SSW Update - FireBootCamp is one week away from ignition!
Microsoft Gold Partner Logo
SSW TV

[the cutting edge ]

G'day Developers!

The SPARROW project for Brisbane Catholic Education: When Scrum fosters collaboration

BCE Sparrow
Figure: BCE SPARROW uses a 'metro' design with all the latest Nuget packages for elegant, consistent and usable design

The benefits of continually improving our processes and practices around the Scrum methodology were never more apparent than with the project we have recently completed for Brisbane Catholic Education (BCE).
As developers, we’ve all worked on projects where the level of collaboration can break down due to any number of factors such as scope creep, availability of the Product Owner, ill-defined requirements or inadequate testing. One of the strongest benefits of Scrum is the focus on communication and feedback to alleviate these symptoms.

The BCE SPARROW Project
The SPARROW project is an extranet site designed to assist school principals when performing long term strategic planning for their school. As such, this was a project with many stakeholders.
On arrival, we found that BCE were ready for Scrum. They had tried applying agile principles to their own projects previously and were interested in formalizing the process. Following Scrum helped us to build a single collaborative development team comprising developers and a designer from SSW with testers and IT staff from BCE. The SSW team for this project included Damian Brady, Adam Stephensen, Brendan Richards, Ben Cull and Rebecca Liu.

Client Role: The Product Owner
It was a pleasure to work with an excellent Product Owner from BCE, Kerry Edwards-Williams. Kerry performed brilliantly at managing the diversity of stakeholder input to give the develoment team a single source of truth for tasks on the Product Backlog. For more information on this key role see What is a Product Owner.

"I would not undertake any other project without using the Scrum methodology. I think it's absolutely exceptional. It's fantastic. I think my favorite thing about working on the project, was learning about the scrum methodology... and working with the SSW team... I'd highly recommend them to anybody." - Kerry Edwards-Williams.

Client Role: The Tester
BCE Testers, led by Latha Matta, used Microsoft Test Manager to provide excellent bug reports directly into TFS – as per our rule: Do you know the three steps to a PBI?
Making client testers part of the development team worked to break down barriers between client and vendor and fostered mutual understanding and respect. This, in turn, led to fantastic turnaround times in identifying and responding to issues.

For Adam’s whole blog post including technical details, keep reading!

Of course, you can learn for yourself everything about how we build awesome web applications at our FireBootCamp.

-Adam Cogan, SSW

Got a comment for Adam?
Email Adam Cogan
Comment Adam Cogan's blog
Tweet @adamcogan

Become a World Class Developer in just 9 weeks with FireBootCamp!

Special Intensive Course

FireBootCamp

Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne, San Francisco

Special introductory cost: $3,000 + GST
Regular cost: $6,000 + GST

FireBootCamp Sydney is only 1 week away! Become a world class .NET developer in 9 weeks starting on the 20th January. There are a few places left, so go to www.firebootcamp.com to find out more

The FireBootCamp program is an intensive, full-time, 9-week program. Participants learn, work and code together for 10-12 hours per day, 5 days a week. There are exercise and food breaks, but for the main the program is continual hands-on learning.

The program focuses on real world skills including agile software development practices, enterprise architecture, application life cycle, end-to-end testing and user interface design. The technology stack covers .NET MVC, TypeScript, JavaScript & jQuery and uses Microsoft Visual Studio 2013.

Scheduled Boot Camps:

Sydney BootCamp #1
20th JAN 2014 – 21st MAR 2014
Brisbane BootCamp #1
7th APR 2014 – 6th JUN 2014
San Francisco BootCamp #1
23rd JUN 2014 – 22nd AUG 2014
Sydney BootCamp #2
23rd JUN 2014 – 22nd AUG 2014
Melbourne BootCamp #1
8th SEP 2014 – 7th NOV 2014

Find out more and Register

Windows Phone 8 Development with Microsoft MVP Michael Crump

In this video, SSW TV’s Adam Stephensen is joined by Michael Crump, who dives into his experiences developing for Windows Phone 8.

Michael is an MVP who works for our good friends at Telerik. He has written for MSDN, he is a PluralSight author and he has spoken all over the world.

