Daniel Terhorst-North uses his deep technical and organisational knowledge to help CIOs, business and software teams to deliver quickly and successfully. He puts people first and finds simple, pragmatic solutions to business and technical problems, often using lean and agile techniques. With over thirty years of experience in IT, Daniel is a frequent speaker at technology and business conferences worldwide.
The originator of Behaviour-Driven Development (BDD) and Deliberate Discovery, Daniel has published feature articles in numerous software and business publications, and contributed to The RSpec Book: Behaviour Driven Development with RSpec, Cucumber, and Friends and 97 Things Every Programmer Should Know: Collective Wisdom from the Experts. He occasionally blogs at dannorth.net.
Talks I've Given
-
Keynote: SWARMing into Action
Featuring Daniel Terhorst-North
Daniel has been Scaling Without a Religious Methodology or SWARMing, for a while now. He's talked about the principles behind this and the table stakes necessary for starting, but then what? How do you get started, and how do you set yourself up for success?
processes product people swarming deliberate-discovery agile bdd -
Keynote: SWARMing: Scaling Without A Religious Methodology
Featuring Daniel Terhorst-North
Dan North has spent the last few years showing all kinds of organisations how they can deliver faster, achieve better results with less effort, and have fun doing it. He has a wealth of experience and stories of alignment at scale, and not a formal scaling methodology in sight. This is not a...
agile methodology people management agility scaling keynote -
How to Fail with BDD
Featuring Daniel Terhorst-North
Having worked with many companies adopting BDD over the years, Dan has seen some remarkable, inspiring, worrying and downright scary activities performed in the name of BDD. It seems there are many ways to interpret both the theory and practice of BDD, and this talk attempts to navigate some of...
bdd bddx -
BDD is not about Testing
Featuring Daniel Terhorst-North
BDD started as a way to teach TDD to programmers who kept getting hung up on the idea they were writing tests. Fast-forward a decade or so and it seems BDD scenario automation tools have invaded the world of acceptance testing like Japanese knotweed. All around I see teams harming themselves...
bdd bddx agile testing automation cucumber specflow -
Event Storming for fun and profit
Featuring Daniel Terhorst-North
Dan has been using Event Storming in a number of different contexts recently. He used it to model a legacy system, to design a new system, to understand several convoluted business processes, and primarily as an exercise in building shared understanding. He has also been coaching others and...
ddd eventstorming -
Delivery Mapping: Turning the Lights On
Featuring Daniel Terhorst-North
It seems the hot topic of the moment is how to “solve” agile delivery at scale. Whether it be the heavyweights of SAFe, DAD and LeSS, or upstarts like Reliable Scrum, the pitch is the same: Our solution, along with its associated consulting and certification, is the Ultimate Answer.
...
people-&-process -
Delivery Mapping: Turning the Lights On
Featuring Daniel Terhorst-North
It seems the hot topic of the moment is how to “solve” agile delivery at scale. Whether it be the heavyweights of SAFe, DAD and LeSS, or upstarts like Reliable Scrum, the pitch is the same: Our solution, along with its associated consulting and certification, is the Ultimate Answer.
...
people-&-process -
Delivery Mapping: Turning the Lights On
Featuring Daniel Terhorst-North
It seems the hot topic of the moment is how to “solve” agile delivery at scale. Whether it be the heavyweights of SAFe, DAD and LeSS, or upstarts like Reliable Scrum, the pitch is the same: Our solution, along with its associated consulting and certification, is the Ultimate Answer.
...
people-&-process -
Dan North - Scaling Agile: Turning the Lights On
Featuring Daniel Terhorst-North
Dan North will be giving a talk on Scaling Agile.
agile -
Software, Faster [Workshop]
Featuring Daniel Terhorst-North
In this workshop Dan North will explore how your organisation can deliver software, faster. Delving into three key areas (analysis, planning, and estimation) you will work in groups to understand how your organisation works and why it moves slowly, and how to make it go faster.
bdd agile -
Agile - You keep using that word
Featuring Daniel Terhorst-North
In January 2001 a gathering of like-minded individuals produced the Agile Manifesto, an astonishing document that is still just as relevant 14 years later. Then the commercialisation, commoditisation and certification began, and the enterprise world began adopting a set of methods that are...
