An alternative to "yesterday, today, blockages" reporting in an Agile stand-up

The standard reporting technique for an Agile stand-up is to run around the team and get everyone to quickly report on three things:

1. What I did yesterday
2. What I am going to do today
3. Blockages

This works really, really well in teams of about 5-8 people, but I have noticed that it can become unwieldy if the team gets much larger. Leaving aside the obvious solution of breaking the team up into smaller units (which might not always be possible, as I found out today on a project that I am working on), I was wondering if there was anything that I could do to make the run-around work a little more smoothly.

One thing that we've tried that can improve the stand-up is to reduce the standard three questions down to just two:

1. Achievements
2. Blockages

Because not everyone will have daily achievements, nor will everyone have daily blockages, you can skip some of the team as necessary, which can speed things up. In a large group, it can give you some extra time to celebrate or congratulate those people that do have an achievement to report, even if it is only small. Or equally, to flag a blockage that needs some more attention. I've noticed that the group recognition is (generally) enough to spur others to participate when they have something worth telling the team.

I know this might sound a little like heresy, but it does actually work, as long as you are very diligent to watch out for two specific pitfalls. These are:

1. "My tasks are 95% complete"
2. "I have nothing to report"

If you find that someone on the team is falling into the "95% complete" rut, then you need to help them out by engaging them directly in the stand-up, and if necessary, go back to the standard three questions to help them out. Equally, if someone has nothing to report for more than 2 or 3 days, its a good sign that something is wrong, or at least, it's enough of a flag to the scrum master to pay a little more attention to that person.

I don't think that this is a substitute for the normal 3-point reporting style, but some stand-ups just get a little larger than you would like, and often this can be out of your control.

I'll see how this new technique goes over the next couple of weeks, and then follow-up with my findings.

M@

Facebook == Hypercard ... ?

The New York Times is reporting [1] that LinkedIn is valued at $1b. This is deeply troubling.

Whilst I have a lot more time for LinkedIn than I do for FaceBook (because it actually has a purpose), I'm still deeply concerned about a $1b valuation for it.

If ever there was a "HAM radio for the Internet", it's social networking. And if you need proof, take a look at OpenSocial. This platform takes the data model that underlies any kind of social graph and makes it open and public. In the (very near) future, simply being a social networking site won't be enough, because every site of any form will be able to expose its social graph and interact with other nodes in the wider, semantic web.

FaceBook (and to a lesser extent LinkedIn) have done a great job kicking off the idea, but because they are both closed systems, they will inevitably be overtaken by things like OpenSocial and the rest of the long tail Internet making use of that library and API.

Here's an analogy:

FaceBook == Hypercard
OpenSocial == Internet

Where are they both today?

BTW: If any of the social network sites has a chance of breaking out of simply representing a social graph, it's probably LinkedIn (or maybe Plaxo). Both of these sites actually do something with the graph that is useful to people. LinkedIn is monetising its data through an alternative to traditional job ads, and Plaxo provides a way for poor, troubled Windows users to sync address/calendar across multiple devices (wait until MobileMe arrives!)

FaceBook, on the other hand, just fills your inbox with crap.

And don't just take my word for it. Google agrees: [1].

For the record, I actually think that Hypercard was a far, far more revolutionary idea (for its time) than FaceBook. Had they just made the leap to allow cards to link to cards on other machines, then the web may have been kick started a few years earlier.

M@

[1] A social site, only the businesslike need apply
[2] Google's view: 3 trends in social networking

Hardware Pr*n

Up until last week, it was over three years since I spent any real money on computer hardware. I have done some minor upgrades here and there, but no completely new machines. Well, a fortnight ago that all changed when my ageing laptop finally gave up completely.

It had been slowing down for a while - the WiFi was going bleak, the network connector was quite dodgy and required a wiggle every now and again to stay connected, and the built-in monitor was shaky at best, and full of interference lines and static when it was feeling poorly. On top of this, my desktop - once a mighty beast of a machine - was also in its last throws of death. After a recent attempt to upgrade video cards to support a pair of new 22" monitors, it was suffering from a peculiar illness that caused it to suddenly die cold, with no warning other than the horrifying sound of the fan powering down as the power drained away and my unsaved document faded from view. And continuing the theme of technology decay, my DVD/PVR also gave up the ghost in the same week. By itself, that would not be too much of a problem (who gets time to watch TV anyway?) but it is a VERY BIG problem when two small children can't watch their daily fix of Pooh Bear and The Einsteins. So that needed replacing too. Excellent.

Part of the reason that I have waited for such a long time to upgrade was financial. Actually - that's most of the reason. But a small part was that I was waiting for Apple's June WWDC before I made any purchases just on the off chance that there could be some spunky new hardware announced. As expected, the WWDC focused on the iPhone, so I went to my local Apple reseller on Tuesday afternoon to put in an order. As an aside, I had contemplated waiting until the Apple store opened in Sydney last week to make the deal, but although I admit openly to liking Apple kit, its not (yet) to the point where I would prostrate myself at the altar that is the new Sydney Apple Store. Not quite ... Well, actually not at all. Certainly not like these kooks [1].

