What is the Nuremberg Digital Festival?
The Nuremberg Digital Festival (#nuedigital) brings together innovation & technology in the Nuremberg Metropolitan Region and celebrates the transformation taking place here. For the second year in a row, we used this opportunity to discuss our know-how and innovative ways of working with participants and visitors, to exchange ideas and make valuable contacts.
During the ten-day festival, we had the pleasure of hosting an interested audience of professionals on two evenings at our premises in Nuremberg. We took the chance to talk about different topics of digitalization.
All visitors of the festival had the opportunity to participate in about 200 virtual as well as live events and to discover new digital trends.
Is agile work as effective as everyone says? Can artificial intelligence make the work of software developers easier?
We hosted experts from the region at our Nuremberg location for two expert presentations to discuss these questions.
During the first event on July 6, our ALTEN experts Alexander Helm, Business Analyst & Product Owner, together with our Head of Testing Steffen Schild and our Product Owner & Scrum Master Andreea Ulrich invited the audience to an interactive discussion around the topic “Agile sucks – fraud or genius?“.
These days, there is no self-respecting company in IT that does not rely on agility in software development. But does it really need it? Or is it often just “labeling fraud”? In a provocative debate, our colleagues got to the bottom of this and other questions and invited a lively exchange.
The hyped AI tool ChatGPT is currently widely used. But what about an implementation in the form of the Codium.ai tool in the world of testing and programming? On July 11, our heads of testing Steffen Schild and Utz Winter, together with our developers Jakob Bablitschky and Marc Remolt, presented on the second event on the topic “Yay! AI writes unittests -or? Journey into the Current Future” to present their experience with this AI tool under development. It was an exciting journey from the introduction to AI to the evaluation of current possibilities based on real software projects.
During these events, our experts were able to highlight the role these two topics play in both personal and professional life, as well as address the burning questions of the visitors. Finally, everyone took the opportunity to network over a buffet and further discuss the topics in a relaxed atmosphere.
The opinion of our ALTEN experts
Agile working- fraud or genius?
The choice to call the talk “Agile sucks – Fraud or Genius?” is quite surprising as well as daring. Why did you choose this title?
“Like every process, the Agile approach has its light and shadow sides. With this title, we deliberately wanted to pay more attention to the shadow sides. We decided to bring the aspects that are usually only discussed in the coffee kitchen constructively onto the stage to collectively develop solutions for a better Agile world.”
Alexander Helm – Business Analyst and Product Owner
What does it mean for you to work in an agile way?
“Agile working means to me to ideally work in a team with all other people involved in the project. This gives us the opportunity to exchange ideas about the quality of our product together, as well as to pass on our know-how and mindset to the team members and thus achieve the optimal result. In the development process, our skills complement each other, we can quickly identify shortcomings, react to changing requirements and thus quickly adapt to them as a team.”
Steffen Schild – Test Department Manager
Can everyone work agile?
“In my opinion, everyone can work agilely. However, not all projects are suitable for it. Agile frameworks are meant to solve complex challenges: for example, where requirements are uncertain and/or the solution methods are unknown. However, if the requirements are clearly defined, the classic way of working might be recommended.”
Andreea Ulrich – Product Owner and Scrum Master
How does artificial intelligence affect the world of work?
Why did you decide to talk about the current topic artificial intelligence?
“We chose the topic primarily out of our own interest, I’ve personally been involved with AI for a number of years and as Chat-GPT shows, current systems have reached a point where evaluation just makes sense.”
Utz Winter – Head of Test
Why did you choose the tool “Codium.ai”?
“We were looking for an Artificial Intelligence tool that would help us create unit tests. Unit tests form the basis of the testing pyramid. They are the foundation for confidence in the software we develop and lead the fastest to uncovering error conditions in the source code. Most AI tools for developers are designed for general code support through AI, but CodiumAI is designed specifically for use-case unit testing.”
Jakob Bablitschky – Developer and Community Leader Cloud
How will the results of the “AI journey” influence your work at ALTEN in the future?
“We plan, depending on the customer, to use CodiumAI or one of the other tested tools as support for our daily work,” said Marc. “Currently, AI is at best a support in very limited cases, as there is simply still too much uncertainty whether you can trust the results and also the data security of the information transferred. I can’t simply transfer project information to third parties and the training data of the current AI is too general for use in my environment beyond that. AI is currently exclusively an auxiliary tool, the use of which must be carefully considered and the results of which must be scrutinized even more than a technical article found via a search engine,” added Utz.
Marc Remolt – Developer and Community Leader Cloud
We look back
It is the second time that you participate in this event, why?
“It gives us the opportunity to share our know-how, ways of working and interests with other interested people from the industry. We can exchange ideas with the participants and visitors and engage in conversations with clients outside of our current projects. In addition, the festival allows us to see what other companies in the region are doing and where there may be project opportunities or space for a professional exchange.”
Steffen Schild – Test Division Manager
What was the most exciting thing about this event for you as speakers, but also for the audience?
“From my point of view, the most exciting thing was the exchange among the participants and us, as well as the many diverse opinions. I think for the participants themselves, the most exciting thing was our analysis and getting to the bottom of it. Many from the audience took pictures of the slides with the findings to capture the information.”
Andre Holtkamp – developer with focus on testing
