XP Days Benelux

XP Day Benelux is an international conference about Agile methods, intended for people from all walks of life who are involved with IT. It provides a good opportunity for exchanging ideas and sharing experiences and is suited for both experienced participants and beginners in Agile methods. The focus of this conference is on practical knowledge, real-world experience, and active participation of everyone.

Mini XP Days Benelux 2010 April 26th 2010 in Eindhoven, The Netherlands

Missed XP Days 2009? Do you want to catch up with the sessions you missed because there were other interesting sessions in the same timeslot? Do you want to send your colleagues to those great sessions you attended?

Mini XP Days 2010 gives you the opportunity to see eight of the favourite sessions of XP Days 2009 in the beautiful surroundings of Kapellerput in Heeze, near Eindhoven.

Register now because there are only 60 places.

See you there!

The XP Day Organisers

Agile Open Belgium 2010 May 21-22nd 2010 in Gent, Belgium

The Agile Open conference has no predetermined program. Instead, we follow Open Space principles. The participants determine the actual program together at the start of the conference. Anyone who participates can propose a session during the opening of the conference and put it in a timeslot of the conference schedule

XP Days Benelux 2010 November 25-26th 2010 in Eindhoven, The Netherlands

The 8th edition XP Days will also be held in Kapellerput in Heeze, near Eindhoven.

The best way to learn at a conference is to present a session, so keep an eye out for the Call for Sessions!

Sponsors

Media Sponsors

Note

• Dutch companies that provide a valid VAT number pay 0% VAT
• Other participants pay 19% VAT

Contact us at registrations if you have any remarks or questions about your registration or payment.

Payment by Bank Transfer

Agile Systems vzw,
St Pancratiuslaan 49,
1933 Sterrebeek, Belgium

Bank (Belgium): Dexia Sterrebeek, Mechelsesteenweg 223, 1933 Sterrebeek, Belgium

• Belgium: DEXIA 068-2436543-27
• EU zone: IBAN BE48-0682-4365-4327 BIC GKCCBEBB

• Postbank 940532
• EU zone: IBAN NL49-PSTB-0000-9405-32 BIC PSTBNL21

This is the fastest and cheapest method of payment.

Payment with credit card

Dutch customers with VAT number	Other customers
Mini XP Day excl VAT 175,00€	Mini XP Day incl VAT 208,25€

We help our customers to deliver more valuable software! To make your software effectively support you and your business we focus on:

• a strong relationship with business and users
• a common understanding of the business goals and processes and how the software can optimally support and amplify these
• frequent deliveries of working increments of software

To make you succeed in working this way and in delivering software that really adds value, we offer you Agile coaching and training services, and we build and completely deliver end-to-end the software you and your business needs.

Media Sponsors

	Methods & Tools is a free software development magazine on Software Testing, Project Management, Programming (Java,.NET, Ruby on Rails, Ajax), UML, Agile (eXtreme Programming, Scrum, TDD), Requirements, Databases, Software Process Improvement, Tools.
	Agile Holland is an independent, not for profit organisation of Agile practitioners in the Netherlands. Its mission is to promote Agile practices and principles in order to achieve better results faster. Agile Holland frequently organises events, like evening meetups and Agile Open Holland.

The conference is organised by a team of volunteers who work tirelessly to make the conference a fun, informative and interesting event.

Let's meet the team:

		Vera Peeters (Tryx) and Portia Tung (emergn) lead the organisation team so that all the work that needs to get done, gets done smoothly.
		Nicole Belilos (Task24) and Marc Evers (Piecemeal Growth) manage the conference program and help presenters so that we can offer high quality, well-prepared sessions that are appealing to a broad range of participants.
		Rob Westgeest (Westgeest Consultancy) and Philippe De Bruycker (Federal Public Service Foreign Affairs Belgium) manage communications so that everybody involved knows about the conference and the XP Days community keeps in touch.
		Tjakko Kleinhuis (Sioux) and Vera Peeters (Tryx) manage all the practical details of the venue so that the conference takes place in great surroundings with good food and drink.
		Rob Westgeest (Westgeest Consultancy) and Nicole Belilos (Task24) ensure that the conference runs smoothly so that participants can concentrate on what they've come for: sharing, learning and meeting people.
		Serge Beaumont (Xebia) and Tjakko Kleinhuis (Sioux) are in charge of fun so that we have a sociable atmosphere and lots of laughs and wow! moments at the conferences.
		Olivier Costa (Aegisoft) and Pascal Van Cauwenberghe (Nayima) ensure that all the infrastructure and resources are available so that everybody involved has what they need to make this a great conference.
		With the help of Lars Vonk (Zilverline) and Gino Marckx (Xodiac)

Sponsor packages Mini XP Days 2010, April 26th

We expect 60 participants

We offer the following sponsor packages:

Bar package

• the sponsor sponsors drinks on Monday (at the end of the conference);
• the sponsor will get an acknowledgement during the conference;
• sponsor is mentioned in the online program and on the program handout;
• the sponsor will get 1 free admission to the conference.

