XConf 2024 Barcelona by Thoughtworks

On 19th of September I had a pleasure to be at a conference organized by Thoughworks company; more pleasue that it was in Barcelona in Fabrica Moritz, a working brewery and a cultural meeting place.

I really enjoyed the selection of topics (chosen from two available tracks). Not overloaded, 45 minutes + questions, just enough.

In the keynote Trisha Gee gave a highly energetic overview of test quality. We learned why code coverage can be a misleading measure, how to handle flaky tests, why the TDD test-first approach might not be for everyone, and why she favors the "should, given, when, then" format in test code (fellow ABAPers, you can use this too with ABAP Sencha or Cacamber).

Minette Mangahas and Andy Symonds introduced us to the topic of measuring environmental impact using the Green Software Foundation’s Impact Framework—not just from a technical perspective, but also how to "sell" such concepts to different levels within an organization.

María Valero Campaña gave a great introduction to the FinOps journey, using a sample company trying to manage costs in their cloud-based operating model. This was my first deeper experience with FinOps itself. I have a feeling that FinOps is similar to DevOps or Platform Engineering—some companies have been doing it even before the term/framework was officially introduced.

Germelinda Musliaj and Abel Guillen gave an insightful talk on the Backend experience based on their own work: the challenges, what's available out of the box, and what might become a hurdle. Super useful information to keep in mind.

Then Valentina Servile and Chris Ford had an interesting conversation about Valentina's new book on Continuous Deployment—how it works, its pitfalls, and useful tips. I'm looking forward to reading the book, and I had the feeling the conversation could have easily continued for another hour. Continuous Deployment is a fascinating topic for me, and for many, building and running tests in some CI system seems to mark the end of the "continuous" journey.

Andreas Reisenauer 🇺🇦 provided a valuable, holistic example of their approach to (truly) large-scale distributed, data-intensive organizations. (And the video at the end—straight to the point!)

My final talk was Amit Dube's overview of security and containers—a well-structured summary and guide through the various "layers" of security around a pod, along with the tools they use to stay on the safer side.

The venue was beautiful, though maybe not the best for a conference :>, still, it was a pleasure to see and be inside. Kudos to all involved 🤜🤛 (and minus for missing vegetarian option during lunch).

Hope to visit XConf again in the future!