Melexis. November 22 & 23, 2018. Ieper, Belgium. UML, smart use cases and domain driven design
Two-day in-house workshop on the topics of UML, smart use cases, activity diagrams, testing and domain driven design.
Category: Smart use cases
Amsterdam, Netherlands. February 19, 2016. Series of three lectures at the Vrije Universiteit on software requirements and estimation.
On February 19 I will be presenting a second series of three lectures for the post-doctorate year of IT Auditing at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam, covering all aspects of modern software development. These three lectures will focus on requirements, user stories, use cases, software estimation mainly. This will be the fifth consecutive year that I will present these lectures […]
Vienna, Austria. January 18, 2016. Masterclass smart use cases
Next to the keynote at the Software Quality Days conference in Vienna, I will run a half-day masterclass on structuring agile requirements using smart use cases One of the important and often underestimated aspects of agile and Scrum projects is how to deal with requirements. Where does the backlog actually come from? Many projects rely solely on user stories. However, […]
Diegem, Belgium. October 28-29, 2015. Two day workshop pragmatic smart use cases and UML
Running an edition of my two day workshop on modeling business processes, smart use cases, domain driven design for IT Works in Diegem, Belgium. More: http://www.itworks.be/event.php?id=UMLD38
EA User Group (Brussel, Belgium. September 2015. Keynote)
Did the opening keynote for the Brussels Enterprise Architect User Group Event in September 2015. The topic for my keynote was Modeling Microservices, where I talked about using modeling techniques in doing microservices architecture, such as smart use cases, domain modeling, bounded context and resource modeling. EA User Group: http://www.eausergroup.com/16-next-event/104-brussels-event-agenda-sept-18th-2015
Failing fast
There is an intriguing question that pops up frequently in organizations developing software in projects: when is a project successful? For sure, one of the most (mis)used resources on the subject is the Standish Group. In their frequently renewed CHAOS Report they define a project successful if it delivers on time, on budget, and with all planned features. For a […]
Agile anti-patterns at CodeMotion Madrid
Many organizations turn towards agile to escape failing traditional software development. Due to this increase in popularity, many newcomers enter the field. Without the necessary real-life experience but proudly waving certificates from two days of training. During a challenging talk I did at the CodeMotion conference in Madrid, in October 2013, I tried to show what happens to projects that […]
Offshore Agile Software Development: A Practical Guide to Making It Work
In my previous post, I explored how offshore Agile software development offers many benefits over more traditional, Waterfall style approaches, but only if some of the obvious difficulties in communication, overheads and language issues are addressed. So how do organizations overcome those difficulties to make offshore Agile work? Over many years at Capgemini, we have gained experience with distributed Agile […]
Validating sending mail messages in smart use case unit tests
When building applications with the Adf framework, smart use cases are implemented in task classes. Quite regularly mail messages are sent from tasks. To do so we use the MailManager class. Using this class mail messages are usually build up as in the following code example. To send mail messages, the MailManager plugs in an implementation of the IMailProvider interface. […]
Reaching post-conditions in tasks
Implementing use cases in Adf.Net is covered by the task pattern. Each smart use case in the model is implemented as a descendant of the Task class in Adf.Net. The task pattern consists of three major parts: Starting the task, either using a parameterized Init() method, or the default Start() method. After a task calls another task, and this second […]
Agile business intelligence
Het besparen van kosten is een veelgenoemde aanleiding voor Business Intelligence (BI) projecten. Zo wilde een bekende overheidsinstantie weten hoe effectief de bestrijding van uitkeringsfraude was. Het onderzoeken van mogelijke fraude kost de instantie geld, maar het vinden van fraudeurs levert echter direct geld op. En dus ging zoekt de instantie naar de optimale verhouding tussen het aantallen onderzoeken en […]
Agile anti-patterns. Yes you agile projects can and will fail too
Over the years I have noticed a lot of agile anti-patterns during projects. Wrongly used agile approaches, dogmatic use of agile approaches, agile-in-name-only. Recently I have presented a talk at a number of agile and software development conferences that demonstrates patterns of agile misuse. These conferences include Agile Open Holland (Dieren), Camp Digital (Manchester), GIDS (Bangalore), ACCU (Oxford) and Jazoon […]
How to kill your estimates
It must have been about twenty five years ago. I was working for a large international consultancy firm. One of the reliable ones. The ones that you would think that had everything worked out. But I guess this was merely the product of my imagination. At one time two colleagues and I were working on an estimate for a bid […]
Agile Open Holland (Dieren, Netherlands. November 2011. Keynote)
