With my personal focus on business development I am swinging heavily back into a focus on software product development.
I am more the product manager/architect type and leave the developing to the experts, but I have a passion for building great software nevertheless. This includes everything around encouraging our developers to further learn and master the latest agile processes and tools, from the foundation of solid Object Oriented Design to the latest in development tools.
The last week and a bit have been pretty consumed with the JPBoodhoo show. For those of you who don't know Jean-Paul Boodhoo, he is considered to be somewhat of an expert on leading edge development best practices applied to the Microsoft .NET technology stack.
A year and a half ago we sent one of our senior developers on JP's Nothing but .NET course and he came back with dreams about where we could go with software development. He made a very significant contribution to our development best practices including getting the entire team to a layered architecture including the MVP pattern, a home grown object relational mapping tool and eventually an implementation of nHibernate.
Last week we sent another of our senior developers to the Nothing but .NET course. It is a very intensive course going from morning until midnight every day for 5 days straight. I think the biggest thing you gain from the course is suddenly being aware of how much there is to still learn.
Today JP dropped by Sunwapta for a visit and the rest of the development team got to discuss some of the practicalities around moving further down the agile path.
This evening a number of us went to JP's presentation on Domain Driven Design Using Fluent nHibernate hosted by the Calgary .NET User Group. JP did not disappoint and adeptly covered how using tools like Fluent nHibernate can free up the development team to focus on a rich domain model rather than data mapping issues… it is not about the tools, it is about spending proportionately more time on the part of software development that matters.
A lot to digest in a short time but I think we will be making a big surge forward adopting these practices over the next while. So thanks JP and thanks Sunwapta team for being open to moving forward.
Becoming agile and a great developer is a journey not a destination… so I agree, you might as well develop with passion… enjoy the journey folks.