Package 1

• sponsor logo and URL will be put on the www.xpday.net website and on the conference hand outs;
• the sponsor will get an acknowledgement during the conference opening session on Monday morning;
• during the conference, sponsor materials will be available at the registration desk;
• the sponsor will get 1 free admission to the conference.

• the sponsor is responsible for getting the materials in time at the conference;
• the conference organizers will give a timely indication of the number of participants to expect.

Package 2

• the sponsor can bring a stand; (Contact us at marketing for a map of the rooms and stands at the venue.)
• sponsor logo and URL will be put on the www.xpday.net website and on the conference hand outs;
• the sponsor will get an acknowledgement during the conference opening session on Monday morning;
• during the conference, sponsor materials will be available at the registration desk;
• the sponsor will get 2 free admissions to the conference.

• the sponsor is responsible for getting the materials in time at the conference;
• the sponsor is responsible for the stand;
• the conference organizers will give a timely indication of the number of participants to expect.

Media sponsoring

• a media sponsor mentions the conference (logo, conference name, location, date, URL), on a website and/or in a magazine and/or in a mailing;
• sponsor logo and URL will be put on the www.xpday.net website;
• the sponsor will get an acknowledgement during the conference opening sessions.

• Contact us at marketing to create a sponsoring package tailored to your wishes.

Sponsor packages XP Days 2010, November 25th-26th

We expect 150 participants.

We offer the following sponsor packages:

Bar package

• the sponsor sponsors drinks on Thursday or Friday;
• the sponsor will get an acknowledgement during the conference;
• sponsor is mentioned in the online program and on the program handout;
• the sponsor will get 1 free admission to the conference.

Package 1

• sponsor logo and URL will be put on the www.xpday.net website and on the conference hand outs;
• the sponsor will get an acknowledgement during the conference opening sessions on Thursday and Friday morning;
• during the conference, sponsor materials will be available at the registration desk;
• the sponsor will get 1 free admission to the conference.

• the sponsor is responsible for getting the materials in time at the conference;
• the conference organizers will give a timely indication of the number of participants to expect.

Package 2

• the sponsor can bring a stand; (Contact us at marketing for a map of the rooms and stands at the venue.)
• sponsor logo and URL will be put on the www.xpday.net website and on the conference hand outs;
• the sponsor will get an acknowledgement during the conference opening sessions on Thursday and Friday morning;
• during the conference, sponsor materials will be available at the registration desk;
• the sponsor will get 2 free admissions to the conference.

• the sponsor is responsible for getting the materials in time at the conference;
• the sponsor is responsible for the stand;
• the conference organizers will give a timely indication of the number of participants to expect.

Media sponsoring

• a media sponsor mentions the conference (logo, conference name, location, date, URL), on a website and/or in a magazine and/or in a mailing;
• sponsor logo and URL will be put on the www.xpday.net website;
• the sponsor will get an acknowledgement during the conference opening sessions.

• Contact us at marketing to create a sponsoring package tailored to your wishes.

Objective(s) of the session:

Learn how to organize code so that the domain model is clearly separated from the technical infrastructure and external APIs. Learn how to refactor towards such an architecture. Improve refactoring skills.

Contents:

This is a little programming kata that gets you to think: how to organize an application so that the domain logic is separated from external libraries and systems? The example reads person records from a file and sends email to selected persons. How do you test this properly? By "properly", I mean that

• the core logic of your application should be tested without need to talk to the filesystem or the mail server.
• you should be able to prove that the system interacts correctly with both the filesystem and the mail server.

How do you separate responsibilities? The "Single Responsibility Principle" says that a class should have a single reason to change. This means that we should have a single place in the code that changes in the event that, say:

• the data comes from a database instead of a file
• instead of sending email, we want to send a FaceBook message or a text message
• the logic for deciding who gets the messages changes
• the content of the messages changes

In this session you will learn about

• The hexagonal architecture, which is a variant of the common three-layers architecture. The advantage is that it avoids making the domain model dependent on the data-access code.
• The dependency-inversion principle, which says that high-level code should not depend on low-level details, and how to implement it.
• Splitting your code in
  • unit tests, which prove that your logic works, and are fast and reliable, and
  • integration tests, which prove that you can talk to external systems, but are a bit less fast and a bit less reliable.

