Back at TechEd in Berlin last year,  I was interviewed by the Microsoft NL Students community. I spoke about my experiences as an entrepreneur at both Corzen and Triton Works as well as how entrepreneurship still thrives at Telerik. You can watch the interview here.

Pay attention at the end, I bang my head against the wall at the request of the interviewer.

Making Agile Development work in your organization

Telerik & e-Zest Solutions Ltd. invites you for Two Free Seminars:

INTRODUCTION

The Agile methodology has been adopted by many organizations around the globe. Unfortunately, many still struggle with the various methodologies (XP, Scrum, Kanban etc), and can’t settle on just one. While some organizations are successful in implementing Agile with the development teams, they tend to forget other vital parts of the process, mainly testing.

A session on how to choose which Agile methodology (or how to mix and match several pieces) to implement in your organization and how to do it.

Are you new to Agile? Have challenges implementing an Agile process in your organization? Have you been using Scrum, but need to bend the rules to make it work in your organization? Are you interested in using Kanban? What about XP? Can’t get the business “buy-in”? Come and learn about implementing an Agile process that suits all your organisational needs.

The “buffet table” of Agile processes & procedures session is aimed at learning how to properly mix & match each process, will cover:

• Defining XP, Scrum, Kanban and some other popular methodologies.
• How to implement a custom process for the enterprise, ISVs, consulting and remote teams?
• How Agile tools aids in implementing your unique process?
• How to “sell” Agile to your business partners and customers?

Seminar Coverage
Time Slot

Free Registration
9:00 am-9:55 am

Speaker Introduction
9:55 am-10:00 am

Session on “The Agile Buffet Table”
10:00 am-1:00 pm

This session dives into the value of Agile testing, how to use automated Agile testing tools and how your organization will benefit from Agile testing.

As more product teams move to Agile methodologies, the need for automated testing becomes essential to generate the velocity needed to ship fully tested features in short iterations.

The Session will cover:

• The differences between traditional testing and Agile testing.
• Exploring tools and strategies, that can help make your automation more productive as well as how to get the automation effort started for both new and existing Agile projects?

Seminar Coverage
Time Slot

Free Registration
2:30 pm-2.50 pm

Speaker Introduction
2.50 pm-3.00 pm

Session on “Agile Testing”
3:00 pm–5:00 pm

Conclusion of Program
5:00 pm

SPEAKERS

Stephen Forte

Stephen Forte is the Chief Strategy Officer of Telerik (A leading vendor of developer and team productivity tools, automated testing and UI components) also a certified scrum master. Involved in several startups, was the Co-founder of Triton Works (acquired by UBM in 2010), CTO and Co-founder of Corzen, Inc. (acquired by Wanted Technologies (TXV: WAN) in 2007). He also speaks regularly at Industry conferences around the world. He has written several books on application and database development including Programming SQL Server 2008 (MS Press). Prior to Corzen, Stephen served as the CTO ofZagat Survey in New York City and also was co-founder of the New York based software consulting firm The Aurora Development Group. He currently is a Microsoft MVP award recipient, INETA speaker and is the Co-moderator & founder of the NYC .NET Developer User Group.

Christopher Eyhorn

Christopher Eyhorn is the Executive VP of Telerik’s automated testing tools division, where they build the next generation of automated testing tools. Formally Co-founder and CEO of ArtOfTest. He has written automation frameworks and functional testing tools and has worked in a variety roles ranging from developer to CEO within the company. Christopher has worked with a variety of companies ranging in size and Industry. He is a licensed pilot that loves to fly every chance he gets and truly appreciates the importance of hardware and software testing every time he takes off.

WHO SHOULD ATTEND?

Agile Buffet Table:
The discussion is advantageous for professionals, using the Microsoft .NET platform as well as Product Managers, Technical Directors, Project Managers, Architects and Sr. Developers.

Agile Testing:
Professionals interested in learning how to make their testing efforts more efficient as well as produce more automated tests at the end of each sprint as well as Project Managers, Software Quality Managers, Test/ QA Leads and Sr. Test Engineers.

Date & Time:

Tuesday, January 18th 2011
Agile Buffet Table, from 9:00 am – 1:00 pm
Agile Testing, from 2:30 pm – 5:00 pm

Venue:

Sumant Moolgaokar Auditorium, Ground floor,
MCCIA Trade Tower, ICC Complex, 403,
Near Senapati Bapat Road, Pune

Pre-registration: Mandatory

Kindly confirm your participation immediately by sending us your contact
details on seminar@e-zest.net

e-Zest Help line number: 020–25459802/03/04

e-Zest Solutions Ltd. (www.e-zest.net) is a CMMI Level 3 & ISO 9001:2008 certified, Product Engineering and Enterprise Solutions provider, focused on solutions and services based on Microsoft .NET (3.0/3.5/4.0), Sun Java EE (5.0) & LAMP. e-Zest is also Telerik Sales & Training India partner, a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner and Sun Associate Partner.

