Gangplank Hacknight

May 7th, 2008

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Successful Agile Retrospective using Mute Mapping

April 4th, 2008

I have been meaning to blog about the success and failures that we are having at Integrum doing Agile Development. First let me say that anything you ever find in this blog related to agile probably did not come directly from me. It came from those that have gone before us and have been gracious enough to share. It is my hope that in sharing our experiences that others can build better teams from seeing our failure and our success.

Earlier this week I did part one of a story writing workshop that I will talk more about later (after I finish the series). It seemed to go fairly well and pretty much 98% of all the content came from the teachings, writings and discussions had with probably the greatest user story writer of our time, Mike Cohn. If you do not own User Stories Applied go buy it right now.

So this morning while waiting to see the surgeon, I was reading my news feeds and read James Shores blog article about Retrospectives. While I had seen this while reading his book The Art of Agile Development it was the incredible poster that made me attracted to this post.

We have been alternating every week who runs our retrospective and it has been a long time since I did one. I knew this was the thing I needed to encourage me to push us into a deeper retrospective, so I volunteered to run this weeks retrospective. I won’t recap the details of what was done, read the article and buy the book for the details. :)

I did capture a brief glimpse of mute mapping by the team on video and am including below.

When we were done mute mapping it was clear that communication/respect was the winner on what needed to be the focus of the objective. The team came up with a list of guidelines/points that are important for communication/respect. We have made a giant poster with this list of items to help keep us in check.

Here is the list:

Integrum Guide to Communication and Respect

• Actively LISTEN to each other
• Planning happens with ALL members of the team
• Deal directly with people to solve problems
• Be aware of WHAT you say and HOW you say it
• Rally wagons at first sign of problems
• Communicate Roles
• Communicate EARLY and OFTEN
• Be RESPONSIBLE for what is expected (demos, standups, timekeeping, planning, etc)
• Acknowledge and understand different points of view
• Stay on point during discussions
• Make time to communicate

The best part is that we had a discussion on our interviewing process immediately following the retrospective and we already saw a huge improvement in communication during that quick meeting. Some personal take aways I have are.

• Making the retrospective a game helps people get involved.
• Uncomfortable silence can help surface problems.
• Brainstorming with out expectations of what will be done with the data lends to more transparent sharing.
• Mute mapping can be fun and is highly effective to quickly organizing data.
• Stating the prime directive* and grouping things by what was done instead of who did what reduces the feeling of being attacked.
• Good healthy conversation lets you tackle/resolve problems in a very calming way.

If you are an agile shop, share your experiences with retrospectives!

This is a community call out. We need to more actively share our stories.

*There is a good discussion on the prime directive on InfoQ

KISS - Fisher Price Block Stupid

April 2nd, 2008

So we have all heard the phrase KISS or Keep It Simple Stupid. In fact, Jim Weirich gave a good presentation at Mountain West Ruby Conference with three slides to hit home the point. Thanks Jim! In talking with a customer the other day they used the phrase in jest that we need to Keep It Fisher Price Block Stupid. Since I have three kids that all made it out of the toddler stage the visual imagery of fisher price blocks hit home.

How often do we say someone is trying to put a square block in a round hole? As software artisans how do we design Fisher Price Block Stupid software that works with the user instead of against the user? But wait, we need Fisher Price Block Stupid tool in order to rapidly develop software. Seriously, when I look at agile, it so Fisher Price Block Stupid (on the surface).

Okay before I get flamed.. Agile is also a black art one can never master. I hope to make a blog post soon that reconciles how something can be simple yet complex at the same time. Until then I challenge you to make everything you do Fisher Price Block Stupid.

SXSW Kid Beyond and The Unicorn

March 21st, 2008

There is so much to write about SXSW but have been too busy. Figured I would at least post a few video highlights as they trickle in.

The Unicorn Kicks It Off

Kid Beyond Part 1

Kid Beyond Part 2

The Wizard

Wardo

SXSW...theunicorn chronicles

March 10th, 2008

Normally Im pretty organized and keep detailed notes of presentations and what not. SXSW is just too overwhelming and light hearted to keep on the action from a slow old antiquated blog. I have been actively twittering most of my adventures. That is when my iphone battery is not dead. 1200 SMS messages a day plus surfing the intertubes it can not withstand the 18 hour days I have been having.

