A presentation to University of Manchester Computer Science graduates about how Ampersand Commerce approaches Agile and Test Driven Development. Also, information about our graduate programme for software engineers

1. Hello. Nice To
Meet You.
Darryl Adie, Managing Director @DarrylAdie
Iain Hubbard, Development Manager @iainhubbard
Joseph McDermott, Senior Developer @Joseph_McD

2. We’re An
Open Source
Ecommerce
Agency.
We help enterprise businesses develop
& improve ecommerce operations
using open source software

3. About Us.
• Founded in 2008
• Located in the Northern Quarter, Manchester
• Magento Gold Solution Partner
• Technical agency focused on Magento Enterprise
• Team of 25 people
Featured Customers

4. What We Do.

5. What We’ve Done.

6. We Use
Magento.
Magento is an open-source
ecommerce solution, written
in PHP with a MySQL database

7. What Is It.
• Open source eCommerce platform
• Written in PHP using Zend Framework
• MySQL database
• MVC
• Its free! (well… some of it)
• Everything you need to sell online
• Modular architecture

8. Agile Development.

9. What Is It.
• Umbrella term for several iterative and incremental software development
methodologies
• Extreme Programming (XP)
• Kanban (development)
• Lean software development
• Scrum

10. What Is It Trying To Solve.
• Waterfall
• Improved customer feedback
• Rapid adjustment to change
• Make the development process less opaque
• Give the client what they want
• Shines a light into the black hole of development

11. What Does It Struggle With.
• Safety critical systems
• Fixed cost development
• Inflexible contracts

12. Agile Development For Us.

13. What Did We Do.
• Single delivery date to unveil project to client
• Client feedback gathered at the end of the project
• Development tasks all share the same deadline

15. What We Do Now.
• Multiple delivery dates to unveil project progress to client
• Client feedback gathered after each delivery date
• Development tasks split into sprints
• Daily internal scrum

16. TDD.

17. Why Test At All.
• Reduces bugs in production code
• Saves you time
• Bugs found at development time are easier and cheaper to fix
• Less time spent on maintenance
• Easier to change and refactor code
• Unit Testing can improve the design of code
• A measure of completion
• Encourages simpler design

18. Why Not TDD.
• Based on the assumption that everybody fully understands the system
• Requires a large amount of up front design
• Requires the client to know exactly what they want

19. TDD For Us.

20. What Did We Do.
• Nothing

21. What We Do Now.
• Continuous integration triggered with every commit
• You break it you fix it (with the ‘escape goat’ for company)
• Aim for high percentage code coverage
• Write tests as early as possible with each task
• Unit vs Feature tests

22. The complexity created by
a programmer is in inverse
proportion to their ability to
handle complexity.
@KentBeck

23. Our Graduate Programme.

24. Since 2011:
We’ve hired 100% of interns
All of them are still with us
Magento Certified within 3 months

25. Valentino
Cristian
Daniel
Software Engineers.
CV Deadline: 9 Aug Start date: 16 Sep
• Basic Requirements
• Object-oriented programming and design skills
• Attention to detail!
• Demonstrable programming ability
• Desirable Skills
• PHP
• MVC
• SQL
• Linux/Unix
• jQuery, Prototype or other Javascript experience
Last year’s
grads say
hello.

26. Software Engineers.
CV Deadline: 9 Aug Start date: 16 Sep
Apply: http://ampersandcommerce.com/careers/graduates/

27. (PS. We’d be your bosses…)
Say hello on twitter
@IainHubbard
@Joseph_McD
@DarrylAdie

28. Thank
You
Tweet us @AmpersandHQ
Learn more ampersandcommerce.com