Jeff McKenzie
Software Development & Architecture Leader | Strategy Through Delivery
Columbus, Ohio, United States
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Jeff McKenzie has worked in software development for more than twenty years as a developer, architect, technical leader, and practice director. He enjoys helping others solve problems through technology, from small businesses going digital for the first time to Fortune 500 companies modernizing and expanding complex systems. His work has spanned software architecture, application modernization, cloud development, DevOps, testing, and technical consulting.
Although he started programming in BASIC on an Atari 800, he took a long detour through Biology and English degrees before rediscovering software development through a new thing called the World Wide Web. Jeff is an experienced conference speaker and has presented at CodeMash, Stir Trek, Agile2019, and other technology conferences. He lives in Columbus, Ohio.
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Same As It Ever Was: Spec-Driven Development for Coding Agents
Our quest to build the right software has always relied on more than the implementation itself. Test-Driven Development uses automated tests to define what our code should do before we build it. Behavior-Driven Development builds on those ideas, expressing expected behavior in language relevant to the business and validating that what we build meets its requirements. These guardrails have been around long before generative AI entered the collective consciousness.
But what happens when coding agents allow us to turn ideas into working software dramatically faster? How do we make sure that requirements, design, architecture, and implementation are all moving in the right direction? Is the vibe enough when the code alone can't tell us what we intended to build?
In this session, you'll learn about Spec-Driven Development (SDD), an evolving approach that turns software intent into versioned, structured artifacts that coding agents can use to plan and implement software. We'll explore and compare approaches including GitHub Spec Kit and OpenSpec, and see how specifications move from requirements through planning, implementation, and verification. From there, we'll look at agent skills, IDE and command-line workflows, and how SDD can fit alongside standard engineering practices such as source control, testing, and CI/CD.
We'll walk through a greenfield example using a reproducible, containerized development environment defined with Dev Containers. We'll also consider what changes when introducing SDD to an existing codebase. You'll leave with a good understanding of where SDD can provide familiar guardrails, where it may simply add unnecessary ceremony, and how you can begin experimenting with it in your own development workflow.
This session is intended as a practical introduction to Spec-Driven Development for software developers, architects, technical leads, and others interested in applying coding agents within a structured software development process. The session is best suited for an intermediate audience, but no prior experience with SDD, GitHub Spec Kit, or OpenSpec is required. Familiarity with common software development practices such as source control, automated testing, and CI/CD will be helpful. Some familiarity with AI-assisted coding or coding agents is useful but not required.
The session focuses on SDD as a software development practice rather than on any particular AI model or coding agent. GitHub Spec Kit and OpenSpec are used as representative examples of current approaches, and IDE and command-line tooling will be demonstrated where appropriate. Examples will run in a containerized development environment using Dev Containers; prior experience with containers or Dev Containers is not required.
This session has not previously been presented at a public conference. All of my sessions are designed to encourage audience participation (to the extent possible given the specific venue), with planned discussion points throughout to keep attendees engaged. I am an experienced conference speaker, with prior appearances at CodeMash, Agile2019, Stir Trek, and other regional technology conferences. The focus of my sessions is on practical instruction combined with an engaging, audience-centered delivery style. No special technical requirements beyond standard presentation capabilities.
Get Some UI In Your CI
User interface testing has always been a little weird. Such tests aren't always easy to pull off, but if ignored, the risk is a bad experience for the very people our apps are supposed to serve. As development practices have evolved -- from source control, to automated builds, through suites of unit and integration tests -- we've gotten pretty good at stringing together checks that run quietly in the background. UI tests, however, have never fit quite as comfortably into that pattern.
The tools have gotten better, but technology alone doesn't make a good test suite. There are amazing ways to bring the browser to life, but how do you design tests that can adapt as your application changes, and how do you get them into your development cycle?
In this session, we'll use different frameworks and approaches to automate the same browser scenario, with technologies like Playwright and Selenium, and examples using Python and .NET. Along the way, we'll separate the mechanics of browser automation from the decisions that make it useful and maintainable. You'll leave with practical techniques for building UI tests that remain flexible over time and making them a reliable part of continuous integration.
This session is intended for an intermediate technical audience looking to move to the next level of maintainable, scalable UI test automation. Experience with browser testing, BDD, and/or DevOps is helpful but not required. This session has been presented previously in an earlier version and has been updated for this submission with a newer technology stack.
All of my sessions are designed to encourage audience participation (to the extent possible given the specific venue), with planned discussion points throughout to keep attendees engaged. I am an experienced conference speaker, with prior appearances at CodeMash, Agile2019, Stir Trek, and other regional technology conferences. The focus of my sessions is on practical instruction combined with an engaging, audience-centered delivery style. No special technical requirements beyond standard presentation capabilities.
Diagrams As Code: Why Friends Don't Let Friends Use Visio
When it comes to building software, diagrams are critical. And too often wrong. Visual design tools are time-consuming, and synchronizing diagrams with systems only gets more difficult as complexity increases. In a traditional workflow, diagrams are often at least one step behind the latest code commit. But what if diagrams could live alongside the code they describe, be reviewed and versioned with it, and be automatically generated and deployed as part of the development process? That's Diagrams as Code (DaC) in practice.
In this session, you'll learn about DaC from both a conceptual and practical perspective, including how different tools fit different use cases and technical roles. We'll look in depth at Mermaid, the text-based, all-purpose diagramming and charting tool, and Structurizr, a visualization platform designed around the C4 model of software architecture. Along the way, you'll see how diagrams can become part of a modern development workflow, including source control, automated builds, and CI/CD with Azure DevOps and GitHub Actions.
This session is intended as a practical, workflow-focused introduction to diagrams as code for a broad technical audience including analysts, developers, and architects. The session is best suited for an intermediate audience, but is accessible to beginners through examples of browser-based and local tooling, with additional depth for more advanced attendees through containerized workflows and CI/CD integration. Mermaid and Structurizr are used as representative examples rather than as the focus of the session, and the emphasis is on treating diagrams as versioned, reviewable, and buildable artifacts that can be managed and delivered through the same workflows used for application code. This session has not previously been presented at a public conference.
All of my sessions are designed to encourage audience participation (to the extent possible given the specific venue), with planned discussion points throughout to keep attendees engaged. I am an experienced conference speaker, with prior appearances at CodeMash, Agile2019, Stir Trek, and other regional technology conferences. The focus of my sessions is on practical instruction combined with an engaging, audience-centered delivery style. No special technical requirements beyond standard presentation capabilities.
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