Telerik (www.telerik.com), is a leading vendor of ASP.NET AJAX, ASP.NET MVC, Silverlight, WinForms & WPF controls & components, as well as .NET Reporting, .NET ORM , .NET CMS, TFS, Code Analysis & Web Application Testing Tools. Building on its expertise in interface development & Microsoft technologies.

Last night I spoke at the SofiaDev .NET User Group in Sofia, Bulgaria on Agile Estimation. We covered how my Bulgarian is horrible, all I know is “pull” and “push” (as in doors). After an introduction to the estimation problem, we talked about User Stories, Story Points, Planning Poker, a Product Backlog, Team Velocity, and re-estimation.

Slides are here:

Call for Speakers Now Open!

The call for speakers is open until January 28th, and we’d love for you to submit your sessions, whether you’re looking to speak for the first time, or you’re an old pro.  Remember – this is an event by the community, for the community!

To apply for a speaking slot, first please register as a speaker here: http://bit.ly/ccnycspeaker

Then with the email address you registered with on our speaker page, please add as many abstracts as you’d like here: http://bit.ly/ccnycsession

Submit on anything you like in the development space. There is no central “theme” to our Code Camp except to focus on topics related to development.

Speakers – although we can’t afford to pay any T & E, we’ll have plenty of pizza and soda, and other fun stuff just for you!

On Thursday night I will be speaking at the SofiaDev .NET User Group. I’ll be talking about Agile Estimation.

The meeting will be at the Microsoft Bulgaria office, you can RSVP here.

Agile Patterns: Agile Estimation
We’re agile, so we don’t have to estimate and have no deadlines, right? Wrong! This session will consist of review of the problem with estimation in projects today and then an overview of the concept of agile estimation and the notion of re-estimation. We’ll learn about user stories, story points, team velocity, how to apply them all to estimation and iterative re-estimation. We will take a look at the cone of uncertainty and how to use it to your advantage. We’ll then take a look at the tools we will use for Agile Estimation, including planning poker, Visual Studio Team System, and much more. This is a very interactive session, so bring a lot of questions!

So far I have made predictions in the Microsoft space and about the rise of the AppStore. Today I turn my attention to Facebook.

Facebook is everywhere, with over 500 million users in about 190 countries, and 250 million who are active daily. If Facebook were a country, it would be the 3rd largest country in the world, almost double the size of the United States, which is the real #3. Everywhere I go from Kathmandu, Nepal, to Budapest, Hungary, to Cairo, Egypt, everyone is on Facebook. Even my dad is on Facebook.  It appears that Facebook is unstoppable.

Facebook has had unbelievable growth: In just under 2 years, it grew 500% from 100 million users to 500 million users. My prediction is that in 2011 we will see the amazing growth of Facebook slow down.

The reason is simple: Facebook is saturated in the developed countries (when your reclusive Aunt sends you a friend request, you know it is saturated) and in order to continue to grow so rapidly, it has to tap the developing markets in a big way. Already locked out of the largest developing market, China, due to censorship issues, Facebook is behind in other developing markets such as Russia (where it is #5) and Brazil (where it is #3). While there is opportunity for growth in those markets, it won’t be as fast overall (5x) as it has been in the past. Facebook has to compete against already established players and it will take time to gain market share.

As with all predictions, I could be wrong and Facebook could surprise me. If they keep on this rate of growth, there will be 1 billion Facebook users by January 2012.

Happy New Year! As I enter my 9th year of blogging, I will open the year with more predictions. I started off last week with predictions in the Microsoft space. This week I will look at general industry trends. Today I start with the AppStore.

Apple has one, Android has one, Windows Phone 7 has one, and even BlackBerry has an AppStore. Apple has the most popular platform to date; Citibank predicts that Apple will sell $2billion in 2011 in their AppStore. Gartner predicts the AppStore market will be $4billion in 2010.

AppStores are everywhere. My colleague Joel Semeniuk and many others argue that we will see a proliferation of AppStores for the many different platforms. I disagree.

