly snapped up xpdx.org on Friday. Stay tuned, well let everyone know when there's a site. Thanks Aaron!
The question of what format following meetings should take was posed to the group. Here's a list of suggestions:
Portland Java Users Group is a good model.
Good guest speakers.
Panels and discussions.
Technical presentations.
A discussion of how to use metaphors in XP.
Cover one aspect of XP each month.
Do XP in the small for an hour.
Discuss tools that people use.
Start the meetings with introductions.
It was decided that the meeting should be held once a month and avoid conflicts with other industry groups in the area. Also, finding a permanent venue was discussed with multiple sites being proposed. A schedule and meeting location will be announced shortly.
Resources
There is information regarding the Portland Xp Users Group available at the Portland Pattern Repository Wiki: Portland Xp Users Group
Also, subscribe to the XPPortland mailing list at: groups.yahoo.com
Thanks to everyone who came, unofficially we had 52 people attend! Thanks to Ward Cunningham for his insight. Thanks to Ace Communications for the great facility. Thanks to Logical e-Business Solutions for the pizza and soda.
See original on c2.com