Uncle Bob talks Agile at Chicago ALT.NET

After an unfortunate cancelation of our last meeting because of the weather, February's meeting of the Chicago ALT.NET Group should be a very interesting one.

Robert "Uncle Bob" Martin looks into XP's rearviewmirror, lessons learned, and the current status of Agile development.

XP: After 10 years, why are we still talking about it?

6:00 pm
Pizza and networking time

6:30 pm

It has been 10 years since Extreme Programming broke upon our industry. In that time we have seen the rise of the Agile movement, and the gold rush for Scrum certification. We have seen the concept of testing do a complete reversal in emphasis; and shift away from heavy planning. But what have we learned? Do we really all program in pairs? Do we really all write our tests first? Do Agile projects really fare better than others? Do we have enough data now to separate the truth from the myth? And why, after all this time, does it still dominate our conferences and conversations. Isn't there something new to talk about?

Robert C. Martin has been a software professional since 1970. In the last 35 years, he has worked in various capacities on literally hundreds of software projects. He has authored "landmark" books on Agile Programming, Extreme Programming, UML, Object-Oriented Programming, and C++ Programming. He has published dozens of articles in various trade journals. Today, He is one of the software industry's leading authorities on Agile software development and is a regular speaker at international conferences and trade shows. He is a former editor of the C++ Report and currently writes a monthly Craftsman column for Software Development magazine.

Mr. Martin is the founder, CEO, and president of Object Mentor Incorporated. Object Mentor is a sister company to Object Mentor International. Like OMI, Object Mentor is comprised of highly experienced software professionals who provide process improvement consulting, object-oriented software design consulting , training, and development services to major corporations around the world.

7:45 pm

Let's use the discussion time to go over the group topics that were planned for last meeting, which had to be canceled.

• What worked well and what didn't in 2008
• What direction should we take with our group
• Viability of our group organizing a CodeCamp soon
• Global ALT.NET participation: as suggested in this message

If you want to help define our meetings format and group actions, then come and help us in this discussion.