In this video, they discuss:

  • The phones that Michael has in his arsenal
  • Pain points developing for the Windows Phone platform
  • Upgrading from Windows Phone 7 to Windows Phone 8
  • Maps control in Windows Phone 8
  • In app purchasing
  • Speech and text recognition
  • Experiences with app development
  • Getting a Cease and Desist letter for developing a Twitter app
  • Lessons learned developing for Windows Phone
  • What the future holds for the platform

This is a great video for anyone who’s thinking about developing for the Windows Phone platform.

Watch more videos on SSW TV

There's Still Time to Sign Up for the 3 Day Scrum Training!

Intensive Professional Scrum Developer Course

Scrum

Brisbane, Melbourne, Sydney, Perth, Canberra, Adelaide

Cost: $2,995 + GST

Professional Scrum Developer courses teach students how to work in a team - using modern software engineering practices - to develop an increment of potentially releasable functionality using a specific technology platform.

Classes are exercise-driven, with students working in self-organizing teams to develop "done" increments from Product Backlog items.

Course at a Glance:

This 3-day Professional Scrum Developer .NET course is a mix of lecture, demonstration, group discussion, simulation, and hands-on software development. The bulk of the course will be spent working as a team on a case study application delivering increments of new functionality in mini-sprints. Here is the course at a glance:

Scrum

Note: Scrum fundamentals are not covered in this 3-day course. If you are not experienced with Scrum fundamentals, the 5 day course is still available.

Adelaide
04 FEB 2014
Book Now Perth
10 FEB 2014
Book Now
Canberra
10 MAR 2014
Book Now Melbourne
7 APR 2014
Book Now
Sydney
28 APR 2014
Book Now

Find out more and Register

Sydney .NET January User Group

The best place to learn .NET for free in Sydney

User Group

Sydney .NET User Group
Wednesday 15th January 2014
6:00pm - 8:00pm
SSW Office
Gateway Court, Suite 13
81-91 Military Road, Neutral Bay NSW 2089


"Building highly scalable HTML5 web and mobile applications with Tribe" - Dale Anderson

It is widely accepted in the industry that messaging patterns like CQRS can facilitate massively scalable applications with loosely coupled components. Tribe takes a different approach to current single page web application frameworks by providing a full composite UI framework with a messaging platform at its core. This enables the rapid development of highly scalable applications built on patterns like CQRS in a simple and intuitive way. The platform also enables seamless, real time distribution of objects on a large scale across multiple devices.

First, we'll briefly discuss some of the concepts behind messaging patterns like CQRS. Then we'll build a simple chat application that targets both browsers and mobile devices (hopefully using a preview of the upcoming nodejs based release), showcasing how Tribe is focused around removing common pain points and repetitive tasks in developing web applications. Finally we'll cover how the concepts discussed earlier can be applied using the platform and have a quick look at the product roadmap.

About the presenter:
Dale Anderson is an exceptionally passionate software engineer. He lives and breathes the stuff every day and loves every moment.

Lucky to have been born in the age when Steve Jobs was busy changing the world, Dale fondly remembers hacking on his dad's Apple II Plus as a youngster, fervently and conscientiously transcribing code from the pages of computing magazines and then excitedly watching the green ASCII characters fly across the screen as the program came to life. Later, the idea of networking computers together fascinated him, driving his parents crazy by tying up the phone line for hours on end as the modem clicked and buzzed away at a blazing 2,400 bits every second. Dale was even nerdy enough to read the entire RFC specifications for the TCP/IP protocols and various other incredibly dry pieces of literature.

Dale has spent most of his 13+ year career focused on the Microsoft technology stack, working with a wide range of government and corporate clients, specialising in solution architecture. He has in depth knowledge of a broad range of Microsoft technologies, covering web, desktop and middleware stacks. Over the last few years, Dale founded a startup, SportingTribe, and in the process, has become an expert in open source web technologies. He has produced a number of open source projects in that domain (https://tribejs.com/ and https://packscript.com/).

To see more details and RSVP, please visit our Facebook .NET Group, our LinkedIn .NET Group or our Meetup Group.

facebook LinkedIn MeetUp

Can't make it to the Sydney .NET User Group?

Watch the Live stream!

