IMPORTANT - As places are limited, please register specifically for this session. Also, please register for day 2 of LAST Conf, if you wish to attend the 2nd day.

You can also read more about the sessions in this blog post. For a beginner friendly version of this session see Agile Dev Immersion - Fundamentals

Get ready to level up at refactoring at LAST Conference's first Refactoring Developer workshop. Inspired by Code Retreat, we have run a similar session, for the basics of agile development, at LAST Conference for the past few years. We have felt that it's Important to support learning in technical disciplines that are extremely important in agile software development.

Too many Agile and DevOps initiatives are stymied by code bases that are hard to change and understand.

While disciplined teams who rigorously practice pair programming, test-driven design (TDD) and other technical Agile practices avoid producing new legacy code in the first place, cleaning up a pre-existing mess is notoriously difficult and dangerous. Without the safety net of excellent automated test coverage, the risk of breaking something else as you refactor is extremely high. Also, code that wasn't designed and written with testability in mind makes it really difficult to get started. So most don't even try ...

In the Refactoring workshop developers learn how to build an initial safety net before applying multiple refactorings, and have lots of fun along the way!

What's it all about?

We will be following a variation of the Legacy Code Retreat format. Working with legacy code (provided!) participants first learn how to build an overarching electronic safety net using the Golden Master Testing technique, before applying a range of refactorings too dangerous to otherwise attempt (but totally worth it).

As with regular code retreat, we will practice pair-programming, rotate pairs, and continue to practice rigorous unit test automation, and share our learnings.

Unlike regular code retreat you do not have to delete your code at the end of each sprint, and the TDD cycle is a bit more relaxed.

Following the opening session, Refactoring workshop will take the remainder of the day, with breaks synchronised with the main conference. You will also be welcome to attend the end of day drinks!

What is Legacy Code?

Legacy code has beed defined "as code without tests" and equivalently "code you are afraid to change". Unfortunately far too much "professional" code is legacy code.

Why should you come?

• We need developers and architects with the skill to continuously refactor and redesign, and managers and leaders who understand the value in doing so
• Come and practice and share some of the fundamental technical skills needed to safely refactor
• Lift developer engagement and work satisfaction by investing in technical quality rather than drowning in technical debt

Stephanie BySouth | Director, Authentika

We often expect ourselves to lead people like mythical legends with the mystical abilities to influence others. Expectations and judgements are thrown at leaders without consideration that they are also people. We aren’t afforded the same learning courtesy as Agile teams expect for themselves. That’s OK, because we know; no matter how safe, it’s not nice or easy to fail people. Especially those we are accountable for.

With this level of accountability and the need to support senior management to cross ‘the Agile team to Agile leadership chasm’ with clients, it was time for a leadership agility framework that serves us, the business and our teams simply and sustainably.

I love being around awesome people, who build great products customers desire. 
I love learning from and together with these amazing minds. 
I love creating the right environment for teams to flourish. 
I love change, and learning from new experiences. 
I love working in Agile environments.

How about you? 
I bet there are some elements of this list why you're in Agile, too. And you can probably add even more elements to it.

The Agile Manifesto states amongst others individuals and interactions, customer collaboration and responding to change.

In our everyday life doing Agile we already respect these aspects in many ways. 
But do we practice what we preach as best we can?

I'd like to challenge your current way of thinking about people and processes. 
I'd like to challenge you to focus on you, before you focus on others. 
I'd like to challenge your current way of reflecting. 
I'd like to inspire you to go different ways. 
I'd like to inspire you to inspire others.

In Agile we're already good in improving our processes and creating well performing teams and hence building the right things in the right way. And in the Agile Manifesto's communication and collaboration piece we can even get better.
"You have not yet reached the limit of what you're capable of!" means we can always further improve. And we do follow this idea in our Agile processes, too, through continuous feedback (Retrospectives) and improvement.

And why not take it even further? Why not go "Beyond Agile"?!

Here's where aspects of Life Coaching come in handy: through also understanding and improving ourselves (how do we interact with people due to how we perceive our environment) we will even further improve communication and collaboration.

Life Coaches believe our clients know the answer. And even if Agile Coaching is slightly different than Life Coaching, I see it as very relevant in Agile Coaching, too. If we apply this in Agile, instead of giving our clients (team, colleagues) the answers, asking them powerful questions to help them be more aware of what's happening at the moment, they will find their answer for it and will have a much better commitment to making the change for themselves, their teams and the company. It's not for us to TELL them what to do, but to ASK them what's going on for themselves. Here's where I see a huge chance for improvement.

In my session I give lots of examples on how to link Life Coaching ideas to our Agile work environments. I've given the session at LAST Conference Melbourne and at the Agile Coaching Circles Meetup Melbourne. The audience was engaged and the attendees were very happy about having some new ideas on how to improve their daily work life.

Come along to be inspired by Life Coaching and thus to benefit our Agile Thinking!