Be Smart. Be Agile.

Fall 2009 Quarter Roundup: What Did We Learn?

2010-07-20T12:09:00.002+03:00

Description

Stanford instructor and seasoned serial entrepreneur Steve Blank looks back at the commonalities and quirks of the quarter's previous speakers. Blank outlines a thorough checklist of questions and analysis helpful to any new enterprise leader, and offers insight and case studies from industry giants and new technology plays alike.

Steve Blank is a retired serial entrepreneur with over 30 years of experience in high technology companies and management. He is a Consulting Professor at Stanford in the Graduate School of Engineering STVP Program.

Steve has been a founder or participant in eight Silicon Valley startups since 1978. His last company, E.piphany, started in his living room. His other startups include two semiconductor companies (Zilog and MIPS Computers), a workstation company (Convergent Technologies), a supercomputer firm (Ardent), a computer peripheral supplier (SuperMac), a military intelligence systems supplier (ESL) and a video game company (Rocket Science Games).

Steve is on the board of CafePress.com, an on-line marketplace, and IMVU, a 3D IM social network.

Video

Evangelizing for the Lean Startup

2010-07-20T11:48:00.001+03:00

Description
Speaker, author, and entrepreneur Eric Ries shares rapid fire wisdom on building nimble, responsive, and efficient online software-based businesses. He also offers his wisdom on streamlining processes and progressing engineering systems, and puts forth front line insight into why some new ideas succeed where others have failed.

Summary

Video

What I Wish I Knew When I Was 20

2010-07-20T11:28:00.002+03:00

Description
Tina Seelig - Stanford Technology Ventures Program's Executive Director shares rich insights in creative thinking and the entrepreneurial mindset.

Summary

The bigger the problem, the bigger the opportunity
Don't Wait to be Anointed
Fail Fast and Frequently
Never miss an opportunity to be fabulous

Video

What really motivates people?

2009-11-20T12:34:00.006+02:00

Dan Pink gets to explain what science knows about incentives and awards and what the business seems to keep ignoring time and time again! Seems that autonomy is a much greater motivator than we understand.

Watch his presentation at TED from July 2009 to get a taste for what he is thinking.

More about Motivation on:
http://www.danpink.com/archives/category/motivation
http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation.html

OpenAgile Presentations

2009-11-09T13:09:00.003+02:00

OpenAgile Process Overview and Benefits
http://www.openagile.com/OpenAgilePresentations

The OpenAgile Primer:
http://www.openagile.com/TheOpenAgilePrimer

The Scrum Checklist

2009-11-09T12:49:00.002+02:00

Very useful checklist, specially for beginners in SCRUM.

Just register on InfoQ then you can read the online version.
http://www.infoq.com/books/scrum-checklists

The Google Story

2009-11-09T12:25:00.001+02:00

14 years of Google history in two minutes

10 things Google has taught us

2009-11-06T16:29:00.001+02:00

What makes Google so revolutionary?

Please find a very inspiring and insightful article at:
http://money.cnn.com/2009/10/22/technology/auletta_maxims.fortune/index.htm?postversion=2009102609

Steve Jobs — CEO of the Decade

2009-11-06T11:43:00.003+02:00

Fortune Magazine has named Steve Jobs CEO of the Decade.

“The past decade in business belongs to Jobs. What makes that simple statement even more remarkable is that barely a year ago it seemed likely that any review of his accomplishments would be valedictory. But by deeds and accounts, Jobs is back.” (Fortune magazine)

Also featured in the profile are a set of rare photos of Jobs over the years, a rundown of the "Top 10" moments in Jobs' career, and a series of testimonials from eight significant personalities in Jobs' industries describing what makes him unique.

The Complete Guide to Google Wave

2009-11-06T11:12:00.000+02:00

Lifehacker authors Gina Trapani and Adam Pash provide an interesting book about Google Wave (what is Google Wave and how we can all use it).
http://completewaveguide.com/guide/The_Complete_Guide_to_Google_Wave

More details on http://wave.google.com/help/wave/about.html

Guidance on WPF and Silverlight differences

2009-11-06T08:34:00.000+02:00

This is question that pops up all the time.