Also, if it's not obvious, my previous suite of IT kit was almost all beige-box PCs running Windows (there was 1 sneaky MacBook that my wife used), plus several even-older cast-off machines that I had managed to rebuild as Ubuntu boxes for a variety of random development tasks like s Subversion repository and a Wiki. This last bit is significant, because for about 15 years - most of my working life, really - I've been using DOS or Windows PCs.

Because it had been such a long time since I'd bought new equipment, when it came around to tooling up, I went a little nuts. I needed a new laptop AND a new desktop, and something to replace the DVD, not to mention a new laptop for my wife. So the order looked more or less like this: MacMini, check. MacBook, check. MacBook Pro, check. MacPro, double check. I went hard on the MacPro. Two 3.2 GHz quad-core Xeons, and 8Gb of RAM. In just under a week, it all turned up, which is where i got the title of this post. This stuff is hardware porn. I know that sounds completely ridiculous, but that's the best way I can think to describe it in only two words. Actually, its a terrible title, and its not at all what I mean, but it's catchy, and it probably got your attention. Sorry for the cheap trick.

But back to the MacPro - the thing that stands out for me at this early stage of ownership is Apple's attention to detail. Even the process of unboxing the thing was enjoyable. The box is about double the quality of any other PC box I've ever seen, and the internal packaging is even more robust and well put together. You could look at this cynically and say its all a waste of time and money - I'm sure it's not cheap to put together - but what it says to me is this: if Apple is prepared to put that kind of effort into packaging, then it gives me a lot of confidence that they will put the same effort into their hardware and software too.

And I hope that's the case. It's been just under a week now, and I'm loving the new machines on a gut level. I wonder how I'll feel in a couple of months? Already, I having some serious mental issues adjusting to some simple things like the differences in Control/Option/Command keys. I'm starting to get it, but slowly. Overall, the experience is one of speed, things flow and almost everything is more or less in the place that I expect it to be (something that I can't say about Windows even after 15 years of use). These feelings are all subjective at this stage as I bask in the post-purchase glow that seems to seduce most Apple customers. It will be interesting to come back in 6 months and see if I still feel the same way.

M@

[1] New Apple Store is a Glass Act

Is transparent synchronisation the next killer app for mobiles?

So we are finally (officially) getting the iPhone in Australia! In what would have to be one of the most un-secret secrets in recent technology history, Steve Jobs today announced the second generation iPhone, along with a host of new countries where the uber sexy little gadget will be available.

Amid all of the fanfare about the iPhone, something struck me about the new Mobile Me service Apple will release in July. There has been past criticism from some quarters that Apple's .Mac service was poor value. I think you could probably make that argument pretty easily. However, this new service seems to be something else. For a start, it has some truly amazing web design (possibly, even as amazing as this, or this). [As an aside, the kinds of things that people are doing now in rich Internet applications and with the full toolbox of Web2.0 tricks is simply mind blowing. I don't think anyone considered 2 years ago that we would have applications of this quality.]

Mobile Me does two things. Firstly, it elevates all of a typical user's electronic stuff into the cloud. This is great, but certainly not unique - Google has been doing precisely this for some time. I think we can be sure that Apple will bring all of their usual user experience aplomb to the task, so the service will certainly be pleasurable to use. However, I think the real trick comes in the second part. Mobile Me also (at least on paper) appears to seamlessly synchronise this stuff across all of a user's devices.

As anyone with more than 1 device (desktop PC, laptop, phone) will know, synchronisation is a total nightmare. I currently use a BlackBerry [1], and even today I find myself fragging the BlackBerry calendar and overwriting it with the Outlook calendar on each sync because if I don't, then the BlackBerry will constantly double-up entries (particularly recurring appointments).

Perhaps more annoying is the fact that I have to start this bizzare and idiosyncratic little synchronisation application to make it all happen. As a consequence of the generally poor quality of synchronisation applications, most people have data that is out of sync or inconsistent, or they just don't bother with the process at all.

If Mobile Me delivers on the ability to push my stuff to the cloud, and then allows me to have a seamless, consistent, up-to-date view of that stuff from any device - from desktop, to laptop to mobile phone - then Apple will have pulled off a real coup. My guess is that they will deliver on this promise, underlying again their ability to "innovate through simplicity".

Which brings me to an observation about the relative approaches of Apple, Microsoft and Google - both in terms of technology and business model.

As we all know, Microsoft concentrates on the endpoint (at least traditionally), both on the PC and on the mobile device. It's all about Windows Vista and Windows Mobile. To play in the Microsoft ecosystem, you need to buy a license of some sort, and in the case of the vast majority of PCs, you don't even have a choice about it because the license comes as part of the purchase of each new machine.

Google is at the other end of the scale. Their entire service offering is in the cloud, and they give everything away for free, making (lots of) money on targeted advertising. Microsoft is certainly trying to respond to Google, but if you need any proof that they don't have a plan or a clue about how to compete online, then just check out their recent attempt to buy Yahoo.

