My personal highlights from JAX 2011

I spent the past few days visiting the JAX 2011 conference in Mainz. And again, like the past years, it was great to meet a lot of interesting and nice people there. Aside of that, I wrote up some short notes about my personal highlights of JAX 2011 for jaxenter (in German), so if you are interested, take a look. I especially recommend to watch the Kata video with Arne Roock demoing a real Karate Kata. Enjoy!

I spent the past few days visiting the JAX 2011 conference in Mainz. And again, like the past years, it was great to meet a lot of interesting and nice people there. Aside of that, I wrote up some short notes about my personal highlights of JAX 2011 for jaxenter (in German), so if you are interested, take a look. I especially recommend to watch the Kata video with Arne Roock demoing a real Karate Kata. Enjoy!

My personal highlights from JAX 2011

Slides from Spring Tooing Talk at JAX 2011

Yesterday I gave a short talk at JAX 2011 called "Spring Tooling - What's Cooking". During the talk I gave an overview of the Spring tooling landscape, demoed some nice features of Spring IDE and the SpringSource Tool Suite and deployed a small Spring app into the hosted cloudfoundy.com PaaS as well as into a local CloudFoundry cloud running exclusively on my notebook. Was fun doing that all in 30min... :-)

Here are the slides from that talk:

• Spring Tooling - What's Cooking (pdf)

The slides also contain the part that I didn't talked about (the team behind Spring IDE and STS, challenges of distributed agile development and our release cycles). So if you missed that from the talk, take a look at those slides.

Yesterday I gave a short talk at JAX 2011 called "Spring Tooling - What's Cooking". During the talk I gave an overview of the Spring tooling landscape, demoed some nice features of Spring IDE and the SpringSource Tool Suite and deployed a small Spring app into the hosted cloudfoundy.com PaaS as well as into a local CloudFoundry cloud running exclusively on my notebook. Was fun doing that all in 30min... :-)

Here are the slides from that talk:

• Spring Tooling - What's Cooking (pdf)

The slides also contain the part that I didn't talked about (the team behind Spring IDE and STS, challenges of distributed agile development and our release cycles). So if you missed that from the talk, take a look at those slides.

Slides from Spring Tooing Talk at JAX 2011

Slides from Nordic Coding Talk

Just a few minutes ago I finished my talk at the Nordic Coding Event in Kiel about my lessons learned using OSGi. Here are the slides, if you wanna take a look:

• OSGi kurzgefasst - und warum gute Medizin bitter sein kann (pdf, in German)

Enjoy!

Just a few minutes ago I finished my talk at the Nordic Coding Event in Kiel about my lessons learned using OSGi. Here are the slides, if you wanna take a look:

• OSGi kurzgefasst - und warum gute Medizin bitter sein kann (pdf, in German)

Enjoy!

Slides from Nordic Coding Talk

Slides from Berlin Expert Days 2011

Yesterday I was invited to the Berlin Expert Days 2011 to give two talks, one on my lessons learned from using and coaching agile development methods and techniques and one about my OSGi experiences. Here are the slides now:

• 10 Agile Years Later - Lessons Learned (pdf, in German)
• OSGi Best and Worst Practices (pdf)

Thanks again for inviting me to this nice event!

Yesterday I was invited to the Berlin Expert Days 2011 to give two talks, one on my lessons learned from using and coaching agile development methods and techniques and one about my OSGi experiences. Here are the slides now:

• 10 Agile Years Later - Lessons Learned (pdf, in German)
• OSGi Best and Worst Practices (pdf)

Thanks again for inviting me to this nice event!

Slides from Berlin Expert Days 2011

Talk at Nordic Coding - and why OSGi is sometimes a bitter pill

I am happy to be invited to speak at the upcoming Nordic Coding Event in Kiel at April 15th about OSGi. The title of the talk is: "A quick tour through OSGi - and why it is sometimes a bitter pill". So after giving a short introduction about the basic principles of OSGi and explaining why its often indispensable medicine for your project, I will talk about my experiences using OSGi for many years now. And I will talk about why that medicine could be a necessary, but quite bitter pill for you and your project.

