Standups and communication

Communication is the first core value of XP. So how does your team communicate with each other? How well do you do it?

One way that our development teams communicate is via daily standup meetings. But what is a standup meeting, anyway? How about this definition: a self-organizing daily gathering to gain shared understanding of the state of our team, focus our day and remind ourselves that we're all in this together. As one comment on Ward Cunningham's wiki puts it, "Our aim is modest: to identify short-term obstacles. The agenda is minimalist: What does the day look like?" Some teams eschew standups because they’re not helpful; perhaps understanding the objectives can help you reshape your standup. How do you know if your standup meetings are effective? Here are some possible outcomes:

• Everyone knows what he or she is going to do -- and with whom -- as soon as the standup ends (rather than finding a pair partner or figuring out what to do after the meeting ends).
• Everyone understands where the team is on all the stories -- if an outsider were to ask you about any story, you could answer (rather than merely “the story I'm working on”).
• Everyone knows high-level problems facing the team for the day (rather than not knowing).
• Everyone has a sense of how complete the iteration is, and what needs to be done to "make it" (rather than being surprised on the last day).
• The team has decided to have breakout meetings to resolve specific problems (rather than try to solve bigger problems in the standup).
• Everyone knows what the team is pledging to accomplish for the day (rather than being unfocused).
  

If you're not accomplishing these, check out the standups article on Martin Fowler's site, which provides useful patterns and identifies "smells" for standups. Now for some best practices that we’ve seen around Asynchrony:

• Prompt start: The way a team starts its standup is indicative of the way the day will go; when everyone arrives on-time (or, heaven forbid, a minute early!) the meeting tends to have a snappier pace. Use a fun disincentive to cut down on lateness (e.g., tardy MFKR team members having to wear a PPE jumpsuit).
• Story-based: Rather than focusing on individual check-ins, the team talks about its progress in terms of stories. Facing the story posters on the board, the team talks about the unfinished stories in order of priority and how to complete them. The team can set a goal by determining which stories it will attempt to finish that day.
• Know what’s next: Before the standup meeting is over, know who your pair partner is (consult the pairing chart for help) and what task you’re going to work on, and go to it.

Hans Reiser: Once a Linux Visionary, Now Accused of Murder

Wired Magazine has published an interview with a man about to stand trial for the murder of his separated wife. The article is written like a short story of sorts with bits of code dropped in for dramatic influence.

Strategic error doomed asynchrony.com

Nate just forwarded this email to a couple of us who've been around long enough to remember the revolutionary software incubator that was asynchrony.com:

From: "DevGalaxy Support"
Date: May 25, 2007 7:19:55 AM CDT
To: sales@asynchrony.com
Subject: Increased Odds "5 star award" from DevGalaxy.com

Hello,

Congratulations!

Due to the number of downloads that your product had from our users and based on our own review we decided to grant your product with the DevGalaxy "5 Stars Award". This means that "Increased Odds" is highly apreciated and already in the top of the searches.

You must be proud of this award and you should let all your users or potential users know about this by displaying it on your website, or on software boxes inside your product.

You can read more about your product's award on our website: http://www.devgalaxy.com/program-q-h-a-a-q.aspx.

For displaying your award use the following details:
Web site URL: http://www.devgalaxy.com/
Software URL: http://www.devgalaxy.com/program-q-h-a-a-q.aspx
Award Html Code:
========================


========================

If you have other software products that you want to get an evaluation for, feel free to request it by sending us an email at:
awards@devgalaxy.com


Best regards,
DevGalaxy.com Team
http://www.devgalaxy.com

I checked out the site -- a whopping 1068 downloads! And here we were spending all of our resources pushing PDA BombDefense. Man, we misjudged the market for lotto apps.

Rage in the Diebold Machine

Fortune Article "Rage in the Machine"

Why we never have to worry about job security while producing quality software.

Here's a five-step plan guaranteed to make an obscure company absolutely notorious.

First get into a business you don't understand, selling to customers who barely understand it either. Then roll out your product without adequate testing. Don't hire enough skilled people. When people notice problems, deny, obfuscate and ignore. Finally, blame your critics when it all blows up in your face.

Are flip-flops damaging your career?

I don't usually read or link to Reuters, but this story was so appropos (I just saw Dan) that I couldn't pass it up:

Style gurus warn that flip-flops, which are worn mainly by younger women, could be harmful to a career.

"Shoes convey the mood of a woman. Wearing flip-flops conveys the mood that you are relaxed and on vacation. That's not a good message in the office," said Meghan Cleary, a style commentator who wrote the book "The Perfect Fit: What Your Shoes Say About You."

