Buzz Pressure

If this is your perception of Agile…

And if you’re in the Waterloo, Ontario area, you might want to come out to a Communitech Event on Dec 17.

Are your software projects:
Defect free?  Yes ? No
On-time?  Yes ? No
Under budget?  Yes ? No
Thrilling your users?  Yes ? No

If you answered Yes to all the above questions then congratulations, read no further. If you answered No to one or more then read on.

Since Agile was first introduced in 2001 it has taken the industry by storm. Recent surveys in Dr. Dobb’s Journal (www.ddj.com) have shown that Agile approaches are being adopted in 69% of organizations in North America and that Agile enjoys a significantly higher success rate than traditional projects. In this presentation Scott Ambler will describe what Agile is, address some of the myths that you may have heard, and discuss how Agile will affect your approach to software development. He’ll go beyond the Agile rhetoric surrounding programming and describe how project management, database development, documentation, modeling, user experience, and quality assurance activities are addressed by Agile teams.
Please join us for a complimentary afternoon seminar with Scott Ambler. Scott W. Ambler is the Practice Leader Agile Development at IBM Corporation. Scott is an award-winning author of several books, including books focused on the Unified Process, agile software development, the Unified Modeling language, and CMM-based development. Scott is a regular speaker at international IT conferences and is a contributing editor with Dr. Dobb’s Journal. Scott led the development of several software processes, including Agile Modeling (AM), Agile Data (AD), Enterprise Unified Process (EUP), and Agile Unified Process (AUP) methodologies.

This seminar is produced by eLead.Inc in collaboration with Communitech

You can register here. For free (as in beer)!

The Agile series was pulled together by local Agile mavens Declan Whelan of DP Whelan and Associates and Jeff Berardine of Innosphere with support from Communitech. I helped a bit but not nearly enough — sorry guys!

If you’re practicing Agile and love it, or if you’ve tried an Agile method and hated it, or if you’re just Agile curious please come out and join in the discussion. Heck just come out and hear Scott Ambler.

This afternoon Mark Slee of Facebook made it semi-official: it is Facebook’s intention to place Thrift into the Apache incubator.

For those of you not familiar with Thrift, I’ll quote Mark:

it’s a lightweight system for cross-language programming using code-generation, RPC, and object serialization. It’s designed first and foremost to provide high performance in real-time environments (i.e. Facebook’s backend, no surprises there).

We’ve been experimenting with Thrift a bit and it’s pretty cool. Some interesting parties playing with Thrift like Powerset and the Persai guys. Not to mention it powers Facebook. As a result, it is worth some experimentation. I have a draft posting of  building Thrift on OS X which is a little bit of an adventure. I’ll post it once it will actually be useful to anyone.

The real reason I’m excited about Thrift heading to Apache is that it’s the basis of what I think is possibly the coolest technology around right now — Thrudb. Thrudb is a framework for document oriented database services and is the brainchild of Jake Luciani of 3rd Rail. You can see Thrudb in action at JunkDepot. Jake has a nice write up on Thrudb on the 3rd Rail blog.

Check it out for yourself and thanks and kudos to Jake.

Carm (my wife) found possibly the most tragic, cautionary example of why you need to be market driven. For the benefit of those non-Canadians or non-caffeinated reading this posting: every year Tim Hortons (think Duncan Donuts) runs a contest called “Roll up the Rim“. The contest runs for a couple of weeks or until Tim Hortons runs out of cups.

Most Canadians gnaw at their cup to make the rim malleable enough to discover that they have to “play again”. Mr. Kind, the inventor of the “Rimroller” obviously was unhappy chewing away on his cup like some caffeine crazed freak trying to get every ounce out of his coffee, or more correctly every millilitre for us Canuckleheads.

Actually when I think of Mr. Kind, I imagine a tweed jacket with leather elbow patches — a sort of Curious George character. Clearly Mr. Kind is far too dignified to gnaw his way to disappointment and Roll up the Rim defeat. But you know you missed the mark when your sole distribution channel has taken pity on you and is only stocking your product because they feel so darn bad:

Paul Kind, had plowed a ton of time and capital into bringing the product to the point where it was ready to market. So, while Lee Valley is clearly not the most appropriate retailer of this product, we could only stand by for so long watching Mr. Kind work hard to sell this product without success.

Ouch. So other then the fact that Mr. Kind wasn’t very successful what else can we learn from this tragic story? That Lee Valley will pick up your crap if you’re unsuccessful? Um no but yeah they do seem to be reinforcing bad behaviour but you have to applaud their support.

Ok yeah the title was a clue. I have a feeling if Mr. Kind spent a little time with the market he would’ve discovered that while his invention is novel, his design elegant if not decidedly brown, it isn’t a “must have” product with a compelling, overt user benefit. Note: reducing cup gnaw is apparently not overt.

I’m sure this invention was justified throughout its development because I bet Mr. Kind has rolled up a rim or two in his time. Man that sounds dirty. But it is that “I’m the market” point that is probably the biggest learning here. It is really easy to say you are your market but the second you become inventor you’re no longer your market. Mr. Kind’s market is scarfing crappy coffee and downing sugary fat. They’re not taking risks, developing an invention. Hopefully the cost of tuition for this little learning wasn’t too much for Mr. Kind.

