Introductions

[Ed Wong]

Here's a thread where you can introduce yourselves. Many of you
already know each other but I'm sure there are several people who you
don't know already.

I'll start.

I'm Ed, and I work at White October which is an up and coming web
agency based in East Oxford. I have been there since February and my
official title is "Production Manager". I often tell people that I
"Herd Geeks" which means that I organise the dev team to try and get
all of the projects that we have on our plate out the door.

Prior to that I worked at a large corporate in Oxford for several
years, working on many types of disk based, intranet and online
applications in the educational sector.

Even before I knew what it meant, all the most successful projects
that I have worked on have used many techniques that can be deemed
"agile".

I then qualified as a Scrum Master about 3 1/2 years ago. I'm
enthusiastic about exploring agility, innovation etc. in my
professional life...which is why I (along with James Geall) have
started this group.

Your turn...

[Tim Pizey]

On 3 November 2010 22:06, Ed Wong wrote:
> Here's a thread where you can introduce yourselves. Many of you
> already know each other but I'm sure there are several people who you
> don't know already.
>
> I'll start.

[snip]
> Your turn...

I currently work for the Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics making
Atom structured repositories for scientific data.

I have worked on the web since it was invented, and still love it.

I worked in a distributed team from 1997 until 2003, during which time
we created a lot of innovative
technology, culminating in http://melati.org/ which I still maintain.

I have used quite a few languages, but have not dug much deeper than
C, and am most happy with java.
I currently have python and ocaml in my sights.

I attended all the Thames Valley Agile SIG meetings in 2001? and have
heard many of the luminaries speak.
One of my crew went on the become a founder of the UK Agile movement,
touring a presentation called
"around the world in 80 standups" where he and the other agile coach
at http://www.wds.co/ explained how to do 24 hour development with
three agile teams in different time zones.

All of that said my current setup, which is nominally 'agile', is
still just a bunch of geeks working pretty darn hard. There is little
pairing and measurement is patchy at best. It is a policy that we will
all do the Agile Methods course at
http://www.softeng.ox.ac.uk/, (which we can get at reduced rates),
however much of the agile methods are not followed, and we are very
much in the grip of star programmers; and I am not convinced that,
given we have star programmers, we should shackle them to less stellar
coders.

I cannot promise to attend meetings, but hope to and will enjoy the
mailing list.

cheers
Tim

--
Tim Pizey - http://pizey.net/~timp
Centre for Genomics and Global Health - http://cggh.org

[chrs]

I'm Chris and I've been working for Nominet, the .uk domain registry
for nearly 10 years now. During that time I've been attempting to do
agile development mainly via a bottom-up approach. Lately though it
seems senior management are finally taking an interest, so we may get
some top-down changes coming too. I'm very much a hand-on developer,
but I also do a bit of scrum mastering/team leading too.

I started the Oxtremists agile book group (http://
www.oxtremists.co.uk/) which ran for a number of years. The highlight
of which was getting Mary and Tom Poppendieck coming along to a
meeting to talk about their book (http://www.oxtremists.co.uk/?p=36).
They even bought me dinner. The group has fizzled out now, but I'm
hoping this group can fill the gap... even if I don't get any free
meals!

Chris

On Nov 3, 11:23 pm, Tim Pizey <tim.pi...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 3 November 2010 22:06, Ed Wong  wrote:
>
> > Here's a thread where you can introduce yourselves. Many of you
> > already know each other but I'm sure there are several people who you
> > don't know already.
>
> > I'll start.
> [snip]
> > Your turn...
>
> I currently work for the Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics making
> Atom structured repositories for scientific data.
>
> I have worked on the web since it was invented, and still love it.
>
> I worked in a distributed team from 1997 until 2003, during which time
> we created a lot of innovative

> technology, culminating inhttp://melati.org/which I still maintain.

>
> I have used quite a few languages, but have not dug much deeper than
> C, and am most happy with java.
> I currently have python and ocaml in my sights.
>
> I attended all the Thames Valley Agile SIG meetings in 2001? and have
> heard many of the luminaries speak.
> One of my crew went on the become a founder of the UK Agile movement,
> touring a presentation called
> "around the world in 80 standups" where he and the other agile coach

> athttp://www.wds.co/explained how to do 24 hour development with

> three agile teams in different time zones.
>
> All of that said my current setup, which is nominally 'agile', is
> still just a bunch of geeks working pretty darn hard. There is little
> pairing and measurement is patchy at best. It is a policy that we will

> all do the Agile Methods course athttp://www.softeng.ox.ac.uk/, (which we can get at reduced rates),

> however much of the agile methods are not followed, and we are very
> much in the grip of star programmers; and I am not convinced that,
> given we have star programmers, we should shackle them to less stellar
> coders.
>
> I cannot promise to attend meetings, but hope to and will enjoy the
> mailing list.
>
> cheers
> Tim
>
> --

> Tim Pizey -http://pizey.net/~timp

[AlistairH]

> Your turn...

I'm Alistair, the co-founder and CTO of a travel search start-up
(http://www.zoombu.co.uk). Our office is in Putney, but I live in
Oxford and work remotely for a few days a week.