Since when was feeling relaxed and on vacation not a good message in the office? Apparently, the writer didn't consult any studies on the correlation of companies' restrictive footwear policies and absenteeism... Come to Asynchrony, where every day is like a vacation!

Agile RSS feeds

I've put together a page with headlines from a wide variety of rss feeds on the topic of Agile development. You can find it here.

Vader Of The Opera

Darth and Luke battle and belt it out in this musical.

Movie Cast Helper

From Lori...

MyHeritage.com does facial recognition on photos to find celebrity matches.

Personally, I don't like it. It says Pam looks like Erica Durance, while I look like Kim Jong Il. Not nice.

A True Employee Incentive

World's first beer health spa opens in Czech
London, Mar 28: A family brewery in the Czech Republic has opened the world’s first beer health centre in its cellar. The Chodovar Family brewery in Chodova Plana offers beer baths, beer massages and beer cosmetics.

The cellar has seven huge Victorian style baths where visitors can swim in beer while enjoying a pint poured at a bathside bar.

"Beer can treat a range of conditions, particularly skin conditions, and the health centre should appeal to men who are put off by 'posh' traditional spas. I have heard of some places in other countries where people can swim in beer but it's just a gimmick. We believe in the healing properties of beer and we offer the full range of treatments. We are a fully-fledged beer spa," Ananova quoted Jiri Plevka, the owner as saying.

The guests are charged 80 pounds for weekend packages, and can indulge in a range of health treatments including beer wraps, starting at 12 pounds per session.

You Got Game? You Know Jack?

Hey, Sports Fans! If you KNOW sports, put yourself to the test here.
faniq.com

Par for the OC?

The last Sunday evening when Pam and I were in Huntington Beach for Boeing, we travelled down to Laguna Beach to see the sunset, eat dinner and witness the hotness of the OC.

This picture I took that day deserves a 'Priceless' award! No plates or registration AND illegally parked. The officer writing the ticket said, "He can afford this!"

Company library: It begins

Need a five-minute break this beautiful Friday afternoon? No, I don’t need to bum a smoke or play ping pong – I’m talking about a diversion that has a more, er, direct benefit to the company. ;)

I’ve been thinking about a way in which we can leverage our employees’ collective book collection (is that redundant redundant?) so that we can know what books we have at our disposal. So I invite you to help me try LibraryThing, an online book-cataloging site. It’s free and easy, and I’ve registered an asynchrony user for us all to share. It uses the concept of tagging, which you may be familiar with from sites like Flickr or del.icio.us.

1. Go to http://www.librarything.com.
2. Sign in using asynchrony/asynchrony.
3. Click the Add books tab.
4. Add as many of your books as you like, tagging liberally.

Some examples of tags might be the book owner (or, since many of our books are technically company-owned, book “possessor”) – I suggest using aCe login name – location or topics. Check out the list of books already in our catalog to see what I mean.

If you have any questions or ideas, please let me know. Thanks!

-Matt

Top 10 Advantages of ADD in a High Tech Career

Are you ADD? Yes? Great!

Now you don't need to spend money on drugs to treat the problem, go into High Tech and MAKE MONEY from your SKILLS!

Of course, we need testers too. Know any OCD people?

And, if you're ADD and OCD (like me), it could be a BFD!

Top 10 Advantages of ADD in a High Tech Career

I guess it's fitting that Blogger locked up and I tried to repost this without checking. haha... chuckle chuckle

Which language to use?

This guy did an essay on 'C++ vs Java vs Python vs Ruby : a first impression'.
http://www.dmh2000.com/cjpr/

What no comparison to some wonderful Micro$oft language? (ha, no)

Maybe we're on the wrong track...

Found out about this conference via Brian Button's blog; I have to admit, some of the arguments are pretty compelling. We've been doing Agile for a couple of years now...maybe it's time to step back and re-evaluate.

http://www.waterfall2006.com/

I think I'm going to have to attend, anyone care to join me? We can all get tickets to Tim Lister's keynote: "Dead Fish Can't Swim But They Can Float Down a Waterfall."

Save the date: April 1, 2006!

Keep the press free

If the left's regulatory war against free speech moves onto the soil of blogs, what would happen to our little company blog, anyway?

URL o' the day

Chuck Norris Facts. Read them.

Robots Go To War

Here is an article from Popular Science which talks about robotic initiatives like FCS.
Article

As the Robo-Gaffo will someday say, "Oh Snap! (brrt, bing) It's on!"

Hey, who's that guy with all the chicks!?

Asynchrony gadfly Dan King is on the prowl again, this time getting some attention at the DD Lounge in Brentwood. Hey, Dan, take your satchel off and have a beer -- or five!

This strikes a little too close to home for my taste, living as I do about 500 feet from the DD...