On November 3, 2011 I presented the keynote of the Agile Open Holland Conference in Dieren. During this challenging talk I discussed the current state of affairs in agile organizations and projects and the effects of the recent strong rise in popularity of agile approaches. Let’s put it mildly: there’s a lot of work to be done. Death by dogma […]
Flower-Power Agile Fluffiness
To all the dear people in the agile community and to the faint-hearted: this will not be an easy blog post. There was a time when being a software developer was a decent craft, requiring decent craftsmanship and yes also a lot of creativity, some communication, some collaboration. Still it was a decent craft. The waterfall-ish methodologies we used weren’t […]
Scrumdamentalists and crusaders
After having promoted agile and iterative approaches to software development projects for over a decade, I finally find that, like Bob Dylan says, the times they are a-changing. And for the better. Many small and large organizations and enterprises are now turning towards agile approaches, often to compensate for years and years of failing projects. You might suggest that all’s […]
How Smart Use Cases Can Drive Web Development. Video for session at DevDays 2011 [in Dutch]
as the Channel 9 website says: using real-life code examples Sander will demonstrate how to model, generate and build smart use cases and introduce the positive impact smart use cases have on your layered software architecture. Anyway, here’s the video for my DevDays 2011 session:
Describing (smart) use cases using Enterprise Architect 8. Part II – Use case scenarios and structured specifications
Enterprise Architect by Sparx Systems is a commonly used modeling tool, targeted at modeling UML and BPMN diagrams. One of the most frequently used diagrams is the use case diagram. A use case diagram consists mainly of actors and use cases, either traditional or smart use cases. Use case scenarios There’s different ways of modeling and describing what action a […]
Describing (smart) use cases using Enterprise Architect 8. Part I – Templates and validations
Enterprise Architect by Sparx Systems is a commonly used modeling tool, targeted at modeling UML and BPMN diagrams. One of the most frequently used diagrams is the use case diagram. A use case diagram consists mainly of actors and use cases, either traditional or smart use cases. A use case template The specification of the individual use cases in the […]
The explicit role of testing and testers in agile projects
Not all agile processes and approaches recognize the role of testing explicitly, other than stressing the importance of unit testing. However in short iterative projects, testing is key from day one. On of the agile approaches that does explicitly describes the role of testing – and of having testers on-board – is the agile process Smart. One of the characteristics […]
A book on pragmatic software architecture, patterns and frameworks?
One of the major items on my wish list – that is on the professional half of it – is to write a book that displays my ideas on software architecture, patterns and frameworks. Yes I know, there are many books on software architecture, and there are many books that explain patterns, and yes there also are a lot of […]
Please vote for my Microsoft Mix 2011 proposals!
From April 12-14 the next edition of Microsoft’s MIX Conference will take place in Las Vegas. I’ve sent in two proposals for the Open Call. Today heard that both proposals made it through the first cut, which means they’re open for public voting (you don’t have to be registered). It would be great if you would cast your vote for […]
Een introductie in agile business intelligence [in Dutch]
Om kosten te besparen, een veelgenoemde aanleiding voor Business Intelligence (BI) projecten, wilde een bekende overheidsinstantie weten hoe effectief de bestrijding van uitkeringsfraude was. Hierbij speelde een interessant fenomeen. Het onderzoeken van mogelijke fraude kost de instantie geld, maar het vinden van fraudeurs levert daarentegen direct geld op. En dus ging men op zoek naar de optimale verhouding tussen het […]
Antwerp, Belgium. November 25-26, 2010. Pragmatic modeling using UML (IT Works)
[Two day hands-on workshop at IT Works, Hotel Crowne Plaza, Antwerp. ] On November 25 and 26 I will present the 32th edition of an intense two-day workshop on the pragmatic use of UML modeling techniques (and beyond) with lots of hands-on exercises. Participants modeling activity diagrams with smart use cases During this workshops we will go through the following […]
November 12, 2010 – Microsoft TechEd Europe. How smart use cases can drive web development
[Session ARC205 at Microsoft TechEd Europe 2010 in Berlin] Use cases have been around for many years describing the requirements of software development projects. From a developer’s point of view, use cases are often seen as too abstract and too complex to develop code from. Until now, that is. During this interactive talk, speaker Sander Hoogendoorn will demonstrate how to […]
A recipe for enterprise agile. Mixing Scrum and Smart
To cut to the chase, those of you who have worked on enterprise or service oriented projects before already know this. These types of projects are characterized by a large number of organizational, functional and technically complicating factors. Enterprise software development projects are surrounded by a large number of complicating characteristics and challenges: Many different stakeholders. Projects have many different […]
Being Smart in enterprise agile
As agile is becoming more and more mainstream, organization are starting to do enterprise software development project using well-known but fairly basic lightweight agile processes. In many projects this has lead to surprisingly bad result, baffling the agile Certified Pokémon Trainers who are coaching these projects. The presentation below shows a number of accelerators or technique that projects can […]
