I went to two sessions today.

The First Session

The first was on test driving the development of client/server application which was essentially a Shout/Echo server. It was written in ruby and the first half of the presentation was ok (I didn’t stay for the second half). The presenter drove the audience through a live coding session of implementing the server using test/unit.

I didn’t take too much away from this presentation. I know ruby, I know ruby’s socket library, I do TDD and I know test/unit very well. It was a good presentation overall and would be a good introduction for someone who perhaps wanted to learn ruby and/or TDD, or wanted to sharpen their skills on ruby’s socket library.

The Second Session

The second session was on Agile Myths. It was a collaborative and interactive session. The two presenters presented a list of 20 agile myths that they had heard while consulting. They also added in myths from the audience. After a quick high level overview of each myth they took out large manila folders and listed out each myth, and the audience formed groups of about five and every group picked a few myths.

The focus of each group was to either support the myth or debunk the myth, and they had to backup their claim. At the end each myth and supporting claim was discussed as a whole audience. This led to some very interesting discussions. After hearing opposing arguments on alot of the myths and claims I feel more confident being a true practitioner of agile methods.

Some of the myths that were debunked were:

• Agile is all or nothing
• Agile doesn’t produce documentation
• Agile doesn’t commit to a deadline
• Agile developers are just Cowboy programmers who don’t want to follow a process.

What agile myths have you heard?