This session was prepared within the Orione team, and was presented to the Milano XP User Group.

Format and length: 90 mins coding dojo. Participants should provide their own laptop. I provide the necessary software.

Intended audience and prerequisites:

This session is for programmers who are beginners to intermediate in TDD and refactoring. Knowledge of Java is preferred. .Net programmers will need to pair with a Java programmer. This is not a session for absolute beginners; I expect the audience to have a basic idea of what TDD and refactoring are and why they're good.

References:

• The Hexagonal Architecture
• The Dependency Inversion principle
• The Birthday Greetings Kata
• About the definition of Unit Test

He's an active member of the local XP user group and the Italian Agile movement. He started approaching Agile in late 2004 and since 2005 has introduced the principles and practices in his day-by-day work, involving clients and collegues. Before Sourcesense he worked for two years in the Agile team of an important F1 racing team.

Contact: m.vaccari

Abstract

Are you a Product Owner? Or do you support or coach a Product Owner? Then you might have had trouble finding a lot more information on the role than the magical “…and the Product Owner comes in with a fully prioritized Product Backlog”. So you might be stuck: where to start with this challenging role? For beginning and practising Product Owners alike, Serge might have some of the answers you need. He has created a clear vision on what the role entails (Focus, Value and Flow) and presents the thinking tools that go with it, along with practical tools in the “fun with stickies” category.

Content

• The three responsibilities of a Product Owner: Focus, Value and Flow
• How to apply focus with the Definition of Ready, Definition of Done, the Backlog and the Product Vision
• How to define value with scales of measure, the Why chain and how to avoid the Cause-Effect Trap
• How to achieve flow through slicing and dicing and the Ready Kanban
• How to connect the operational, tactical and strategic levels with the Why chain, Story Mapping and the Portfolio Wall

Format and length: 60 mins interactive presentation.

Intended audience and prerequisites: anybody who has to deal with the Product Owner role. This is not a Scrum introduction: knowledge of the Scrum process is assumed.

Session History

• Integrating Agile Conference 2009
• Scrum Gathering 2009, Munich
• XP Days 2009 (doh)

Serge is a CSP and trains CSM courses with Jeff Sutherland and CSPO courses with Arlen Bankston. Through his assignments Serge’s expertise is in large corporate agile adoptions and Product Ownership. He has coached organizations like Albumprinter, Ericsson, bol.com, Albert Heijn and Triodos Bank. Serge combines enthusiasm and deep knowledge of software engineering, agile processes and human nature with a pragmatic approach that allows him to tailor agile to a wide array of situations and organizations.

Linked In: http://nl.linkedin.com/in/sergebeaumont

Blog: http://blog.xebia.com/author/sbeaumont

Twitter: @sbeaumont]]> Pascal.Van.Cauwenberghe 07 February 2010 20:45 GMT http://www.xpday.net/Xpday2010/Mini%20XPDay/PaymentCanceled.html http://www.xpday.net/Xpday2010/Mini%20XPDay/PaymentCanceled.html Your payment has not been executed

If you have any questions or remarks about registration or payment, contact registration

Objective(s) of the session:

As a participant, you will

• get a short but interesting view of the product backlog management flow
• share experiences with and learn about best practices as product owners.

Experiment: let’s not make it another “free” session:

• you will go home with tangible outcome
• if you agree there is follow-up on what you really applied after this session.
• at the end of the session you will receive feedback what previous session participants learned and applied in reality

Contents:

Managing a product backlog is simple: list your stories, prioritize, estimate and have stories pulled by your development cycle. That’s easy in theory. Daily reality reveals lots of challenges however. Participate at this session if you want to learn more about

• Agile striptease (=a way to split end-to-end user stories into different dimensions)
• Kanban board product backlog management
• Visual project representation & prioritization
• Fail fast & transparent stakeholders communication
• Using examples – requirements – acceptance cases as a single thread
• Many more… [suggest your extra best practices to discuss]

As a participant, you get an interesting product backlog management flow overview as warming up, and you have a vote which best practices will be discussed, or you can suggest others.