I am happy to be invited to speak at the upcoming Nordic Coding Event in Kiel at April 15th about OSGi. The title of the talk is: "A quick tour through OSGi - and why it is sometimes a bitter pill". So after giving a short introduction about the basic principles of OSGi and explaining why its often indispensable medicine for your project, I will talk about my experiences using OSGi for many years now. And I will talk about why that medicine could be a necessary, but quite bitter pill for you and your project.

Talk at Nordic Coding - and why OSGi is sometimes a bitter pill

Berlin Expert Days

I will be speaking at the Berlin Expert Days about my experiences from using agile methods over the past 10 years as well as some lessons learned from using OSGi for different kind of settings and situations. Looking forward to meet you at the event on April 7th in Berlin! :-)

I will be speaking at the Berlin Expert Days about my experiences from using agile methods over the past 10 years as well as some lessons learned from using OSGi for different kind of settings and situations. Looking forward to meet you at the event on April 7th in Berlin! :-)

Berlin Expert Days

Upcoming Event: JAX 2011

I am pretty happy to participate in the upcoming JAX 2011 conference in Mainz, Germany as part of the Eclipse Tools Day (organized by Lars Vogel). In my talk "Spring Tooling - What's cooking" I will talk about the stuff I am doing in my job all day: building Eclipse-based tooling for the Spring development platform. Aside of showing some of the nice features we built into this tooling (like direct deployment to different PaaS clouds and nice improvements for annotation-based spring programming) I will also take a look under the hood. I will take a look at the challenges and problems building this tooling on top of the Eclipse platform and how we adressed them.

See you at JAX 2011 in Mainz!

I am pretty happy to participate in the upcoming JAX 2011 conference in Mainz, Germany as part of the Eclipse Tools Day (organized by Lars Vogel). In my talk "Spring Tooling - What's cooking" I will talk about the stuff I am doing in my job all day: building Eclipse-based tooling for the Spring development platform. Aside of showing some of the nice features we built into this tooling (like direct deployment to different PaaS clouds and nice improvements for annotation-based spring programming) I will also take a look under the hood. I will take a look at the challenges and problems building this tooling on top of the Eclipse platform and how we adressed them.

See you at JAX 2011 in Mainz!

Upcoming Event: JAX 2011

Slides from WJAX 2010: Agile Practices in the Real World

Last November I gave a talk at the WJAX conference in Munich together with Matthias Lübken about our experiences using agile methods in difficult settings. We went trough our observations adapting or replacing typical agile practices with different ones when necessary and talked about what worked and what didn't. The slides are in a lightweight style, so the real content of our talk was spoken only. Nevertheless you can find the slideware we used here:

• Agile Techniken ungeschminkt (pdf)

Enjoy!

Last November I gave a talk at the WJAX conference in Munich together with Matthias Lübken about our experiences using agile methods in difficult settings. We went trough our observations adapting or replacing typical agile practices with different ones when necessary and talked about what worked and what didn't. The slides are in a lightweight style, so the real content of our talk was spoken only. Nevertheless you can find the slideware we used here:

• Agile Techniken ungeschminkt (pdf)

Enjoy!

Slides from WJAX 2010: Agile Practices in the Real World

Upcoming Event: Eclipse Summit India 2011

I've been invited to speak at the upcoming Eclipse Summit India at May 26th + 27th in Bangelore, India. The current plan is to talk about:

• OSGi Best and Worst Practices
• Module Systems and Architectures
• Bytecode Weaving in OSGi
• Classloading and Type Visibility in OSGi

See you in Bangalore!

I've been invited to speak at the upcoming Eclipse Summit India at May 26th + 27th in Bangelore, India. The current plan is to talk about:

• OSGi Best and Worst Practices
• Module Systems and Architectures
• Bytecode Weaving in OSGi
• Classloading and Type Visibility in OSGi

See you in Bangalore!

Upcoming Event: Eclipse Summit India 2011

Spring Extension Factory now on Github

Two years ago I wrote a tiny little piece of software that lets you combine Spring Dynamic Modules and the Equinox Extension Registry in an easy way. Now I found the time to put this SpringExtensionFactory on Github. So if you ever wanted to use Spring Dynamic Modules to inject dependencies into your RCP view and editors - take a look, its quite simple to use... :-)

Two years ago I wrote a tiny little piece of software that lets you combine Spring Dynamic Modules and the Equinox Extension Registry in an easy way. Now I found the time to put this SpringExtensionFactory on Github. So if you ever wanted to use Spring Dynamic Modules to inject dependencies into your RCP view and editors - take a look, its quite simple to use... :-)

Spring Extension Factory now on Github

Two things...

