Agile QA Transition & Developer Adventures in the Clouds

Although Shrove Tuesday, February's Agile Yorkshire meet-up saw one of it's largest attendances, possibly second only to the event at which Martin Fowler was guest speaker.

Clement Pickering presented a report discussing his experience heading up the transition from traditional to agile methods in the testing function of Callcredit. Discussed were differences in strategy, processes, tools and techniques between an agile and more 'traditional' approach. The presentation was followed by a lively Q&A and debate.

Following Clement's presentation and a short break, Neil McLaughlin gave a demo of developing a Google Hangouts application, using a suite of cloud applications including Cloud9 IDE, an online development environment. The demo gods had maybe left to eat their pancakes when one of the web services Neil was using was down.

Clement Pickering has been with the Callcredit group for over 13 years leading Development teams in creating a wide range of products for the financial services industry. He has long been an advocate of agile development practices and the philosophy that underpins agile as he passionately believes it helps teams deliver more effectively. He has been involved for many years in helping Callcredit adopt agile practices and in his current role has most recently focussed on helping the QA community and project teams within Callcredit get to grips with agile testing.

Neil McLaughlin is a freelance developer/coach/scrum master who enjoys building stuff and helping teams to enjoy building stuff.