Format and length: 120 min presentation + iterative group workshops (timing can be adapted but 120 min is preferred)

Process and timetable:

• 1) introduction (presentation, I will try to do this without slides): max 15 min.
• 2) iterative group workshops (total 15 min + 5min/group)
  • a) select (a) best practice(s) by the audience: 5 min
  • b) group discussion & elaboration: 10 min
  • c) presentation: 5 min /group (nr of groups, and total duration of all presentations will depend on the audience size)
• 3) conclusions + feedback on what former participants really learned & applied after attending tryout sessions (more info: see session objectives)

Intended audience and prerequisites:

Product owners, product & program managers, testers, project managers, people interested in the organizational aspects of software development/Scrum/Kanban/… At least 1 practical experience with backlog management is required to level public expertise on this domain.

What do the presenters expect to learn from the session?

I am very curious

• which extra usable best practices will be presented by the audience
• how/if the practices will be understood & used in practice

Materials needed, room layout, limitations...:

No participant limits as the group size & nr of iterations can be flexibly adapted. Standard materials Need possibility to hang up 1 A3 or flipchart paper per best practice.

Objective(s) of the session:

You are team leader of a development team and the organisation is moving to an agile approach. You visited some congresses and studied some agile methodologies. You had several sessions with your development team and started a few weeks ago. For some reason the communication in the team is not going well and there are some rules of Murphy, quotes of famous people and sarcastic comics on the wall. What can you do? My objective is to give you some hints and tips to let the team progress in their agile development.

I would like to give information about how to improve an office set up for an agile environment, give some examples what those subtly signs could mean, discuss and exchange experiences about agile environments. Give you, with the other attendees, information about the items you really need in an agile office.

Contents:

“Welcome at the Planon office tour. I will be your guide today and together with me you will explore our development department. I will show you all the secrets and fun stuff of our development department. Please be seated during the tour and keep your hands inside. You are allowed to take pictures.”

I would like you to show a regular day in our Development department. Goal is to share our experience with an agile office with you. We always like to improve ourselves. By doing a tour we can discuss our office setup, exchange ideas about the ideal agile office setup and discuss the problems of an agile office. During the tour I will show also pictures of other (agile) offices.

Besides the office setup there are also a lot of other signs that a scrum master or agile coach should pick up. Signs that tell something about the team morale or agile awareness of a department. I would like to find out with you what the signs are in our department.

Format and length:

40 minutes presentation/central discussion and approx. 15 minutes workshop

Objectives:

What if an Agile Coach could have a way to determine the right question to ask to intervene on an individual or a team? How valuable would this be for a such a coach?

The Solution Focused methodology is widely used in psychotherapy and also in coaching. Itʼs based on designing a solution and working out the steps needed to achieve it. This is a very elegant approach because it shifts the discussion from the emotionally-filled problem state to where the result is: the solution state. This technique can be successfully used when coaching Agile teams, for example during planning and retrospectives, but also as a reflection mechanism and coaching technique for Scrum Masters, Product Owners and the whole development team as well.

The session is intended to give an experiential introduction to the Solution Focused approach, providing the basic practical tools to use it in the daily team coaching activities.

Intended audience:

The session is targeted at agile coaches, scrum masters, product owners and, in general, everybody relying on intensive communication in teamwork. The methods presented can be effectively used also by team members to achieve a more efficient teamwork by asking “better questions” and understanding the difference between asking questions to provide a solution and asking questions to search for a solution.

Contents:

• Content-free coaching: a definition
• Solution Focused approach basics
• Methods used in Solution Focused work: systemic questions, miracles, interviews and scales
• Where to apply these methods when coaching Agile teams
• Reflection and lessons learned

After a short introduction to correctly frame the basic concepts, the session will proceed presenting each method through a short description. For the methods “systemic questions” and “scales” there will be a set of hands-on exercises in small groups. Each group will be composed by a minimum of three and a maximum of five people: the coachee, the coach and one to three observers. In each exercise round, the coach will coach the coachee utilising the concepts introduced. The observer has the role of observing both coach and coachee, providing feedback on the process, in particular on the following aspects: 1) has the coach worked “content-free” or did she suggest solutions? 2) what about the body language of both coach and coachee? 3) were there moments when the coach was more effective? If yes, what happened exactly?

At the end of the session there will be a reflection collecting feedback from the participants about how they felt during the process and how they could utilise the techniques in their work.

Format and length: 90 min presentation and interactive exercises

Kapellerput is located in one of the loveliest parts of Heeze in Brabant. Surrounded by art and colour, you’ll experience true tranquility in this magnificent environment, rich in forests and waterways, to formulate ideas, share expertise and find solutions.

The conference center includes a hotel if you want to stay overnight. We can book a room for you at the best rates. Let us know when registering if and when you'd like to stay at the hotel.

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