The ability to produce future proof and sustainable software - using modern methods and a sound approach to Software Projects - are important cornerstones of efficient Software production.

Conference Step 1 offers inspiration and updated knowledge to all Developers, Testers, Project Managers and Managers, through lectures and discussions with our internationally renowned speakers and experts. 

Conference Step 1 is held both in Växjö and Karlskrona!
Select date in the coloumn to the right, to view detailed session abstracts.

Overview of Session Titles & Speakers:

One of the key activities within agile development is continuous planning. Using short feedback cycles the whole team will be able to improve the estimates and help the customer to understand what his or her requirements really are.

This will make the planning more and more precise over time and allows for strategic software development and risk reduction.

After a short presentation, participants will experience how this can be done in practice. This simulation will illustrate agile estimation methods, the concept of (development) velocity and as well continuous learning via retrospectives.

From a user perspective, the IT industry has a lousy reputation. The IT department consistently delivers late, if we deliver at all. We often hear that this isn't what the user wanted, or asked for, or that it isn't fit for purpose. It's too slow, it's the wrong colour, people don't do it like that any more - the market has moved on.

Behaviour-driven development (BDD) is an attempt to address this situation. With roots in agile software delivery, behavioural psychology and learning theory, BDD brings together everyone involved in the software lifecycle: users, developers, testers, analysts and the poor operations and systems folk who have to support our systems. It breaks away from the us-and-them mentality to create a shared understanding between business and technical people.

This workshop introduces BDD over four sessions, showing how it works, and more importantly why it works. It also shows how you can start using BDD successfully on your own projects and deliver software that matters to your business.

Session 1: Agile Software Delivery (80 mins)

Why are we so poor at writing software that is fit for purpose? Even when we deliver something, we often find it doesn't solve the original business objective. This session looks at how the IT industry has grown up around engineering principles that tie us in to unhelpful development practices. It introduces the principles of agile software delivery, that allow us to react to changing requirements and information, based on feedback and open communication.

Session 2: How BDD works (80 mins)

Behaviour-driven development is a "second generation" agile methodology. It freely borrows from established, successful approaches such as test-driven development, domain-driven design, acceptance test-driven planning and other proven practices, bringing them under a single, holistic framework. This session introduces BDD as an "outside-in" methodology - starting from the business objective and only writing software that helps meet that objective.

Session 3: Why BDD works (80 mins)

BDD grew out of the challenges I was facing as a coach on agile software teams. From a non-technical perspective, its roots are in neuro-linguistic programming (NLP), behavioural psychology, learning theory and life coaching. This session explores some of these themes and explains why BDD works and how it evolved.

Session 4: Introducing BDD to your team (80 mins)

This session is about how change works, and how to introduce change into your team or organisation in a sustainable way. Different people react differently to change. This session explores why this happens and provides you with techniques to introduce BDD into your working environment in a way that will support and encourage your team members.

Retrospective

We will spend some time at the end of the day reviewing what we have learned.

Over the years, the Open Source Spring Framework has grown into the de-facto standard for doing Enterprise Java Development. While developing Spring, we have learned valuable lessons about successful framework design. In this session, we are going to share these lessons.

The session will take the form of a number of freestanding items, each showing one specific rule for designing a good framework.

Patterns, antipatterns, organizational tricks and code samples are described in a pragmatic fashion.

 is a senior enterprise application architect with more than ten years' experience in commercial software environments. Three years ago, Arjen started to specialise in Web Services and Service Oriented Architectures. During this period he has conducted trainings and has researched SOAs in large organisations.

Arjen is the founder and the project lead for the Spring Web Services. Arjen has also contributed to various other open source projects, including XFire, NEO and others.

Curious about Test-Driven Development? Heard a lot about it, but never had a chance to really try it?

This tutorial will give you hands-on experience with Test-Driven Development in C# or VB.NET.

Bring your laptop with Visual Studio 2005 installed and you'll get a real Test-Driven kick-start! We will provide you with the additional tools/frameworks you'll need. You will get a feeling for what it's like to make changes to a system that has a lot of tests (no more "this looks ugly, but I don't have the guts to change it"). You'll also experience how writing test code before writing the production code changes the way you think about and design your production code. The tutorial will introduce you to Test-Driven Development, refactoring, unit-testing frameworks, and mock frameworks.

You'll have the opportunity to try these for yourself in C# or VB.NET, with the presenter helping out and answering your questions.

 is first and foremost a developer with more than 20 years of experience. He has also written the books ".Net Enterprise Design" and "Applying Domain-Driven Design and Patterns".