The end of September is approaching fast, so its time for me to announce two things...

First the sad part of the story: I will leave it-agile at the end of this month. The reason behind this is basically that I am sick of traveling. Don't misunderstand me, I always tried to make my traveling as comfortable as possible (and it was quite comfortable). But I wish to spent more time being in my home town, being with the family, with my two wonderful kids.

I founded it-agile about six years ago, together with great colleagues and friends to start something new, something great about agile software development, something with true employee participation, where transparency becomes reality, something open for cooperations and with honesty to all our customers. We wanted to build a company that makes a real difference, that doesn't promise everything just to get the contract, that isn't focussed and dogmatic on some religion, a consulting company that doesn't know it better just because we are consultants.

And today, looking back over the past six years, I am so proud that we got it all to work. All wishes became true - and we built a really great company. I learned a lot over the past years and I have to thank all of my colleagues within it-agile and within the projects I was involved in for this absolutely awesome and unforgettable time.

What comes next? I got the chance to join the people at the SpringSource devision of VMware to become part of the STS (SpringSource Tool Suite) team. These are the guys behind the STS, AJDT and the Eclipse Groovy tooling and I am looking forward to work with this great team on amazing developer tooling - and I think (and hope) that I will have some more time to work on some open-source projects, including Equinox Weaving. And last but not least, I will mostly work in Hamburg, my lovely home town... :-)

See you at WJAX in Munich this year!

The end of September is approaching fast, so its time for me to announce two things...

First the sad part of the story: I will leave it-agile at the end of this month. The reason behind this is basically that I am sick of traveling. Don't misunderstand me, I always tried to make my traveling as comfortable as possible (and it was quite comfortable). But I wish to spent more time being in my home town, being with the family, with my two wonderful kids.

I founded it-agile about six years ago, together with great colleagues and friends to start something new, something great about agile software development, something with true employee participation, where transparency becomes reality, something open for cooperations and with honesty to all our customers. We wanted to build a company that makes a real difference, that doesn't promise everything just to get the contract, that isn't focussed and dogmatic on some religion, a consulting company that doesn't know it better just because we are consultants.

And today, looking back over the past six years, I am so proud that we got it all to work. All wishes became true - and we built a really great company. I learned a lot over the past years and I have to thank all of my colleagues within it-agile and within the projects I was involved in for this absolutely awesome and unforgettable time.

What comes next? I got the chance to join the people at the SpringSource devision of VMware to become part of the STS (SpringSource Tool Suite) team. These are the guys behind the STS, AJDT and the Eclipse Groovy tooling and I am looking forward to work with this great team on amazing developer tooling - and I think (and hope) that I will have some more time to work on some open-source projects, including Equinox Weaving. And last but not least, I will mostly work in Hamburg, my lovely home town... :-)

See you at WJAX in Munich this year!

Two things...

SE-Radio Episode with Kent Beck is Online

The latest episode on Software Engineering Radio went online yesterday and covers an interview I did with Kent Beck on the history of JUnit and the future of testing and software engineering. I am pretty excited that we got Kent on the show and have him talk about these topics. He is definitely one of the most influential guys in software engineering these days - father of extreme programming, inventor of unit testing, co-creator of JUnit, co-creator of the agile movement, created test-driven development - to name just a few things he created/invented that changed the daily life of many software developers across the planet. I don't know why it took more than 160 episodes to have him on the show, but I think this was not the last episode on SE-Radio talking with Kent Beck... :-)

The latest episode on Software Engineering Radio went online yesterday and covers an interview I did with Kent Beck on the history of JUnit and the future of testing and software engineering. I am pretty excited that we got Kent on the show and have him talk about these topics. He is definitely one of the most influential guys in software engineering these days - father of extreme programming, inventor of unit testing, co-creator of JUnit, co-creator of the agile movement, created test-driven development - to name just a few things he created/invented that changed the daily life of many software developers across the planet. I don't know why it took more than 160 episodes to have him on the show, but I think this was not the last episode on SE-Radio talking with Kent Beck... :-)

SE-Radio Episode with Kent Beck is Online

Some More Thoughts on Software Architectures

Some month ago I wrote a blog post about some of my thoughts on software architecture and why I think the metaphor of a cathedral is no longer very useful for todays software development. I don't mean that you don't need an architecture when you do agile software development. A good software architecture is absolutely necessary to survive. It is an essential part of each system.