The good news is that it was free for all of us — unless in a moment of sympathy and weakness you popped for a Rim Roller. Now get out there and talk to your market, your fans and more importantly your critics.

Of course you can’t expect the market to tell you exactly what they want. They haven’t a clue but they know what they like when they see it and they know where it hurts. Now run along and invent and refine products that make your users’ world a better place.

Quinn was very excited tonight that he could see the planet Mars. Finally I took a look and holy crap the Moon was red. Apparently it is a bad sign for air quality but it’s pretty funky nonetheless.

I snapped a photo from our balcony — hopefully you can see it ok. I’m using the crappy Powershot 410 since someone stole our good camera while I was sailing at the Youngstown Regatta.

Red Moon over the hills of Chicopee

Twittering about how ridiculous the reaction to the first snow is  - $0.05 for SMS costs

Missing a lunch because you’re stuck in a ditch  - $20.oo saved

Public humiliation on the AideRSS site - priceless

B-Cubed recently posted about an Amazon screw-up with their recommendation engine where they failed to disambiguate the author Alan Cooper (of Cooper Design) with Alan Cooper who apparently writes about the history of war. Thus if you bought About Face you should buy Bravery Awards for Aerial Combat. Design is hell people. Apparently this recommendation engine affliction is both contagious and mutating.

Today I was doing some research and was poking around on the term “Hmaster” along with some other terms that I won’t mention for IP reasons. Anyhow Google suggested that I was likely really looking for “Hamster”. Ah no but it made me laugh anyhow. Especially at the thought that Google was recommending hamsters for my distributed processing. Hmmmn maybe they’re on to something.

PS before anyone comments, yeah I know more people search for “hamster” then “hmaster”. Or more correctly people change their “hmaster” search to “hamster”.

Yep apparently that’s what I am. I read this post to Carm (my wife) and sadly it seemed to resonate. At least we both laughed pretty heartily at it.

Some high points for me:

Understand your nerd’s relation to the computer. It’s clichéd, but a nerd is defined by his computer, and you need to understand why.

…

The nerd has based his career, maybe his life, on the computer, and as we’ll see, this intimate relationship has altered his view of the world. He sees the world as a system which, given enough time and effort, is completely knowable. This is a fragile illusion that your nerd has adopted, but it’s a pleasant one that gets your nerd through the day.

Yeah too true… Carm was explaining to a friend the other day that I come home jump on a computer, eat dinner (fast, more on that later) put the kids to bed and jump on a computer. The friend totally couldn’t believe it or more likely she couldn’t believe that Carm puts up with it.

Your nerd has built himself a cave. I’ve written about The Cave elsewhere, but here are the basics. The Cave is designed to allow your nerd to do his favorite thing, which is working on the project. If you want to understand your nerd, stare long and hard at his Cave. How does he have it arranged? When does he tend to go there? How long does he stay?

Each object in the Cave has a particular place and purpose. Even the clutter is well designed. Don’t believe me? Grab that seemingly discarded Mac Mini which has been sitting on the floor for two months and hide it. You’ll have 10 minutes before he’ll come stomping out of the Cave — “Where’s the Mac?”

As we prepped to sell our house recently, Carm weened me off my clutter. Invariably she would have just freecycled or packed an object and I suddenly needed it. It was spooky. Stuff I hadn’t touched in years. Good to know I was only doing what is expected of my species.

As each part of the project is completed, your nerd receives an adrenaline rush that we’re going to call The High.

Yep I get that all the time. I mentioned it recently. When I really get going, I bang the keyboard, or scribble on the whiteboard like a frenzied rat banging a bar to get cocaine-laced food pellets. It isn’t pretty.

Your nerd’s insatiable quest for information and The High has tweaked his brain in an interesting way. For any given piece of incoming information, your nerd is making a lightning fast assessment: relevant or not relevant? Relevance means that the incoming information fits into the system of things your nerd currently cares about. Expect active involvement from your nerd when you trip the relevance flag. If you trip the irrelevance flag, look for verbal punctuation announcing his judgment of irrelevance. It’s the word your nerd says when he’s not listening and it’s always the same. My word is “Cool”, and when you hear “Cool”, I’m not listening.

Guilty as charged. With kids, especially smart kids this is really dangerous. P and Q both know when I’m not listening and have exploited that to new heights. Guess who is getting two guinea pigs once our new house is built. I swear I thought they were talking about a TV show (Wonderpets) not pet ownership.

You might’ve noticed your nerd’s strange relation to food. Does he eat fast? Like really fast? You should know what’s going on here. Food is thrown into the irrelevant bucket because it’s getting in the way of the content. Exercise, too. Thing is, you want your nerd to eat healthily so that he’s here in another thirty years, so how do you change this behavior? You make diet and exercise the project.

For me, exercise became the project ten years ago after a horrible break-up. When the project was no longer the Ex, I dove into exercise every single day of the week. There were charts tracking my workouts, there were graphs tracking my weight, and there was the exercise. Every single day for two years until the day I passed out in a McDonald’s post-workout after not eating for a day. Ok, so time for a new project. Yeah, nerds also have moderation issues. That’s another essay.

