Julian Simpson, The Build Doctor

Julian Simpson started his career in technical support. He has run his own business connecting people to the Internet, been (and sometimes still is) a Unix systems administrator. Julian spent four years at ThoughtWorks doing build, continuous integration and deployment on large software projects. He has worked on Java and .NET projects in Telecommunications, Media, Finance and Insurance industries. Presently he is working at a media company doing a mix of build and release management and production systems administration.

Presentation: "CI from the trenches: real-world Continuous Integration challenges (and what to do about them)"

Time: Wednesday 14:30 - 15:30

Location: To be announced

Abstract:

Many organisations will tell you that they are "doing" continuous integration. A boat anchor of a PC in the corner running an old version of CruiseControl might tick a few boxes, but is it really effective? You'll find out in good time if somebody checks in a broken test or forgets to check in a file; it won't tell you if your code is likely to run in production. In our focus on delivering code, can we forget where the code will be running? You might be writing it in a warm office on a quad core Intel PC. Production might be a single core SPARC system in a cold datacentre or a dusty room.

As we get better at CI, we should start seeing our feedback loop extend out past development into other areas. But what strategies do we have for doing this and keeping the feedback loop tight for the developers? Does that matter?

This session will attempt to answer all those questions and more. The presenter will share his experiences of 5 years of being a professional build manager, using examples taken from real projects.

Keywords: CI, continuous integration, build examples

Presentation: "Panel Discussion"

Time: Wednesday 16:00 - 17:00

Location: To be announced