Props to theunicorn for being the superstar of the event.

Phoenix Rails (February)

February 20th, 2008

This is a recap of last nights Phoenix Rails meeting for those that may have missed it or who attended but are looking for links from the discussion. I had originally written this and not saved it, my Macbook failed me with the famous command-tab freeze lockup and all was lost. So if this version sucks I apologize in advance.

The social hour started early with much nostalgia on early computer animation. There was talk about the early days of Pixar and how Silicon Graphics was one of the one viable hardware choices. The talk began to meander to Smalltalk at Xerox PARC and how to buy one of those machines on eBay. People continued to trickle in as the conversation progressed each adding their own experiences.

At 7pm Marc (with a “c”) Chung of OpenRain fired up the projector and started to give his presentation on Amazon’s EC2 Platform to a full house. He gave a nice overview of what EC2 is and how to create new instances and manage them. He demoed a great ruby gem for ec2 that has a full ec2 shell called ec2sh. There is a good article describing its use.

Next Marc fired up several EC2 instances and demoed a few application using MPI Ruby a ruby implementation of the Message Passing Interface Standard. This part of the presentation was fascinating and show the potential of EC2 for distributed applications and platforms like MPI Ruby and ERLANG.

Marc did a great job conveying the risks, limitations and frustrations that OpenRain has realized during the exploration of EC2. There was a great question and answer session comparing various services and functionality. Overall, there was a general sentiment that cloud computing is really just starting and that limitations are being overcoming daily. Additionally other Amazon Web Services like Mechanical Turk, S3 and SimpleDB were discussed.

There was mention that Mountain West Ruby Conf and Gotham Ruby Conf were both on the horizon.

After the meeting 10 or so attendees headed down to Churchill’s Pub and Grill for more conversation. Everyone was into their conversation that we ended up helping shut Churchhill’s down for the night. :)

I wanted to shout out to Bryan Williams of City Tech visiting all the way from Chicago, IL.

Additionally if you are just getting started with Amazon Web Services and Ruby you might to check out an Introduction to AWS for Ruby Developers

You should be able to find audio of the event shortly on Rubyology.

And Less Allan, yes I was rocking the SVN up bitches shirt. It got lots of great comments!

Hasselhoff Bathroom Art (Prank)

February 8th, 2008

So last week Lindsay and Erica went to the Google Geek Girl Dinner. We felt it was our duty to prank them in the same way we would anyone else in the office out on travel. During our retrospective Matt Gist was talking about this tool called Rasterbator. Because we have the maturity of an junior high school it took us about an hour to recover from the name Rasterbator before it clicked that we needed to print SOMETHING. Of course, a five foot tall picture of the Hoff in a speedo was the only acceptable answer. The question? Where do we hang this? In the girls bathroom, because they are all out of the office was also logical. So how big? Five feet should do, cause no one puts Hoff in the corner.

It took a few minutes for the image to print it was over 40 sheets. Josh Huckabee and Chris Young artfully assembled the image and hung it with style. It just so happens that when you sit on the throne, that the Hoff’s junk is square in your face. In the most hideously cool way. Additionally when you open the door the entire mirror is filled with Hoff starring back at you. So if you are in the neighborhood on Thursdays (or any day) drop on in to see our art work and experience club Integrum first hand.

Top 5 Reasons to Attend SXSW

February 8th, 2008

So Popped Collar put out his top 5 reasons to attend SXSW.

I figured I would add five of my own….

5. Everyone needs a trip to mecca. Do your patriotic duty and pay homage to George and Laura Bush in Texas

4. Being in Texas just makes you feel smarter.

3. Enjoy the spring break parties you never were cool enough to attend in college.

2. It’s no fun being the only web designer/developer in phoenix.

1. How else will you learn how to Bankrupt your Startup in 5 easy steps in under an hour?

Refresh Demo Night

February 6th, 2008

Refresh Phoenix last night was quite the event. There were probably over 70 people gathered at Inza in Scottsdale, AZ to watch five minute demos from local Phoenix companies. Below is a quick hit list of what was presented. refresh notes:

1. Show in a Box (Cheryl Colan and Clintus McGintus)

Show in a Box is a package of free video-centric themes and plugins for WordPress, made by and for independent video-on-the-internet creators. We’ll teach you how to set-up your very own website for your video “show” and provide many of the tools needed as a free download.