Fred Wilson argues that mobile economics will start to look like web economics, meaning that as the mobile platforms mature and become mainstream, the behaviors and business models of mobile will mimic those of the web.  We don’t rely on an AppStore to market Web applications and contain comments/ratings, we rely on social media for that. On the web today if we want an application, we don’t go to an AppStore, we go to a web site and download it. On that website there is always a “choose your platform” options, as shown on Skype’s home page below.

As behaviors on the mobile internet merge with the behaviors on the “regular” web, we’ll see more vendors offering their products this way. (Google Voice avoided the Apple AppStore this way at one point when Apple was blocking it.) I can already bypass the Android marketplace and download many apps directly. The most popular iPhone game, AngryBirds, is also available on the Android, but they bypassed the Android MarketPlace and went with Getjar downloads. (What is also interesting is that AngryBirds on Android is free but that is a different conversation about paid v ad supported content.)

It is not just about avoiding the commission you have to pay the AppStores, it is about controlling your brand and extending your brand across platforms. Skype, AngryBirds, and others want to control their interaction with their users and customers, not have Apple or Google control it. The content developers know you may have a PC at work, a Mac at home, and an Android in your pocket, so they want to interact with you directly, not through an intermediary.

I can’t see content developers giving up control. The reason why the AppStore succeeded at first was that the mobile platform was new and there was only one important player (Apple) who only allowed you on their platform via the AppStore. Now mobile is everywhere and Apple is no longer the sole dominate player (Android has more market share actually). Of course Apple has tight control over the iPhone and it is not going to change anytime soon, however, as the other platforms emerge and gain market share, the web model will prevail, making the Apple AppStore look like Lycos and Excite in 1999.

Lastly, there is a technical pressure against AppStores as well. HTML5 is being positioned as a way to avoid having to write your app at least 3 times (iOS, Android, Windows Phone 7). While I don’t believe all of the hype behind HTML5, undoubtedly some companies will choose HTML5 over native apps. Those companies will easily avoid the AppStores, even the iPhone one.

2011 will see the beginning of this trend.

Last year I made some long range predictions saying that 2010 will be the turning point for a few trends. I was not saying that on December 31st, 2010 (today!) you will sit back and say I am right on all of these, but I was saying that by December 31st, 2011 or 2012 you will. The trends I spoke about last year are: .NET has hit the end of the road, BI is the next big thing, the cloud will emerge, Google and Apple will go to war, and content providers will strike back.

I still think these trends hold true. It looks like #4 (Google v Apple) and #5 (Content Providers strike back) already started to happen in 2010.

It is now time for some predictions in the Microsoft space and the industry in general. Today I will start with Microsoft, here are three bold predictions in the Microsoft space:

Windows Phone 7 will have more apps than both iPhone and Android in 2 years

Windows Phone 7 (WP7) is playing catch-up and will start to gain some market share in 2011. While it will still be a distant 3rd place behind Android and the iPhone in the “Smartphone” category, it will shine in one area: apps. There are tons of apps out there for both iPhone and Android and only very few for WP7 as of this writing. That will change, and one story this year will be the explosion of quality apps for WP7. 

We are already seeing great growth in the Windows 7 Marketplace. Currently there are over 5,000 apps in less than two months since launch. It took Android over 5 months to get to the 5,000 number. WP7 has well over double the speed of the growth Android had at launch. While this does not mean much, if the trend continues as I think it will, Microsoft’s phone will have the most apps within a couple of years.

Developers build applications on a platform for two reasons: the platform has reach and it is easy to develop for. WP7 will have broad reach as it gains market share this year and developer ecosystems are in Microsoft’s DNA, not Apple’s and Google’s. While developers will continue to develop for the iPhone and Android, within two years, WP7 (or 8?) will have the most applications. Both the XBox (XNA) and Silverlight platforms to develop on are quite easy and already have a tremendous amount of developers.

Windows 8 will ship a beta and the surprise story will be Silverlight, not HTML5

While Windows 7 is  the most successful operation system Microsoft has shipped to date, we will see a Windows 8 beta this year, most likely at the PDC in the fall. Speculation is that Windows 8 will be based on HTML5 and not have any support for Silverlight included, a hint as to where Microsoft has put its priorities. My bold prediction is that while HTML5 will be “everywhere” in Windows 8, Silverlight will ship as part of the core OS, putting it on equal footing with HTML5 in Windows 8.

Office 365 will dominate over GoogleApps

Later this year Office 365 will launch and compete head on with GoogleApps. Microsoft has the model right, online applications that integrate with the locally installed ones, Exchange integrations, and managed support. At $6 per user, your business can have a fully functional Exchange, Sharepoint, and Office solution without any IT costs. GoogleApps are good, however, they can’t compete with what Office 365 is offering.