De uiterste houdbaarheidsdatum van requirements
Vorige week gaf ik – voor de zoveelste keer – training in het identificeren en modelleren van smart use cases. Dit keer bevond ik me in de hippe ruimtes van Meeting Plaza Utrecht, boven het altijd sfeervolle Hoog Catharijne. Tijdens de goed verzorgde lunch werd het onderwerp al snel bepaald door de uiterste houdbaarheidsdatum. Van levensmiddelen, maar meer nog, van […]
Smart use case stereotypes in service oriented projects
Smart use cases are a great technique for specifying standardized requirements in many types of projects. Over the past few years we have smart use cases being modeled and written in projects using Java and .NET, as you might expect, but also in Sharepoint projects, business intelligence, service oriented projects and even SAP implementations. Stereotypes drive standardization Standardization of your […]
Introducing our Agile Dashboard
The Accelerated Delivery Platform’s (ADP) Agile Dashboard is a pragmatic and publicly available tool (free) for managing project progress online. The Agile Dashboard was originally intended to manage progress for our agile projects, but these day it is used in a much broader perspective. As the ADP Core Team receives a lot of questions about it, it’s time to present […]
Questions on smart use cases. Part III – Stereotypes and minimal use case specifications
As you might have heard from me before (endlessly), smart use cases are a fairly straightforward reqirements technique that we have introduced in many different types of projects, such as Java, .NET, BI, SOA, SAP projects. At times I receive question on smart use cases in projects, this time from Ron Kersic of Capgemini. See Ron’s original Dutch statement below. […]
Questions on smart use cases. Part II – The smart use case life cycle
As you might have heard from me before (endlessly), smart use cases are a fairly straightforward reqirements technique that we have introduced in many different types of projects, such as Java, .NET, BI projects apply smart use cases, but also in service oriented projects, where smart use cases where used to model the front end and also the services and […]
Questions on smart use cases. Part I – Estimating user-goal and sub-function level use cases
As you might have heard from me before (endlessly), smart use cases are a fairly straightforward reqirements technique that we have introduced in many different types of projects. Of course, Java, .NET, BI projects apply smart use cases, but this year I have also been involved in service oriented projects, where smart use cases where used to model not only […]
December 1, 2009. Talk “An introduction to agile SAP SOA”
Customer presentation, Eindhoven. After Twan van den Broek (of Ciber) and I succesfully applied a great mix of agile software development processes and techniques, including Scrum, Smart, smart use cases, smart estimation in probably the first agile SAP SOA projects in the Netherlands, we’ve held several talks on the subject at conferences and seminars, including an agile conference, the SOA […]
Identifying services we might need in the future but don’t know right now?
Earlier this week I attended the Landelijk Architectuur Congres in Nieuwegein. Besides the noteworthy percentage of attendees with mustaches, grey hair and ties, a pleasant and friendly event. In the afternoon of the first day of the event I did a lively talk on shaping service oriented projects using smart use cases. During the talk I recevied some very peculiar […]
Landelijk Architectuur Congres (Nieuwegein, Netherlands. November 2009)
Shaping service oriented projects using smart use cases Landelijk Architectuur Congres 2009, NBC Nieuwegein. As a consequence of a succesful duo-talk at the Integrate Agile conference in the spring, Twan van den Broek (of Ciber) and I where invited to present the same material at the Landelijk Architectuur Congres (LAC 2009), however split into two separate talks. Twan will focus […]
Service georienteerde projecten vormgeven met smart use cases [In Dutch]
This post was originally written to be published as a chapter in an upcoming book on IT architecture. The book will be presented at the Landelijk Architectuur Congres 2009 in Nieuwegein, The Netherlands. This post will likely also be published in two parts in Software Release Magazine. Ondanks dat ik inmiddels al zo’n twintig jaar in dit vakgebied rondloop, blijven […]
Serviceorientatie vormgeven met smart use cases [In Dutch]
This post was originally written to be published as a chapter in an upcoming book on IT architecture. The book will be presented at the Landelijk Architectuur Congres 2009 in Nieuwegein, The Netherlands. This post will likely also be published in two parts in Software Release Magazine. Ondanks dat ik inmiddels al zo’n twintig jaar in dit vakgebied rondloop, blijven […]
Amsterdam, The Netherlands. October 26, 2009. Software development methodologies and techniques through the years (Vrije Universiteit)
Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam. Earlier this year I was invited by prof. Arno Oosterhaven to do a series of lectures on software development at the post-doctoral program IT Auditor at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam. The audience of IT Auditors is very mixed, ranging from accountants to actual software developers, which makes it difficult to address all interests of the students. […]