bdd agile -
2
Introducing Delivery Mapping
Featuring Daniel Terhorst-North and Chris Matts
Just over ten years ago Dan North and Chris Matts came together to create the Given-When-Then format that we are here to celebrate today. They had come together to solve a problem they perceived in the communication between developers and non-developers.
agile-testing bdd bddx delivery-mapping -
2
Two-and-a-half Years Later - an Experience Report
Featuring Lee Nicholls and Daniel Terhorst-North
In 2012 Lee Nicholls, a senior executive at a major international bank, embarked on a change programme involving over 400 people in London, New York, India and elsewhere. Dan North has been helping out (for values of “helping”) for some of that time, and in this candid Q&A session he...
bddx bdd -
5
Panel: Portfolio delivery: from here to there.
Featuring Daniel Terhorst-North, Chris Matts, Tony Grout, Marina Oliveira and Ram Rao
Join experts from the Portfolio Management track of the Agile Testing and BDD eXchange for a panel discussion.
bddx bdd -
Embracing Uncertainty
Featuring Daniel Terhorst-North
Agile software development was born over a decade ago, with a gathering of industry luminaries in Snowbird, Utah. They were frustrated that so much ceremony and effort was going into so little success, in failed project after failed project, across the software industry. They had each enjoyed...
people-&-process -
Embracing Uncertainty
Featuring Daniel Terhorst-North
Agile software development was born over a decade ago, with a gathering of industry luminaries in Snowbird, Utah. They were frustrated that so much ceremony and effort was going into so little success, in failed project after failed project, across the software industry. They had each enjoyed...
people-&-process -
Embracing Uncertainty
Featuring Daniel Terhorst-North
Agile software development was born over a decade ago, with a gathering of industry luminaries in Snowbird, Utah. They were frustrated that so much ceremony and effort was going into so little success, in failed project after failed project, across the software industry. They had each enjoyed...
architecture-&-design -
2
Make impact, not software
Featuring Gojko Adzic and Daniel Terhorst-North
At the recent BDD eXchange event in London, Gojko and Dan North, the originator of BDD, staged an impromptu state-of-the-union discussion about the present and future of BDD. Dan introduced his latest body of work, Accelerated Agile, describing it as accelerating delivery from months to minutes....
bdd -
Where is the Quality in Agility?
Featuring Daniel Terhorst-North
In partnership with QCon and Skills Matter, Dan North will give a talk on "Where is the Quality in Agility?". Dan proposes that quality applies on several levels: not only how well-written the software itself is, but the completeness of a solution and also its fitness for purpose.
agile bdd -
2
Deliberate Discovery - Step Away From The Tools
Featuring Daniel Terhorst-North and Liz Keogh
In this talk, Liz and Dan introduce BDD from a new perspective, taking the focus away from the tools and scenarios and returning to the language, conversations and philosophies at its heart. With deliberate Discovery addressing our ignorance and misunderstanding across technology, people and...
bdd cucumber -
Keynote: Deliberate discovery: code like you mean it
Featuring Daniel Terhorst-North
In this talk, Dan North explains why ignorance is the greatest enemy to success, and presents some strategies and techniques for deliberately reducing ignorance, increasing learning and moving towards more deterministic and lower risk software delivery.
bdd agile testing requirements -
Irresponsible architectures
Featuring Daniel Terhorst-North
Since the very first days of software we have been developing strategies to support ever bigger and more complex application requirements.
architecture design requirements -
How to sell BDD to the business -
Featuring Daniel Terhorst-North
I don't care how you do it - I just want it better, faster and cheaper and I don't want you to keep bugging me...Software delivery shouldn't be a zero sum game where you have to choose between writing quality software, showing bottom line results and having fun. In this talk, Dan...
bdd agile -
2
Introduction to BDD
Featuring Daniel Terhorst-North and Liz Keogh
Dan North and Liz Keogh introduce the principles behind BDD and describe how it works in practice.
-
Don't get tied to the Rails
Featuring Daniel Terhorst-North
In this talk Dan provides a brief introduction to Ruby and Rails and highlights some of the drawbacks of the Rails and ActiveRecord model for...
activerecord ruby web-applications demo alternative ramaze testability dsl embedded xml verbose