So where does Apple fit in? Clearly, they have a strong story at the endpoint. The entire Mac hardware range, from laptops to desktops, is well regarded, and if recent sales figures are to be believed, are selling amazingly well. The Mac operating system is also a stand-out, and in stark contrast to Vista, seems to get almost nothing but high praise.

In my view, Apple's new Mobile Me offering places them equidistant from Microsoft and Google, with a service that makes the best use of their endpoint and operating system expertise, adds a cloud-based service layer that (on the surface) solves many of the traditional problems with synchronising multiple devices, mixed in with a subscription based charging model.

Such an economic proposition almost certainly means that Apple won't achieve the user scale of Google Apps (Mail, Calendar, Docs, etc) for Mobile Me, but it does allow them to target the premium end of the market - precisely the same market that they target with hardware sales, and one that is exceptionally profitable for the company.

In many ways, you could probably think of Mobile Me as a premium version of Google Apps in the same way that you can consider the Mac and Mac OS X as a premium version of a Windows PC. Of course, some would argue that these things are not even playing the same game, but allow me to stretch the metaphor for the sake of the discussion.

The real question is this: Where does it leave Microsoft? As an organisation, Microsoft lacks Google's capability in search or scale in advertising; Vista appears to be losing the operating system battle (at least in mind share, if not in volume) to OS X; and they do not appear to have anything nearly as compelling as Mobile Me as an online application. They will almost certainly attempt to turn the ship to deliver a suite of competitive services over the next 12 months or so, but where will Apple be in that time?

One final point that I think ties into this thread is the constant call for Apple to license OS X to third parties. Leaving aside all of the Hackintosh projects that are popping up, I do not think there is a snowball's chance that Apple will ever license their OS to anyone (again). And in any case, why would they bother? A compelling Mobile Me service that generates US$99/year per subscriber will generate a tidy revenue stream that will not in any way jeopardise Apple's healthy margins on the sales of Mac hardware. At the same time, Windows-based Mobile Me and iPhone users might be seduced to switch in the same way as the droves of iPod users who liked the seamless integration between the iPod and iTunes have done so up to now.

I expect that Apple has done its numbers properly to the point that any revenue lost through foregoing sharing argeements with carriers is more than compensated by a US$99/year subscription to Mobile Me. That is, of course, assuming that they can get enough subscribers. So I also expect that they will be trying to convert a big percentage of all new iPhone owners into Mobile Me subscribers as well.

The extent to which this is possible, I think, comes down to the success of Mobile Me. We have all been looking around for the next real killer application in the mobile space for some time [If you are wondering, the first two were obviously voice calls and SMS texting. UPDATE: Of course! Photos is number 3. Thanks Jen.]

Interestingly, the next killer mobile application may not be a mobile application at all, but rather, an application that makes it completely irrelevant and transparent that I am mobile. Regardless of whether I sit down at my desktop at home, my laptop in the airport lounge, or my phone on the go, I get the same, live, consistent view of all of my electronic stuff.

Apple really looks like they have cracked it with this one.

M@


[1] I was waiting for today's announcements from Apple before I replaced my entire technology kit. It's been over three years since I last splurged on decent technology infrastructure. So, come 9am this morning, I'm off to buy a new laptop and a new desktop. And I've already put my order in with Optus for a couple of 3G iPhones.

What I read last week 6.2

[1] Gin, television and social surplus
I just love the idea that there is massive attention tsunami building and building ...

[2] Nick Bostrom's Home Page
If you want to cause a fracas at your next dinner party, read The Simulation Argument. Also, check out his TED Talk on "The 3 Biggest Problems for Humanity", linked off his home page: death, existential risk, and an inability to know how good things can really be.

[3] Where are they? Why I hope the search for extraterrestrial life finds nothing.
He's got a point.

[4] Content with style - A CSS framework.
This is brilliant - someone has applied the logic of software framework design to the creation of a set of stylesheets. Very well done. AppFuse uses this framework (or a variation on it).

How to apply for a job at Google

Simple: just build this:

http://goosh.org/

However, I wonder what Google thinks about the fact that all of their AdWords get stripped out of the search results?

M@

What I read last week 6.1

[1] Why Apple will sell 10 million iPhones
I wonder what they'll say when Apple end's up selling 12 million?

[2] Overview of Twine
Do I really need another social networking, information discovery tool?

[3] A tornado in space
I'm glad I don't live near this.

[4] First live images and videos of full screen ANDROID demos
There's something more to this whole story than is immediately obvious. Apple and Google are *very* close (Schmidt is on the board of Apple), so I don't think that either would do anything to screw the other over while they both share a common enemy. I wonder what they are up to?

[5] 'Give it Away and Pray' is Not a Business Model, but it doesn't mean that 'Free' Doesn't Work
There's a whole lot of 'buying a dollar and selling for 75c' in here. Maybe Jonah Peretti's "mullet strategy" is the way of the future?