Another one that hits close to home. About 5 years ago I started running. I hated running as a kid because it was always the thing we did before the fun stuff (e.g. rowing). For some reason I got possessed and decided to run a 5k and then 10K. I got the pace/HRM/watch with a massive statistics package. Not satisfied with 10K I decided to take it further and head for marathons. Being on the proverbial project I kept pushing forward and broke multiple bones (metatarsals) in both of my feet. I also developed plantar fasciitis and sprained my ankle, twice. Yeah moderation is not my strong point.

Oh well at least I’m know I’m in reasonably good company.

John Battelle posted an article near and dear to my heart entitled “The Power of Power Searchers“.

“What I do wonder is whether Google et al are creating products for ME, or for my mother. This data would argue that they should be for me.”

I’ve had many a heated discussion on what user segment a given product should be focused. At times, I think I’ve been right and I definitely know I’ve been wrong.

I’ve always been jaded/inspired by the Kai’s Power Tools approach. KPT had a stunning feature of awesomeness for power users. After you had applied KPT filters enough, you’d ‘earn’ more filters. These filters weren’t just greyed out, they were completely invisible to noobs. Most interestingly, I never saw the whole user apprenticeship model mentioned anywhere.

Of course, I never read manuals and it could have been featured prominently, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t based on the reactions of delight I heard from other users. It was sort of a secret society of the KPT Power Users. We made the Skull and Bones look like a bunch of gossipy fools. You’d see some crappy luminosity effect applied in someone’s Persuasion presentation and there’d be a few smug glances exchanged in the room, as if we were all thinking “Guess who just bought KPT!?”

Ok, so back to the point- KPT might have struck a balance but probably would’ve really alienated first time users deemed not worthy of some of the more interesting effects if it hadn’t been such a small segment of users and in a pre-blog era.

I’ve railed against adding wizards in one of my products because it was a sovereign application - I wasn’t going to punish the users who live day in and out in my app by burdening them with hand holding. That said, I wanted to ease the transition for the novice and make them productive ASAP.

The challenge with wizards and other performance support models is that you force the user to admit that he’s an idiot and I’ve yet to meet a user who feels he’s anything but absolutely and completely right. And they’re unanimous in that.

You can’t be everything to everybody. Don’t design apps for your Mom unless you’re chasing that lucrative ‘Mom’ market. Design for the segment that will gain the most utility from your application and also support your business/revenue needs. It’s pretty simple really.

Do I think Google missed the mark? Hmmmm, I don’t think that it is that simple. As someone pointed out in the comments of the Battelle article, power users do not click ads. Heck, I have enough Firefox extensions that obliterate ads  that I can’t remember the last time I saw a Google Ad. So taking my advice, they’re completely correct in not designing for me. I also can derive utility from Google -  the advanced page appeals to my need for 50 knobs to tweak. Where I do not  think they’ve done well in meeting my needs (and it is all about me) is in Google Apps. That said, they’ve made it pretty clear they’re not designing for me.

All right I give up — well done Google.

This morning I participated in an Agile Software Development panel. It was early but even through my fog of only a couple (as in 2) hours of sleep, I think some interesting thoughts and comments surfaced.

One thing that struck me was the discussion about the role of software testing within Agile practices. ‘Typically’ you’d want your testers living side by side with your developers. Even better, you’d want them working with the Product Owner to verify that the story was implemented satisfactorily. There was some discussion/disagreement about the scope that Test Drive Development can realistically cover and the need for formalized acceptance testing. A few people chimed in that although software development practices have evolved, testing/QA/SV practices have failed to keep up to the pace of change.

Around this point, Paul Carvalho (a former senior tester of mine), theorized that we needed to get testers more comfortable with Agile practices like Exploratory Testing (ET) and even more importantly, developers needed to be comfortable with ET. My experience has been that developers’ initial reaction (mine included) to ET is pretty similar to  management’s first reaction to Agile. And while Paul eventually won me over with ET, I would’ve loved the kind comfort of a test plan in the early days.

Paul feels we can overcome the resistance to change through discussion and education but I’m curious -  is Exploratory Testing testing the Agile testing method of choice? What resistance have people felt to implementing Exploratory Testing?

37 Signals has a post today where they poo-poo personas

We don’t use personas. We use ourselves. I believe personas lead to a false sense of understanding at the deepest, most critical levels.

Every product we build is a product we build for ourselves to solve our own problems. We recognize our problems aren’t unique. In fact, our problems are probably a lot like your problems. So we bundle up the solutions to our problems in the form of web-based software and offer them for sale.

So I buy in that you can/should build software that scratches an itch. I also can understand why it is powerful when it’s your itch but are they really saying we can only build software for ourselves? Note to self: good thing I consume a lot of RSS.

Seriously though, a lot of useful software would never have been built if this were the case. However, I suppose you could argue that there’s a lot of software built that shouldn’t have been.
I wonder what my former colleague Robert Barlow-Busch thinks. Bobby, what say ye?