We started using scrum almost two years ago and since then we have
done weekly or fortnightly sprints. Introducing scrum meant that we
switched from there being about three months between releases, to
going into production every 1-2 weeks. Over time, the way we use scrum
has evolved and I am interested to learn about how other people
implement scrum and use other agile processes in practice; and
hopefully share a bit of what we have learnt that works well.

I have plenty of questions too about the challenges that crop up for
us, and I would also like to meet more people in the Oxford developer
community.

Cheers,

Alistair

[leo]

> > Your turn...

I'm Leo, founder of a small Drupal web agency based in the North West,
but I've recently relocated back down to Oxford area where I grew up.

We have a small team < 10 who work out of our Carlisle office - I
manage them remotely.
Our work is varied from 1 person projects that are completed within a
couple of weeks, right through to our largest current project that has
spanned 6 iterations, 14 months and involved a team of 8 spread across
us and our client agency!

Personally I'm a creative, have dabbled with development but now I'm
firmly in a management role.
I've an overview understanding of various Agile methodologies, but I
haven't ever had any formal training.

Essentially I'm seeking info as to what, when and how I should apply
more formal structure to our firmly agile ethos as our team grows.

Cheers,
Leo

[James Christie]

I'm James, a user-centered designer at the local branch of Pearson Education.
I started as a web designer about 11 years ago, then trained up in
usability engineering and information architecture. On most projects I
do the job of turning requirements into stories, criteria, and
prototypes.

I've been in a few Agile projects, using Scrum, others pseudo-scrum
(which basically means, "Do whatever, badly"). On all of them I've
never fully understood how the UX / designer person is meant to
perform - I get the feeling that I'm doing agile wrong, or that I
could be shaping the process more.

So I hope to come and hear how other teams integrate UX functions into
Agile, and about Agile generally.

[James Geall]

<snip/>

 

Your turn...

I am another James. I am a contractor/consultant and have been trying to practice agile techniques wherever I have worked since 2004 with varying degrees of success. 

 

Primarily I work in a development role and several of those roles have included helping/mentoring the teams I have worked along side to "do agile", from both top down and bottom up. 

 

The result of 6 years practicing agile techniques is that I firmly believe that agile disciplines consistently produce the best results, but that it can be pretty hard working out how to get to being agile.  Oh, and I am still near the bottom of the mountain but I am climbing it slowly.

 

I did the scrum master course earlier this year and mentioned to the trainers that I wanted to get an agile group together in oxford, and they put me in touch with Ed. 

I am looking forwards to exploring new issues and ideas from the group as well as discussing how others see agile and how they have solved their challenges.

[Al Power]

Hi,

I'm another Alistair (usually going by Al if that helps) who works
alongside Chris at Nominet. I've been working there for just over four
years, and have had the same 'agile at work' experience that Chris
describes. Currently I run a small web team who are responsible for
development of Nominet's web systems. I code mainly in Java, using
Freemarker on the front end along with HTML, CSS, web standards etc.
At the moment I'm working on primarily UX focused projects.

In previous job I have worked in the healthcare informatics and
content management sectors, all for small companies, usually always
doing web development, in JSP, ASP, .net, and Coldfusion.

In terms of Agile experience outside of work, I've attended the Agile
Methods course at http://www.softeng.ox.ac.uk/ (highly recommended)
but as my Agile methods practice is occasional at best, I need a lot
more hands on experience.

Like James, I'm interested to hear how other teams integrate UX

functions into Agile, and about Agile generally.

cheers,
Al
http://alpower.com

[Matthew]

Hi everyone.

I'm a project manager at Oxford University Press, working more often
than not on online projects. Our design and development work is
usually outsourced, so I'm generally responsible for ensuring that
suppliers and my internal stakeholders are sharing the right kind of
information, understanding each other, and keeping things moving.

My exposure to agile is fairly limited, though we did see one very
successful project through in which our supplier took us down that
path. That was a great experience, so I'm keen to learn more, and to
think about how we can better work with suppliers who use agile
methods.

I can't join you all next week, unfortunately, but I hope to join you
next time. Have fun!

Matthew Hutchings

[Jason Field]

On 3 November 2010 22:06, Ed Wong <e...@projectslittlehelper.com> wrote:

Here's a thread where you can introduce yourselves. 

Hi all,

I am the development group resource manager for Oxford Instruments Magnetic Resonance near Abingdon. We make scientific instrumentation mainly for NMR and MRI applications. I have been slowly pushing the software side of the development team towards a more agile way of working, and would love to hear some 'stories from the trenches' from others who have been running agile projects. 

One of the key issues that we face that might be different to most is that we design and manufacture hardware as well as software. The long lead times involved in hardware manufacture make for some interesting tensions when setting software goals and trying to work iteratively. If anyone has any thoughts on optimising this process I'm all ears!

I should be able to make it to the gathering next week, so I look forward to meeting some like-minded souls.

Cheers,

Jason

[Marc Carlucci]

On 3 November 2010 22:06, Ed Wong <e...@projectslittlehelper.com> wrote:

Here's a thread where you can introduce yourselves. 

Hello,

I'm Marc Carlucci, a freelance software developer, mainly using PHP/MySQL. 

I have a limited practical knowledge of Agile Methodology, writing unit and functional testing and user stories.

I'm interested in listening and exchanging ideas on using Agile Methodology so I can applied them with clients when freelancing.

I'll be in next week.

Thanks Ed for setting that up!

Marc Carlucci

07866 480 715