Successful software delivery is about more than just being a good programmer, tester or analyst. The process of creating software to solve business problems requires many social interactions both within a team and with external stakeholders. This workshop explores how people learn and communicate with one another and provides techniques for coaching software teams.

Throughout the workshop, there will be interactive exercises that allow delegates to practise the techniques as they are introduced.

Session 1: How learning works

This session explores how people learn. We look at three popular learning models and talk about how they impact the process of teaching and learning. We also explore various techniques for giving and receiving effective feedback. This background will underpin the other sessions throughout the day.

Session 2: How communication works

The ability to communicate with other individuals - or groups of people - is a critical skill for a successful coach. This session introduces the principles of neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) around creating rapport and communicating effectively with others.

Session 3: How coaching works

A successful software coach is able to interpret and react to different team dynamics. The team's responsibility is to deliver a solution; the coach's responsibility is to deliver a team. Much of the skill of a coach is in knowing what to say and when to say it, and just as importantly when to say nothing and just listen. This session looks at teams and team dynamics and provides techniques and insights into how to create a happy and functional team.

Session 4: How change works

This session is about how change works, and how to introduce change into your team or organisation in a sustainable way. Different people react differently to change. This session explores why this happens and provides you with techniques to introduce new processes or technologies into your team in a way that will support and encourage your team members.

Retrospective

We will spend some time at the end of the day reviewing what we have learned.

has been writing software for about 18 years and has been a developer and agile coach for software development consultancy ThoughtWorks since 2002. He gets very excited about helping teams become more effective at delivering software. He thinks writing software shouldn't be that hard and that people should talk to each other more.  

Many teams, projects and even organizations are in the meantime following an agile process. However, not always successfully. If you're looking behind the scenery, you will find out that although the agile practices like pair programming or test-driven development are used properly, the agile value system is not implemented. This is due to the fact that the practices can support agility but they can not establish agility. This leads to an expectation mismatch regarding acceptance and success of agile development.

With her experience in helping projects all over Europe to establish the agile value system, Jutta will point out what to look out for when appliying agility.

 is an experienced independent consultant and trainer from Braunschweig, Germany, for agile software development. She has unique experience in applying agile processes within medium-sized to large mission-critical projects.

On the one hand there are currently not many projects left that are made at home without outsourcing, off- or nearshoring.

On the other hand more and more projects discover the success factor of agile development which requests - among other things - an emphasis on face-to-face communication.

In this tutorial, Jutta will report from her experiences in bringing these two trends together and which practices help and which hinder the success of a project

  is an experienced independent consultant and trainer from Braunschweig, Germany, for agile software development. She has unique experience in applying agile processes within medium-sized to large mission-critical projects.

Over the years, the Open Source Spring Framework has grown into the de-facto standard for doing Enterprise Java Development. While developing Spring, we have learned valuable lessons about successful framework design. In this session, we are going to share these lessons.

The session will take the form of a number of freestanding items, each showing one specific rule for designing a good framework.

Patterns, antipatterns, organizational tricks and code samples are described in a pragmatic fashion.

 is a senior enterprise application architect with more than ten years' experience in commercial software environments. Three years ago, Arjen started to specialise in Web Services and Service Oriented Architectures. During this period he has conducted trainings and has researched SOAs in large organisations.

Arjen is the founder and the project lead for the Spring Web Services. Arjen has also contributed to various other open source projects, including XFire, NEO and others.

Java is both a language and a platform, and even though the Java language is still going strong, interesting options for integration with other languages are showing up on the Java platform.

JRuby is one of the most interesting additions to the Java platform.

JRuby makes it possible to mix Java and Ruby on the JVM; Ruby code can call Java code and vice versa, and Sun is actively involved in JRuby (not the least by hiring two of the main developers).

Ruby is a fully object-oriented dynamic language on the rise and programmers who try Ruby reports a significantly higher productivity than they have in their traditional languages, especially due to the flexibility in the Ruby language and its powerful constructs.

In this hands-on workshop, you will get to program in Ruby and learn how to mix Java and Ruby code. The language basics and its dynamic parts will be analyzed and explained and you will get the opportunity to experiment and understand where the productivity gains comes from, while having guidance at your service.

No previous Ruby experience is expected, but Java knowledge is expected.

is a coach, developer, educator and writer with a deep passion for the software development craft. He believes that a lot of things really do make a difference in software development, like the languages, tools and processes you use.

This belief is the reason behind his love for things like agile processes, dynamic languages, code generation and domain-driven design - and also the reason he is very curious about what amazing things the future may hold.