The first few steps you take with a software project can have a huge influence on its success. This screencast shows you how to position your project for success by getting the basics right in “iteration zero”.

In the space of twenty minutes, we’ll go from having an empty directory to a deployed “Hello World” web application.

Along the way you will learn how to put in place a sensible directory layout, how to manage dependencies, how to do test driven development using JUnit and how to do automated building, testing and artifact (JAR and WAR) creation using Ant.

Audience: The screencast is intended for developers or team leads with little or no agile experience who are looking to get the basics in place.

Run time: 19 minutes

Update April 2010 I’m going to completely redo this video. It was the first one I did, and it was recorded in a noisy hotel room, so the quality is not up to scratch.