A series of cartoons depicts the terrible things that happen when agile practices aren’t followed. This session is valid for any persona, but especially for the product owner who will suffer when their product fails because they follow a process that isn’t helping their team deliver!

Cucumber is a new acceptance testing (AT) tool that works with RSpec. Already popular in the Ruby community, this tutorial shows you how to use Cucumber to test drive Java applications, when you combine Cucumber and RSpec with JRuby.

We’ll also discuss Cucumber vs. FitNesse and using RSpec vs. JUnit. You’ll learn tips for writing good acceptance tests. Half of the time will be devoted to a hands-on exercises, where you will test drive a simple Java application using Cucumber.

Bring your laptop (or a pair partner with one), with the latest Cucumber, RSpec, and JRuby installed.

The technique of expressing requirements as user stories is one of the most widely applicable techniques introduced by the agile processes. User stories are an effective approach on all time constrained projects and are a great way to begin introducing a bit of agility to your projects.

How do agile teams account for backlog items that do not fit the user story paradigm? Aside from user stories, what are ways you can represent product needs? Teams struggle with incorporating quality attributes (sometimes called “quality of service” requirements), external interfaces, design and implementation constraints, and team or technical “stories” into their backlogs. Without these items, you will not build the right product, or build it right. This tutorial will introduce you to ways that agile teams represent these nonfunctional requirements and other items in the backlog.

The business analyst role seems conspicuously missing from most agile methods. Do agile methods make business analyst an obsolete role? Certainly not! But how do you integrate what is sometimes portrayed as a plodding and documentation driven role into an agile project? This tutorial provides participants practical guidance for how the business analyst integrates and collaborates with all members of the team. During this workshop the participant will learn how to construct and evolve an agile business analysis process that is appropriate for their specific project environment.

When adjectives and adverbs appear in User Stories, they can be easily overlooked and seen as simple adornments to the story. There are a couple schools of thought on how to handle non-functional requirements on Agile projects. Mike Cohn recommends writing a User Story for each non-functional requirement, while others recommend creating task cards to drive out specification using Thomas Gilb’s approach. In this session, examples of various techniques for handling non-functional requirements will be demonstrated, with a discussion of pros and cons of each technique.