My mind wonders…

• Contrado Solutions PTY LTD » Planning Poker Cards
  Site that has planning poker cards in PDF format for download
  (tags: agile scrum planning poker cards)
• BBC NEWS | Wales | North West Wales | Man gets breakfast tattoo on head
  Weird
  (tags: tatoo head chimp)

Not quite in the Big Brother House but in the Hostel as part of my enforced absence from snowboarding.

The knee is feeling a little better if perhaps a little stiff still, maybe I’ll make it up there for a couple of hours to see how it goes tomorrow.

Really, there is nothing else to report other than that I’ve done a lot of reading and a lot of playing on the Ms. Pac Man Table that they have here.

I got a great email from a friend of mine giving me some good feedback on the work related posts that I have made in the past. It got me thinking about some of the things that I have written about over the last 3 months or so.

Before starting this blog I had read Agile Project Management With Scrum and attended a Certified Scrum Master Course run by Conchango and delivered by Mike Cohn. I was then given a great opportunity to practice what I had been preaching. A daunting prospect at the time but when I reflect upon the experience, I realise that I enjoyed it a lot and, in my opinion, the project was largely successful. I do realise that it wasn’t all down to me, the team that delivered the software were largely responsible for it’s success.

I now find myself subscribing to a number of different blogs, having read more books and of course, having had some first hand experience. At the moment I am reading Extreme Programming Explained. I started on chapter 8 this morning and in light of the email that I referred to above it was interesting. In my reply to the email I said that I find a lack of willing at my company to change frustrating. I actually think that that is untrue of recent times, there is some change happening, it’s just taking a little longer to be realised. The author, Kent Beck states that “It’s easy start to change by changing one thing at a time. I think it’s hard to jump in and do all the practices, embrace all the values, and apply all the principles”.

My attitude has always been to dive straight in and learn whilst you go, this is true of the way I use a piece of new technology or software in fact (I do admit though that I do turn to the manual after a while.) and I find it frustrating sometimes that others are not willing to follow my lead, hence the statement above really struck a chord. It’s not that people aren’t willing to change (well, there are some) it’s just that they are mature enough to see that it takes time.

Interestingly, I sat in a meeting prior to my departure for Canada with somebody and, if I remember correctly he said to me that I had presented a real problem for some people to deal with (he was referring to the fact that I had run a project in a very different manner to which we as an IT division would normally do so.). I came out of that meeting a little miffed because I didn’t think that I had presented a problem but a solution, in hindsight though I now think I understand what he meant.

It’s strange, I’ve been out here for nearly a couple of weeks and whilst I am not missing work, I am missing the prospect of being part of the change that is taking place.

It’s been good to hear from those that have chosen to comment on the blog, keep them coming. It amused me to find that one of Rob’s posts has been commented on by his Dad. Unfortunately this will be the only comment though as Rob has now disabled them.

Mr Read, if you’re listening, do Fedex the poker table, it would be interesting to see Rob get that back through customs.

Phil and Ali that are running the Mountain Shadow Hostel here in Red kindly took us out for a couple of runs this morning, whilst the conditions were still poor we had a good time, we stopped at the Paradide Lodge for some lunch and then went our own ways. We’d already done a couple of really nice runs on Red itself in the morning and this may sound funny but I found myself going faster because I knew they wouldn’t be waiting for me. We also met with one of Musky’s mates Mike. All three of them were incredibly good riders, I had felt a little nervous about slowing them up when they first suggested it but they were happy buttering at the side of the piste and pulling the odd drop here and there, all in all a good morning anyway and it certainly pushed me a little which is a good thing.

After lunch we took a run down Long Squaw in to Northern Belle and then on to the Motherlode Chair at which point my day changed. On the unload I didn’t quite get myself set up properly and ended up falling over. In the process I managed to twist my already tender knee and as a result, at this moment in time, am in quite a lot of pain. Still, we went to the Flying Steam Shovel pub and got some anaesthetic. Always works for me.

It’s loooking highly unlikely, even with the prospect of fresh snow tomorrow that I will be able to make it up in the morning, my knee is twice it’s normal size and I am barely able to walk on it without inducing some pain. I’ve been taking it a bit easy so as not to ruin my trip to early on, I feel so silly to now be sat here having done what I have done.

A late start today and an early finish which was probably a good thing, my knee has started to hurt so I have taken to wearing a support but also because the heat during the day has been melting the slow slightly, meaning that it refreezes over night leading to fairly miserable conditions first thing and heavy moist stuff in the afternoon.

I’ve seen a lovely bowl over a ridge that we ride past every so often, it looks as though it would be a serious hike but definitely worth it, I might well see if any of the others fancy going up early in the morning for first lifts and doing that.

Rob and Nathan both ordered their Avalanche Kit today and I picked up a Shovel and Probe having already bought a Mammut Pulse in the UK, we’ve got our first day with Big Red Cats on the 16th so we’ll need to get some practice in using them before then.