WPF and Silverlight are both XAML based platforms but there are some important functionality and implementation differences between the two.

Please find a good document that illustrate this:
http://wpfslguidance.codeplex.com/

Ubuntu 9.10 Officially Released

2009-11-01T13:52:00.001+02:00

"The latest version of Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala) has been released. Offering numerous enhancements for both desktop and server environments, this release includes notable features like Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud images, the Ubuntu One 'personal cloud,' and Linux kernel version 2.6.31. Please be sure to use a release mirror close to your geographic location to help reduce the stress on Ubuntu's primary servers; using BitTorrent for downloads can help alleviate the load even more. If your organization has adequate network and server resources, please consider hosting a mirror as well."

Features: http://www.ubuntu.com/products/whatisubuntu/910features
Download: http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/download

What Is Scrum and Why Should You Do It?

2009-10-30T13:06:00.004+02:00

For the past tow years, I have practice Scrum in my organization. Let me share with you some of my experiences.

What Is Scrum?
Scrum is an iterative incremental managing framework for complex projects.

Projects are controlled through ongoing measurement and control of backlog, issues, risk, problems and changes. A deliverable product is always ready through the use of constant builds and testing in parallel with development. Small teams develop component-based systems with clean interfaces.

The main roles in Scrum are:

1. "ScrumMaster", who maintains the processes (typically project manager)
2. "Product Owner", who represents the stakeholders
3. "Team", a cross-functional group people (5-9) who do the actual analysis, design, implementation, testing, etc.

Meetings

Daily Scrum

Each day during the sprint, a project status meeting occurs. The meeting is timeboxed to 15 minutes and discussion is restricted to the three SCRUM questions:

What did you do yesterday?
What will you do today?
What obstacles got in your way?

The meeting should happen at the same location and same time every day.

Scrum of Scrums

These meetings allow PM to discuss about teams work, focusing especially on areas of overlap and integration
Weekly meetings

Sprint Planning Meeting

At the beginning of the sprint cycle (usually 2-4 weeks) the following actions are taken:

Select what work is to be done
Prepare the Sprint Backlog that details the time it will take to do that work, with the entire teamIdentify and communicate how much of the work is likely to be done during the current sprint
Timebox limited (4 hours)

Sprint Review Meeting

Review the work that was completed and not completed
Present the completed work to the stakeholders (a.k.a. "the demo")
Incomplete work cannot be demonstrated
TimeBox (2 hours)

Sprint Retrospective

All team members reflect on the past sprint
Make continuous process improvements
Two main questions are asked in the sprint retrospective: What went well during the sprint? What could be improved in the next sprint?
Timebox (2 hours)

Artifacts

Product backlog

It contains backlog items: broad descriptions of all required features, wish-list items, etc. prioritized by business value. Those estimates help the Product Owner to gauge the timeline and, to a limited extent, priority.

Sprint backlog

It is a document containing information about how the team is going to implement the features for the upcoming sprint. Features are broken down into tasks; as a best practice, tasks are normally estimated between four and sixteen hours of work.

Burn down

It is a publicly displayed chart showing remaining work in the sprint backlog. Updated every day, it gives a simple view of the sprint progress.

For more details see: www.scrumalliance.org

Why does Scrum Work?
The basic premise is that if you are committed to the team and the project, then you can spend time being productive instead of justifying your work. This reduces the need for meetings, reporting and authorization. It is exercised by selecting the right people, creating an open work environment, encouraging feedback, establishing an evaluation and reward program based on group performance, managing the tendency to go off in different directions early on, and tolerating mistakes. Every person on the team starts with an understanding of the problem, associates it with a range of solutions experienced and studied, then using skill, intelligence, and experience, will narrow the range to one or a few options.

Useful links:
http://www.scrumalliance.org
http://www.ambysoft.com/essays/agileProjectPlanning.html
http://pharazon.blog.com/2009/07/13/lean-agile-software-engineering/

Scrum in Under 10 Minutes!

2009-10-30T12:45:00.000+02:00

Many of you may have seen this but I would like to post it for those of you that do not have an understanding of how Scrum Works. The YouTube video was created by Hamid Shojaee.