Nevertheless agile software development is based on the idea of embracing change. "Inspect and Adapt" is the secret of success in agile development. The structure of your software emerges over time when you constantly refactor your code. But is this also true for the architecture of the system? Does this architecture emerge over time as well? Or is it adaptable when life changes?

I discussed this a lot over the past years with various people. We typically found two basic contrasting (for this posting simplified) opinions:

• Opinion 1: The architecture includes the most important technical decisions. It is hard to change those things later on. Therefore the architecture should be defined at the beginning of a project and should experience only minor changes. Major changes in the architecture are considered a bad thing and should be avoided.
• Opinion 2: The architecture of a system is an artifact that emerges over time. It reacts to change by embracing it. Changing the architecture of a system is considered a good thing and part may be part of your daily live.

While I was always an opinion-2-guy, I always had to admit that some parts of the architecture of a system are hard to change. So changing a large rich-client app to a web-based app might be expensive. The same might be true for changing the implementation language or refactoring a classical three-tier app into a Quasar-like structure.

Then I recorded SE-Radio podcast episode 166 with John Wiegand and listened to him talking about what he calls "Living Architectures":

• SE-Radio Episode 166: Living Architectures with John Wiegand

During the episode he explains the basic architectural decisions behind the Eclipse platform and the Jazz project at IBM. Both architectures are surprisingly simple. They define the general idea of how parts of the system are built and interact. And both don't contain a single word about those things I mentioned above. Even the language is an implementation detail.

The Jazz system is, for example, built around the idea of the web. RESTful services define the heart of the structure. It doesn't matter how those services are implemented, which frameworks they use or how they are internally structured. The whole system might consists out of various languages, various runtime platforms, various infrastructure settings. Even object-orientation becomes an implementation detail of individual services. All things I often thought of being part of the general architecture. But now I know that I was terribly wrong about this.

Of course there are things that are expensive to change. Reimplementing a huge system with a different language might cost you a lot. But the question is: Why do you need to reimplement everything if you switch to another implementation language? The RESTful style, for example, doesn't require such a tight language binding. Its just an example, but it made me think. And it convinced me that "the definition of architecture as the set of things that are hard or expensive to change" leads into the wrong direction.

Architectures are living things. Don't treat them as dead artifacts. And don't be afraid of change. Its a good thing. It reflects your learning. It helps you build better systems.

Some month ago I wrote a blog post about some of my thoughts on software architecture and why I think the metaphor of a cathedral is no longer very useful for todays software development. I don't mean that you don't need an architecture when you do agile software development. A good software architecture is absolutely necessary to survive. It is an essential part of each system.

Nevertheless agile software development is based on the idea of embracing change. "Inspect and Adapt" is the secret of success in agile development. The structure of your software emerges over time when you constantly refactor your code. But is this also true for the architecture of the system? Does this architecture emerge over time as well? Or is it adaptable when life changes?

I discussed this a lot over the past years with various people. We typically found two basic contrasting (for this posting simplified) opinions:

• Opinion 1: The architecture includes the most important technical decisions. It is hard to change those things later on. Therefore the architecture should be defined at the beginning of a project and should experience only minor changes. Major changes in the architecture are considered a bad thing and should be avoided.
• Opinion 2: The architecture of a system is an artifact that emerges over time. It reacts to change by embracing it. Changing the architecture of a system is considered a good thing and part may be part of your daily live.

While I was always an opinion-2-guy, I always had to admit that some parts of the architecture of a system are hard to change. So changing a large rich-client app to a web-based app might be expensive. The same might be true for changing the implementation language or refactoring a classical three-tier app into a Quasar-like structure.

Then I recorded SE-Radio podcast episode 166 with John Wiegand and listened to him talking about what he calls "Living Architectures":

• SE-Radio Episode 166: Living Architectures with John Wiegand

During the episode he explains the basic architectural decisions behind the Eclipse platform and the Jazz project at IBM. Both architectures are surprisingly simple. They define the general idea of how parts of the system are built and interact. And both don't contain a single word about those things I mentioned above. Even the language is an implementation detail.

