Montreal Xp Meetings Winter Spring Four

Montreal XP Users Group - Meetings Winter/Spring 2004

See Also MontrealXpUsersGroup and MontrealXpNextMeeting

Thursday, May 6 2004 (Meeting 48) - 5 members present

A general round table discussion.

Topics previously suggested included - PairProgramming Difficulties (BobPotter, IainLowe)

Thursday, April 1 2004 (Meeting 47)

Topics proposed from the last meeting (Please feel free to add more):

Pair-Programming - Scenarios and difficulties - BobPotter, AlainFarmer

Agile Planning in real life - - VincentTence, AlainFarmer, JorgeCampos

What XP practices usually are *not* adopted and why (Last month we focused on the customer or lack of) - BobPotter, PascalRoy?, AlainFarmer, JorgeCampos

Thursday, March 4 2004 (Meeting 46)

Present: BobPotter, SebastienDaupleix, IainLowe, JorgeCampos, PascalRoy?, VincentTence, YoucefBouayad (please add your name if it is missing)

Topic of Discussion: The Customer

Various experiences with "customers" were presented. We all realize the importance of a customer but there was discussion on how the customer interacts with the team. SebastienDaupleix described his successful experiences with "customers" on his most recent project. BobPotter provided his difficulties with the concept of customer in a multi-client environment where the product could sell to one client for $1,000 and another for $1,000,000 and the influence of the sales and marketing team. PascalRoy? described the difficulty of customers making decisions where there is more than one "right" way to go.

(Please add to this summary to make it more complete.)

Voting for discussion topic

Thursday, February 5 2004 (Meeting 45)

See also MontrealXpWhereAreWeGoing

Discuss about the mission and the organization of the group.

We had the chance to have newcomers and we divided in 2 groups to think about what we expected from the group and what we would like to do during the meetings.

The main points that came up were the following: 

  - We are looking to have fun while discussing Agile matters and we value the social aspect of the meetings
  - We want the meetings to be organized, yet stay informal in nature
  - We must make everything possible to facilitate integration of new members
  - We realize that we have disparate levels of knowledge of XP and Agile practices, with different levels 
of interest, so we need to find a way to accommodate everybody
  - Some people were interested in getting back to the basics and discussing the core values and practices
  - Some people were interesting in exchanging on real world experiences,war stories and tools
  - Some people were interested in doing workshops, role playing/games or projects
Knowing that, we decided to experiment the following: 
  - The group will continue to meet and Cafe Veranda (no more karaoke, we scared the guy), once a month, 
on the first Thursday.
  - Formal presentations on Agile/XP practices will take place during the Montreal Agile Users Group meeting.
That hopefully will help cross-pollination between the 2 groups.
  - A follow up on the presentation will be done to people interested, in the next XP Group meeting. 
People from the Agile meeting are encouraged to come discuss the subject. If there is enough interest,
we can organize practical exercises for a another meeting.
  - A second discussion group is held on a related subject. This will interest the more "experienced"
members. This second discussion group is less formally organized and can take various forms.
  - Study groups/projects are done outside of the group meetings but participants are encouraged to 
share their experience with the group.
  - A list of subject proposals is posted on the wiki/list and people vote the content of the next meeting.
  - We encourage people to suggest ideas for future meetings.
  - We would like to try pairing new members/more experienced members to give presentations at the Agile
Users Group or organize discussions at the XP Users Group.
These minutes were prepared by VincentTence and posted by BobPotter.

Tuesday, January 20 2004 (Meeting 44)

Thursday, January 8 2004 (Meeting 43)

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