We want you to feel comfortable and have fun during the workshop. We will have a very tight timebox within the course itself, so you will need to do some prep work in advance. Preparation is critical. By doing a little bit of work upfront we can save a great deal of time discussing the mechanics and move onto deeper problems.

As part of the course, and in the spirit of Scrum, you write the acceptance criteria for the training itself. In preparation, please prepare a minimum of 3 items that would make you say at the end of the workshop, “Wow, what a great workshop!” Detailed beats general or vague.

Examples:

• I understand the importance of a cross-functional team
• I have learned more about testing in the Agile world
• I have a good understanding of Test Driven Development

Then shoot me an email, sharing a little about yourself as well as your acceptance criteria for the training.

So I can tailor the workshop to the room, please rank yourself on three things: your programming language experience, Test Driven Development, and your use of the IDE.

Use a scale of 0 to 10, where:

• 0 means “What’s that?” or “I can spell it!”
• 10 means “I’ll be teaching the trainer a thing or two about that” or “I invented that!”

Bring your three numbers with you (or include them in the email with your acceptance criteria). There are no wrong answers, this just helps me meet you where you are.

A code smell is a hint that something might be wrong in your codebase. A smell isn’t always a problem, rather it’s a hint that a further look is warranted. Code smells originated in Martin Fowler’s Refactoring, and we will work with them throughout the course.

Please read through our Code Smells glossary entry, which catalogues the smells we will use in class (Bloaters, Object-Oriented or Functional Abusers, Change Preventers, Dispensables, and Couplers). As you read, identify which ones apply in your own code.

Much of this course is about building software together, not alone. Please read these rules ahead of time so we share a starting point on day one.

This is a hands-on coding course, so you must arrive with a working development environment. Please complete this step for both in-person and virtual workshops.

The Tennis Refactoring Kata comes from the Samman Technical Coaching community. We use it because it contains some of the best examples of code smells available, which makes it ideal practice for the work we will do together in class.

GenAI coding agents (Copilot, Cursor, Claude Code, and the like) can be genuinely useful tools, and you are welcome to use them in your everyday work. During the workshop, though, I ask that you relegate them to giving you feedback on the code: reviewing it, spotting smells, and suggesting refactorings, rather than writing the code for you.

The purpose of the exercises is to gain a deeper appreciation for the engineering practices, not to produce the most code. If the agent writes the solution, you miss the very thing we came together to learn.

For our virtual workshops we will be using a combination of online tools to deliver the training. You will need to prepare well in advance of the course start date, and pre-test all of these tools, to ensure that you’re able to fully participate in the entire course as soon as it starts.

You will need a solid internet connection and a computer that can handle video conferencing and multiple applications at once, a webcam, and a microphone (your computer mic is fine). Corporate Firewall? If any of these tools are blocked, switch to a personal computer and network, because certification will not be possible without your active participation using all of them. Please do not use a VPN. It doesn’t end well. On a single laptop monitor, seeing Zoom and Mural at the same time can be challenging. If you can, a second monitor makes a big difference.

We use the following online tools as our classroom. You can access all of them without creating any account or giving your email address.

When you have completed all preparation, please email us at contact@agilepainrelief.com and tell us, so we know that you, and your local system, are fully prepared for start of class.

I’ll look forward to seeing you in class!

~ Mark