How does this all tie in to the title? It doesn’t, the reason for the title is that Rob today shaved his beard off whilst Nathan and I are still persevering with ours. I must confess though, every time my beard itches, which it does quite often, I consider shaving it off too.

• Tales From The Ridge
  Nathan recommended one of his friends’ blogs to me, I’ve read a couple of the posts and they are very good.
  (tags: writing fiction microfiction)

This is the second of the two work related blog posts that I spoke of, if you are here for Snowboarding related tales please feel free to visit the Red Moutain specific tag set.

I sat in a meeting towards the end of the Skunkworks project that I was working on and I was being asked about something, the subject of which I forget now, but the conversation led to how to make the projects more effective. I said that what was really needed was a 2 page document outlining the objectives of the project and what was needed to achieve them. At that point I was challenged, no, it was suggested to me that what I was talking about was actually a requirements pack. It wasn’t.

What I was talking about in that instance was a Business Justification Document, I personally think that any project, be it an internal one, relevant to a particular business area or a commercially focussed one, needs to have a sponsor, a Product Owner if you like, that is willing to say that I want to / need this piece of software because it will deliver this amount of value to my department / organistaion.

When we finally saw what was essentially the BJD (we had been calling it a proposition during the project) it focussed everyone’s minds. One thing that impressed me was that it had a bullet pointed list of 5 / 6 core features that had to be in the application before it launched, this was something that I had previously never seen in any documentation that the departments tasked with delivering IT based projects in this company had ever delivered (They had delivered requirements packs but they were long winded and some times difficult to comprehend, that is, in my opinion). These were the things that we had been waiting for, however, and this is this point that I was trying to make in the meeting and in fact now, I think each one would have been better delivered as a story. I am of the opinion that using stories help the person getting the information to engage with the Product Owner and that is why this post by Rachel Davies is interesting for that reason, Rachel, if she is who I think she is (excuse me if you are not), has been working across the road from us, furthermore, my boss has been spaeking to her about working with us (the prospect of which is exciting).

Before I left for my trip the department was on the cusp of managing a couple of projects using an Agile approach, I think some of the Project Managers are ready to see what that style of approach has to offer, it would be great to see some of the Business Analysts looking further in to this approach so as to combine our efforts, I for one think that using stories to gather requirements has a lot to offer. For anyone that is interested, I read Mike Cohn’s book, User Stories Applied: For Agile Software Development which I thought was excellent.

This is the first of a couple of posts that I have had in my drafts waiting to be completed for a while now, I apologise if they seem a little out of context.

I came across this blog post in which the author makes a couple of points that are similar to those that I was trying to convey whilst working on the Skunkworks project before Christmas to the Steering Group and in particular, the person who was acting as the Product Owner.

I know all of this stuff shouldn’t still be bothering me, I am off work for another 9 weeks but it is. It’s important for me that the product that we were working to develop doesn’t fall flat on it’s face. Before I left it sounded though that it was going to be released to the general public and a press release made about it, having just checked the URL though it would appear that somebody has put some sort of Username / Password on it to deny access so maybe it has been sent to a limited audience. Let’s hope so.

The trouble that I think there is with releasing software that is not fully functioning is that, in my opinion, people are prepared to try any new piece of software, be it desktop or web based, I share the sentiments of the author of this post, however, that people will only continue to use software that is functioning fully. I think the rule that 80% of users only use 20% of the functionality is true and that if we as a company are to continue to develop software aimed at the commerical market we should concentrate on delivering the core feature set very well with our first bit of funding looking to then focus on the other 80%. Sadly, during the meeting that I attended with the digital steering group prior to my departure when I suggested this as an approach, I don’t think it was taken on board. Still, on my return I can perhaps continue to work moving to delivering software in that way. I think there are definitely others in the department that share my desire to see us work in this way.

Given the time constraints that we were exposed to during the project’s lifecycle one thing that we didn’t build in was scalability, we did everything that was necessary to allow to us to deliver as quickly as possible, because of the hosting environment that the organisation has and the controls that are enforced we were unable to use things like rails or django which is unfortunate as these would have obviously given us an advantage in terms of speed to deliver. Scalability will become an issue if this sofware is released to the general public without a team gaving been established to support and develop it going forward. In my opinion if the company is going to fund this going forward a Scrum team or at the very least a project team should be established to progress this piece of software in a way that those on the digital steering group would expect.

It’s interesting times for my company and my department in particular and I am dissapointed that I am not there to experience it and be part of it.

We were all up early this morning hoping for a powder day. We were dissapointed to find that the inversion was back, it was -3 at the base and +5 at the top. It was also apparent that it had rained over night meaning that the powder from yesterday had turned in to a hard packed ice. The day’s riding was unpleasant and I called it quits at lunch time, I hitched back to the hostel getting a lift from a nice couple who opinion of the conditions were pretty similar to mine. All in all a shame, it’s 17.15 here at the moment and it’s raining in town which I am taking as not being a good indication for tomorrow, still we’ll go up and see how it goes.