The Jazz system is, for example, built around the idea of the web. RESTful services define the heart of the structure. It doesn't matter how those services are implemented, which frameworks they use or how they are internally structured. The whole system might consists out of various languages, various runtime platforms, various infrastructure settings. Even object-orientation becomes an implementation detail of individual services. All things I often thought of being part of the general architecture. But now I know that I was terribly wrong about this.

Of course there are things that are expensive to change. Reimplementing a huge system with a different language might cost you a lot. But the question is: Why do you need to reimplement everything if you switch to another implementation language? The RESTful style, for example, doesn't require such a tight language binding. Its just an example, but it made me think. And it convinced me that "the definition of architecture as the set of things that are hard or expensive to change" leads into the wrong direction.

Architectures are living things. Don't treat them as dead artifacts. And don't be afraid of change. Its a good thing. It reflects your learning. It helps you build better systems.

Some More Thoughts on Software Architectures

Slides from Java-Forum-Stuttgart 2010

I gave a talk about some lessons learned when using OSGi in various settings at this years Java-Forum-Stuttgart. It's pretty much the talk I gave together with Chris Anisczcyk, Jeff McAffer and Paul VanderLei at this years EclipseCon. Here are the slides we used:

• OSGi Lessons Learned: Best and Worst Practices (pdf)

Enjoy!

I gave a talk about some lessons learned when using OSGi in various settings at this years Java-Forum-Stuttgart. It's pretty much the talk I gave together with Chris Anisczcyk, Jeff McAffer and Paul VanderLei at this years EclipseCon. Here are the slides we used:

• OSGi Lessons Learned: Best and Worst Practices (pdf)

Enjoy!

Slides from Java-Forum-Stuttgart 2010

Eclipse Demo Camp in Hamburg on July 9th - Don't miss it!!!

The upcoming Eclipse Helios Demp Camp in Hamburg on July 9th will be really amazing. Peter and myself are working on a great program for this event and we already have good ideas and suggestions. Apart from that we have organized a new location. The demo camp will take place in the Magazin-Kino in Hamburg, a cinema just for us for this evening. As you can imagine, popcorn, ice-cream, and soft-drinks will be ready for you as well as some more surprises! So don't miss it!!! Join us on July 9th, register here: Helios Demo Camp Hamburg Wiki Page.

See you at the cinema!!!

P.S.: There is no soccer game (FIFA World Cup) that evening. So there is no reason not to come... :-)

The upcoming Eclipse Helios Demp Camp in Hamburg on July 9th will be really amazing. Peter and myself are working on a great program for this event and we already have good ideas and suggestions. Apart from that we have organized a new location. The demo camp will take place in the Magazin-Kino in Hamburg, a cinema just for us for this evening. As you can imagine, popcorn, ice-cream, and soft-drinks will be ready for you as well as some more surprises! So don't miss it!!! Join us on July 9th, register here: Helios Demo Camp Hamburg Wiki Page.

See you at the cinema!!!

P.S.: There is no soccer game (FIFA World Cup) that evening. So there is no reason not to come... :-)

Eclipse Demo Camp in Hamburg on July 9th - Don't miss it!!!

Slides from JAX-2010

I gave a bunch of talks together with colleagues at the JAX 2010 conference last week in Mainz, Germany. Aside of the fact that I enjoyed the conference a lot this year (again), it was fun presenting there. For those of you interested in the slideware:

• Was wird aus dem Projektleiter in agilen Projekten (in german, together with Henning Wolf)
• Was können Unternehmen von Open-Source lernen (in german, together with Bernd Kolb)
• Wie Modulsysteme Architekturen beeinflussen (mostly english slides)

Sorry for this bulk of German titles. The slides are mostly Presentation Zen style, so not many German words here. Hope you enjoy it anyway! :-)

I gave a bunch of talks together with colleagues at the JAX 2010 conference last week in Mainz, Germany. Aside of the fact that I enjoyed the conference a lot this year (again), it was fun presenting there. For those of you interested in the slideware:

• Was wird aus dem Projektleiter in agilen Projekten (in german, together with Henning Wolf)
• Was können Unternehmen von Open-Source lernen (in german, together with Bernd Kolb)
• Wie Modulsysteme Architekturen beeinflussen (mostly english slides)

