Trust can take years to build, and moments to destroy. Communication lies at the heart of trust, and the more you communicate, the more trust you can build. Keep things to yourself, and people begin to fear for the worst.

Many employers say they care about their employees, then you take the job only to find out they really don’t; they want cogs in their machine. How can you determine up front if an employer really does care about the employees or not? In this video we explore some of the questions you can ask to find out just that.

About Voalté

Voalté is redefining hospital mobile point-of-care communication by providing a complete solution for voice, alarms and text messaging on a robust expandable platform – the Apple iPhone. The resulting improvement in clinician workflow leads to better patient outcomes and improvements in nurse job satisfaction.

All Positions Have Excellent Benefits

Paid medical, dental, and vision insurance coverage

• Monthly employer contribution to a Health Spending Account (HSA)
• Employee Stock Options
• Paid Vacation and Personal Time
• Relocation Bonus

And here are the job descriptions.

Blackberry Team Lead

We are looking for an experienced Blackberry developer with agile development and leadership skills to join our company. The responsibilities would include working with an outsourced team of Blackberry developers to complete the Voalte mobile client application. Which needs to communicate with the Voalte Server and a BES server to receive push notifications while the device is asleep. Also to integrate with client BES servers in an enterprise Wifi network. Any VoIP experience a huge plus.

Here’s the full job description for the Blackberry Team Lead.

Ruby on Rails Developer

The Voalte solution consists of the Voalte Server that runs in a UNIX environment and the mobile application running on a device such as the Blackberry Curve or Apple iPhone. We are looking for a Ruby on Rails web application developer to build the client side user interface to the Voalte server, which will be used for configuration and administration:

• User and Group accounts
• Access control and permissions
• Device management
• Feature (voice, alarms, text) detail/parameter management
• View log files

Here’s the full job description for the Ruby on Rails developer position.

There are a growing number of blogs, videos, books, conferences, presentations, and other materials that show how to use Agile at many experience levels. While these are great for knowledge, they are not a replacement for sustained agile coaching. The problem, which we are solving with ADS Skirmish, is that currently hiring an agile consultant to be on-site and work with the team for a number of weeks or months is prohibitively expensive. But this is exactly what is needed. Work hand-in-hand with a team, get them going down the road. Once that is accomplished, transition someone in, giving them all the tools and resources needed to be successful. That is what ADS Skirmish is all about.

The Agile Development Practices Conference 2009 starts tomorrow and goes through the 13th. Since I’m on the road visiting clients and development conferences I won’t be able to attend. Last year was awesome, so I’ll definitely miss it. If you do, please share your experiences via blog and Twitter. Here’s a description of the conference:

Discover Agile Development Practices and take back the latest in agile methods, technologies, tools, and leadership principles from thought leaders who deliver inspiring keynote presentations, in-depth tutorials, and a wide range of conference classes. Join industry experts and peers in the agile community for a week jam-packed with learning sessions that will help you make a powerful impact in your job role and for your organization.

In this presentation we look at the similarities and differences that a PHP developer will want to keep in mind when adding Rails to their toolbox.

If you like the presentation and want to learn more, check out the Rails for PHP Developers book site, and download the reference.

In this interview at Big LAMP Camp in Franklin, Tennessee, Marcus Whitney talks about his experience coordinating the first Enterprise LAMP Summit, and Big LAMP Camp. Both days were excellent and well attended. And don’t let the name fool you. I spoke at Big LAMP Camp about Rails, and Python was also represented along with the heavy dose of PHP, MySQL, and PostgreSQL (our database of choice).

Visit the Enterprise LAMP site for the awesome speaker list that Marcus lined up for both conference days.

When you see employees as people rather than resources, your view on what information they should have access to changes, and the barriers to communication can be broken down.

Product Backlog

The first thing we did is move the product backlog to it’s own tab. With the product backlog being located on the project planning page, it was too small to work with, especially for larger projects. Also, we made the expand and collapse links show and hide the acceptance criteria. We also made the number of story points on a user story more pronounced. The product backlog is now the place to create new user stories, and sort them in priority order by dragging them into place.

Pop-Up Forms

And speaking of creating new things, inline forms were great for quickly creating anything new, but they tended to get in the way. So we’ve replaced all the inline edits with pop-up boxes. This makes it easier to see what you’re working with when you create new things or editing existing ones.

Project Planning

With the product backlog moved to it’s own tab, the project planning page is now all about planning your releases and sprints. Drag and drop user stories inside a sprint to be sure that everyone knows what the priorities are.

Also easily move user stories back to the product backlog, or edit them right there.

Adding User Stories to a Sprint

Adding user stories to a sprint is now even easier too with a pop-up that provides a list of all user stories from the product backlog. Simply check the ones you want and add them to the sprint. Watch out for adding more story points than your velocity allows for.

Sprint Backlog

Create tasks for user stories directly in the sprint backlog. No need to go to a separate sprint planning page any more for that.

Updated Project Navigation

And to compliment all of the new goodies, we’ve update the project navigation so you can quickly get to the information you need.

Markdown Support for Acceptance Criteria and Task Descriptions

We’ve added markdown support for formatting acceptance criteria on user stories, and descriptions on tasks. This should make all that text much easier to read. This will work for all new user stories and tasks.

And What’s Next?

We’re proud of this major update to Scrum’d, and are not going to rest on our laurels now. You’ve given us a ton of feedback and we have a huge list of features we want to add. Look for things like multiple admins and read-only user accounts (a.k.a. “the chicken” role) to come soon.

We Want Your Feedback

We want to know how you like or don’t like scrum’d. Please let us know in comments here or on our support site if you’re a user. We’re listening.

With trust broken, employees seen as resources, and customers viewed as invoices, business is broken. Social media has given the consumer a much louder voice, who is demanding a new way of being from business. It is time for a new business manifesto.