I've seen Test Driven Development work, so why not adjust it slightly and have the attendees (who own the requirements after all) drive the presentation? Today, at the in-between conference (a.k.a. Microsoft Community Summit 2008), I did just that. I had the attendees drive my four hour presentation. I did this in the Open Space room, and it not only fit with the theme of that room, but it worked great!
As the attendees arrived, I handed them 3-5 3x5 cards - the cool ones from 3M that you can sort, stack, and stick to surfaces.
Here are the topics (backlog items) that they came up with:
- How do you customize work item types?
- (What) team size to justify the usage of Team System?
- What's new and improved in VSTS 2008 vs. VSTS 2005?
- Continuous Integration (x 3)
- What performance degradation (can occur) from extensive branching?
- Integration with external tools (e.g. Mercury Quality Center, Doors)
- TDD
- Multiple builds running at the same time
- How to limit CI build to only trigger when for certain check-ins (by location)
- Best practices
- How to customize Code Analysis
- What makes VSTS more beneficial than VS Professional?
- What is Team Foundation Server?
And my personal favorite:
- I'm here to see if you're a good presenter because my company is thinking of bringing you in for a day to teach the team.
For those of you who attended my talk, here's a link to my notes and my worst practices presentation.