Live stream

Tune in from anywhere!

Sydney .NET User Group Live
6PM AEDT (UTC+11)

The team at SSWTV are now streaming our User Group sessions live. Each session will also be published on the SSWTV site after the event so you can review what was said in the sessions.

Then join us at the NerdDinner

Where nerds meet and eat

NerdDinner

NerdDinner - Where geeks eat
Wednesday 15th January 2014
8:10pm - 9:30pm
The Oaks Hotel
118 Military Road, Neutral Bay

SSW and Telerik invite you to join us for pizza at The Oaks. A fantastic opportunity for networking with peers and sharing thoughts after the Sydney .NET User Group presentation.

Sydney .Net User Group and NerdDinner proudly sponsored by:

Telerik Logo

Canberra .NET User Group

The best place to learn .NET for free in Canberra

User Group Canberra .NET User Group
Monday 13th January 2014
6:00pm - 8:00pm
Microsoft Canberra Branch
Level 4, 6 National Circuit
Barton, Australia

"Building highly scalable HTML5 web and mobile applications with Tribe" - Dale Anderson

It is widely accepted in the industry that messaging patterns like CQRS can facilitate massively scalable applications with loosely coupled components. Tribe takes a different approach to current single page web application frameworks by providing a full composite UI framework with a messaging platform at its core. This enables the rapid development of highly scalable applications built on patterns like CQRS in a simple and intuitive way. The platform also enables seamless, real time distribution of objects on a large scale across multiple devices.

First, we'll briefly discuss some of the concepts behind messaging patterns like CQRS. Then we'll build a simple chat application that targets both browsers and mobile devices (hopefully using a preview of the upcoming nodejs based release), showcasing how Tribe is focused around removing common pain points and repetitive tasks in developing web applications. Finally we'll cover how the concepts discussed earlier can be applied using the platform and have a quick look at the product roadmap.

About the presenter:
Dale Anderson is an exceptionally passionate software engineer. He lives and breathes the stuff every day and loves every moment.

Lucky to have been born in the age when Steve Jobs was busy changing the world, Dale fondly remembers hacking on his dad's Apple II Plus as a youngster, fervently and conscientiously transcribing code from the pages of computing magazines and then excitedly watching the green ASCII characters fly across the screen as the program came to life. Later, the idea of networking computers together fascinated him, driving his parents crazy by tying up the phone line for hours on end as the modem clicked and buzzed away at a blazing 2,400 bits every second. Dale was even nerdy enough to read the entire RFC specifications for the TCP/IP protocols and various other incredibly dry pieces of literature.

Dale has spent most of his 13+ year career focused on the Microsoft technology stack, working with a wide range of government and corporate clients, specialising in solution architecture. He has in depth knowledge of a broad range of Microsoft technologies, covering web, desktop and middleware stacks. Over the last few years, Dale founded a startup, SportingTribe, and in the process, has become an expert in open source web technologies. He has produced a number of open source projects in that domain (https://tribejs.com/ and https://packscript.com/).

To see more details and RSVP, please visit our Facebook .NET Group, our LinkedIn .NET Group or our Meetup Group.

facebook LinkedIn MeetUp

Canberra .Net User Group proudly sponsored by:

Microsoft Logo

Advertise with SSW

If you would like to advertise your product or service with SSW or would like to find out more about various advertising opportunities, please email your enquiry to [email protected] or call: +61 2 9953 3000.

SSW Update

January 2014

Employment

ASP.NET MVC, Software Developer

SSW is looking for an enthusiastic .NET MVC (and some ASP.NET Web Forms) developer. Our ideal candidate will have strong skills designing and implementing ASP.NET MVC and Web Forms applications using C#, a good understanding of XML, HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript and a working knowledge of agile software development methodologies (preferably Scrum).

Read more and APPLY NOW...

SharePoint 2013 Developer

Are you looking to establish a career working with the latest software technology for a large range of great organisations? Do you enjoy managing your own clients in a fun, fast-paced and dynamic environment?
SSW has been the leading Microsoft technology company in Sydney for 21 years. We require an enthusiastic SharePoint developer to start ASAP.

Read more and APPLY NOW...

Proudly developed by SSW Sydney Web Design