Ben Fulton

I've been evangelizing agile practices since 2002 to anyone who would listen. After many years as a professional C++ developer, I became involved with Agile after reading a Dr. Dobbs article on how to create automated tests in C++. I am not sure what my next significant step towards mastery will be, but I'm considering returning to school for a Ph.D. Any suggestions would be appreciated!

Pre-agile (1992-2001): Read a Book: Martin Fowler's Refactoring; Gamma's Design Patterns. Steady use of version control from the the time SourceSafe was introduced with MSVS 6.0.

2002: Started practicing Test-Driven Development, began using Mocks in C++, creating link-time mocks as well as interface-based mocks.

January 2003: Gave presentation to co-workers on the advantages of TDD, with fairly minimal response. Set up a testing run as part of an automated build that ran once a day. Practiced XP For One.

Feb. 2004 Started a blog as a general diary, but later focused more on technical issues and agile development.

June 2004 Read a Book: Extreme Programming Explained

May 2005 - Began attending local user group http://www.indynda.org

July 2005 New job at a non-agile company. Set up a continuous integration server and introduced TDD and automated tests.

November 2005 Joined the Indianapolis Quality Assurance Assocation

April 2006 Attended CITCONF in Chicago

June 2006 Read a Book: Working Effectively with Legacy Code

October 2006 Attended IQAA conference on quality enrichment

January 2007 Read a Book: Scott Rosenberg's Dreaming in Code.

February 2007 New job at a company that attempted many of the agile practices. First practical exposure to Story Estimation, Story Picking, and Stand Up Meetings, as well as integration testing in the form of Fitnesse. A CI build was already set up, but I added unit testing to the build.

March 2007 Attended a lecture on community-building at local church.

September 2007 Attended SD Best Practices conference in Boston

October 2007 Began organizing Geek Dinners in Bloomington.

November 2007 Began practicing Pair Programming at the office

March 2009: Read a Book: Domain Driven Design

April 2009: Gave a presentation on DDD to co-workers.

April 2010: Joined the Agile Skills Project