Sorry for this bulk of German titles. The slides are mostly Presentation Zen style, so not many German words here. Hope you enjoy it anyway! :-)

Slides from JAX-2010

Sessionfire Continues to Innovate

A few days ago the team at Sessionfire published its second beta build. Interestingly this new build does not add these basic features you might expect from a presentation tool like direct graphical editing or so. In contrast to that it innovates. Its adds real new stuff to the world of presentations. Things that helps you to improve your presentations, to visualize things for your audience. The big new feature in this build is "Non-Linear Presentations". You no longer need to put your slides in a linear sequence - they aren't anyway. Many of my talks contain different sections and details, sometimes I decide to skip a section, sometimes I just want to show the topics while speaking. This is now directly supported in Sessionfire, giving you the option to create sections and visualize those sections for your audience. You can go into the details on demand or just jump from section to section at your fingertip. Watch the teaser case at YouTube, it shows non-linear presentations among the other new features in a quick overview:

The current Sessionfire beta builds are free. You can download your copy for Windows XP/Vista/7, Mac OS X or Linux from http://www.sessionfire.com/. Just make sure you have the latest Java6 installed... :-)

A few days ago the team at Sessionfire published its second beta build. Interestingly this new build does not add these basic features you might expect from a presentation tool like direct graphical editing or so. In contrast to that it innovates. Its adds real new stuff to the world of presentations. Things that helps you to improve your presentations, to visualize things for your audience. The big new feature in this build is "Non-Linear Presentations". You no longer need to put your slides in a linear sequence - they aren't anyway. Many of my talks contain different sections and details, sometimes I decide to skip a section, sometimes I just want to show the topics while speaking. This is now directly supported in Sessionfire, giving you the option to create sections and visualize those sections for your audience. You can go into the details on demand or just jump from section to section at your fingertip. Watch the teaser case at YouTube, it shows non-linear presentations among the other new features in a quick overview:

The current Sessionfire beta builds are free. You can download your copy for Windows XP/Vista/7, Mac OS X or Linux from http://www.sessionfire.com/. Just make sure you have the latest Java6 installed... :-)

Sessionfire Continues to Innovate

OSGi Best and Worst Practices at EclipseCon 2010

Together with Jeff McAffer, Chris Anisczcyk and Paul VanderLei I gave a talk on OSGi Best and Worst Practices here at Eclipse 2010. Here are the slides:

• OSGi Best and Worst Practices (pdf)

Enjoy!

Together with Jeff McAffer, Chris Anisczcyk and Paul VanderLei I gave a talk on OSGi Best and Worst Practices here at Eclipse 2010. Here are the slides:

• OSGi Best and Worst Practices (pdf)

Enjoy!

OSGi Best and Worst Practices at EclipseCon 2010

Slides on OSGi Best and Worst Practices from Java-User-Group-Meeting in Karlsruhe

I gave a talk at the Java User Group Karlsruhe last week on best and worst practices using OSGi for building business applications (thanks to David for inviting me). You can get the slides from the user group or directly here:

• OSGi Best and Worst Practices (pdf)

Thanks again for joining! The room was full of people and I especially enjoyed all the great questions and discussions during and after the talk. Thanks again, it was a pleasure to be a guest at the event!

I gave a talk at the Java User Group Karlsruhe last week on best and worst practices using OSGi for building business applications (thanks to David for inviting me). You can get the slides from the user group or directly here:

• OSGi Best and Worst Practices (pdf)

Thanks again for joining! The room was full of people and I especially enjoyed all the great questions and discussions during and after the talk. Thanks again, it was a pleasure to be a guest at the event!

Slides on OSGi Best and Worst Practices from Java-User-Group-Meeting in Karlsruhe

Slides on OSGi Lessons Learned from OOP-2010 Conference

A few weeks ago I gave a talk at the OOP-2010 conference in Munich about the lessons I learned from building business apps on top of OSGi during the past five years. Finally I put the slides online:

• OSGi - Lessons Learned (pdf)

Sorry for the delay!

A few weeks ago I gave a talk at the OOP-2010 conference in Munich about the lessons I learned from building business apps on top of OSGi during the past five years. Finally I put the slides online:

• OSGi - Lessons Learned (pdf)

Sorry for the delay!

Slides on OSGi Lessons Learned from OOP-2010 Conference