2. Square Mile Web (Eric Eaglstun)

The Square Mile is a new, fun way to share and find interesting images.

3. Durt Bagz (Erin Atherton)

Erin stated that this is Threadless for dumb people. In a nutshell, users generate sign designs. Users vote on sign designs. Erin creates limited runs of bags with the most popular designs. She also has a dirty laundry section that are interviews with fake celebrities. You can also make custom durtbagz. Erin you need to hook up AZ folks attending SXSW so that you can get some free marketing!!!

Dynamic presenter that engaged people well. Kudos Erin. Looking forward to the “How to Stay From Being Lame” video blog that she mentioned was soon releasing.

4. My Community Board (Deacon Hayes)

Recently, we’ve lived in three places where we didn’t know the people who lived right next door. Then we thought, “there has got to be a better way”. Nothing is better than creating something to scratch a personal itch. Deacon was a quality presenter and is attempting to solve a very real problem we encounter in this digital world. Curious to how something like this might fit into The QC

5. Travel Click (Kevin Schumacher)

Show case of proprietary content management system for the hotel industry. Travel Click is looking for developers.

6. Crowd Box (Seth Markowitz)

Conference. Content. Community.

Crowdbox helps you manage your conference content, create a community around it, and help your attendees build their professional relationships and networks.

Unfortunately the speaker spent the majority of the time discussing the space as opposed to showing the product. However, what was seen probably showed the most promise out of all the demos. I think the product takes best in show for this demo night.

7. Testing Software (Hugh Dunne)

Windows GUI application to automate testing. No website or take away here.

8. Read Phoenix (Erica Lucci)

Listing of blogs in the Phoenix Area. I mentioned that an OPML feed was done, but not published. Unfortunately I got my projects mixed up. Will look to get this functionality added by end of weekend. :(

9. XID Card (Brian Shaler)

The XID project is intended to provide a free, open, and decentralized method of sharing your online identity with your friends. Brian did a great job covering a huge project in five minutes time. Like all of Brian’s adventures, this one is sure to be a fun ride.

10. gAuto (Srini Vasan)

A safe and easy way to buy auto services. Vertical market specific directory listing with quality rankings. Another project birthed out of personal need. Roughly 3 weeks old.

11.Neh Meh Yeh (Matt Gist & Matt Heidemann)

It’s a simple question, “How are you today?”

Nehmehyeh is a super rad way for you and yo’ friends to track how your mood be everyday…until you die.

12. Twitter Sign (Matt Gist)

Have you ever seen an odd sign?

This is where you broadcast those signs to the twitter world.

12. After Halloween (Daniel Davis)

There are people good at what they do and there are geniuses. Daniel is a genius. Just enjoy what he is capable of.

Daniel is also rocking Tiny Army a new group for illustrators.

Two different companies announced that they got funding (I don’t recall their names). Additionally, several people were looking for CakePHP developers.

There was an announcement that the AZ Republic is looking for submissions for its 35 under 35 contest. Unfortunately links to get applications seem to be too sparse for me to tinker with.

All in all a great night. I won’t even get into the wild after party at Ling and Louies.

Share Your Story

February 1st, 2008

A hotly contested argument here in the Phoenix area is that it is a culture desert as well as real desert. That nothing is ever happening and there is no excitement. While I think we have a long ways to go, there certainly is some exciting stuff happening locally. Refresh Phoenix is a big part of that.

Here at Integrum we have been inviting other shops to occupy space with us rent free to try to stimulate relationships and information to take things to the next level. Forty has been occupying space for sometime and we have really enjoyed the fruits of co-working.

We have been extending this and now have Draw Backwards lined up to occupy and start co-working. I don’t think I can adequately articulate the advantages to working in this way without having real experience with it. The amount of energy that comes out working in this environment is incredible. Which brings me to the whole reason for this stupid blog post (I have had it on my list to blog about co-working for like 6 months)...

At the SEED Conference Jason Fried talked about great chef’s make their name by releasing their cookbook. That is sharing the secret to their success. 37 Signals of course did this with Getting Real. I shared with James Archer and ACME Photography that someone really needs to do this for photography. There is no good place to get that expert photographer mojo.